Finding my way into jazz

I was always curious about jazz. I purchased a handful of the revered albums, sparked by lists of the greatest albums of all-time or a favorite artist raving about one. When a music journalist wants to capture how talented and innovative a band is, they often call out their jazz influences.

So, jazz for me was a higher ideal of music. I enjoyed it now and then, but it felt like an obligation—I should like it, but I wasn’t drawn to it. I also saw it as frozen in time—an artifact from a distant heyday.

When the pandemic began, I started working from home for the first time. I realized I could now listen to music as much as I wanted, but knew that familiar songs with lyrics would be too distracting.

I decided to try listening to my jazz albums. I didn’t know them well and set out to learn what I liked and why.

It was the perfect work companion and I started to understand it better and more importantly, fall in love with it. I would look up albums on Wikipedia, which pointed me to more great albums and artists. My interest and knowledge started to expand, but I still assumed that my jazz project was limited to digging through the archives.

One day, I came across a review of a Mike Reed album. It was A New Kind of Dance by his People, Places & Things project. I tried it and loved it. That moment made me realize that jazz is a living, breathing, evolving thing, and I was missing out.

I didn't know how to find what I was looking for, though. Thankfully, I discovered two sites that have introduced me to hundreds of fantastic albums and many favorite artists: JazzTrail and The Free Jazz Collective.

Later, I came across We Jazz. This Helsinki record label releases a lot of great music, but they also publish the Paris Review of jazz magazines. Each quarterly issue is beautifully done and includes profiles of current and past artists, deep dives into obscure corners of jazz, and numerous album reviews. Crucially, it’s only in print, but I’ve managed to track down a copy of every issue. Here’s the latest one.

The final piece in my jazz obsession was going to concerts. My first was Hunter Diamond at Chickie Wah Wah during a trip to New Orleans. The show was great. I loved the intimacy, willingness to take risks, and the singular focus on the music.

A year later, we moved to Northampton, MA and I joined Jazz Shares. Now, jazz concerts are a constant part of my life.

One of favorite things about jazz is there’s an infinite music to explore in many different forms, yet it’s also a highly interconnected world.

The drummer at that Hunter Diamond show? It was Mike Reed. I was able to tell him after the show how A New Kind of Dance was the gateway for me into something that brings me so much joy. Just as that concert turned out to be.

This year, Hunter’s group Black Diamond released an album called Furniture Of the Mind Rearranging. Mike Reed debuted The Separatist Party. Both are terrific, and both were released on We Jazz Records.

The night we arrived in Northampton, I went to my first Jazz Shares show. At the reception after, I had a great conversation with a writer.

He’s a regular contributor to We Jazz Magazine.