It takes a pretty intelligent thinker to truly appreciate jazz music. The same can be said concerning the brain power required to totally understand and appreciate abstract art. It’s almost as if they were made for each other. Both relatively new art forms that share some interesting similarities. You cannot approach either without an impressionable mind. Each artistic endeavor calls upon the listener and the viewer to submit and surrender their pre-concieved skeptical ideals & thoughts.
Try to reminisce a time in your life when you so completely and unequivocally surrendered your thinking. Good Luck… you may never have. It’s simply not within our nature, especially if you are a man. Women being in some cases more sensitive to the influences around them have a better chance of achievement in this area. Probably the only time you ever hear of an individual surrendering it’s almost always tied to their faith and religion.
The jazz style referred to as “free jazz” pioneered by musicians like John Coltrane & Charles Mingus and others can be a bit disjointed and very unsettling. But if you let yourself go you can be seduced. Abstract art can look disjointed and for many extremely unsettling. But coupling these two art forms is the gateway to a profound experience like no other.
The beauty of Art and Jazz…Jazz and Art is…they can work in concert to prepare the mind and perhaps even the soul to immerse in each other’s profound form of art. Almost any music brings joy to the soul, and when coupled with a visual experience can be an outright epiphany. Jazz music is the perfect catalyst for preparing the mind for the amazing visual dichotomy that is found in abstract art.
One of the most famous jazz albums features a cover by the artist Joan Miro. No jazz aficionado maintains a music collection without this amazing album created by Dave Brubeck Quartet. Of course I’m referring to Time Out and the cut Take Five. There was time when you couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing at least the abbreviated version of Take Five and if you were lucky you got the whole enchilada, drum solo and all. Spectacular! And to use a famous jazz term, “That’s copasetic”
The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out - Joan Miro Cover Art
Learn to surrender…explore the world of jazz & abstract art. Grab your iPod and load it up with Dave Brubeck’s Time Out album and head to the Museum of Modern Art or any museum that features contemporary art. If you can’t make it to a museum, pick up an abstract art book and immerse. Think of the Vulcan mind-meld.
Painting by Rod Jones Artist entitled: 12:15 - Oil on Canvas
Suggested jazz music for viewing 12:15 by Rod Jones Artist -“Acknowledgement” – John Coltrane,“Salt Peanuts” – Dizzy Gillespie, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” – Charles Mingus, “Blue in Green” – Miles Davis, anything by Sydney Bechet and of course Louis Armstrong.
