You know? I've been looking over that last number of months at TORCH and there's been a pretty damn good run of music and special interests. There have been a lot of very talented artists and every one of the performances unique … personal if you will. Again, last Sunday I was taken on another occasion that, I believe, really helped flesh out the soul of TORCH and what it means.
You know Sean Roderick? That one guy with the … yeah, that one! Sean! He was at TORCH and performed solo … solo improve … on piano. I'll get to the music in a minute but first I want tell you about some stuff he had to say that's very important to the story.
Before he started his first set, Sean pulled his seat up to the audience, welcomed everybody and started talking about what they were about to experience. Which is kind of hard to explain. It's not everyday a musician says, "hey! I have no idea what's going to happen." Well, actually, that probably happens more than anyone cares to acknowledge but that's not what he meant.
Sean started to teach us about improvisation. There were a couple of other musicians in the audience who might have understood but for the most part all of us were novices to the concept of music "in the moment." I also didn't notice any Jackson Pollacks in the audience either.
Let me see if I can sum up what we learned. A musician "plays." That's a key concept so; stick with me for a minute. Over time they develop a musical vocabulary that continues to expand as they experiment, make mistakes and become conversant with their language. This takes many hours to develop and flourish. Sean sits down to improvise on the piano everyday. He is constantly exploring and thinking up Sean phrases, new words and paragraphs in the musical sense. He develops a language that is all his own … his signature … and the vocabulary becomes second nature just like a signature.
When it comes time to improvise the musician may have an idea of what he wants to say but his target is an instant when technique and thought is relinquished to the moment. His hands become a conduit to deliver, that which is his heart and soul speaking at that time; that which is him. Suddenly, he is in a fragile space where heart and mind are speaking to the audience, the audience is listening and literally receiving the story. He's playing. He's not thinking of the next verse, how thirsty he is, that guy taking pictures or anything else. Just having a conversation with the listeners.
It was very cool. It's got to be a scary thing for musicians to sacrifice themselves on the altar of performance giving themselves over to the moment. Nobody knew what was going to happen. What if it didn't work? The wrong audience, the wrong night, they're gonna turn off my electricity or a billion other things?
One of the musicians there, who's played with Sean, asked me at the break if I thought Sean had reached his goal. I told him, "only Sean would be able to tell us that for sure but what he played was beautiful." What a gift he gave to TORCH.
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