Tonight, I went to the Khyber Gallery’s Wednesday Improv group with Nick Dourado. It was church, y’all, jazz church. Coltrane, John and Alice, Ornette, and Santana, First we sat and focused on the breath, and listened, listened to the whispering sounds in the room, the shuffle of feet, a deep inhale/exhale, a flutter of paper, the refrigerator turning off, and on. Then group singing, four rounds of making a big-throated sounds with our voices, and listening to other voices, and imitating those sounds, and collectively making the most enormous choir on earth resonate within the walls of the gallery. And finally, we played, improvised, sang, twanged, beat, bleeped, honked, hooted, whatever came natural. All the ground work had been laid in the breath, the listening, and the singing. We were fully resonant with each other, fully open and in tune with each other. Democracy. A Love Supreme. Day 1 of jazz church.

]]>