Among the great amount of concerts I attended in 2022, for me personally Jason Moran’s solo concert at Jazz Festival Saalfelden 2022, Austria, captivated me the most and has a special place in my memory.
Not all spectacular appearances are outstanding vice versa. Close to each other are outstanding and extraordinary musicianship. The predicate ‘outstanding’ applies above all to the solo-concert of Jason Moran at the intimate Nexus venue: a performance of a category and class of itself. He excelled by great discursive wealth and narrative gift in connecting spots from musical history, in relating music to social realities and spirit plus his connectedness to different art forms and dramaturgical framings.
He started quite casual, parlando, and step by step led the audience along a series of significant landmarks of increasing intensity and density – all on the basis of a clear and trustful self-evidence. No nimbus game, all was what it was and open to take in. And then all of a sudden the temperature increased … He did not leave it at that but went on a trembling expedition into darker tonalities that conjured an ominously rumbling world of sound. It was a non-expectable turn, forceful and memorable, at the end of his concert, a strong trembling sound comment on the present state of our world (if you want to take it as that).
Here are two video’s that can give an indication what it was and what happened …
More about mountain, waves of sound, people and pebbles you can read HERE – it’s a summerly recollection of 2022 musical moments in an alpine environment.