I so love the moments when music melts away what separates us and let us experience this oneness with all who are present. It is such a powerful feeling and reminds me why I do what I do. I feel so lucky that I get to create/share experiences like that in my work. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does, it is tremendous.
The very last shows of 2019 at The Jazz Gallery was Gretchen Parlato’s “the stars or space between.” It was commissioned by The Jazz Gallery as part of our Fellowship program and Gretchen premiered the suite this past weekend on Friday and Saturday.
The music explores the polarity and symbiotic relationship of things that seem opposite. It was personal and honest and adventurous and incredibly beautiful. She took us on a journey which made us realize how we are all the same despite our differences. Songs sprung out of her experiences and struggles of being a new mother is the one many of us can relate to regardless of where you come from and where you stand; feeling of losing oneself and then finding oneself is what we all go through in different stages of our lives no matter what languages we speak.
At the end of the very last set, we all held our breaths and sat in complete silence for a good three seconds (which is a very long time) before the audience side of the room broke out into passionate applauds. I think we were all literally stunned by what we just experienced collectively and that we needed to come back down to earth, so to speak.
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