I am similar to Adrian Chiles (I may not understand jazz – but I know enough to know it’s wonderful, 26 June). I only have a rudimentary understanding of the theory and structures of jazz; like Adrian, I am blown away by the musicality of a jazz band, the balance between individual expression and group cohesion, and the often familiar tune warped and moulded into something unique. There is nothing musically to compare with a jazz musician soaring off into some cosmic place (Jack Kerouac describes this brilliantly in On the Road). At its best, jazz is a transcendental, almost spiritual experience.
When you have heard John Coltrane, or when you walked through a Rome park at midnight with a jazz band conjuring musical alchemy, some guys robotically knocking out the same few chords just doesn’t cut it. I like jazz because it moves me in the same way that Beethoven and Puccini do. I am no muso – I just appreciate the emotional effect.
Mark Paine
Birmingham
• I was absolutely delighted to read this article. I am a 57-year‑old printmaking artist who fell in love with jazz. It started with a conversation, which led to buying CDs, then more CDs, suddenly “getting” the Köln Concert, then asking friends about their ideas, then checking out the local Berlin jazz scene, going to my first jazz concert in a club, loving the music and just forgetting everything else. In the end, I guess jazz is a way of life. And it can hardly be described in words.
For like-minded people, I would recommend the movie Music for Black Pigeons, a Danish film about jazz musicians. I have watched it five times.
Eva Pietzcker
Berlin, Germany
• I fell under the spell of modern jazz when the owner of the record shop on Richmond Hill introduced me to Miles Davis’ Greatest Hits 50 years ago. The early parts of a song are invariably catchy and tuneful, and can be appreciated by just about everyone. The improvs of section two are a fabulous mystery, as he suggests; just give yourself up to the mesmeric blizzard of notes; and then return to the joy of the main tune again (section three), which has been hanging around in the wings waiting to return. The moment it does land again, it’s indeed something like sorcery.
Richard Tippett
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
• I too was brought up in the West Midlands (Stourbridge) and I have a vivid memory of my parents taking me to the Strathallan hotel on the Hagley Road in Birmingham in the mid- to late 1970s for jazz nights. My favourite memory is seeing Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. I loved the atmosphere and musicianship – at the time in my teenage years I worshipped Dr Feelgood, also known for their live shows. Somebody once said to me years later that live jazz was like watching and listening to a group of very talented musicians, all playing a different tune. Thanks for the memories, Adrian.
Nick Mason
Holbeach Fen, Lincolnshire
• I introduced my wife to jazz when we first started dating. We’d both come of age in the 1960s and 70s on American and British rock’n’roll. But as I aged, I’d developed a taste for jazz. I began by making CDs for her with various themes – piano, trumpet, sax, bass – and I would occasionally quiz her on who’s that on piano or sax? I was often answered with “I don’t care”. So I started creating little cheats for her: piano, too many notes? Art Tatum. Sounds like the wrong notes? Thelonious Monk. Alas, to this day she’ll say “Can’t we just listen to the Beatles or the Who?”
Gary Lothian
Portland, Oregon, US
• Perhaps Adrian Chiles would have been better able to impress his dinner date by heeding the advice of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the phonograph, and possibly the earliest of jazz’s detractors, who is said to have declared: “I always play jazz records backwards – they sound better that way.” But then again Edison was nearly deaf.
Adrian Brodkin
London
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