The Trumpeter

The trumpeter in one of the Miles Davis numbers I’ve been listening to has inspired me to write this. I make no assurance that this will be a perfect piece, but albeit so, this is how I feel.

I need a piano here, badly. Music has always been my refuge. A shoulder to cry on. The only one avenue that allows me to really express how I feel. Just when I thought everything was okay, there was something that will distort this. I thought I had no worries. I thought there was nothing that could affect my emotions. How wrong I was.

Being a performer under the tutelage of Teacher Jasmin has changed my perception towards music. For once, I really enjoyed playing. I enjoyed performing. I somehow could feel what the music is about. And why it was written in such ways. There are infinite ways of defining a piece. My one and only definition of a good piece of music - freedom. It isn’t about playing in a rigid rhythm accurately in every measure. It isn’t about following accurately the f, ff, sfz, ppp, accents and the phrasings. It is about understanding the music you’re playing. How well a music is played could be judged by the expressions and the message the player is trying to convey. Perhaps this is why I shifted to jazz despite years of studying classical pieces.

Jazz is something one might not understand, but enjoyed it anyway. At first I thought jazz was something incomprehensible, carries no message, just pieces made up of dissonant harmony and awkward chromatics. But that changed after I started playing. For once I felt so free. Free to play, free to just discover what I feel within. The ad libitum - my favourite section in a jazz piece - allows me to play what I want. How I want to. My own chords, my own notes, my real style of playing. And each time I play, it differs according to my feelings. And the beauty of jazz lies in this section. Michel Camilo’s ad libitum are played with dynamics and is often very, very technical. Miles Davis’, however, includes rubato to pull back the music a little just so to allow the listeners to feel the depth of the piece.

There is so much I want to express. Those words just couldn’t come out of me. I somehow find it difficult to spill out my feelings. I’m always finding for a piece that I can express myself with. And then I realized how foolish I was. All pieces and songs written reflects the songwriters themselves. Their messages. How can I express myself through emotions and feelings of other people? And then I found another alternative - to feel. I feel that I can ‘live’ in the song or piece itself. And perhaps that was how Brahms’ First Symphony moved me.

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The trumpeter was independent… Independent of the piano accompaniment. Independent of the Bossanova rhythm of the drummer. He was independent… the trumpet was singing for him. His heart… his thoughts… the moment which belonged to him…