Standing in witness to the music

by DRM

I

Dusk is falling early in the gar­den as the sun slides behind the sky­scrap­ers. As the light dims, the sound grows fuller, a deep-bellied rum­ble that echoes against the pale green Aspen leaves, the cast iron and brushed metal sculp­tures, the gran­ite gar­den walls, the slate-laid plat­forms, the plate glass win­dows, the clat­ter­ing traf­fic noises: rich, pas­sion­ate bend­ing tones, clar­ion calls, shat­ter­ing the air with a sud­den honk­ing urgency.

Sonny Rollins is play­ing his horn. Alone: one man against the untamed pas­sion of a city pass­ing from the heat of the day to the heat of the night.

We’re wit­nesses, gath­ered in the sculp­ture gar­den of the Museum of Mod­ern Art, present for the rit­ual of a mod­ern mas­ter who paints with sound, in the moment, all pres­ence and con­scious­ness washed away in the unfet­tered whirl of creation.

He plays Green Dol­phin Street. I move my fin­gers. I play this on my horn in clubs and am invited into the truth the song holds, the easy free­dom of a bright smile, a rolling surrender.

II

We are still in the cav­ern of the church as the final wash of sound driz­zles down from the dark­ness. The musi­cians sham­ble off the stage. It is mid­night. The New Year has come, the con­cert is over. We gather our things qui­etly: there was dis­qui­etude in the end­ing, an incom­plete­ness, that hangs in the air like a faint fog.

In the still­ness a click-clack sounds. A click-clack again, a quick rap, a bang, then bang, then bang, swick, bang, swick in rhythm, and the beat builds, picks up the in-and-out, the sway, the silence in the great eaves of St. John the Divine, and between each beat there is an invi­ta­tion. It stops us.

The beats con­tinue and we peer through the dark­ness. One musi­cian is still on the stage. Max Roach, his face down to the face of the Tom-Tom in a mir­rored com­mu­nion, his hands flash­ing against the weath­ered leather, the greasy taper­ing sides, boom, bang, quiet, boom, boom, bang, still.

Then the heav­ens open: the tribal sig­nal of a boom­ing horn as Julius Hemphill walks from the dark, honk­ing and scream­ing in response. Roach picks up the rhythm, a firmer beat, louder, rolling bar­rels of sound through the air, and then the musi­cians stream on to the stage, the per­cus­sion­ists of m’boom, the horn play­ers of the World Sax­o­phone Quartet,and we all stand, throats opened full, cheers, cries and hoots and hollers, look­ing at each other and laugh­ing in dis­may as the clamor gath­ers in full force, a cel­e­bra­tion of inspi­ra­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, dri­ven by the quiet thin man with the pierc­ing eyes who won’t give up the rhythm.

III

Max Roach and Sonny Rollins were white hot cool. The vol­cano poured lava each moment that they played.

And they’ve played and played and played. They never take refuge in rep­u­ta­tion, never hide from the music. They stand in wit­ness to what they hear, bear tes­ta­ment to the music they are meant to make.