Still from the closing piece of the short concert in tribute to trumpeter Snooky Young on the occasion of being awarded the first LA Jazz Treasure award. This was on Friday 11th September, at LACMA. (Don’t you long for a time when everybody had nicknames like this as a matter of course? Well, it is more of a matter of place and culture than a time, in some ways, but anyhow… What would you choose yours to be, if you had the choice?) There are some trumpet players of note on the stage at this point (Arturo Sandoval is one, I cannot identify the others by eye), and Snooky himself is there too. He’s the one looking endearingly like a Mathematics professor (which, now I think about it, sort of fits for a trumpet player).
While it was a pleasant enough event, and I am glad it took place, I can’t help but think that it would have been greatly improved by not having quite so many official bloated speeches (what is it about LA when people decide to get all formal…? Things almost invariably degenerate in to one suit droning on and then introducing another suit to drone on who ends up introducing suit number three who drones on before…), and more music. I found myself a bit impatient over that aspect additionally because I could not help think how ironic it all was, given that generally Jazz is, in my opinion, so poorly supported, appreciated, or understood in this city, one of the greatest (pick your measure) cities in the USA (where people turn out in significant numbers relatively rarely, and then mostly to venues where Jazz does not really do very well, musically (I get the impression that people here largely like the idea that they’ve been to a jazz concert more than the actual business of having to listen to the music, let the musicians create, appreciate what’s going on at more than a superficial level, and so on)), for them to treat a big audience with mostly pleasant easy-listening stuff, not much of it to boot, load them up with speeches, and – get this – a 26 inch TV rolled out at one point to show some clips from his career to the assembled crowd of 150-200 people. [Yes, I am aware that was an intensely complicated sentence. Think of it as a slightly rambly jazz solo to be deconstructed and enjoyed.]
On the other hand, people seemed happy. They were not all at home playing on facebook and were out interacting with each other in person, more or less. Maybe that’s all that matters, in the end. The best one can hope for. Perhaps I’m just getting a bit sour in my old age and should just shut up…
-cvj
*Thanks for letting me know about it, Mary A.!
