Editor,
So, I just got back from "Jazz Jazz Jazz," Eddie Daniels' salute to Benny Goodman with New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in Popejoy Hall.
It is my feeling that we need to get more UNM students to similar New Mexico Symphony Orchestra events. If you are waiting to hear how it will help you and make you a better person, honestly, I don't really care. But each of us does have a responsibility to our community and musicians.
Eddie and the orchestra played a bunch of music, closing with Goodman's classic "Sing, Sing, Sing." In the closing number, the orchestra and Daniels rocked their faces off. They didn't rock a little - they played jazz dirty, fast and, most of all, awesome.
It was in this final number that the weakness of the whole performance showed through. We had a chronic mismatch between audience and performance. Instead of bobbing heads, tapping feet and moving bodies, Daniels and the orchestra were facing a bunch of old people, sitting in reverent silence, respecting the music.
I love classical music, but this was a jazz concert with a jazz sensibility. People, we need to show the orchestra season-pass holders how to rock. A reverent, almost church-like attitude toward jazz music - a musical movement born of irreverence - strikes me as hypocritical at best and disrespectful at worst. You can rock even sitting in your Popejoy chair. Let's show up for "Dancin' in the Rain" on Feb. 23 to demonstrate to a bunch of inappropriately reverent old people how to enjoy rowdy, rebellious music.
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Cabel Schoen
Daily Lobo reader
