There is a purity expressed as solitude, a sound that is at once lonely and yearning, but also capable of such magnificent joy. The instrument that became the voicxe of the blues for generations of musicians finds even more complex and subtle emotions in the hands of the Master.
Toots talks about playing between the smile and the tear.
There were plenty of both in evidence for the Sunday matinee. Kernny and Oscar took Bossa standards like Wave and One Note Samba and weaved complex harmonies into the recognized changes while Toots hovered over the music like an angel. The nature of Toots' instrument and his genius as a musician made me think oddly of Coltrane and the manner in which our ears, atuned to Western music, tend to hear by default in chordal intervals until someone comes along and shows us greater subtlties. There was Toots, climbing chromatic steps, revealing the mystical connctions between chord tones, helping us understand that jazz is about appreciating the various subtle possibilities in getting from here to there. I had the advantage of having spent an hour the previous day in Toots' company as he related the story of his career, rich with the fauna and flora of a half century of jazz history.