Jazz in the Atrium

For my first performance report, I decided to go to the Dallas Museum of Art and listen to jazz music. The museum hosts a jazz group every Thursday night in their casual café, the Atrium. The Atrium was a very open space, brightly lit with many round tables filling the space almost to the brim. Very different from the cliché dark-lit smoky bar that many people think of when they think of jazz, this setting changed the atmosphere a bit. A giant glass window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling framed the band. All of the tables were surrounding them. This placed the band at the center of attention while still giving the audience the ability to hold polite, quiet conversation at each table.

The place was extremely crowded. I couldn’t even find a table to sit at, so I ended up leaning against the wall in the back of the room for the performance. This gave me a good view of the band and the audience at the same time. The audience was a mix of old and young, families and couples, well-dressed and casual. It did not seem like there was a cookie cutter mold of who came to listen to this performance. The attention of the audience depended on where one was sitting. The people very close to the band were focused and attentive the entire time. That kind of dissipated as you looked further back at the tables that were on the fringe. There was polite clapping after each song, and also during some of the songs, which baffled me. I’m guessing that it was after some of the solos that the trumpet player did, but I don’t know how the audience knew when to clap. I certainly did not.

On this particular night, April Fool’s Day, the performing group was Freddie Jones Jazz. In jazz music, usually there are melody instruments and a rhythm section that provides the harmony and rhythm. These two lines create polyphony that kind of weaves in and out of each other. During this performance, Freddie Jones would be the melody on trumpet while the guitar, basses, percussion, and keyboard would create the rhythm section and harmonize with him. On occasion, the guitar would take the lead and the trumpet would move to the back with the harmony. The timbre of a trumpet is very sharp, while the timbre of the harmonizing instruments felt a lot smoother. It seemed to balance each other out. Many of the songs had a laid back, lazy feeling, while others were very upbeat. I noticed that when the trumpet player was playing on his own, it seemed like he was improvising at times, which is another common element of jazz. I was also surprised to hear a song that I recognized. It was hard to make out at first, because at the beginning the trumpeter was slowing it down a lot and adding in his own flairs here and there. However, once the rest of the band joined in, the tempo speeded up and I recognized the melody “Killing me Softly with his Song”.

The band is influenced by Stevie Wonder, David Sanborn, Najee, and Chris Botti. The trumpet player, Freddie Jones, graduated from University of North Texas with a degree in jazz studies and is a teacher at Brookhaven College in Dallas. While the group performed, I noticed that all the performers were nodding their heads to the beat of the song. It seemed like they were very into the flow of the music and in synch with the other musicians in the band.

I’m glad that I attended this event. It made me appreciate jazz music a lot more. The intricate parts that all musicians played wove together and created a whole sound that is very uniquely jazz. The audience seemed like they enjoyed it, as did I.

Works Cited:
"Facebook |Freddie Jones Jazz". 4/5/2010 .

Jazz in the Atrium. By Freddie Jones Jazz. Perf. Freddie Jones, Gordon Pope, Lawrence Ferrell, Aaron West, Mike Finkel, Allen Cato. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas. April 1, 2010.