Performance Report

I attended Jazz in the Atrium at the Dallas Museum of Art featuring Freddie Jones last Thursday. I was not too excited about going because I’m normally not a big fan of Jazz and I am a huge fan of NBC’s Thursday lineup. This event takes place every Thursday at the Dallas Museum of art. It was fairly easy to find, but if you’re not used to driving in downtown Dallas it’s easy to get lost. I’m not used to driving in downtown Dallas so I had my friend drive me there. The performance was taking place at the Atrium Café connected to the museum. It was a pretty nice setting for the type of performance that was going on. The space felt very modern and clean to me It felt like something out of the television series Caprica a positive point. The space for audience members was fairly large. The area was pretty packed, I got there around six and it was still hard to find somewhere to sit so I stood towards the back. There was a bar and audience members could also purchase snack type foods during the performance, so it wasn’t completely formal. A good portion of the audience did get dressed up but I could spot more than a couple people just wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Many people appeared to be there for the jazz event, however there also seemed to be some people who had spent the day at the museum and were curious and just stopped by. The majority of the attendees appeared to be older people. I assume this is because most younger people are not interested in the jazz because it is not on the MTV. A lot of the audience members seemed to be enjoying the performance. I was watching the audience and I noticed a lot of head nodding and toe tapping going on. The people who were there for the most part seemed like people who enjoyed jazz, not just people who were there because they were in the area. The area was full of people who came for the jazz and their enthusiasm added to the feel of the performance.
The musicians were pretty talented, which is pretty important for jazz musicians. They employed a great deal of improvisation. There were many instances where one musician would go off on a solo, and the audience would applaud. This was a performance where applause was discouraged. This worked well for the performance because the applause seemed to fuel the performers. I was expecting to hear jazz akin to that played during the nineteen twenties. However he performers played jazz that sounded more like the smooth jazz that my dad used to listen to on the old radio station the Oasis. The band as I can best recall was made up of an electric bass player, an electric guitar player, a drummer, a keyboard player and a saxophonist. The saxophonist seemed to be the centerpiece of the band as most of the time the other musicians just seemed to be backing him up. The bass player also stood out as someone who was particularly talented to me. In most music I listen to the bass takes a back seat to the rest of the instruments, but the bass was very prominent in this performance. The performers were very groovy. If I couldn’t hear I would have still probably been able to tell what type of music they were playing just by the way that the performers moved.
Although I am not a big fan of jazz, I could still appreciate the skill of the musicians and recognize some elements of music culture. It is not really my thing but I can understand why people who enjoy it would come out to the Dallas Museum of Art every couple of Thursdays to enjoy the jazz. It’s not something I would do regularly because it’s kind of out of the way, but it is something I would consider doing again if I needed some place classy to take someone I want to impress.

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

Jones, Freddie. "Freddie Jones." Web log post. Freddies Jones on Myspace. 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 06 Apr. 2010. .