Memory Lane
Reminisces of a fortunate dilettante
This past Wednesday, we attended an outdoor jazz concert in the Phipps Conservatory Garden. The ensemble, Roger Humphries and the RH Factor, set the gardens alight with jazz. It was mesmerizing to be swept away by the setting and the sounds. I listened with half an ear to the patter, which chronicled the vast and storied legacy of jazz musicians from Pittsburgh. That didn’t mean too much to me, I vaguely recognized some of the names, because I am a dilettante. I am the sort of person who judges a literal book by its actual cover. But then they began to play Song For My Father, and some neural switch flipped and threw me back 50 years to a music club in lower Manhattan where a young Leon Thomas sang songs from his first album, Spirits Known and Unknown. We lived in Jersey City, NJ back in those days, and it was nothing to hop on the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson rail line) and wander through the magic kingdom of Manhattan. One of our friends, a knowledgeable fellow who eventually built a career in the music industry, had sent us there. We had no idea we were witnessing history.
I started thinking of all the amazing artists I have stumbled across during my life. And I do mean stumble. I don’t study the art scene, I am not an expert on any art form, and I don’t pretend to have any sort of expertise at all. But I can’t imagine not…
