Possibilities

I forget, from time to time, just how much I love live entertainment over something digitized and mass re-produced. Then I attend a play, a comedy bar, a symphony, a benefit concert, a reading, or, as tonight, a chamber series, and I vow anew to do a better job of scanning the campus newspaper and the entertainment section to find those live settings that allow a human connection impossible when the artist is a two-dimensional re-presentation. But I never do, do that better job. It's almost always accidental, but always a good thing. Tonight, it was on purpose.

I won't bother to review the concert. I'll say it was outstanding and leave it at that. The purpose of this entry is to pass on a recommendation. Whenever I've had the good fortune to interview authors, one question I always ask is, "Whom are you reading now?" Should I ever interview a musician whose work I like, I should ask, "To whom are you listening these days?" Tonight, I didn't have to ask. In the course of introducing a piece, one of the musicians put in a plug for a collection he'd lately found inspirational.

In the realm of books, I've never had a bum steer from an author I respected; so, I stopped on the way home and bought the album. I think we've started something. (I should probably have picked up a little Amy Winehouse while I was there, based on another recent recommendation, but I'm still smarting from Idiocracy.) At any rate, the recommendation was for Herbie Hancock's, Possibilities, an album which includes work with Sting, Santana, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Paul Simon, Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan to name a few. I am always fascinated and seldom disappointed by the result when musical artists make appearances in one anothers' works. (Ponder for a moment, what that might look like if artists in the written word were to try it.)

So far, the whole thing goes really, really well with Woodford Reserve on the rocks.