Basquiat, the painter, the commentator, the political, the tager, the thinker, the lover of jazz who composed mental images, displayed them on public property and left you thinking. Thinking about yourself, how life relates and how you are a part of that relation. Or perhaps how the “SAMO” followers are inspired by graffiti and art. The world, if you haven’t noticed, can be very odd. Most people see someone who is not like them and keep walking, they see a tattoo or a piercing or perhaps even someone less fortunate and they make sure not to socialize. It can be like this with music and art as well. But, fortunately for Jean-Michel Basquiat, people were paying attention and so genius hidden in an odd package rises to fame much like when the right person likes the music and then instant success!
Basquiat was inspired by the music and many of his paintings reflect images of jazz heroes who are incorporated into the imagination of his canvases. And what an imagination or perhaps not, perhaps what a reality! This is usually the case when it comes to art. It is not thought, it is life and everyone else is amazed by what comes by way of nature.
Nicholas Payton has brought his ensemble of players to the
Bing Theater at LACMA to celebrate this particular beautiful blend of artistic
and musical imagery and integrity. The music is the magic that can easily be
the conduit of myth and mystic cerebralness. Music was certainly one of the key
factors in the interpretation of sounds flowing through the caverns of the mind
and out through the pinnacle tips of brushes onto a solid tangible canvas like
an interpretation machine.
Music is color and Nicholas knows this by the way he paints his ideas with sound. Flowing, fleeting, ascending and descending down upon our emotions, the music and the visuals work together to stimulate our own impressions using bits and pieces of our life’s experience to formulate some sort of understanding about what we are feeling at this moment.
Billy Childs is “Lyric”lly a master of landscaping primes, pastels, naturals, sharps and minors. There is a source that’s moving, that has the notes create movement in the still of our rapidly adventurous journey. Persuasive percussion, rhythm and intense desire to provoke is all lead by the sound of the trumpet, that works through Nicolas, that is drawing on skill, experience, Basquiat, tradition, Parker, Dizz and the energy that blends it all together.
Nic takes familiar Parker riffs and uses only a few disguised notes to carve out his own beauty. The intensity builds before the music cascades to a return and then ascension!
Improv, straight ahead, and out phrases over seamlessly flowing rhythmic pleasures creating a tranquil existence of ebbs and flows to resolve.
Art and music, get into it!
LeRoy Downs
