An active klezmer musician has been coming regularly to hear my Mixed Bag experiments, where I play recitals without printed programs to encourage just listening, rather than listening always inside boxes of expectation and prejudice.
I find myself wondering whether what she hears has any influence at all on her music-making. Does anything carry over from my approach to, say, rhythm? It could. After all, these are basically ways of transmitting elan vital, more than adhering to conventions within any given style or tradition.
