Whether you look at Varèse or Ellington, Bud Powell or Maria Callas, Beethoven or Liszt or Ali Akbar Khan: the content of their art is intimately linked to their being born in history at a particular time. This is why you can’t simply reproduce it. Young people studying jazz these days are deluded if they think they’re learning to play the way Dizzy Gillespie played, or the way Bill Evans played. You can’t do it the way they did it. Any art is tied to its historical moment. And tied to the life of the artist, and all the social, psychological, and spiritual content that molded that life. Music is everything that makes the musician: family, friends, hardships, joys, the sounds on the street, how tight you buckle your belt, the person who happens to be sitting across from you in the subway car, what you ate for breakfast—all of it.
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