What is 21st Century Jazz?
from Chris Strouth Columnist at City Pages Minneapolis and Composer at Paris 1919:
Louis & Clarke cuts to the quick:
it imagines a jazz for the 21st century.
Not one with jet packs and rayguns;
rather one for the future as it is now:
a Mock Chicken in every pot, a six dollar latte on every corner.
It is 21st century jazz the way Charles Eames imagined the now;
not scary, not something that will scare your moms.
But different nonetheless.
Soulful yet streamlined and smooth, minus the syrup;
the angry young man grows up to be the wise elder statesman.
Pushing boundaries, but not pushing the same ones
that have been pushed oh so many times before.
This is the stuff of quiet revolution, because really it’s just evolution.
It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s covering it with a tire
and adding shock absorbers
and riding the dotted highway line between the known and the unknowable.