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Dan Krimm

About Me

My Jazz Story

I love jazz because it combines everything I love about music in one place: composition-performance-improvisation, intellectual- visceral-spiritual. It speaks to me on all levels, and I can participate on all levels as a musician. I was first exposed to jazz in high school, but it didn't really make an impression on me until college, when I first heard Light As A Feather by Return To Forever. Spain blew me away. It was at that time that I decided I needed to find a way to start playing this music (after a decade of classical training). I met John Scofield by taking a private lesson from him in NYC in the early 80s shortly before he joined Miles' band. He was already a hero to me by then. The first jazz record I bought was Adventures In Time by Dave Brubeck (a 2-disk compilation of his odd-meter tunes from prior albums). My advice to new listeners: there are as many different forms of jazz as there are other kinds of music overall, so find the kind that speaks to you and dive into it. Then let your discovery process find its way organically. There's a "language" of how jazz is structured, and how improvisation happens, and once you lock into that it opens up the music to a deeper level.