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What was the most memorable jazz concert you attended?

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By Chris May
March 6, 2024
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If you are an AAJer, you will almost certainly have some live performances filed under magic moments. My first came in 1966 when I saw Charles Lloyd at the Juan-Les-Pins Jazz Festival in Antibes, France. At the time I knew Lloyd only through his recorded work with Chico Hamilton's group and nothing had prepared me for the new look Lloyd Quartet other than a few tabs of Owsley's finest earlier that summer. The band delivered half an hour or so of the first jazz I heard which chimed with the counterculture I had signed up to, rather than the bop/hard bop tradition that had first attracted me to jazz. I remember Keith Jarrett reaching inside the piano to pluck the strings (another first for me) but above all I remember the group's performance of the (at the time unrecorded) "Forest Flower." Wow. My most recent magic moments are Jaimie Branch at London's Total Refreshment Centre in 2018 and Makaya McCraven at London's Barbican in 2023.

Please post your most memorable concert experiences in the comments section below.

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