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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

saxophone
b.1938

" data-original-title="" title="">Charles Lloyd at the Juan-Les-Pins Jazz Festival in Antibes, France. At the time I knew Lloyd only through his recorded work with

" data-original-title="" title="">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

piano
b.1945

" data-original-title="" title="">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

trumpet
1983 - 2022

" data-original-title="" title="">Jaimie Branch at London's Total Refreshment Centre in 2018 and

Makaya McCraven

drums
b.1983

" data-original-title="" title="">Makaya McCraven at London's Barbican in 2023.

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

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