The Juilliard Jazz Quartet was spectacular on Tuesday.  Jazz isn’t a genre that I usually listen to, so I entered thinking it wouldn’t be all that good. Mannnnn, was  I wrong! The music they played was great and it totally flipped my idea of jazz.

When I was younger I always thought that jazz was alright but that it was for older folk and that it had no real relevance in our modern day. To me it was always a bunch cacophonous  sounds that only appealed to the older generation. After seeing this performance I realize that I was incorrect in thinking that because it has the ability to move anyone. I found myself tapping my feet and bobbing to the drums and watching each musician intently wondering what would happen next. Though I do listen to many genres of music, I never held jazz in a high regard, because it wasn’t something relevant to me. That changed afterward because I went home and searched up some more Thelonious Monk.

Another big part of the experience was the feeling that was conveyed through the sounds. Those feelings are one of the most important reasons I listen to music at all. Music is a story told through sound, and the beauty of it is that it can interpreted in so many ways and depending on how you interpret it, you can make that music your own in a way. The jazz that was played conveyed many different emotion. Some of them were very exciting and invigorating and I felt like jumping up and dancing, but others were calm and soothing and I felt like sleeping, in a good way.

The Quartet was off the chains and it was magnificent to watch them play such meaningful music.

The trip to Brooklyn Museum turned out to be very different from what I expected it to be, which was a boring, slow paced trip where we would have to talk about art and try to find deeper meanings that I didn’t think existed. I thought that was only for stuck up pretentious people, who were ” connoisseurs” of art.

I was totally wrong. After relaxing for a bit, we finally got our groups, recorders and headed into the world of art. TO my surprise all of the pieces were quite intriguing and when we started recording for the first time on a piece in the Egyptian section, my group and I began talking up a a storm. We were making observations and analyzing the pieces like those stuck up people I mentioned earlier. It was actually a little bit of fun getting to express feeling about the pieces while also hearing your friends giving analysis and observations that weren’t anywhere in your mind. So many times I was caught off guard by some of the observations that my peers made, and them by observations I made.

Though I can’t say that this trip was magnificent or anything like that because at the end of the day, I’m just not a big fan of museums so being in there staring at art for so long did become boring. Though I won’t lie, my view of art has undergone a type of metamorphosis and I can see more details in a piece and understand the deeper meanings behind it. Overall it was a good experience but it wasn’t as awesome for me as it was for others.