The Twin Cities has been filled with jazz music over the last days. There are jazz musicians making music everywhere. These musicians have been doing their work, making their music, not only in restaurants and bars where they are often the ‘background’ music but in concert with our full attention. It is in this place of  full attention that we listeners get to experience the real art and gift of jazz. It is a style that has much to offer that goes beyond the music.

Being an improvisational style of music, there is usually only a ‘lead sheet’, the shape of the melody that the musicians work around. Everyone shows up with their instruments, there is a down beat and off they go. The music happens in the sharing of melody, taking turns, the wisdom to ‘sit out’, knowing when you are up for the melody and when you are better at backup, at harmonizing. The art form is built on trust and listening.

It is a form of music that has so much to teach us about how we work together, how we are in relationship, how we live our lives. It requires that we give up a certain amount of control and that we trust our fellow travelers along the road, that we listen well and respond when appropriate. It also requires that we trust ourselves to share our gifts and that we stretch ourselves in that process.  It teaches us that sometimes we are meant to be the leader and other times a follower, sometimes center stage and other times backup singers. And sometimes our best work is no work.

What if we did our days, our work, more like jazz musicians? What if we picked up the lead sheet every morning and headed out into the world to ‘play well with others’, trusting one another to lead and follow, play melody or harmony, or just sit out and listen? What if we tried less to control what was happening and instead practiced moving in and out of the basic melody, offering what we had to offer and receiving from others their gifts?

A jazz musician might say………."Cool,man!"