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Welcome to waidy.com

I Jazz

Humming Bird Wings beating about 53 times per second
Why do I Jazz? Jazz is a way for me to recharge my creative batteries; a form to see who I am through the reflection of improvising; and a mean of innovation. The warm, rich, distinctive tone from my Sax and Trumpet, and the improvisations dart nimbly from the horn's lowest register into the stratosphere and back, relaxes and excites me.

One of the great things about jazz music is that you can play music in a style from any period in the past and still make it in a completely different style--original but nontraditional. Having my imagination to create, conveying my emotional responses to people, objects, and landscapes, etc.... The feeling is just wonderful.

Through improvisation, I am playing my emotions, my feelings, my experiences of the moment. I could play a tune that was written fifty or sixty years ago and make it original but yet nontraditional through improvisation. I could manipulate a scale and make it Jazz. I could play music which is loosely based in the bebop style, created forty years ago, and make it sexy and tasteful through my personality. Ultimately, when I am improvising, I am playing myself...

I am young in heart and I am evolving. What I did three years ago is not what I am doing now, and what I am doing now, I won't be doing five years from now. It is natural that when one grows older and matures, their identity is going to come forward. In terms of being recognized as an original voice and being an innovator, that will come with time. I do have my own voice, but I will have more of my own voice five years from now. Just like I have more my own voice now than I did when I first entered to the world. This is a natural process.

There is this faux controversy, the idea of a conflict between tradition and innovation.

There is time that a sense of a choice has to be made, that either I am embracing the lineage and legacy and the history of acoustic jazz, or I am doing something radical and revolutionary and new. Some people feel into that, accepted that dichotomy and that view, and chose a side. Others resisted it and chose not to choose. I try to work within a variety of languages, hope that over time those would get synthesized, and didn't consciously try to wear the mantle of innovation, but certainly also not to be backward-looking. I consider myself one of these people.

In a sense... My voice is already there. I don't need to go on some epic quest to 'find' it. I play like me. But naturally, as I listen, work, experience, evolve (in music and in life), my voice gets deeper, richer, more varied, more personal, more 'me'.

waidy@waidy.com No Junk Email!