Day & Night

The weekend found me at two ends of the musician/audience relationship spectrum.

First, drummer Matt Wilson, as generous a performer as you’ll find anywhere. Despite a horrendous travel day that began before dawn for a performance that ended after midnight, Wilson was both warm and witty as he led his recently re-constituted Arts & Crafts quartet at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre. Paraphrasing Phil Woods, Wilson said: “You don’t get paid to play; you get paid to get there. My hourly rate is pretty low today.”

Flash forward less than 24 hours and listen to Keith Jarrett threaten to skip an encore after several audience members at Montreal’s Place des Arts had the temerity to take his photograph as his trio took their bows. After cussing out the photographers, he further ingratiated himself by dumping on the city’s dominant French-language media. No word on whether he threw the mattress out of his five-star hotel room and ordered a new $2,000 one in, as he did during the Toronto stop on his tour.