Matthew J. Bellisario 2023
That one-time musical event is unrepeatable.
Almost every Tuesday evening I have the privilege of sitting down at True Story Brewing and listening to live Jazz. Every Jazz jam on each night is unique. The feeling in the room can be vastly different. As a result, each musician performs different, sometimes more aggressive, sometimes more subdued, sometimes spectacular, sometimes not as spectacular. Every musical performance is an experience that will never be repeated. The notes dance out into the air, you hear them as they pass and they dissipate out into the ether and are gone forever. It’s an event that will only live on in the memories of those who were there, unless they happened to be recorded.
Being a recording engineer who also mixes and masters his own recordings, including some of these live Jazz jams, it is always my intention to capture these live musical events with the same feeling and sound which I experienced. No matter how good the sound of the recording is, one thing is certain… no live recording no matter how well done ever truly captures the live event. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube, it just can’t be done! Have you ever watched a documentary on a unique place such as Venice, Italy, and then actually travelled to that place? Experiencing that unique place is night and day from what you saw on television. The same is true for music. This fact was made very clear during the lockdowns, where many musicians filmed or broadcasted “live” performances online, none of which were truly successful as a replacement for a concert experience.
As special as musical recording is, and I have many of them, attending a live musical event is the natural manner in which music is to be experienced. Before there was any mechanism for recording music, it existed only in a live setting. As ancient as music is, only a small portion of its existence has been present in the recording age. Music has always been a special conversation among singers and instrumentalists often done for the musicians own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of those surrounding them during the performance.
At a live show these musical notes are heard and experienced with the others who are there, never to be truly captured or repeated again. The way you felt, the people around you, the songs you heard and the way the players played was only for that moment, for that time that you were there. This makes the live music experience a very special event in the lives of those who love music, and why the desire for music concerts and performances will never die. These experiences that we have during these events are some of the greatest and most unique experiences we will ever have in our lives. This is why live music matters!
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