Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming How has Sooloos (sorry, MDMS) changed your listening habits?

Serendipity.

A year ago the NY Times had a notice that Paul Motian had died. I had recently bought a recording of one of his last concerts, at Birdland. Didn't remember who it was filed under, drummers usually don't get top billing. But I searched under Birdland and recognized it among all the other Birdland stuff, it was Charlie Haden. (But why doesn't the search pane show album covers?)

Listened to that, and then looked under credits and Focused on Motian. Lots of albums. Oh, wow, Motian played on Portrait in Jazz, Evans's breakthrough album in 1959. Listened to that. But he also played with Anat Fort, a young Israeli piano player, on A Long Story in 2007. I read the review and listened to that again.

And Bobo Stenson and Enrico Rava and Marilyn Crispell and... Lots of listening.

But only on one Keith Jarrett album in my collection, At the Deer Head Inn. Only one? I have dozens of Jarrett albums. So after listening to Deer Head Inn, I look in the list By This Artist; of course many are solo performances, but in the Standards trio and many other groups he plays with Jack DeJohnette -- of course, I saw them at a concert recently.

So for comparison, I focused on DeJohnette. A similar pattern, from Miles Davis's Bitches Brew to Esperanza Spalding, who recently got a Grammy, beating out Justin Bieber. (No, I didn't listen to Bieber.)

And both Motian and DeJohnette had some albums under their own leadership, fascinating comparisons.

And then I pivoted on instrumentation, focused on Piano Trio. Pieranunzi plays with Joey Baron on drums, and so does John Taylor. Taylor also plays in Azimuth, an unusual piano trio with flugelhorn and soprano, no drums at all. And Hiromi, quite wild.

And it went on, a weekend of exploration.

This is about discovery, serendipity. It isn't about search, navigation. If I know what I want to listen to, of course I can find it, and of course it is more convenient than shelves of CDs. But tripping over interesting links, rediscovering my collection, that is the ultimate value.