This episode was inspired by a ground breaking music concert I saw this week. There were combinations of artistic elements in this show that I didn't believe would ever be seen on the one stage. I was blown away, and excited by the creative possibilities that exist if we just allow them to. I share a vulnerable admission and encourage you to give yourself permission to do the seemingly silly, the crazy and the impossible.Subscribe to my mailing listSend me an emailFacebookInstagramOrder my colouring Book - It Starts With A HeartTRANSCRIPTWell, hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the joyful creative. My name's Deborah O'Toole, if you didn't pick that up in the intro. This episode is a little unplanned, it's really come up from something that happened this week and I was really inspired to talk about it. I went to see a concert that really blew my mind and just reminded me of what's possible creatively speaking. The concert was Esperanza Spalding. She's an American jazz bass player. She plays upright and also electric bass and she sings and composes, and I've been following her for a little while and yeah, she's just completely mesmerizing to watch on stage and incredible bass player in her own right just as it is.But in this concert, as well as the small band (she had a little ensemble) and also two contemporary dancers were on stage, not all the time, but when they did come on, at times they were improvising their movements to the instrumental solos that the instrumentalists were playing. It was just, I found it really fascinating because I really love dance, particularly creative and contemporary, interpretive dance. And I just found that it had me so visually engaged as well as listening to the solos because the musicians were unbelievable as well. But I do admit that sometimes when I'm listening to a jazz gig and I'm hearing an instrumental solo for an extended period of time, I tend to get a little, I'm not going to say bored, I just get a bit restless. I'm sure that there are jazz musicians out there who would think I'm completely mad because they're just hanging on every note. I am hanging on every note for about the first, maybe three minutes. And then after that I can tend to drift off, but having these dancers on stage adding this visual element was just, I just thought it was so inspired. Um, yeah, just such a creative, amazing idea. But for those of you who are not familiar with the jazz scene, I can, I think I can safely assure you that having dancers in a jazz concert is not the done thing. I've never heard of it. Yeah, it was quite a new thing.She also incorporated spoken word in her recitatives when she was, I couldn't really figure out whether this is patter things she was saying in between songs or whether it was actually part of a song, but it was, it was kind of a spoken and kind of song and it was sort of along with music. Um, but it was just very theatrical and theatre and jazz... I don't think they really a thing together. And look, I have that notion because I had an experience that I had very, very early in my career. I was in my early twenties and I was auditioning for a jazz course in Melbourne, I won't say which. College it was. But they really had two streams. You could either be a classical player or you could be a jazz player. And I sort of, wasn't really either one

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