Intellectual and Soulful Jazz

"'Jazz is best when it satisfies its peers on an intellectual level, and relates to non-musicians on a soulful level' is a phrase my former mentor, David Bloom, used all the time. Non-musicians respond to story telling, tension-and-release, and group interaction aspects of music, rather than theory. We can still be true to ourselves and yet reach more than the three percent that typically listen to jazz. Wouldn't that be great?"

--Russ Nolan, "Teaching Jazz As A Language," JAZZed, September 2008