Jazz Reflections - Mirrors, Images, and Reality

Why did Thomas Nelson put a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge on the cover of Blue Like Jazz?  Do you know? Maybe the cover designer just grabbed something blue.

Some things in life have a simple explanation, but people are not satisfied with the answer. Or maybe the answer is real simple, but people never bother to ask the question…

Brooklyn Bridge on the cover of Blue Like Jazz.

Brooklyn Bridge on the cover of Blue Like Jazz.

Actually, the cover design came from David Carlson Design. David got the photo from Paul Mason in the  Getty-Photonica collection. I tracked down Paul Mason’s original photograph here. David designed the cover of a best seller. If the “bridge theme” was just “dumb luck” on the original design, how do you explain the cover of Jazz Notes?

So I guess that explains who and what, but it still doesn’t explain why.

Jazz is music that asks why.  Jazz is full of fuzzy images, mirrors, and reflections. Jazz is full of bridges. Jazz is always going from someplace to some other place. Jazz is always asking questions, bending notes, revisiting themes, making analogies, and talking in parallels and parables.

Life is like a bridge. Is the question resolved?

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1 Comment »

  1. Vos Virtual Network » Jazz, Innovation, and Scripting said,

    August 30, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    [...] enjoy many musical genres, and musical styles, but lately I’ve been really exploring jazz. In a recent article I described jazz as being full of  images, mirrors, and reflections.  Jazz is like a bridge [...]

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