Did I enjoy or did I persevere?

Before I answer the above question, I will say this: it was an interesting jazz experience.

Everyone has their own jazz opinion, ranging from the humble to not-so-humble. Take for example, Ryan Gosling’s performance in La La Land as Sebastian, who romanticized traditional jazz and jabbed at the gentle forms that play in elevators and cocktail bars.

As an enthusiast of gentle jazz and Astrud Gilberto’s often-called “elevator music”, I would need to have a word with him regarding that.

But I doubt Sebastian would have listened. He loved chaos and excitement as a musical medium.

With that in mind, I am not sure how he would have reacted to this event. On the one hand, it was adventurous, different, chaotic, and energized. He would have appreciated this. But on the other hand, it felt less like funky jazz and more like jazzy funk. Certainly, core jazz lovers might have needed a while for their ears to adapt to the music being played.

To fans of the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack from the 1970s, this combo works well. Several songs sounded like something that would play in a detective’s montage scene, with dusty cigars and trench coats galore. To others, they might argue that the combination of jazz + funk = junk.

Certainly, the organ was the core instrument throughout the evening. Unfortunately, this overpowered the rest of the instruments even if it did provide an interesting take on “jazz” itself. For that reason, I would say this both subtracted from and added to the experience.

But with religious glass paintings and the gothic structure, it seemed fitting that an organ would be part of the musical ensemble.

The venue was unsurprisingly stunning, albeit an interesting choice. Like the organ, the Lincoln Cathedral comes with both its disadvantages and advantages, depending on where you sit.

When I attended the London Film and TV Orchestra’s performance in the Lincoln Cathedral, the musicians were placed central to the venue. Like a small army, equipped with strings, trumpets, and more, they faced the long hall of the building, and their sound carried far with minimum reverberation and echoes from the walls. It did not matter where you were in the audience because the sound carried well.

However, the James Taylor Quartet were placed against a wall, not facing the long hall, but facing another wall, which was directly behind the audience.

The chairs were semi-circled around the stage. I sat center and back, close to the musicians in front and even closer to the wall behind me, and felt as the loud sound waves traveled through me, bounced from the stone walls behind, and zig-zagged in my ear canal.

It was difficult to not get overwhelmed as the music pierced you at least two times over. I don’t think that speakers were completely necessary, and my drink agreed as I felt the liquid inside the can vibrate, as if a dinosaur from Jurassic Park were on its way.

Another one of the disadvantages to the Lincoln Cathedral is it is often too cold to enjoy sitting in one place for too long, but thankfully that evening was warm and those stone walls served as a welcome fridge.

There were drinks and snacks available, which certainly one-upped the London Film and TV Orchestra evening, in which no drinks or snacks were provided.

Another area where the James Taylor Quartet won was in the audience engagement. James Taylor himself was something of a comedian. Not to the point where he became a key element of the evening, but he knew how to keep his audience feeling useful and entertained. People clapped their hands, danced, and sang.

However, the variety of the music was a little stiff, and considering the general age demographic of the people attending, so were the dancing moves.

Now, in answer to my question, I did both persevere and enjoy the evening.

The experience of live music is always a fun one, and perhaps it is never truly comfortable. Maybe it should not be, in favor of La La Land Sebastian’s views.

But if The Girl from Ipanema or more jazzy genres were performed that night, I would have enjoyed the performance little more and needed to persevere a little less.

But that’s just my humble jazz opinion.