A Case of "Kaes"

A couple of weeks ago while I am taking a little time to slow down my metronome, I went off to a concert by a highly dexterous piano player – Michael Kaeshammer.  It is always great to see people who are willing to venture out.  I think Mr. Kaeshammer has more than enough talent to be successful in what might be destined as more popular ventures, but he has chosen to stick with his love:  boogie woogie piano playing.  I have a few of his discs and I can vouch that there is much more energy evident in a live performance.  The playing is truly entertaining not just virtuosic or enervating. 

I heard and saw him at the Markham Theatre north of Toronto with about 600 other people.  Certainly it was bigger than a club, but much smaller than venues at which you might hear the likes of Diana Krall.  The experience was close up enough to become infectious. 

Hopefully this will work for him as a strategy and gradually people will not only be won over to his playing but also to the music for which he is such a happy ambassador.  Whether it is the biblical history of the prophets or those who bring about positive changes in daily living it is often the willingness to say, “Yes” to the inner voice that is really a fiery furnace that becomes a gift to the world. 

Success is too often measured monetarily or by popularity.  When the “opus” of our life sits out there, it is the fruitfulness of it over the long term that matters, and probably not for us, but for those who follow, as we may not even be around to take the credit.  Good music is good music; it doesn’t need a category, but it does need someone willing to broadcast.  Musicians often refer to keeping faith with their art.  They are impelled, obliged.  Some will even say they are enslaved. 

  There is more than a little similarity to the spiritual life.  Once we have heard that inner voice of God, it becomes a fiery furnace – someone we cannot ignore in anything that we do.  We just have to have the discipline to practice and remind ourselves not to ignore that voice and then broadcast.