It’s Friday night. I’m sitting at my drawing board in my studio loft at Hiawatha Artspace, Seattle. Through the generous windows, I can see the lights of the tall downtown buildings. I can hear them talk about magical and mysterious stories going on down there: impossible love affairs, unexpected reunions with old friends, the discovery of never imagined flavors at exotic restaurants, and the rapturous blowing of a sax at a night club. At my studio, Dexter Gordon provides the soundtrack to this everlasting moment that I’m trying to capture with all my might.
To capture just in one image a feeling that has been with me all my life… That’s all I want. It is now crystallized at this Seattle studio. To capture, in a second, a whole universe of sensations: a sordid and tearing jazz ballad… a glass of wine by the candle lights, the sweeping perfume of a woman passing by, whom you don’t see and will never get to see… the monorail rushing across the night streets carrying couples in their blind dates… the immensity of Seattle’s lights creating an abstract puzzle competing with a starry sky…
It’s Friday night. After many workdays, I get to finish this new album cover. I´ve only 20 minutes left to reach the Jazz Alley club, where I’m about to make a dream come true: Bobby Caldwell, one of my teenage idols, plays live. The brilliant alto sax of Andrew Neu asserts it: definitively, it is Jazzin’ in Seattle.
