2009-07-21 - 12:15 a.m.
On Friday night, the first night of Artscape, some friends and I wound up in a small but slick performing-arts auditorium. We were on the fifth floor of the University of Baltimore's new student center, a modern building with a curvy facade and so new that the carpets were without stains, the windows without smudges.
We were late, and so when we opened the doors to the room and didn't hear any music, we thought that we'd missed it entirely. But, no, the musicians were in between songs and standing still on the stage, waiting for some hidden cue to go at it again. There were five saxophonists, a drummer, and a guy playing electric bass. There were few empty seats and so we stood along the back wall, all of us sweaty from being outside. We stood shoulder to shoulder. And then the music started again, but I'm not sure that's the right word. Although it's true the sounds they made were beautiful, they weren't music in the sense that there was a beat or any discernible structure of any kind. The drummer left the stage altogether and then the bassist. It was just the saxophones. They made long, lingering sounds, mournful and slow and steady, like agitated breaths or low cries. One or two would stop for a moment, get a breath, and in that time one or two of the others would build on their notes, never changing pitch but blowing harder and then, once the first two had begun blowing again, letting their notes drop off so that these five instruments made a continuous, seething, mournful wail.
And yet it was beautiful and here's how I know. I'd found a seat, on the end of the last row in the back, and the woman next to me--about 45, with curly blond hair--was rocking back and forth, tapping her foot to a beat that only she could hear. And I looked at her face, and her eyes were closed. She was rocking her head to the front and then the back. I looked again, and she was smiling, and then I was, too.
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