"I see music as a framework for life, a way to ask the bigger questions"

Music isn’t just sound but a way of organizing experience. A framework suggests both structure and openness: form, rhythm, and harmony that hold life together while leaving space for surprise. Jazz makes this vivid. A tune has a shape, changes, a tempo, a melody, yet its heart lies in improvisation. That balance becomes a model for living: establish foundations, then explore; keep time, then stretch it; honor the chart, then write a new one when the moment demands.

Asking bigger questions begins with listening. Music trains the ear to notice nuance, the breath between notes, the weight of silence, the conversation inside a chord. Attentive listening is an ethical act. It turns a solo into a dialogue, teaches empathy, and shows how individuality can flourish within a collective. A quartet seeking the downbeat together resembles a community finding common ground.

Unresolved cadences are not failures; they are invitations. A suspended chord leaves the ear leaning forward, much like a life lived toward what’s still unknown. Improvisation becomes a form of inquiry: Who am I when the script ends? How do I meet uncertainty without retreat? What do I contribute to the song when it’s my turn to speak?

Practice offers another lesson. Scales and long tones are quiet rituals, a discipline that refines intention. Technique matters, but only insofar as it frees the voice to ask better questions. Virtuosity without curiosity is mere display; virtuosity in service of wonder points beyond itself.

Music also reframes time. Groove stitches the present to memory and anticipation. A motif returns altered, and we hear both what was and what might be. Mortality feels like a fermata, held, not ended, while the beat continues elsewhere.

To live musically is to move through the world with courage and curiosity, to compose and to risk, to leave space for others, and to let the final measure remain open enough for the next note.