Art & Creativity Quote by Al Jarreau

There is a quiet self-defense baked into Jarreau's excitement here: not just anticipation, but a claim for artistic room to breathe. He is not talking about a tour like a victory lap. He is talking about permission. "The whole other kind of approach" hints at an audience (and industry) that already knows him in a fixed shape: the velvet-smooth vocalist, the jazz-pop bridge, the immaculate technician. Live performance, for Jarreau, becomes the one place he can renegotiate that contract in real time.

The phrasing is tellingly conversational and slightly tangled, like someone thinking aloud rather than delivering a polished pitch. That matters. Jarreau's gift was always musicality that sounded effortless even when it was absurdly complex. Here, the unvarnished syntax signals sincerity: he wants to try something new and he feels he has to justify it as "important", not merely "fun". That word carries the subtext of legacy management. By the later stages of a long career, experimentation can be framed as indulgence unless you insist it is necessary for growth.

Contextually, this reads like an artist pushing against the greatest-hits gravity that traps many beloved performers. "Haven't had a chance" suggests constraints - of setlists, band arrangements, commercial expectations, even the mythology of what an Al Jarreau show is supposed to be. He's staking a claim that the live stage isn't just where songs are reproduced; it's where identity gets revised.