The doors to The Nash swung open and a volunteer bravely pushed his head into the wind to pull me into the jazz venue Monday night.
Palm trees bent in worship to the 60 mph winds and the rain crashed onto the backs of those walking outside on Roosevelt and First streets. As soon as I found refuge from the storm, the power cut. Darkness swallowed us whole.
The sound of a piano broke the silence of darkness. Soon candles sprinkled the room in bits of light, just enough to see your neighbor.
The jazz didn’t stop. The noise of the storm mingled with the instruments. The drums played with brushes on the snare to bring the sound of the rain indoors.
“They didn’t say I had to go on, I just said ‘let’s go’, we can play acoustic,” headliner trumpet player Carl Saunders said. “You gotta take it as it comes.”
Saunders seemed to be in a fight with his instrument, constantly screaming notes into the mouthpiece of his trumpet. He finished with a few big gulps of air and a round of applause from the audience.
The musicians continued without any notice to the blackness that surrounded them. A man held up his phone’s light to illuminate the stage.
“I’ve been in the recording business most of my life, producing CDs and LPs and that kind of thing so it just was natural to step up,” audience member Bruce Collier Jr. said. “We just go with the flow, that’s just jazz, you just go with the flow and do the best you can.”
Heads bobbing and toe tapping were ghostly silhouettes. Audience members stood up to share their phone’s light on piano and bass. Upright bass plucked the strings, his fingers a blur under the light of iPhones.
The rain came through the ceiling, overflowing buckets.
“We have leaks in the roof but they’re not as major as what we had tonight and I know there have been repairs to them but I guess we’ll be needing new repairs,” lead volunteer Marcia Cowan said. “I don’t think we’ve ever done a show without power here. It is kind of interesting.”
No one seemed bothered by not seeing the headliner they came for. Instead they used other senses.
“You can smell the jazz tonight,” shouted an audience member as humidity dripped from us. “Play Rainy Day!” joked another.
No one asked for a refund that night.
“I don’t think it is overwhelming, we’re making it work the best that we can,” Cowan said. “That’s what jazz does, everybody is used to improvising so we’re improvising tonight.”
Flash flood warnings continued to light up phones into the night.
Contact the columnist at Melanie.Whyte@asu.edu.
