Local Renaissance

A string quartet on hallowed musical grounds. Coldplay by candlelight.

My wife came to me out of the blue a few months back and showed me this cool show she had found in downtown Jax. It was an orchestra by candlelight doing modern tunes like Ed Sheeran, Adele, Coldplay, Taylor Swift. This is why I dig her! ;-) When we met in Miami, she would rather go to the small cozy jazz bar on South Beach than the big trendy loud club. I was good with both worlds, but was wise enough to tail her around. This looked like a similar small venue and we bought tickets to Coldplay.

The show was tonight and it was magnificent! 💫 It was really cool to see how they structured the arrangements for pop songs around such Old World instruments and their ‘limited' range. The range was anything but limited! Experiencing them perform songs like Paradise and Fix You was a true joy. They were true musicians and it radidated from them like the light of the candles. The violin player was world-class and amazing to watch. To see an instrument sing so richly off such limited movement is mind‐blowing. She made that bow wail! More than that, she truly made it sing (to new millenia jams).

I was struck by several things this evening, which will explain the title…

First (and I get that this is my own limitations), it was so beautiful to listen to those sounds. No phones, no distractions, just soft encompassing music. I noticed the room of maybe 250 sat perfectly silent and mostly still. Many sat up-right; everyone was dressed nice. Think of the contrasts to how all of us in that room likely spend our days. Consumed by noise and screens and distraction and movement. Even the music itself - I saw Coldplay a year or so ago in Tampa and it was sensational but it was loud! Rocking, bright, and electric. Here were the same melodies being played and yet we were meditating in it. Old World, indeed.

Similar to the community vibe I get at church (at the nation's oldest cathedral), I was moved by how this calm happy energy was being shared by us all together. We were in this gorgeous old colonial-feeling room and were all bathing in the same vibe, on the same wavelength. I had pleasant conversation with everyone I interacted with. I didn't hear a negative tune the whole time. The music had brought us there… and the light of the event. It was so simple and pure; so beautiful and perfect. I'm sure everyone left happy and relaxed. Think how positive that is for the fabric of the community. It springs upward!

The whole project was neat. Here are people passionate for an instrument, an art, and who have made it their lives. In doing so, they were enriching ours. Enriching the whole town, in fact. I ran the numbers in my head and they were making good coin. They filled every fold-out chair they had put down. But I didn't really mean encriching that way…

I would find out as I was leaving that this charming venue is the oldest one in all of Florida. Formed in 1890 as the brainchild of a gifted and special woman named Claudia L’Engle Adams, Friday Musicale began as a musical commune. She brought 11 friends together to not just play and socialize, but to put on performances and create a community. By the Roaring 20s, her brainchild was electric!

Turns out it has deep roots in the Jacksonville Orchestra and much of the musical arts community here. Amazing! 💫 What a magical evening, and what a magical little place. So touched by the layers of history of here. Not just where I was tonight and my hometown, but how the art-form itself (and the human love of music and gathering) traces back through thousands of years.

The reason I said “Local Renaissance” is that as I was sitting there having all these cool thoughts and warm and fuzzies, thinking about the contrasts between modern chaos and this peaceful old serenity, I thought “Why?”. Why do we all have to live in such hecticness? Why do we have to abandon old ways? Says whom? I'm not interested in that command. But it's not actually a struggle, it's a choice. Those of us glowing in candles together tonight made the choice to be entertained in the same manner as our forefathers centuries ago. That past-current blend again as Chris Martin's creation emanates out of strings that entertained emperors. A string quartet played “Yellow”!

We don't have to live in Big Tech Utopia, even if it exists, even if it gets pushed from everywhere, and even if others choose to. We can just gather together again. Look how much happiness these instruments brought, even in busy modern times. 👇 It's as if they made time stand still. We should do that more. A lot more.

We stand on the shoulders of giants!