Braxton Cook and Jazze Belle Transform the Atrium into an Oasis

by Safet Bektesevic

Sounds, vain sounds of conversations heard and forgotten. The buzz of elevators and revolving doors that never, never stop, beating irregularly like hurting hearts. The unsteady, strident noises from the other side of the street. Do our lives need some more pleasant rhythms, maybe?

Last Thursday the irregular sound of our footsteps had brought us to the Atrium at Lincoln Center for a date that was like a small wrapped gift. Inside, where at times it seemed primarily to be a place of retreat and relaxation in the midst of city hustle and bustle, we encountered stimulating, dazzling notes of Jazz, a genre that one finds in life like all that which, secretly, one needed, but did not expect to find – an oasis or a lost piece of a dream.

Braxton Cook and Jazze Belle had created a parenthesis of unsuspected notes that widens and widens ever since –  which, like heartbeats, immediately took possession of the language of our veins. With the music’s vigorous and vibrant dynamics, these two ensembles made us bid farewell to the hum of indistinct sounds lost in uncomfortable silences, to the the grinding noise of elevators and doors, to the pandemonium of the busy hour, and brought us, if only for awhile, to that place that we all have left, but to which we all want to return. Like inadvertent lovers, they took us on a date only to raise before us a spectacle that made us escape from our own arduous routines, and from the incessant, grueling, even maddening march of the typical New Yorker, the one who does not even sit down to heave a sigh of relief.

Let the strident noises in the street be silent, let the arduous race cease for a moment…these great musicians offered us what we longed for without knowing it: a chair for when we were exhausted, a break from the seemingly unbreakable noise of the city (and of life), and music that spoke squarely to our experiences and to the human condition. With these artists’ warm, liquid notes, the atrium revealed itself for what it truly is: an oasis for the urban traveler, where one can regain strength while drinking water in the form of bright, refreshing melodies before returning to one’s post in the frenetic march that takes place on the streets. The memory of the oasis accompanies us, showing us a rhythm in the veins of our wrist, a rhythm that palpitates, that moves us forward, that pursues new possibilities, and that is stronger than any other. At this point, I can only ask myself, “Where is the next oasis at?”