Space Craft shakes me out of a dulling reverie | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Published 9:44 am Saturday, July 30, 2016

To the editor:

I live here in the woods on this island roughly the size of Manhattan (only, you could fit all of us in one midtown New York City high-rise). I’ve lived on Bainbridge for more than a decade, and like all of you, I moved here to down shift and raise a family in a superlative, bucolic community. A place to settle in and raise my kids. A place to casually dwindle.

But tonight something remarkable happened—something you wouldn’t think possible on a forested island on the far western edge of this troubled continent: riveting, innovative jazz.

Here’s how it went down: I dropped off my boys at the Kingston ferry to go visit their grandparents, and then on a whim I stopped by Space Craft (spacecraftpresents.org) on the way home to join a dozen islanders watching a trio of 22-year-old wunderkinds just throwing down, transcending form and genre, channeling a time before they were born; Greenwich Village venues like Smalls and Sweet Basil where the leading lights of jazz would congregate and risk everything to mix it up and see what happens next.

Improbably, a similar scene transpired in Rolling Bay tonight. I witnessed Sound Underground — a deft Miami trio with remarkable range and lyrical integrity — and local ensemble Hunter Gather weave dense jazz tapestries composed of equal parts Wayne Shorter and Instagram, composed by artists who ventured far from home to bring miraculous music to Bainbridge Island.

Our choices matter — if we don’t occasionally exit our comfy confines on this island paradise to support endeavors like Space Craft, then these artists (like the Dorcas, who have dwindled and gone unto the west) will not return, and we will be poorer for it.

ROB DALTON

Pleasant Beach