“My friend thinks I keep silence,” writes Thoreau, “who am only choked with letting it out so fast.” It was pianist Ahmad Jamal who, in the 1950s, helped Miles Davis learn how to channel silence: how to let it out at just the right pace, in just the right patterns. Today, at 89, Jamal is still finding new wells to draw from. —E.E.
Ahmad Jamal
San Francisco Jazz Center
201 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA
Get Directions »