So tell me, who wouldn't fall in love with an 85 year old jazz musician who fell ill last winter and said, someone up there told him:
Menneken, as ge veurzichtig zij meude nog een betteken spele.
Translated:
Little man, if you are careful, you can play a little longer.
Toots Thielemans was an absolute delight onstage in Middelheim tonight. He played for an hour and a half and came back for one encore, then returned 3 times because the audience just wouldn't stop clapping.
We loved him, I might have even told Gert that I would consider taking Belgian citizenship based on Toots Thielemans being Belgian.
He moved everyone there tonight, his harmonica playing was sublime ... his band was a joy to listen to and I finally realised that music is a language and a psychology in ways that I had never seen before.
A bow to the man who considers the time when he played with Louis Armstrong, his hero, for 22 seconds as one of the highlights of his life.
2 comments:
What struck me about Toots when I saw him, sigh, at Middelheim 2 years ago, pause for another heavy sigh...was how incredibly generous he is as a musician (and a storied one) with his young band members. I have never seen a musician- any musician and I'm a musician's kid - get that genuinely psyched by what his cohorts are doing when they really get cooking...or be that generous with nonverbal praise - looks, faces, eyebrows, little sounds. The man's a team player on top of it all. Must rock to play with him.
You caught it precisely and I'm not a musician's kid but he is so generous and I loved the way he slipped back into things after giving a fellow musician a solo break.
He seemed truly sweet and generous and as you wrote, it must surely rock to play with him.
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