Headed out to the Blue Note last night to catch legendary jazz pianist Horace Silver who, in his late 70’s, is still in prime form. Though the venue was packed, the group I was meeting (members of a jazz octet with which I play) had arrived early enough to get a table directly in front of the stage, so I ended up sitting about five feet in front of the piano, directly in Silver’s eye line.

Silver pulled up one of his classic compositions, “Song for my Father”, early in the set, and as I had played the same piece earlier in the day at a lunchtime jam session, my fingers were unconsciously moving through trumpet fingerings along with the music. He saw me doing so, winked at me. And for the rest of the show, Silver shot me sidelong glances whenever he did something he was particularly proud of – working bits of Rachmaninoff or “When John Comes Marching Home” (aka “The Ants Go Marching Two By Two”) into his solos, laughing to himself about it along the way.

Most of the rest of the group were younger guys, in their twenties and thirties, and Silver clearly relished the enthusiasm they put forth. “That’s right,” he’d shout, in the midst of their solos, “that’s how you say it!” And, indeed, that was how you say it, as the group laid down funky jazz line after funky jazz line.

I’d not seen Silver play live before, and, as he and many other jazz icons are aging rapidly, I wanted to catch him while I still could. It was indubitably worth it, in part to simply hear such great jazz being played right in front of me, in part to see that, no matter how seriously the audience was taking his playing, Silver wasn’t taking it seriously at all, was simply jamming his heart out and having a hell of a lot of fun.