A coincidence created by improvisation… The moment you listen to jazz, everything changes.

[arte] Nam Moo-seong’s jazz and a cup of coffee

The reason I took out (by Carl Sagan), which was sleeping in the corner of the bookshelf, was a physics teacher who lived in a neighboring town. He, whom I recently became acquainted with, lives in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, and teaches physics at a middle school.

He first came to me saying he wanted to learn about jazz, but there was almost no mention of music in our conversation. Conversely, from him, I hear about Newton and Einstein, as well as Carl Sagan’s and . It is very fun to tell the story of the universe through physics. At times like that, I play jazz music at a low level. Jazz and physics may seem very different from each other, but they talk quite well and spend a long time together.

I have loved looking at stars since I was young. I often lay on the rooftop late at night looking at the stars and then came down shivering from the cold. I can’t forget the Milky Way that decorated the sky like a large river at that time. The Milky Way is a group of stars. All stars are the same, but a planet that emits its own light like the sun is called a star. There are numerous planets within the solar system. Where is the end of our galaxy, which has 400 billion stars that shine like the sun? Where is the end of the universe, which has hundreds of billions of galaxies?

The music we listen to is as impossible to count as the countless stars in the night sky. Moreover, there are more hidden stars than those visible to our eyes. Among them, jazz is like an asteroid that can only be seen if you have to look to see it. I also brought up an interesting story to a physics teacher who wanted to know about jazz.

Few people know, but there is a star in the solar system named after a jazz musician. The planet is named ‘Janeira Bloom’ by NASA after American female saxophonist Jane Ire Bloom. Because it is less than 8km in diameter and does not emit its own light, a special telescope is required to view this asteroid.

Jane Ira Bloom created music at the request of the ‘NASA ART’ program (encouraging the imagination of space exploration as a work of art) (1992). The song’s title is ‘Most Distant Galaxy’, and it is an avant-garde jazz song entirely composed of improvisation. The sound of the instrument sounds like an unknown sound and creates an atmosphere of darkness and loneliness. On the other hand, there are jazz songs that sing about the universe, such as ‘Stardust’ and ‘Fly Me To The Moon’.

[추천곡] ‘Most Distant Galaxy’ by Jane Ira Bloom

It becomes difficult when the physics teacher’s story goes beyond stars and space and extends to quantum physics. Studying microscopic particles such as atoms and electrons is a field that makes you sleepy. Even if you listen to YouTube lectures on this topic, it still doesn’t make sense. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, said, “No one fully understands quantum mechanics,” which is of some consolation.

However, the famous ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ theory remains in my mind. The moment you open the box, whether the cat lives or dies is decided. This means that it is ‘confirmed the moment you observe it’ or ‘changes the moment you observe it’, and when it is not observed, there is a 5 to 5 probability. It’s half and half… It’s not a dying cat(?). What does this mean?

Then, I would like to say that when it comes to jazz music, ‘everything changes the moment you listen to it.’ The improvisation of jazz does not proceed according to a fixed plot like other music. Regardless of the intention of the composer or performer, each listener unfolds his or her own imagination amid waves of unknown notes. There is tension in the contingency created in this moment of improvisation. Observing it is the joy of appreciating jazz.

Nam Moo-seong, jazz critic