“Day After Day,” Mr. Monder’s latest album.

I wish the article quoted here had reproduced the De Chirico painting it mentions. I like to see evidence of how painting and music can interact for an artist. I’m only now becoming acquainted with Monder’s music. His recurring dream suggests that even an accomplished musician can’t always play how or what he would like to play. That somehow inspires me to keep playing.

Mr. Monder has a print of a small, phosphorescent De Chirico painting on the wall in his practice room at home in south Brooklyn. “There are paintings that seem to convey what I’m trying to sound like,” he said… He described a recurring dream that he said the painting always reminds him of. “I’m in a room, which is flooded with light, and I’m practicing, and I’m able to play just, anything,” he said. “It’s super inspiring, and I always wake up and I’m like, ‘Where did that go?’”

(Giovanni Russonello, “Ben Monder and David Torn: Jazz Guitarists Unafraid to Wrestle With Darkness,” NYTimes, 4-9-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.