Josh Grossman's blog

I was taking in the Mike Webster Nonet at The Rex Hotel last week and at a certain point during his set Mike introduced a tune as follows: “I’ve been exploring a lot of different time signatures and harmonies and I thought it was time to write a simple tune.” And the tune they subsequently played was just that: simple. And beautiful. And it got me thinking—what makes music beautiful?

It’s now been one month since I took on the role of Artistic Director of Toronto Downtown Jazz and these past four weeks have been action-packed: exciting, overwhelming, challenging, illuminating...I’ve learned a lot about how the festival runs - which artists sell tickets, which venues work best - and look forward to learning even more over the next six months.