Ted Gioia’s “Music to Raise the Dead” and my experience of the transformative power of music with John Scofield, Dave Holland, and The Grateful Dead

From the perspective of Ted Gioia's ongoing serial publication of "Music to Raise the Dead" on his Substack "The Honest Broker", the two concerts I saw last week (Dave Holland and John Scofield) were each a transformative experience. But they also linked with when I saw Holland and Scofield for the first time in the mid-eighties (Scofield even with Miles Davis). After previously discovering The Grateful Dead, only jazz also gave me that same sensation. That link gave Scofield’s concert an extra twist: he played Dead tunes in jazz arrangements that themselves transformed the songs and took them to new places even beyond the many places the Dead had taken them. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 March 2023)