It’s a common complaint that jazz audiences are smaller because the music is so complicated.

Half-true.

One of the central tenets of The Twelve’s belief system is, “You cannot love what you do not know.” So, the more you know about jazz, the more you’ll love it. And because it’s a musical tradition with lots of points of view and historical roots, yes, it can be complicated to tease apart what you’re listening to.

Joe Lovano with John Scofield in Oslo, Norway. Bjørn Erik Pedersen. Wikimedia Commons.

But let’s be real about how we all learn anything.

We cannot know something well unless we notice it first.

To teach people how to listen to jazz, we simply have to start with pointing out something to notice … and let them notice it.

Just like the opening two notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in Cmin organize everything that follows, once even a musical novice hears this seed, they get much more out of listening.

And so it is with Joe Lovano’s Abstractions on 52nd Street, off of his Joe Lovano Nonet CD. Except he uses a minor third, instead of a major third as his theme. (He slips in major thirds, too, the minor third his is motif.)

If we’re going to get new audiences to love jazz more, to be willing to show up, to be willing to come into our world of music discover, we’ve got to give them something to notice that, like Joe’s solo, or Beethoven’s Fifth, they notice.

The minor third, the sound of “Yoo, hoo!” Pay attention! You over there.

When people hear what had once been hidden, they shiver with excitement, their world is reorganized, they can love more, because they know more. And, most importantly, they can never go back.

Like we can’t.