Contemplating Creation in the Minivan with Freddie Hubbard

What to do with this glorious sun-drenched Saturday? How about driving dozens of miles through New Jersey's  traffic-jammed highways to deliver your son's upright bass, with its broken tailpiece, from one music store to another? I took our younger son, L., a fledgling trumpeter, along for company. It turned out to be a beautiful drive home, because Freddie Hubbard rode with me.

Never heard of him? Well, I hadn't either. Until the man behind the counter at Music Store #1 (who pointed out that Music Store #2, where we bought the bass a couple of months ago, should be repairing it for free) mentioned his name.  As we were leaving with the unrepaired bass, L's beginning trumpet book and his very first music stand, the clerk asked him whether he liked listening to trumpet music. Sure, but did he have some suggestions? The clerk scrawled a few names on a business card: (early) Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan.

A couple of hours later, I had hauled bass across a steaming parking lot in a strip shopping mall in Lawrenceville, NJ to music store #2.  L. and I took ourselves to the far back left corner at the wonderfully air-conditioned Princeton Record Exchange, and rifled through the "Budget Jazz" CDs, just as the clerk many miles and towns away had suggested. I held the business card in my hand as we searched the unalphabetized offerings. We bought Freddie Hubbard's CD "First Light" for about $10.  L. liked the cover. I liked the title.

Take a listen. Hear how the title song, all 11 minutes of it, paints a portrait of the sun rising someplace far far away. Listen how it all builds to a wild crescendo of civilization by the end.

Then you will remember, as I did today, how Beauty emerges from so many unexpected places in this ragged world. And that Beauty's source is the same: the Presence who created the very First Light.