Sometimes it seems like what we do as musicians doesn't really matter anymore. But I played a small arts center in Orange Beach, Alabama in November 2004, to what I must tell you was one of the best audiences anywhere. They listened in such a way that my trio played the best we ever played.

I was booked there again in November 2005, and after the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina, I didn't expect many folks to show up, even though I really wanted to play that venue and give something back to these wonderful people.

When we got to the area, there was no promotion-we couldn't find anyone that even knew we were going to play. So we figured the place would be a ghost town. But when we got to the gig it was packed with people that had traveled for miles to get from their relocated temporary homes to attend what turned out to be the highlight of that tour.

Most of them had gone to all this trouble to return because of how much they dug the music the previous year, which demonstrates both the power of the music and how in live performance of improvised music, the audience's energy (which comes from their attention) - actually fuels the music. Both the audience and the musicians know it when that happens, and it happened on both of those November evenings in Orange Beach, Alabama.