An Accumulation of Moments

Emmet Cohen was amazing as usual

Caramoor Jazz Festival 2026 a Contamination Observation

There are birthdays that arrive with great pomp and ceremony.

Mine arrived beneath a shaded treeline in Katonah, New York, surrounded by music, old friends, and a quiet accumulation of moments.

Remi and I spent most of the day in Friends Field at the Caramoor Jazz Festival. We settled into the shade with folding chairs, a cooler full of food, and a small bar kit I had assembled specifically for afternoons just like this. Jim Beam. Muddled blackberries. A lemon simple syrup made with sucralose instead of sugar—a concession not so much to turning sixty as to Type 2 diabetes, apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, whatever else ailes me. It seemed like the proper way to spend a warm summer afternoon listening to great jazz.

What I had forgotten was ice.

It turns out every good bar kit should include an allowance for forgetting something really important.

For a while we borrowed enough cold from a thermos of iced water to make it work. Later, Chris and Sue rescued us carrying poached shrimp, lobster salad, wonderful snacks, and, after hearing about my oversight, a bag of ice. They are easy and kind friends, the very best sort.

Problem solved.

As the afternoon unfolded, Chris's brother Mickey wandered over from his encampment. We've known each other since high school. We reminisced about going together to the Jerry Garcia Band's Felt Forum shows decades ago and laughed about places we'd been and people we'd known. Katherine brought homemade cookies. Their son Matt had recently gone with Mickey to use my squandered Al Di Meola tickets at Ridgefield Playhouse. I thanked them both for having bailed me out by putting them to good use. At one point we somehow found ourselves talking about the Hoover Dam.

Life rarely organizes itself around themes.

I had come to Caramoor for a number of reasons.

The first was Emmet Cohen.

I've crossed paths with Emmet a handful of times over the years, attended many gigs and every encounter has been marked by the same openness and kindness. Once, while we were talking in a school lobby in East Harlem, his mother walked over and asked, "Who's your friend, Emmet?" He remembered me well enough to introduce us. It was a small gesture, but one I've never forgotten. Truly a sweet guy.

At the Charleston Jazz Festival I stopped to say hello after a performance. He laughed and asked if I'd really driven all the way from New York to hear him.

"You know I play in New York too?"

It was exactly the sort of gentle humor you'd expect from someone so completely grounded despite his remarkable success.

Lucy Yeghiazaryan at Caramoor gave an astonishing performance

At Caramoor, when Lucy Yeghiazaryan joined him once again, Charleston quietly returned to the room. Two performances, separated by time and distance, suddenly occupied the same memory.

The second reason I came was William Hill III.

I had missed hearing him the previous weekend at Jazz Forum Arts and wasn't about to let that happen twice.

His trio performance early in the day stopped me almost in my tracks.

Not because it was flashy.

Because it was so completely at ease.

Some musicians seem to will music into existence.

William Hill appeared simply to abide within it.

Later I saw him wandering among the musicians, talking, listening, laughing—just another member of the community before eventually joining Walter Blanding's amazing quintet in the Grecian Theater later.

When he began to solo in that context, I found myself almost holding my breath.

I'd heard of him before.

But, not heard him.

Now I'm a fan.

Walter Blanding may have given me the most interesting musical insight of the day.

He wasn't primarily playing Coltrane and Miles compositions although he was playing a tribute set to the two greats.

He was interpreting music that Coltrane and Miles themselves had interpreted—Monk, Wayne Shorter, standards and other composers whose work they had made part of their own language.

That felt important.

Jazz isn't preserved by imitation.

It's kept alive through conversation.

Every generation speaks to the ones before it while adding something of its own.

Watching Emmet always leaves me wondering where memory ends and originality begins.

His command of the history of jazz is astonishing.

At first it can feel like quotation.

Then, after a while, you realize it isn't quotation at all.

It's fluency.

History has simply become his native language.

After the concert I thanked Joe Farnsworth.

"Thanks for a great show."

He smiled.

"Thank you, brother."

Joe grooving behind his kit….

I couldn't resist asking a question that had been in my head while watching and listening to them absolutely fly on stage.

"Whose tempo is faster, yours or Emmet's? And if I asked Emmet, would he agree?"

Joe laughed.

"He's fast... he is fast. Real fast. I had to keep up with Johnny Griffin, Harold Mabern and Cedar Walton, so I guess I better be able to keep up."

Amazing.

It was the perfect answer.

He answered a question about himself by talking about the musicians who had shaped him.

Lineage.

Moments.

Again.

Somewhere during all of this I turned sixty.

The calendar suggested something had changed.

I'm not convinced it had.

I didn't become sixty that morning.

I'd been moving toward sixty from the day I was born.

The date simply gave me a reason to notice.

Watching Walter Blanding reinterpret the music of the musicians who had influenced him...

Watching William Hill III emerge into his own voice...

Watching Emmet Cohen carry decades of jazz history so naturally that it becomes something entirely his own...

Listening to Joe Farnsworth measure himself not against today's players but against Johnny Griffin, Harold Mabern, and Cedar Walton... I keep rolling that over in my head, Johnny Griffin, Harold Mabern and Cedar Walton…. whoah

It all seemed to point toward the same quiet truth.

Nothing important appears all at once amid pomp and ceremony.

Not musicians.

Not traditions.

Not friendships.

Not lives.

They accumulate.

A life well lived is an accumulation of moments.

Over the years my path has crossed remarkable artists from time to time. They have always been generous with their time, kind in conversation, and welcoming in ways they never needed to be. I don't imagine I've become part of their stories.

But they have certainly become a part of mine.

Their music, their generosity, a remembered joke, a brief conversation, a simple "Thank you, brother"—all of it has been woven into the fabric of my sixty years.

An accumulation of moments.

By evening the ice had melted.

The chairs folded.

Friends drifted toward their cars.

The festival slowly dissolved into the night.

This contamination wasn't chaos, it never is—it was kindness.

A remembered introduction.

A joke from Emmet.

"Thank you, brother."

A bag of ice.

Cookies.

Old friends beneath the trees.

New artists making their bones.

The ride home happened.

I’m pretty certain it did.

I remember almost nothing about it.

Part of me was still sitting beneath those trees, bourbon in hand, talking about the Hoover Dam, listening to a conversation that began long before I was born and will continue long after I'm gone.

Perhaps that's how memory works.

For years we collect ordinary moments without recognizing or acknowledging the totality of what they are becoming.

Then one warm summer afternoon, beneath a canopy of trees, surrounded by old friends and extraordinary musicians, we suddenly see that those moments were never differentiated from one another at all.

They had been quietly weaving themselves together all along, becoming the fabric of a life.

Do it.

Buy the ticket.

Call the friend.

Do the thing.

Just go and do it.

Reality is alive, unstable, interconnected, and impossible to fully contain.

May all beings benefit.

~Nikki

Continue Wandering...

• Our Story — Every observation begins somewhere.
https://nikkiarcane.com/our-story

• More Contamination Observations — Other places where reality became briefly transparent.
https://nikkiarcane.com/contamination-observations

• Field Shelters for Nomads — Every traveler deserves a place to pause.
https://nikkiarcane.com/field-shelters

• Recovered Artifacts — Some observations eventually become things you can carry with you.
https://nikkiarcane.com/shop