For Roger Sellers

For Roger Sellers RIP 14/07/2018

I remember Roger getting on a "roll" once speaking after one of our Friday afternoon performance workshops in the old tuberculosis hospital on Mt Victoria. Roger could talk at times like he was soloing: right out there on the edge, calling up the spirits and seemingly hanging on for dear life. However, even by Roger’s high standards this time was a bit special. When it ended, perhaps a full thirty minutes later, I felt I had witnessed something unrepeatable, something that should have been recorded for posterity. A few of the other students were likely gagging to get home to their hip-hop and heavy metal records, but I was completely enthralled all the way, the little hairs on my forearm standing up on end. I could sense the palpable air of creation, the intoxicating lack of anything prepared as he zigzagged one way then another, pivoting and pirouetting down the various neuron pathways of his curious musical mind. It was Elvin, Max, Shelly and Mel. It was Rog.

Today I would have likely flicked on a phone app and that Roger rave would have been recorded forever. But you know, looking back, I think that a recording would have only weakened it somehow. I cannot even really remember the path of his thoughts today; in fact the path seems largely un-important now. It could have started with a problem a student had had playing the changes to a standard, yet from there Roger would have tap-danced off into the ether and laid down a whole new version of jazz history. He might have thrown in some personal anecdotes of his playing days in England, a slightly bawdy story or two and then finished it off with a discussion on the mystery of combined musical energy or the importance of strong musical friendships. You know it’s not important that I cannot remember it clearly anymore, but I do know that it was far more than just a musical speech. It was more like improvised philosophy - it enriched and nourished me. 

And like the best of jazz, like the out-pouring of a brilliant saxophone trio in a largely empty bar - after is over, it is gone.

Except as memory.


(Sorry, I could not find a reference for the photographer of the great photo included above of Roger. I did try.)