Branford Marsalis and a Fire Engine, in Grace Cathedral.

The deep brassed and earthy tones of the tenor sax have reverberated in me since teenage years.

In fall and winter, seasonally for some reason, jazz music streams out of my speakers morning and night. Makes me think too of how there are too many times over the years that I’ve had to pull out a soapbox, and stand on it, at some party, to deliver a passionate defense of these musicians when hearing jazz called ‘good background music’.

Jazz stands on the highest ground in music in how it combines skill and musical artistry with raw emotional exposure in the improvisation segments that are the backbone to the art form.

On the receiving end of improvisation, we the listeners get the privilege of deep insight into a musician’s state of mind, as well as the brilliance of the years of ‘language-learning’ that it takes to express that state musically in the moment.

When you really listen to what is going on, jazz music is visceral. And its raw spontaneity is the point of its philosophy and roots in the early 20th century.

I recently discovered a 2014 Branford Marsalis recording made locally in San Francisco.

In My Solitude: Live at Grace Cathedral is pure solo instrumental improvisation on tenor and alto saxophones.

It comes to you from the natural acoustics of the arcing crypts that define Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

You can listen to it on Spotify, and learn more at Marsalis’ site here.

But, what led me to want to write was the beautiful moment of jazz that unfolds around the one minute mark.

Someone in the audience sputters a quiet cough, to remind you that you are listening to a live recording. And, if you have really good speakers, you might find yourself wondering if that fire engine siren emerging outside your window or coming from the recording.

At that moment, Branford Marsalis is filling every cubic inch of acoustic space in a vast cathedral, bending its silences into the placing of his finger pads on a saxophone in the nave. He’s breaking into what was probably planned as the second theme of this piece, teasing and playing around with the original two-tone opening.

And then “real-life” drama steps in. In the beauty of jazz’ endless adaptation to just where the musician is just at that very moment — Marsalis fronts up to what is going on.

You hear him jiggle the keys in anticipation, like a tennis player twitching before uncoiling into a serve. And you hear him honk right back into that fire engine’s face. You can almost feel the Marsalis tenor echo out the front door of the Cathedral, to face off with a gleaming fire engine.

Marsalis then settles into the conclusion, perhaps bringing us back onto the foreshores of San Francisco’s Crissy Field, the fog horn blasting into the shifting grey mists that will blanket us through summer mornings. His ambulant notes gather pace into some kind of hopeful peaky conclusion. And, we’re palmed back into the vaunted ceilings of Grace Cathedral, and the delicate patting of each placed tone, as Improvisation №3 closes out.

Jazz music has always delivered to me deep feelings of visceral connection. Life’s spirit and colors, happy or sad, and thoughtful or ebullient.

My music playing school days loved the precision and rigor of classical music. But listening tastes pawed beyond structure as I would discover new jazz albums dandering around in the HMV record shop in Guildford (England) on Saturdays. The music inside those HMV listening posts quickly won ‘ear-share’ from the paths I was exploring in rock and roll around the same time, from Led Zeppelin and the Doors to The Beach Boys. I was soon discovering Miles Davis – who had just died around then, I remember the Rolling Stone cover with his obituary – and the late Stan Getz, the contemporary Andy Hamilton (who I saw live with Dad), the San Francisco-based Joshua Redman, and the Marsalis brothers Wynton and Branford.

I saw Oscar Peterson at the Royal Albert Hall and Wynton in Ronnie Scott’s. And a great buddy Tim and I had tickets to see Dizzy Gillespie until a letter plopped on the doormat one dark morning. It confirmed the news headline that I’d seen the previous week that ‘Diz’ had been hospitalized with stomach cancer. (And he never came back).

Today a tenor saxophone, forever underplayed, sits in a corner behind a door at home, taunting me every day for not playing. This sax meant so much to me as a teenager, from the very day I took an envelope of cash up to London’s oldest woodwind shop to buy it. The envelope was two years savings in cash (per Dad’s advice to haggle for a tax-free price) and this Yamaha YTS62 tenor  became the adored sister to my adored African blackwood Buffett R13 clarinet.