This past week, with a lot of illness-related downtime on my hands — I’m fine, now — I did some casual scrolling across Youtube and came upon the video of a young musician named Jacob Collier leading a full orchestra on a 20-minute improvisational performance.
It was pure joy.
I had never heard of Collier, but he’s a young Englishman, musician and composer from a family of musicians. In this performance with a San Francisco orchestra, he directs each instrument section to play a certain chord over and over. He leads them section by section, so you don’t know where it is heading.
In fact, in a note posted with the video, Collier said the entire performance was accomplished with ‘no rehearsal, no sheet music, no prior discussion.’
When Collier finally leads every instrument section to play together as he begins to play the piano, you discover where it’s actually gone. He sings Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ and it’s a perfect fit with the instruments. Then it morphs into a mix with ‘Every Breath You Take’ as he leads the audience to join in singing key lines.
It an uplifting performance, and you can see it in the reactions not only of the audience but of the members of the orchestra. Every participant seemed caught up in the joyous moment.
I must have watched it six times. Watch it yourself below.
Collier has other videos posted where he interacts with audiences and orchestras the same way, and it’s all for the purpose of nothing more than celebrating joy.
In today’s us-vs.-them dystopian world, doing something with no motive other than to celebrate joy brings a breath of fresh air to us all. Or at least all of us who celebrate joy for, well, the joy it brings.
I’ve uncovered a few other gems that brought me joy this week that I’m sharing in this post.
First is a column by Joe Posnanski, one of America’s preeminent baseball writers. Written shortly before the Major League Baseball season began, Joe presents ‘The Most Fun Teams in Baseball.’ It’s an innovative way to consider all 30 MLB teams and rank them according to the number of ‘fun’ players rather than pure statistics. Read the column here.
Posnanski celebrates baseball with a joy that makes you want to love the game as much as he does.
Next is author and tech reporter David Pogue, whose reporting on Apple and other tech innovators over the years is always presented in an upbeat and positive manner with a touch of joyous humor thrown in. I mentioned Pogue in a recent post about the hundreds of people who lined up outside Apple retailers when the first iPhones and iPads were released nearly 20 years ago.
I’m including him in this post because he’s written a wonderful article about how he became a tech reporter and his personal interactions with Apple and Steve Jobs over the years. It turns out that we have David to thank for the ability to make screenshots on the iPhone. The comments of his readers are just as interesting — and joyful.
Finally, I ran across an ESPN Instagram feed featuring their reporter, Omar Raja, who is sort of a mobile deliverer of unexpected joy to unlikely people. In one post, he surprised a kid of about 10 years old and his dad in the far upper deck of Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium with field passes AND front row seats to the game. The kid actually spent his own Christmas money to treat his dad to their first Steelers game. It’s a feel good story.
But there’s more from Omar.
On Super Bowl Sunday he drives past a kid who has set up a lemonade stand just blocks from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., site of this year’s Super Bowl. He slows down and apologizes to the kid because he has no cash to pay for a lemonade. As he drives off, the kid runs up to the car window holding a complimentary cup. Omar rewards him and his dad with Super Bowl field pass and tickets and ushers them into the stadium.
Tears of pure joy.
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