McCoy Tyner Quartet featuring Gary Bartz

At the Blue Note on Wednesday, January 11.

Jazz is never going to be my thing. I have tried (and tried and tried and tried), but I always feel at sea to some extent. Sometimes I get something out of it, and sometimes I simply don't, but the music never truly speaks to me the way other genres do. I feel bad about that (I feel bad about lots of things), but there it is.

That said, the surest way to pull me out a little bit is to feature a good pianist, and McCoy Tyner happens to be a great one. His résumé—pianist for the John Coltrane Quartet as well as sideman on numerous albums for Blue Note Records and eventual bandleader—is obviously pretty striking (it's generally a good sign if even I recognize the names), but it wasn't just Tyner's credentials that impressed me. He's an incredible pianist, in a way that transcends genre altogether.