It wasn’t just historical happenstance—Sato had explained to Minty, late one night after the music had ended and the sake was making him wax eloquent—it was philosophical alignment: jazz was a Zen art, dig? Controlled spontaneity. Like sumi-e ink painting, like haiku, like archery, like kendo fencing—jazz wasn’t something you planned, it was something you did. You practiced, you played your scales, you learned your chops, then you brought all your knowledge, your conditioning, to the moment. “And in jazz, every moment is a crisis,” Sato quoted Wynton Marsalis, “and you bring all your skill to
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