“The Jazz Musician (Black Man With a Horn”

“The Jazz Musician” was the first on a list of titles Parhelion planned for years to paint accompanying pictures to. He didn’t begin this work with that title in mind, but as the painting began to develop he recognised what it was becoming - an image of the power of music, jazz in particular, to stir up the emotion and power of the unconscious so it erupts within the listener. He also found he was tapping into an image he remembered from the story “Black Man with a Horn” by T.E.D. Klein, that had impressed him as a boy with its vision of cosmic horror. There, as here, the jazz musician could be a symbol of a primal entity with a horn like a trump of doom and revelation. As an aside - the musical notes were lifted from an actual jazz score, “So What” by Miles Davis, but mutated as Parhelion exercised his artistic licence! The curved lines of the score reflect a popular (mis?)conception that the German term “Schräge Musik” (“slanting” or “strange” music”) is a colloquial term for jazz.