As I've noted before, I sometimes watch jazz musicians decide not to play. At the Jazz Campus in Basel last night, during an unaccompanied passage by guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, I heard a click from drummer Brian Blade's sticks. But instead of joining in, he laid them in his lap. A few seconds later, I heard another click and saw Blade put the sticks down again. A few seconds after that, he cupped a shaker in his hands to accompany Muthspiel. Later, in the ballad encore, bassist Scott Colley stopped playing for moments on end and accompanied Muthspiel and Blade with silence. Several times, he prepared to play something and then didn't. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 27 February 2026)