All the decisions that jazz musicians make about what to play and when not to play come together to form the whole. At their concert at the Jazz Campus in Basel on Thursday, 26 February 2026, guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel's trio with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade mostly played Muthspiel's compositions, but also chose two covers that were the highlights of the evening for me. First, drummer Paul Motian's "Abacus", a composition for free playing, took the band from quiet passages to psychedelic sounds. Then Joni Mitchell's "Amelia" lived up to her words (unsung in this version) and became "a song so wild and blue" that brought me to tears. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 February 2026)