Between Many Worlds

In 2002, the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition focused on saxophonists. There were 15 musicians, and the bar was set high enough that a player as polished and original as Marcus Strickland only placed third. The winner was 31-year-old Seamus Blake, a British-born, Vancouver-reared New Yorker who, at that point, was little known outside of a few select scenes. But as Ben Ratliff, writing for the New York Times, put it, Blake’s win was no contest. By the end, Ratliff wrote, “most at the competition, judges and spectators alike, agreed that he had more of everything: melody, harmony, time, coherence, originality.”

“I honestly didn’t think I would win,” Blake says now. “I entered because I wanted to meet Wayne [Shorter] and Herbie [Hancock], two of my biggest idols.” He not only got to meet them, but he played with them at the competition’s finale. Even so, Blake is modest about his achievement, shrugging it off as having been more about hard work and preparation than inborn ability. “I treated the competition