About a decade ago, I played in the (now defunct) "Jozef Pauly ensemble", a flute choir connected to the musical academy where I was taught to play the flute. At the time, this ensemble had the habit of goin on summer trips every year; sometimes these trips were large international concert tours (like our 2001 trip to Australia), but that wasn't always the case; there have also been smaller trips, like the 2002 one to the French Ardennes.

While there, we went on a day trip to the city of Reims. As a city close to the front in the first world war, it has a museum dedicated to that subject that I remembered going to. But the fondest memory of that day was going to a park where a podium was set up, with a few stacks of fold-up chairs standing nearby. I took one and listened to the music.

That was the day when I realized that I kindof like jazz. I had come into contact with Jazz before, but it had always been something to be used as a kind of musical wallpaper; something you put on, but don't consciously listen to. Watching this woman sing, however, was a different kind of experience altogether. I'm still very fond of her rendition of "Besame Mucho".

After having listened to the concert for about two hours, they called it quits, but did tell us that there was a record which you could buy. Of course, after having enjoyed the afternoon so much, I couldn't imagine not buying it, so that happened.

Fast forward several years, in the move from my apartment above my then-office to my current apartment (just around the corner), the record got put into the wrong box, and when I unpacked things again it got lost; permanently, I thought. Since I also hadn't digitized it yet at the time, I haven't listened to it anymore in quite a while.

But that time came to an end today. The record which I thought I'd lost wasn't, it was just in a weird place, and while cleaning yesterday, I found it sitting among a bunch of old stuff that I was going to throw out. Putting on the record today made me realize again how good it really is, and I thought that I might want to see if she was still active, and if she might perhaps have made another album.

It was great to find out that not only had she made six more albums since the one I bought, she'd also become a lot more known in the Jazz world (which I must admit I don't really follow all that well), and won a number of awards.

At the time, Youn Sun Nah was just a (fairly) recent graduate from a particular Jazz school in Paris. Today, she appears to be so much more...