“Tempus fugit”, they say, when you are wasting time. And the speaker usually means you are wasting their time as well as your own. The insinuation is that time is too precious to be wasted, and those who squander it are bad boys and girls. But how can we decide how best to use the time we have? How can we zone in on what’s important?

Perhaps we need to understand time better. If time flies, studying the characteristics of its flight might help. We might, for example, compare time with other things that fly:

Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

Oh, wait … I seem to have been distracted by a little joke. This is off-topic for a music blog.

But I still can’t help wondering if we should consider the arrow of time and whether it is, as some scientists surmise, all an illusion. Or if time zones in like a lens, enabling us to focus on any subject we choose. Let’s take advantage of that freedom and see what the Esthesis Quartet has to say on the subject in the opening track of their recently released album, Time Zones:

This is definitely jazz – intricate, partly improvised music. It demands a precise sense of timing from the musicians. It is also highly inventive. And it lives up to the ‘esthesis’ promise, inviting the listener to tune in to their innermost feelings.

Esthesis Quartet plays original music with a reckless abandon that shakes the preconceptions of traditional instrumentation roles.

YouTube video

And here’s another example of their work, this time from their debut, self-titled album. It’s a live version of a track called Cricket.

Now, before the sands of blogging time run out, I should introduce the band. The members of the Esthesis Quartet are:

• Dawn Clement, pianist
• Elsa Nilsson, flautist
• Emma Dayhuff, bassist
• Tina Raymond, drummer

The band has a lovely website, from which we learn that the four musicians are spread across the U.S. from Denver to New York City, and Chicago to Los Angeles. That’s a lot of air miles … and four different time zones by my count.