Barbados

Barbados is one of two unlikely requests the narrator imagines making of pianist Tommy Flanagan during a live performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When Flanagan plays it unasked as the second-to-last set-ending piece, the moment answers the narrator’s anxious wish for something memorable and becomes an extraordinary coincidence grounded in a specific musical history.

The imagined request

The narrator chooses Barbados while listening to Flanagan’s trio at the Regattabar Jazz Club. The performance has not lived up to his expectations: as the set approaches its end, he worries that he will leave with only lukewarm memories, or none at all. He imagines being asked to name two songs and settles on Barbados and Star-Crossed Lovers, while knowing the encounter is purely fanciful and the chance of Flanagan approaching his table is effectively nil.

The choices are deliberate rather than obvious. Barbados, by Charlie Parker, is described as one of Parker’s less flashy compositions and is not often performed; the other selection, by Duke Ellington, is even less familiar to most listeners. The narrator’s imagined request therefore reflects particular recordings he admires, not a bid for standard crowd-pleasers.

A song with a history

Flanagan had recorded Barbados on the 1957 album Dial JJ 5, playing piano with the J. J. Johnson Quintet. The narrator especially values Flanagan’s crisp, intelligent solo on that recording, brief but memorable. He links the imagined request to that earlier performance: hearing Flanagan play the piece live would bring a familiar, cherished musical moment into the present.

The narrator’s reasons for choosing the song also establish a contrast between Flanagan’s broad career as a sideman and the particular solos that stayed with one listener. Barbados matters here not simply as a Parker composition but as a piece through which the narrator recognizes Flanagan’s playing.

The unexpected performance

Without speaking to the narrator or even glancing toward him, Flanagan begins the set’s final two numbers with the ballad Star-Crossed Lovers, then follows it with an up-tempo Barbados. The order and selection match the narrator’s private choices. He sits speechless, holding his wineglass, as the imagined request becomes a real performance.

The coincidence is heightened by the size of the field from which Flanagan could have chosen: jazz offers millions of possible numbers, and these two were not typical selections. Yet the episode’s force is not only that the pianist happens to play both. The narrator also finds both performances amazing, precisely the memorable conclusion he had feared the evening would fail to provide.

Meaning in the episode

Barbados joins private recollection, musical taste, and chance in a single event. Its earlier recording gives the narrator a concrete reason to hope for it; Flanagan’s unexpected choice then makes that remembered attachment seem, for an instant, answered by the performance itself. The account leaves the coincidence unexplained, presenting its improbability and emotional effect without claiming that the pianist knew of the narrator’s wish.