In Bird, Clint Eastwood's movie about Charlie Parker, another inspiring saxophone player hears Parker play and, in despair, throws his horn off a bridge into a river. When I was a kid taking piano lessons, one of my teachers, a young man studying piano at Juilliard, threw in the towel and became a stockbroker, saying he could make better music with his record player than with his piano.
By the same token, I should give up flute. Recently the fine Israeli flutist, Idit Shemer, played a recital in our home, accompanied by Maggie Cole (who mainly plays harpsichord and fortepiano), and I was overwhelmed both by Idit's tone and by the way she and Maggie played demanding pieces with impeccable musicality and deep understanding of each other. Idit, according to the Internet, was born in 1961, and she's been playing the flute since her youth. Doing the arithmetic, that comes to about fifty years of experience. I was born in 1944 and only took up the flute about ten years ago. I'll never catch up!
Recently I saw an interview on Youtube with the pianist Garrick Ohlsson about playing Chopin. Ohlsson was charming and articulate, and, of course, intelligent and erudite. He evidently has memorized all of Chopin's oeuvre. When he wanted to demonstrate something he was saying, he effortlessly, without looking at music, plucked out the appropriate passage to make his point, from works by Chopin and other composers. That's a kind of musical mastery that comes from great training, deep practice, and a long career of performing all over the world.
I don't plan to give up on music, even though I'll never get to Idit's level on the flute or memorize tons of music like Ohlsson and other great musicians. I'm not a great musician and never aspired to be one. But I get a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from playing at my level.
In the past year I've been playing baritone saxophone in an ensemble that calls itself a big band, even though we're missing a few of the players we need to be a real big band. The conductor encourages us all to take solos, so I've been working on my harmonic skills, though, as above, I don't hear chord patterns as well as good jazz musicians do.
To train my ear and mind, I've been playing songs like "Till There Was You" (not the Beatles' version) in all twelve keys on flute and sax and also playing the basic rhythm changes pattern of I-VI-II-V, all twelve keys, trying to hear how each chord leads to the next one.
I hope that when our band plays in public, I'll be able to put out credible solos that demonstrate grasp of the harmonies and some inspiration, and that people will enjoy hearing them.
