The One Thing That Will Change Everything

 I used to read a charming old book called Lion by William Pène du Bois to my children. It tells about an angel who is designing a new animal, and the drawing looks wrong to him. He asks another angel to tell him one thing that's wrong with the picture. After he corrects that flaw, he asks another angel, and so on until he comes up with a picture of a lion. I love the message of that book. There were so many things wrong with the initial drawing that the designer might have decided to rip it up and start over, but once he started correcting each flaw in turn, he came up with something superb. You can't correct everything that's wrong all at once.

Musicianship is similar. So many factors are involved in playing an instrument, that you can't approach them all at once. You have to pick one problem and deal with it, hoping that one thing will lead to another. Saxophone players, to take a personal example, might address their breathing, their embouchure, and their fingering, but they have to figure out what's the most important problem or the one that's easiest to address first. YouTube is full of videos giving us useful advice.

Sometimes one imagines that the problem is with one's gear. Even if you have a decent instrument, you might not be producing the sound you want, so you experiment with mouthpieces and reeds, hoping that once you've acquired the ideal mouthpiece, you'll play like one of the musicians you admire. 

Recently I tried out three of the baritone saxophone mouthpieces I've bought over the years, because the one I was using was giving me problems. Surprisingly, one of the mouthpieces that I had given up on long ago turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered, as it were. In a recent rehearsal of the big band I play in, I was happier with the way I was playing than I have been in a while. So maybe that mouthpiece is the one thing that will change everything - but I doubt it.

In my case the one thing that would improve my playing immeasurably would be to go back in time to my high school years and practice clarinet more intensively.

Failing that, I've been listening occasionally to talks on Youtube by Molly Gebrian, a professor of viola with a strong academic background in neuroscience. A recent series of hers fascinated me: The Power of Attentional Focus. Much of the research she refers to focuses on studies of performance in sports but is clearly applicable to musical performance. The lesson I drew from her talks was that, for a wind player, to improve your sound, for example, you won't get anywhere by concentrating exclusively on your embouchure and breathing. You have to focus on your goal, the kind of sound you want to produce. As you approach that goal, your muscles will find the way of doing it. Thinking about your lips and opening your throat can get in the way of using your lips right and opening your throat! 

Gebrian says that you have to focus on something outside yourself. I'm trying that, and it works. Her videos assume an audience of music educators and young musicians aspiring to become professionals. Although I don't fit into that category, I find them insightful and useful.

Hosting a Great Concert

Trio Noga played in our living room last night. All three of the musicians are superb professionals. Idit Shemer is an extraordinary flutist whose tone has exceptional intensity. She also plays baroque flute and is a consummate artist. The cellist, Orit Messer-Jacobi, is an equally distinguished musician, the first cellist of the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, where Idit also plays when there is a call for a flute. The pianist, Shira Shaked, made our aging Yamaha baby grand sound fantastic. The three women are clearly good friends and communicate with each other as they play.

They also communicated with the intimate audience that gathered in our living room, creating a warm and enthusiastic atmosphere. Their program was varied and creative, from a Beethoven trio in which the cello played a part originally written for the bassoon (Op. 37). They then played a lively piece, written for them, by Aharon Harlap, a contemporary Israeli composer. They followed it with a piece by Mel Bonis, a French composer who was neglected in her lifetime because she was a woman. They concluded the recital with a trio (in which the flute part was originally written for clarinet) by Nino Rota, who was mainly known for his film scores.

The creative variety of the program is a reflection of the unusual composition of the trio, as it is much more common to hear a piano trio consisting of piano, violin, and cello. Having a wind instrument take the upper part gives the trio a unique flavor: the percussion nature of the piano, with its hammers, the suave, bowed tone of the cello, topped with the clear notes of the flute offer a fascinating range of tones, making them almost a miniature orchestra. Of course it is challenging to blend the voices of such different instruments, and Trio Noga does so to an outstanding degree.

Only about thirty-five people could squeeze into our living room, while another ten or fifteen listeners sat in the adjoining room, where one can hear every note but not see the performers so well. Usually the audience consists mainly of friends of ours, but in this case Idit, Orit, and Shira invited friends of theirs. We were afraid too many people would come, but we fit everyone in. The concert was a great success both for the musicians and the audience. 

It gives my wife and me great satisfaction to host concerts like this. We don't make a penny, of course. In fact, between keeping the piano tuned and providing the refreshments, we are out of pocket, but it's money well spent. Especially in tense and conflicted times like the present, hearing such great music strengthens one's soul. For us it is a privilege and a blessing to open our home to the Noga Trio and musicians on their high level, and share their artistry with guests.

We're fortunate to have a roomy home and to own a decent piano (a wedding gift from my wife's parents), what better use could we make of our privilege than to share it with music lovers?

The YouTube Algorithm Knows What Interests Me

 Among the clips that the algorithm recommends to me is a series hosted by two Taiwanese-Australian violinists, Brett Yang and Eddie Chen called "Twoset Violin." They're a bit too goofy for my taste, but they're both knowledgeable musicians and frequently showcase musical prodigies. They appreciate but don't try to explain the almost supernatural abilities of extremely young musicians. 

Music isn't the only field in which young people display astonishing skill and intuitive understanding at an age when one wouldn't think they had had time to acquire it. Mathematics, chess, and Talmud come to mind, as do a number of questions. What's the difference between a bright child and a prodigy? Do the rest of us, the non-prodigies, ever catch up to the prodigies? Interestingly, Yang and Chen trace the development of the musical prodigies they have discovered and show clips of them at various ages, as they turn into mature musicians. Sometimes, I'm sure, they also drop music and go on to another field to excel in.

There must be plenty of psychological studies of the phenomenon, and I plan to check on it.

Along with Twoset Violin, the algorithm often shows me clips about improving one's saxophone playing and about practicing music in general. At my stage in life, I don't expect to improve very much as a musician. I mainly play saxophone and flute to maintain my decent but hardly impressive level, so I can continue enjoying myself as an active amateur.

One exercise I've been working on is deceptively simple in concept but, at least for me, has turned out to be challenging enough to be interesting. The idea is to pick a major scale and move up in it, playing the triad on each step of the scale, then moving down and doing the same thing. The tricky part is the way you group the notes. If you simply play triplets, you get something straightforward like this:

CEG| DFA| EGB| FAC| GBD etc. Then, backward: GEC| FDB| ECA| etc. 

But if you play the notes in groups of four you get:

CEGD| FAEG| BDFA|CGBD etc. Backward: GECF| DAEG| BDBG| CAFB etc.

This gets trickier when you go up and down scales with a lot of flats or sharps.

The idea is to hear the qualities of the chords, major, minor, and diminished on every step of a scale. Also, obviously, as another sax video reminded me, you have to maintain a satisfying sound as you play through this exercise.

I've been doing it for a while, patiently, and I'm gaining fluency at it. Am I maintaining my level or improving?

What Blind Virtuosos can Teach Us

 I strongly recommend the documentary available on Youtube, a two-part interview with the English jazz pianist, George Shearing. He comes across as both a musical genius and a kind, essentially modest person. An equally fascinating documentary was made about Art Tatum, a phenomenal blind pianist of even greater importance. Another great blind jazz musician was Roland Kirk - I haven't seen this documentary yet. There have also been blind classical composers and performers. I looked it up on the Web. However, I don't think any of them was as influential in their field as Shearing, Tatum, and Kirk.

 A number of great jazz musicians purportedly didn't know how to read music like the monster guitarist Wes Montgomery and the pianist and composer Erroll Garner. In Western classical music, I doubt if there were any sighted composers or performers who couldn't read music, whereas in Indian classical music, no one plays from written notes, as far as I know.

The development of musical notation was of huge importance in the history of Western classical music. It's hard to imagine how any of the composers from the sixteenth or seventeenth century on could have composed their works without setting pen to paper. Notation can be a trap, but not for great musicians. Some composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, were also famous as improvisers. Bartok apparently worked on his piano pieces by ear until he was ready to write them down.

The musicality of a musician who plays without written notes is different from that of musicians who mainly play from written notes. I wonder whether musicians like myself, who are enslaved to written scores, could have been trained to be the first kind of musicians, who learn music by ear and play it by ear, if our teachers were interested in teaching us that skill (and possessed it). I suspect that it's not a matter of training but one of personality and talent. If I, for one, had been more independently musical as a child, I would have developed in the way I now wish I had developed. I can't blame it on my teachers.

Authentic Instruments?

I just heard a splendid live performance of Mozart's Serenade for Winds. All the musicians, including the two who were playing the basset horn parts, were playing modern symphonic instruments, not the instruments Mozart wrote for in the late eighteenth century. 

I'm not complaining. It sounded wonderful. However, if the argument for playing baroque music on baroque instruments is strong, why isn't a similar argument, equally strong, made for playing Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, among others, on the instruments of their times (which were not essentially different from the instruments of the mid-eighteenth century)?

A few years ago at a music festival in Warsaw I heard a symphony orchestra that used old-style instruments and arranged the musicians the way they used to be arranged in the nineteenth century, and I was impressed. Obviously if a symphony orchestra today is playing a program with music from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century, it has to use modern instruments (most of which haven't changed all that much since the Industrial Revolution), and, within limits, it can't keep rearranging the players. So we hear what the conductor has in mind and places on the stage.

Incidentally, the Mozart Serenade calls for two basset horns, which are similar in range to modern alto clarinets. Authentic basset horns aren't exactly common, so I assume the two musicians who were playing in the Serenade last night were playing alto clarinets. If a clarinettist wants to own a range of professional level instruments - a B flat and A clarinet, an alto clarinet, and a bass clarinet - he or she has to invest a considerable amount of money, which, in general, professional musicians don't have.

Jam and Jobim

Yesterday evening, Amos Shaked, an accomplished pianist who took up trombone and plays it in the big band where I play baritone saxophone - together we inhabit the lower realms of the songs we play - gave himself a sixtieth birthday party by inviting a bunch of musicians to a jam session at his house. 

Amos worked in hi tech for years,  but when the startup he was working for folded, he decided to take early retirement and started playing in a number of ensembles. I attended his party along with my close friend and fellow musician, Bob Trachtenberg, who after retiring from a career as a lawyer, has also given himself over almost completely to music. He and Amos drive (separately) all over the country to play with groups. I don't have the energy or enthusiasm to follow their example.

A lot of us got to play. It was enjoyable and congenial. I brought my alto saxophone, though I haven't been playing it very much recently, because it's much smaller and lighter than my cumbersome baritone sax. I considered bringing my flute, but I didn't think it would be audible. I didn't know there was going to be a sound system with mics. I also thought of bringing my tenor sax, which I've been playing more recently, but it's in a heavy fiberglass case now, and I didn't feel like transferring it to a gig bag and carrying it to Bob's house. That's another example of a certain kind of laziness that hits me now and then.

I took solos on a number of the pieces. I don't think my solos are any good. But I do free my mind and play without thinking very much about what I'm playing, so that I often surprise myself in my solos. Two other guys in the big band also played solos, and both of them, in my opinion, think too much about what they're playing, and their solos aren't interesting. Sonny Rollins, to whom I by no means compare myself, said that when you practice you should think about what you're doing, but when you perform, you should just play. When I practice I try to listen to myself attentively. I think that helps when I'm called upon (or call upon myself) to solo.

For a very long time I loved listening to jazz, but I didn't understand what the musicians were doing. I didn't know about the chords underlying the melodies, the changes, and I didn't understand the structure of a jazz performance. When I was in high school, I had an am radio in the headboard of my bed, and when my parents thought I was sleeping, I used to listen to a jazz program hosted by Mort Fega on WEVD (standing for Eugene V. Debs, the socialist politician). I vividly remember when he played The Girl from Ipanema, with Stan Getz, three times in a row, because it was such a new sound. (Bossa Nova means "the new thing.")

Although it's probably his most popular song, The Girl from Ipanema isn't all that characteristic of Jobim, who was a brilliant and sophisticated composer. For many months now I've been trying to memorize his Chega de Saudade. It's frustrating, and I've only gotten, tentatively, to 3/4 of the piece. But I'm convinced the exercise is useful.

Before leaving for Amos's party, I had a conversation with Ruth Mason, Bob's wife, about getting old. I said that for me the worst part is the closing of the horizon. She asked me whether I'd heard about research claiming that having a positive attitude toward aging increases one's longevity. Taking part in a jam session when I'm nearly 82 years old is, I guess, a positive thing to do. Maybe in a month or two I'll be able to perform Chega de Saudade and improvise on it!

How Can We Concern Ourselves with Music in Times like These?

Our failure to deal with climate change effectively, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, the ongoing wars in the Middle East, the political uncertainty in the US, and so on, and so on are all such serious problems that it seems ridiculous to worry about how to phrase a passage in a piano sonata. On the other hand, has there ever been a time in history when problems weren't pressing? Artists are affected by the threats to health, security, prosperity, and tranquility perhaps even more than ordinary people, because they are more sensitive than ordinary people. Yet, despite these threats, artists continue to compose and perform music, to paint, to write poetry and fiction, and thinking people continue to ponder the eternal mysteries of life in the universe.

Recently I began watching a documentary on Youtube about young musicians who aspire to careers as concert pianists, although, as some of their teachers say, their chances of "making it" are slim. I am troubled by the idea of "making it." My admiration for the dedication of the young pianists is enormous, though I wonder why the entire system has to be so competitive and why whole families have to devote all their resources to the success of their girls and boys. They all reach a very high level of musicianship, even the ones who don't win competitions and go on to brilliant performing careers. Why isn't there a place for these talented, hard-working young people outside of the concert hall? 

Obviously these must be, and I'd like to see a documentary about the musicians who find another path after realizing they aren't going to be famous performers. A cousin of mine started off at the conservatory at Oberlin but realized he wasn't going to be a successful performer. Instead he studied musicology at Oberlin and then at Yale and went on to a successful and rewarding career in the record industry. I would say he "made it"! A young friend of mine is a very gifted saxophonist who went to medical school after finishing studies in a conservatory rather than pursue a professional career in music. He'll never be a saxophone virtuoso, but he'll be a fine family doctor.

My own musical talent is minimal compared to the brilliant young pianists in the documentary, or to my cousin's, but I get a lot of pleasure from music at my modest level. In most weeks, I play baritone saxophone in a big band and in a quartet, and I play flute duets with a friend of mine. During the summer, the big band is on hold, and the quartet has been meeting only sporadically, as one or another of us can't make a rehearsal, and my flute duet partner and I have had to put off playing together for one reason or another. That has been discouraging.

This week, however, not only did the quartet manage to get together, but I also played a lovely Quantz duet with my friend. I play better when I play with other people. I concentrate on the music, listen more attentively, and play somewhat more expressively, since it counts. Playing with other people is the only justification for practicing.

The music doesn't undo the crises threatening us. It doesn't empower us directly to act to save the environment and resolve our political problems, but it give us spiritual strength to cope.

Different Kinds of Practice

In an instructive video that I saw on Youtube by Molly Gebrian, a violist who is also a neuro-scientist, she emphasized that one should have a goal every time one picks up one's instrument to practice. This is probably something that music teachers should tell their students.

I'm aware of many weaknesses of mine as a musician, and I try to address them, not all at once, when I practice. Incidentally, my music guru, Arnie Lawrence, disliked the word "practice." He told us that we should play, not practice. In other words, there shouldn't be a difference between practice and performance - though he also hated the word "performance," as it suggests something artificial. A person who was performing  was doing something slightly dishonest, at least as Arnie saw it. I don't see what verb you can use instead of "to perform," but maybe one should think of practice as performance.

Sometimes when I practice, I concentrate on my sound. I play long notes and intervals between them, trying to hear what I'm playing. How can you not hear what you're playing? It's easy, especially when you're reading music and concentrating on playing the right note, the one that's on the page. So what you hear is whether you played a G sharp when it's called for, whether you're playing the articulation and phrasing that the composer demands, but not the way you sound when you're playing. I hope that the attention I give to my sound, to the way I move from note to note, to the intonation, and so on, will carry over to my playing when I'm reading music.

I also work on memorizing music, playing by heart, transposing songs from key to key by ear. I hope to deepen my understanding of what I play. I consciously notice when an accidental appears in a song, when it moves momentarily from key to key, what the interval is from the end of a phrase to the beginning of the next one. I'm not good at remembering the chords that underlie the melodies I play, but I give them attention, too.

When I play the flute, which is not a transposing instrument, the written notes are the notes that are played. If a song is written in a certain key, those are the notes I have to memorize. But when I play the same song on a tenor saxophone or another instrument that's in B flat, I have to play it in a different key to produce the same audible notes. I often find it difficult to remember the original key of a song when I try to play it by heart on a different instrument. That's something I keep working on.

I also play duets with another flutist, and to prepare for our sessions I have to work in a different way. I wrote "work" and not "practice," because mastering the notes of the duets is work of a different kind from developing my sound. While I'm trying to master sixteenth-note runs and unusual figures, I also try to play with a good tone, but the focus is different.

Awareness and mindfulness, the goals of meditation, are not so much the goals of playing music as the basis of it. If you think too much about what you're playing you get in your own way. But if you don't think about it, you won't get anywhere. The difference between practice and performance is connected with the amount of thought in your playing. If you've thought enough while you're practicing, you shouldn't have to think much while your playing.

From Envy to Admiration

I recently heard a quartet playing mainly Brazilian music, led by the singer, guitarist, and composer Fernando Seixas. He is a charming man and a fine musician. The drummer who played with him, Avinoam Maraton was excellent, as was the bassist, Eve Glula. Fernando's son, Gabriel, in his early twenties, played tenor sax and flute. At first he didn't play very much, and I wasn't impressed. Then he got into it, playing melodiously and confidently, and fitting in perfectly with the ensemble, not trying to dominate it the way a tenor player can.

He never looked at a bit of written music throughout the whole evening. Since it was a planned performance, he had plenty of time to learn the songs by heart, but only a musician with a good ear and a good musical memory could have carried it off the way he did.

Any tenor sax player performing Brazilian music has to have Stan Getz hovering over his shoulder, and Gabriel wasn't intimidated by Getz's ghost. Rather, he was inspired.

How Many Times Can You See/Hear the Mikado?

Every year here in Jerusalem an amateur group puts on a production of an operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan. Every ten years or so, they put on the Mikado again. I saw it last week, and I'm pretty sure it was the third time I saw it here, along with God knows how many times I saw it before. Although essentially amateur, the singers are excellent, the chorus dances gracefully, without being great dancers, the scenery and costumes are excellent, and the small orchestra plays admirably. Every year just about every English speaker in the area comes out to hear them.

The D'Oyly Carte company came to New York when I was eleven, and my mother took me to every one of their productions, a memorable experience. My distinguished cousin, Tom Shepard, a fine musician and composer who also produced many records for Columbia, RCA, and Sony, is a devoted Savoyard as well as a big fan of Broadway musicals, of which he produced many original cast recordings. So on his authority I admit that I love Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, no matter how many times I've seen and heard them, and although I concede they aren't great artworks.

I know that Gilbert and Sullivan didn't get along well, despite the success of their collaboration, and I recommend Mike Leigh's movie Topsy Turvy for an exploration of their very different characters. Obviously Gilbert's wit and shameless exploitation of improbable plots is a key to the enduring success and even relevance of the operettas, but without Sullivan's music they would long have been forgotten. It's not great music or deep music, but it's perfect for its setting. The melodies keep ringing in your ear! If they produce the Mikado again in another ten years, and if I'm alive and not deaf, I'll make a point of seeing it again.

A Fine Jazz Documentary

Youtube recommended a documentary about jazz in Detroit to me, The Best of the Best. I watched it, and learned a lot from it. First of all, I didn't know how many great jazz musicians were born, raised, and educated in that city. The film tells the story of the Black community in Detroit, thousands and thousands of people who came from the rural south to work in the automobile factories. It also tells a story about a generous tradition of music education and mentorship.

I am envious of the great musicians I saw in the movie. I never had their natural musicianship or their commitment to music, but I still enjoy playing and have reached a decent level of proficiency. One of the constants in discussions of jazz is the individuality of the musician. Yusef Lateef, who was a brilliant and original musician, says in the documentary that the goal in music is to sound like yourself. This, of course, is far from easy. Before you can sound like yourself, you have to discover who you are. That is lifelong quest.

What Makes Grigory Sokolov's Playing so Wonderful?

Youtube once decided to offer me a performance by Grigory Sokolov. Since then I have listened to many performances by him and have always been enthralled. 

Fortunately for us, the world is full of brilliant classical pianists. The music-lover would be hard pressed to choose a favorite, but there's no need. Why do I have to decide whether Andres Schiff or Angela Hewitt, so different from one another in personality and self-presentation, is a better pianist than Yuja Wang, let's say, or twentieth century virtuosi like Rubinstein and Horowitz? 

Nevertheless, I find something particularly compelling in Sokolov's playing. When I listen to one of his (obviously) recorded performances I have the illusion that he is playing just for me, that he is sharing with me an intimate and personal understanding of the music.

That understanding goes beyond technical mastery of the pieces he plays, the impressive mastery one hears in a performance, by memory, of long, difficult, and demanding pieces, by any competent concert pianist. It is also more than sheer musicological understanding, which I'm sure he has. It's the elusive quality of emotional understanding. As he plays, one senses that the music is meaningful to him, that it has reached deeply into his soul, to use language that makes me uncomfortable. Because it has that meaning for him, he conveys that meaning to the listener and miraculously connects the listener to the composer, simultaneously making himself invisible, a link between the long dead composer and the living audience, but also incredibly present.

Music Making in a Time of Acute Trouble

 I play baritone saxophone in an amateur big band sponsored by the Jerusalem Municipality. I enjoy it and can still pretty much hold my own, though at the age of 81 I'm significantly older than the other musicians. We rehearse in a building in the Hinnom Valley under the walls of the Old City. It was renovated through the generosity of Herb Alpert of the Tijuana Brass and named after his parents.

We were supposed to play in a concert with two other municipally sponsored bands on March 1, 2026, the second day of the war against Iran. Obviously that performance was cancelled. Against all odds, we were able to rehearse yesterday, March 9 (a Monday, our usual rehearsal night), and everyone came: the drummer (who lives about an hour's drive away), the bass player (the only woman in our band), the guitarist (an accomplished musician, who, on a volunteer basis, is the band's manager), all five saxophonists, four trumpet players, and our only trombone player, and the director of the band (a saxophonist who plays piano, since we don't have a regular pianist yet; he is a high school teacher whose students are distressed, and the parent of two adolescents, who are going through a hard time) - 14 musicians in all, if I counted right.

No one I know is happy about the ongoing war against Iran, with missiles and drones launched against Israel and bombardment of Iran by Israel and the US. The war is causing physical, mental, and economic damage on a vast scale. Though Jerusalem is seldom targeted by the Iranians, we hear frequent air raid sirens, enter our bomb shelters, and listen to the explosions of interceptions. Most things are closed, and people are stuck at home.

Getting together and playing music was hugely important to us. Maybe by next week we'll stop firing missiles one each other.

Masters of Improvisation, Memorization, and Blues for Alice

Recently I viewed a valuable documentary about Keith Jarrett, in which he had a lot to say about his art. I also saw a valuable Q and A session with Joe Henderson about learning how to improvise. Both of them emphasized the importance of memorization. Jarrett, whose trios played standards, usually not deciding in advance which ones they would play at a given concert, told how he memorized countless standards early in his career. Henderson talks about listening to records, transcribing solos, and playing from memory. Jarrett and Henderson did what they did naturally, without teachers telling them that's what they should be doing. 

Not every expert musician is a great memorizer. But a professional jazz musician ought to know the melodies of hundreds of standards as well as their underlying harmonies and to be able to improvise according to those harmonies by ear. A musician who can't do that will become some other kind of player.

Certain types of classical music also demand memorization. Concert pianists and other soloists are expected - and expect of themselves - to memorize the music they perform, an ability that astounds me. Some of the works they play are long, technically difficult, and very complex. It appears that the process of mastering a concerto includes memorizing it.

When I was young, taking piano lessons, I think I was told to memorize pieces, but it didn't stick, and I never became even a fair pianist. All my subsequent musical education was based on reading notes well, and I never felt confined by that emphasis. I was never a natural musician, and that hasn't prevented me from enjoying playing.

However, I think it's important to address my weaknesses as a musician, even at my advanced age, so I try to memorize pieces and I sometimes go through the exercise of playing a memorized piece in a number of keys. Since I play saxophones in Eb and Bb as well as flute, I have to be able to play tunes in three different keys, an interesting challenge.

One of the pieces I am trying to memorize is Charlie Parker's "Blues for Alice." It's difficult for me, partially because the changes (the chords) aren't those of a standard blues. I assume that Parker didn't write the music down and play it from the written notes before improvising on it. He probably composed it in his head and played it from memory. Among many others, Roland Kirk recorded it. Since he was blind, he had to learn it by listening to it and playing it by memory, not a feat one should take for granted, as the melody is tricky.

Even if one is not a natural musician like the great masters of jazz improvisation, one can inch forward toward greater competence.

What is Music For?

Recently I read about the discovery in Slovenia of a bone flute that is 60,00 years old, made by Neanderthals. Other prehistoric bone flutes that have been discovered are only 35,000 years old. On a visit to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History I heard recordings of the sounds made by such a flute. Musical instruments of that age or earlier, made of less durable material - reeds or wood -obviously will never be discovered, but must we not assume that people were singing and also making and playing musical instruments since there were human beings?

Music has probably always had a social function - possibly its first function - in producing a shared emotional atmosphere at important social gatherings, ceremonies. Dance, rhythmic movement of the  body, is inseparable from music, part of musical experience. I imagine that people were singing, dancing, and playing instruments together from time immemorial. Music, no less than speech, is what makes us human.

One might object and argue that music has never been for anything, that it is simply itself, not functional. Or else, that functional music is an inferior type of music. I think that's wrong. Without being judgmental, we can agree that there are many different kinds of music and therefore music does many different things. In all instances, I believe, music is expressive. Of what? Of what words cannot express. That's why we need it.

I Think My Talk Went Over My Audience's Heads

 My topic is one that interests me a lot: the connections between musical factors (the demands composers make on musicians and the demands the pubic makes on composers and musicians), technological factors in the manufacture of musical instruments, economic factors, cultural developments such as the building of large auditoriums, the emergence of the symphony orchestra and other ensembles, and so on in the improvement and invention of musical instruments. For example, without the development of sound systems capable of filling a stadium, huge rock concerts wouldn't be possible. But the audience I gave the talk to didn't know enough about the things that I assumed they would know. My talk was too academic and too technical. Oh well.

What would speak to the kind of audience that gets invited to my talk? I began by saying that archaeologists have discovered bone flutes 60,000 years old, and that caught their attention. A talk entitled, "What Does Music Do for Us?" would reach the audience I had. Another way of putting it would be: "What is Music For?"

The simple answer to these conjoined rhetorical questions would begin with the social function of music. Music, when it is performed for a group of people, especially when it's part of a ceremony, broadly conceived, arouses a shared emotion within a group, as in a congregation that sings hymns together. It binds an audience together, especially when the audience is also making the music.

I haven't thought about the topic enough to put together a lecture on this topic, but I think I could avoid talking over people's heads if I gave it a try.

A Talk about Woodwinds

 A few years ago the Jerusalem Municipality organized a short course for retired people (whom they called people in "the third age," a euphemism I'm not fond of) to train them to give lectures to other retired people, the assumption being that people of our age have wisdom to impart. There were about forty people in the course, and most of the subjects of the talks they offered were full of self-help advice. I decided, seeing that I've had a long career, as it were, as a serious amateur musician, to talk about the way music has enriched my life. I eventually gave up on that idea, because it struck me as too boastful: look at me, I play in a wind orchestra! But I found a different way of framing the talk: How and why was the saxophone invented?

I've given the talk twice so far, and I'm slated to give it again in a week or two. Each time I give it, I see ways of improving it. This time I intend to start by telling them about playing clarinet in high school, and why I stopped playing when I went off to college. The main reason was that I knew I wasn't talented and dedicated enough to become a professional musician. Nevertheless, I can still play clarinet with a good tone, and I'll play something on my clarinet to demonstrate.

The first time I tried out the talk, I brought some instruments with me, but I didn't play them enough. My audience expected to hear music. This time I'll prepare songs to play. I still haven't decided just what I'll play. I should probably play something classical on the clarinet first, and then something klezmerish.

After I've demonstrated the clarinet and spoken about it a little, I'll take out my soprano saxophone and talk about the differences between the clarinet and the saxophone and why Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone. The first times I gave the talk, I brought bigger saxes with me, but they're heavy and cumbersome, and the soprano is a more unusual instrument, straight (at least mine is) and not curved like the other instruments in the family. I'll also talk about the family of saxophones.

Then I'll take out the pan pipe that my daughter brought from Peru and talk a little about the ancient history of wind instruments and how they work. Archaeologists have found a bone flute 60,000 years old!

Photograph by Petar Milošević 

Until the 17th century, woodwinds were essentially the same: tubes with holes in them. I'll take out my plastic baroque flute and my Indian bansuri to show that. I'll compare my modern silver flute to the simpler, earlier flutes. I will also make it clear that I'm not saying the modern Western music is better than earlier music or the music of other cultures.Then I'll talk about why instrument builders started adding keys to the flutes, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons they were making. 

First, composers began to write music with accidentals and changes in key. Second, the Industrial Revolution made it possible to build complicated instruments. Third, the manufacture of musical instruments became industrialized. Fourth, larger and larger concert halls were built, along with military parades led by bands - all of which necessitated louder instruments.

There's more to say and more to play. Let's see how the talk goes.

Voices

The other day I saw a great documentary narrated by Branford Marsalis about great tenor saxophonists, but for some reason I can't find it on Youtube again. Never mind. Marsalis spoke about the way Coleman Hawkins essentially invented the tenor as a jazz instrument and played clips of many of great tenor players from Hawkins up to David Murray (it was made in 1992, so maybe other impressive contemporary players would have been included if he'd made it last year).

In the past few years I've mainly been playing baritone sax, partly because if you play the baritone, you can always find an ensemble to play in. I also enjoy playing baritone. I'm not suffering, though sometimes the parts are boring. You hear music differently when you play the bottom notes. 

I do own the other common sizes of saxes, soprano, alto, and tenor, and every now and then I play one of them, to get back in touch with the other horns, but my tenor was giving me trouble. There was a leak in one of the pads, and I couldn't play the low notes at all. I asked a friend of mine, who knows how to repair horns and has a lot of tools, to take a look at my tenor (a well-made Taiwanese Lien-Cheng instrument), and, sure enough, he found and easily fixed the leak, which wasn't where I thought it was. So in the past few days I've been playing tenor for a change. The sound is quite different from the sound of the baritone. Also the transposition to concert pitch is different, so it forces me to make an adjustment.

There are two approaches. Some musicians stick to a single instrument and get deeper and deeper into it. Once, for example, I asked a young tuba player whether he played other brass instruments, and he said there was so much to explore with the tuba, that he saw no need to play any other horn. Other musicians play a lot of different instruments, like, for example, Yusuf Lateef and Eric Dolphy. It's far from uncommon. Many violinists also play viola, classical clarinetists in orchestras also play bass clarinet, and some folk musicians can play guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle. I recently heard a singer who sang with a fine, strong baritone voice and then switched to counter-tenor. Hard to believe the same person was singing.

Every voice expresses a different part of the musician's self.