Warm-Ups and Changes

I am always surprised when very good amateur classical musicians (not guitarists, of course) tell me they don't know anything about harmony. Why weren't they ever taught? Weren't they curious enough to learn?
You can know how to play a classical piece very well without analyzing its harmonic structure, though you can play it a lot better if you do hear and understand the way it moves from tonality to tonality. But knowing just the melody of a jazz standard is barely knowing it at all.
Typically, a written piece of classical music tells you exactly what note to play, how fast to play it, how to articulate it, and how loud it should be. All these precise directives still leave a lot of room for interpretation. The classical musician is not a robot producing sounds dictated by the marks on the page in front of her. But the ideal remains of playing the piece the way the composer wanted it to be played.
Typically when a jazz musician has sheet music in front of her, all she sees is a melody line and some chords written as letters (e.g. C7, G-7b5). The harmonic instruments - piano, bass, and guitar - have to figure out how to play those chords, and the melodic instruments have to improvise in a way that fits over them. No two jazz pianists, given the same series of letters representing chords, would play them exactly the same way. Not only that, they have freedom to substitute chords that can have a similar harmonic function.  I found a good article on this stuff in Wikipedia.
When I was working on jazz, I got to the stage where I could look at letters standing for chords and play stuff that fit, and I could also transpose to the right key for the kind of saxophone I was playing (C major concert is D major on a tenor sax, for example). I also got to the stage where I had learned the melodies of a good number of songs by heart. However, I never pushed myself past that stage, to memorizing (and hearing) the underlying harmonies of a song.
Recently I found way of doing that by combining that exercise with another musical goal: improving my sound. I'm gradually learning the harmonies of the great jazz standard, All the Things You Are, by Jerome Kern. I'm using the notes of the harmonies as long tones to warm up on the flute, first playing the bass notes (F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, G, C... etc.).  I've almost learned the progression well enough that I can go through it without stopping to think. Then I build on it by playing the first two notes in the chord (F-Ab, Bb-Db, Ab-C ... etc.), then the triad, then the seventh, etc. etc.
I'm doing something very similar with rhythm changes, the chord progression underlying Gershwin's I Got Rhythm.
Warming up on the flute or another melodic instrument this way makes more sense than just playing a series of long tones, because the notes you play have musical meaning as a sequence. For the same reason, sometimes I take a piece by Bach or Telemann and play it very slowly, concentrating on the quality of my sound, but still brought forward by musical logic and not anything mechanical.

Plotting an Old Course in a New Way (Maybe)

On a recent, rainy Saturday night a quartet of young jazz musicians played a concert in our living room to an absolutely packed house - there wasn't an empty chair left in our house. The musicians are Jerusalemites who have known each other since high school and been playing with each other for something like twelve years. They call themselves "Friendy," and I hope they'll have a bright and successful future together. The pianist is Noam Borns, the bassist is Daniel Ashkenazi, the drummer is Shai Yuval, and the tenor sax player is Zohar Mokadi Amar. They played all original music of their own. Everyone loved it. At the end, after they were officially finished playing,  they were soaring and couldn't stop. I asked Zohar to try my tenor, and he confirmed what I thought: it's a good instrument. Then they invited me to play a blues, "Tenor Madness," with them. What a kick to play with such great musicians! I held my own, almost, and that inspired me and gave me confidence.
On Friday mornings I've been going to a class in blues and jazz given by Yaki Levi, a great drummer and pianist, at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Yaki is inspiring. Last week we were playing solos of "Freedom Jazz Dance," a quirky tune by Eddie Harris that is all on a single chord, so you don't have to think about changes when you play. At a certain point in my solo (we go around the room, and everyone gets a chance to play), I was inspired. That's the only way I can put it. Suddenly I was playing the way I always wished I could play, finding notes that I hadn't thought of and that didn't come automatically in a pattern that I always fall into.
A few days before that, my flute teacher told me that he couldn't teach me any longer, and I realized that it was probably a good time to strike out on my own. I'm never going to be a fine classical flautist, and I don't even want to be a fine classical flautist. I want to have fun playing whatever instrument I play and to be free and creative if possible.
For years I played standards with a pianist and improvised, but it didn't work, partly because the pianist never learned how to accompany and support soloists - that bored him. But also because I find it very difficult to memorize songs, to learn them by ear, to hear and remember the changes. Up to now I've been too lazy to work on what didn't come relatively easily. But in the past week I decided to learn the changes for "All the Things You Are" once and for all, slowly and patiently. I'm going to give that what it takes, and once I can do that fluently, I'll try to improvise on those chords. If I can muster the patience to get that song down, maybe it will be easier for me to learn other songs.
If I had begun doing this kind of music work when I was a teenager, I wouldn't have to struggle now, when my memory isn't as retentive as it was.

Music Lessons: pros and cons

My second flute teacher fired me.
Not because I wasn't practicing and making (slow) progress, but because of a change in his circumstances.
Now I have to decide whether to continue taking classical flute lessons from a fine teacher, who's been recommended to me, or whether I should work on my own. After all, I've been playing wind instruments for decades, and I've received the fundamentals of flute playing from two excellent teachers. Maybe I know enough to step out on my own.
With my teacher, I mainly played baroque music with occasional forays into the classical and romantic realms, and I love that music. I've learned a lot by struggling to master the Bach flute sonatas, and that learning has been valuable.
But I also love listening to jazz, and I especially enjoy playing standards, what people call the American Song Book.
I have no trouble playing blues, but I do have trouble sticking to the changes when I play standards. I'm generally too impatient to learn the chords of the pieces I play. I can read a chart and follow the written changes, and I can memorize melodies pretty well, but I've been too lazy to memorize the harmony up to now.
Today I decided to work on that. I worked on the chord progression of "All The Things You Are" and II-V-I patterns.
I think I can combine technical work on the flute - improving my tone and vibrato, for example - with work in music theory: examining the connection between chords and melody. I haven't decided against continuing lessons with a classical flutist, but I'm leaning that way.

Pampered Classical Music Fans and Beethoven's Stormy Emotions

I just spent the weekend (Dec. 5-7, 2019) in the Pastoral Hotel at Kfar Blum, a large kibbutz in the north of Israel, overeating and listening to great classical pianists and other musicians. One of the highlights of the weekend for me, aside from a Beethoven piano concerto and virtuoso piano performances of pieces of Scriabin and Alkan, was a fascinating lecture on music and the emotions by a brilliant man who combines the highest level of musical performance and teaching with scientific work in brain science: Eitan Globerson.
Among the many things Globerson discussed was the mysterious way that music arouses emotions in us. He compared it to the expression of emotions in the pitch, prosody, and tempo of speech. The following day, listening to a performance of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto by Ching-Yun Hu, a dynamic and assertive pianist, I thought of Globerson's discussion of emotional expression and found myself noticing the rapid movement from one emotional state to another in each movement of the concerto.
Obviously Beethoven was closely attentive to the flow and ebb of his own emotions, excitement, calm, anger, solace, love ... And his audience expected to hear more than one emotion in every movement of the concerto.
No one suffered to hear the music at Kfar Blum, unless it was in paying for the event. The rooms were spacious and comfortable, the food was delicious and ample (an understatement), and the acoustics in the concert hall were fine. It's a privilege to have the music brought to you - once you've traveled up to the far north of Israel - rather than having to get to a concert hall.
Classical music doesn't draw a huge, young audience, but it still attracts listeners and brilliant young practitioners. My main problem with it is keying myself up to the highest level of attention at a concert. My mind wanders. I sometimes fall asleep. I don't hear a lot of what's in the music. But I do take in the sound of classical music, even if passively, and I love that sound.
By the way, the other great pianist who performed, Nicolas Namoradze, was a gentle and more self-effacing performer, and he played some music that he had composed. The differences between the two musicians added to the interest of the concerts.

Why Can't I Memorize "Freedom Jazz Dance"?

The teacher of the blues class I started attending at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Yaki Levi, a great drummer and pianist, assigned "Freedom Jazz Dance" to us, a famous song by Eddie Harris. He wanted us to learn it because it's all on a single chord: Bb7. After a week of working on it, I still don't have it in my ears or under my fingers, and I've been playing it both on flute and on tenor sax. Maybe if I just did it in one key it would be easier.  But I should be able to hear how it goes.
In general I'm not very good at playing what I hear and memorizing. I can play a bunch of standards by memory, but I haven't really learned the changes, the chords underlying the melody, because I find that very difficult.
But there are no chords to memorize in this case. So why am I having trouble remembering a fairly simple song: two measures (15 notes), then two measures of rests, then another two measures (12 notes), and another two measures of rests, then four measures (32 notes), for a total of 59 notes. That shouldn't be an impossible feat of memorization.
However, the song doesn't have a conventional melody. It's composed of leaps up and down that move in fourths without spelling out chords. Obviously the key is to understand the logic of the piece, and I'm working on it.
Perhaps by dint of drilling it, the logic will come clear to me.

Tenor

Stupidly I once thought the alto sax was a wimpy instrument. Why would Charlie Parker, Art Pepper, Cannonball Adderley, Arnie Lawrence, and Phil Woods (to name just the musicians who come to mind immediately) have played a wimpy instrument?
However, think of the tenor players everyone admires: Lester Young (who could play with power when he wanted to), Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and a dozen other powerful African-American musicians who used the tenor sax assertively.
When I took up saxophone again as a grownup, I started with tenor, but I eventually gravitated toward the baritone sax, which is more a supportive than a self-assertive instrument. I'm not a powerful African-American man (which isn't to say that there haven't been great white tenor players like Stan Getz, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims).
However, recently I enrolled in a blues workshop, and I decided to take out my tenor again. I didn't feel like lugging my baritone around, and I thought it was time to try out my first saxophone love. It's fun to use a new voice and find myself in it. Maybe I can channel some of those powerful players.

I don't Get It. What's so Great About Philip Glass?

He's supposed to be a minimalist, but the production of Akhnaten we just saw, a simultaneous broadcast of the matinee of the Metropolitan Opera, was hardly minimalist.
Samuel Becket is a minimalist. His stages are bare, and the lives of his characters are pared down to nothing. Philip Glass writes long, loud, elaborate, pretentious operas.
I went to hear Akhnaten mainly out of curiosity, not expecting to enjoy it, and my expectations were fulfilled. What is there to enjoy except the stage effects surrounding the production? The music is monotonous. The opera has virtually no plot, no characters, no drama. It's slow-moving, pompous, and bombastic. Some people call it hypnotic. I don't go the opera to be hypnotized. I go, if I do at all, to be overwhelmed by the beauty of the music.
Yet if you read about Glass, you are exposed to a story of phenomenal success. He is prolific, widely performed, and highly regarded. I would call it a case of the emperor's new clothes, but Glass isn't naked. He's overdressed, like the singers in this production, in outlandish costumes that mainly have little or nothing to do with ancient Egypt.
Okay, I'm not an opera fan. Mainly I see opera productions as money misspent. Even though my wife and I paid about a hundred dollars for our two seats at the mere broadcast of the opera, and the people who go to the real thing pay many times more than that, we are told that the broadcasts are subsidized, and that the Metropolitan Opera needs contributions to keep going. In a country swarming with homeless people (and a world swarming with hungry refugees), they have a nerve to present themselves as a charity.
Rather than spend millions of dollars on super-lavish productions, they should stage the operas frugally, in a manner that lets the music come out. After all, the music is what it's about, not the costumes, sets, and special effects.
A few years ago we heard a production of Cosi fan tutte in the opera house of Lyons. The singers were fine, the orchestra was high level, and the staging was simple. Who needs anything more?
But if you put Akhnaten without all the flimflam, you 'd see it for the empty thing that it is.