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.