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.