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.