EMOTION and MAGIC in MUSICAL PERFORMANCE Bill Benzon Version 12, February 23, 2024 CONTENTS Prefatory Note: On the Phenomenology of Musical Experience ......................................................3 PART 1 • Music Through Me: Mind, Body, and Busic ........................................................................ 4 On lizard brain: animal power ........................................................................................................ 4 Magic of the Bell .............................................................................................................................. 5 Ego loss ............................................................................................................................................. 6 Lump in the throat ........................................................................................................................... 6 A well-formed solo ........................................................................................................................... 7 Autopilot ........................................................................................................................................... 7 White-out ......................................................................................................................................... 7 Confounded expectations................................................................................................................ 8 Pickup Group: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door .................................................................................... 8 For the Children ............................................................................................................................. 10 Recognition..................................................................................................................................... 10 William Parker Workshop .............................................................................................................. 11 Jamming for Peace .......................................................................................................................... 12 Trickster ...........................................................................................................................................14 PART 2 • Listeners Speak..................................................................................................................... 16 My Music ......................................................................................................................................... 16 An 8-year old ................................................................................................................................... 17 Alias high on Trane ......................................................................................................................... 17 Kronos Quartet ................................................................................................................................18 A Resonant Sound ...........................................................................................................................18 Beethoven moves listeners to tears ............................................................................................. 20 PART 3 • Testify! – Musicians on Performing ................................................................................... 21 Leonard Bernstein ........................................................................................................................... 21 Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story.............................................................................................. 21 Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein ........................................................................................ 22 Pablo Casals .................................................................................................................................... 22 Seymour Bernstein..........................................................................................................................23 Yehudi Menuhin ..............................................................................................................................23 Dizzy Gillespie .................................................................................................................................23 Earl Hines, Art Hodes, Roy Eldridge, Ornette Coleman, Sid Catlett ......................................... 24 Harvey Swartz ................................................................................................................................ 24 Ira Sullivan ...................................................................................................................................... 25 Sonny Rollins, Roy Eldridge .......................................................................................................... 25 Stephanie Burrous, Terence Blanchard ........................................................................................ 25 Three by Miles Davis ...................................................................................................................... 26 On Record: “My Man’ s Gone Now” .......................................................................................... 26 In the Recording Studio: Bitches Brew ..................................................................................... 26 In Concert: “Time After Time” ................................................................................................... 27 David Craig, Lena Horne ............................................................................................................... 27 Milt Jackson .................................................................................................................................... 28 Neil Young ...................................................................................................................................... 28 Smyth, Bullard, O’Conner, Marsalis, Starr, Lewis, Clapton ........................................................ 28 -1- Jean-Baptiste Arban ....................................................................................................................... 29 Cuda Brown .................................................................................................................................... 30 North Indian in studio ................................................................................................................... 30 William Harvey ............................................................................................................................... 31 Martin Luther ..................................................................................................................................32 Penn Gillette in the Groove ............................................................................................................ 33 Paul McCartney .............................................................................................................................. 34 Paul Simon ....................................................................................................................................... 35 Yacub Addy ...................................................................................................................................... 35 Hilary Hahn on practice as daydreaming, and on goose-bumps in live performance ............. 36 Denis DiBlasio in the Zone – “I don’t know if it’s like a drug induced kind of thing” ............... 37 Mulgrew Miller: Why I play jazz .................................................................................................. 39 The first time Will Smith got in the zone with Jazzy Jeff .......................................................... 39 Bill Frisell in the moment .............................................................................................................. 40 Beethoven moves listeners to tears ............................................................................................. 40 Maya Deren is ridden by a god (Erzulie) ......................................................................................41 Masaaki Suzuki conducts .............................................................................................................. 42 -2- ***************************************** Prefatory Note: On the Phenomenology of Musical Experience ***************************************** This document is in three parts. The first is some experiences I’ve had as a musician which give me some insight into how emotion & magic arise in musical performance. I list these first, not because I think they are somehow special; they are what I know. I list them first simply because I am able to describe them more completely than the anecdotes I have collected from others. These span my musical life from my middle school years into the current millennium. The second part contains a few statements by listeners. The third part is a list of passages by various performers that I’ve collected from various sources over the years. These are anecdotes I’ve come across in the normal course of my meaning. There has never been a period when I specifically looked for such anecdotes, but I’ve read about music and musicians all my life. I have no idea about how to ‘calibrate’ these anecdotes. I don’t know what is common among musicians or listeners. Thus I have no idea what a systematic search of the archives would turn up, much less systematic interviews of a wide range of people, musicians and non-musicians alike. -3- ***************************************** PART 1 • Music Through Me: Mind, Body, and Busic ***************************************** This document contains a number of experiences I’ve had playing music. I’ve tried to include distinctly different experiences. One aspect of these experiences which particularly interests me is whether they are: TRANSITION: Taking you into a sustained state. SUSTAINED: A general mode of playing that holds steady for some period. PEAK: Comes at the end of sustained playing; may be intense but need not be cosmically mind blowing. It is definite. There’s also the general intensity and the emotional quality, which can be difficult to identify. And how my body felt and what I did with it to get the result. On lizard brain: animal power I was playing with a RnB band at a place called Skinflints. It was 2am (ain’t it always?), we were exhausted after 5 hours, and my chops were shot. We were playing “Stormy Monday.” Normally I don’t solo on that tune; but, it’s a slow blues, which I dearly love. So, despite no chops, I decided to take a chorus. I started in the lower-middle register and built by playing more complex lines and moving to the upper register. I hit my climax at bar 11, as anticipated, and could tell that the rhythm section expected me to play another 12. If I’d had any sense I’d have ignored them and stopped at the end of my one chorus. My lips were crying out in pain. I absolutely couldn’t remain in the upper register, nor could I drop down and build back up. And I didn’t like the idea of following a good chorus – which it had been to that point – with a mediocre one. However, in a split-split second I decided “oh, what the hell” and did a Sonny Rollins, dropping to the middle register, growling and flutter tonguing to make the nastiest bluesiest sound I could. The old lizard brain took over, captain cat went on the prowl, and I went into overdrive. I nailed it to the wall. Solid. Note: While this account makes it seem like I was doing a lot of thinking and calculating while playing, that’s not so. For one thing, there was no time to think; the whole solo couldn’t have lasted much more than a minute and a half (96 beats at, say, 60 per minute). The thinking was mostly a matter of a few quick intuitive judgments and was in music and images more than in words or verbal symbols. My initial strategizing before I started playing was simply a decision to follow an improvisatory strategy I’d followed thousands of times before, start simple and build from there. That’s a no-brainer. When I decided to attempt a second chorus in the manner of Sonny Rollins what happened was my mind flashed an image of Rollins playing a concert (which I’d attended at Jacob’s Pillow) where he ended one particular solo, to great effect, by going to the bottom register and playing with strength, force, and cajones. The flash of that image was how I made my decision on how to approach the second 12 bars. Once I made that decision I had the definite sense of a another force – which I call the lizard brain after Dr. Paul MacLean’s theory about brain structure – working in my playing. [with Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band] SUSTAINED, perhaps a PEAK. -4- Magic of the Bell Precise interaction between musicians brings about a groove. Or is it that being in a groove brings about precise interaction? The musical situation which brought this lesson home was a specific one. There were four of us, as I recall, with Ade Knowles leading. Each of us had a bell with two or more heads on it. Ade assigned three of us simple interlocking rhythms to play. Ade then improvised over the interlocking parts. Once it got going melodies would emerge which no one was playing. Rather, the tones came from one bell, then another, and another, and so on. No one person was playing the melody; it arose from the “cohesions” which appeared in the shifting pattern of tones played by the ensemble. Depending on the patterns he played, Ade could “direct” the melody, but the tones he played weren’t necessarily the melody tones. Rather, they served to direct the melodic “cohesions” from place to place. The tones which were in the foreground, i.e. the melody, shifted from bell to bell depending of the pitch and temporal relationships between the tones. Since three of us were playing the same thing over and over again, the relationships which obtained between our tones stayed the same from cycle to cycle. However, Ade’s patterns were improvised; they were not the same from cycle to cycle. And the’tones he played didn't simply "float on top" of the tones the rest of us were playing. They existed in the same tonal space, and, because of this, they affected the’moment to moment gestalt of tones in that space. Something even more remarkable would occasionally happen. When, and only when, we were really locked together in animated playing we could hear relatively high-pitched tones which no one was playing. That is, each bell had a “pitch tendency” (these bells were not precisely tuned), but these high tones did not match the pitch tendency of any of the bells. They were distinct tones, but not directly attributable to any of the bells. I don’t really know the explanation for this, but I’ve given it a little thought. Roughly, the different bells emit a wide range of frequencies, some more strongly than others. Since these bells were not precisely tuned, each was putting out sounds from several harmonic series. With several bells together frequencies which are weak in each bell individually could interact and become stronger through constructive interference, strong enough for the ear to pick them out as definite pitches. But, to interact so that some frequencies reinforce one another would, it seems to me, require that the musicians coordinate their playing to 1/10,000 of a second (the tones I heard were at least 1000 hz). That’s pretty remarkable. This only happened when we were in the state of relaxation conducive to intense playing, a groove, if you will. Without the relaxation, no emergent tones & melodies. According to Ade, that’s how it always is. The “magic” of the bell happens only when the musicians are in a groove. And so we have a paradox. In conventional terms precision goes along with rational control. In this case, the precision interaction happens only when there is a bit of “irrational” emotional control guiding the playing. This sort of interaction is, in fact, typical of any African percussion ensemble I’ve heard, not just bell ensembles. But the effect was most striking with the bells. The point is that the interaction is such that patterns move into the perceptual foreground which aren’t being played by any one musician. The melodic stream, the foreground, moves from musician to musician. If you break the perceived music into perceptually and functionally distinct parts, those parts will be different from the parts being played by individual musicians. This ensemble arrangement is -5- a perfect metaphor/realization of group consciousness. I assume this degree of precision occurs in any group, performing in any idiom, that’s got a good groove going. SUSTAINED Ego loss During the early 1970s I’d played for two years with a rock band called “St. Matthew Passion” – a 4-piece rhythm section plus three horns: sax, trumpet, trombone. On “She’s Not There” the three horns would start with a chaotic improvised freak-out and then, on cue from the keyboard player, the entire band would come in on the first bar of the written arrangement. On our last gig it was just me and the sax player; the trombonist couldn’t make it. We started and got more and more intense until Wham! I felt myself dissolve into white light and pure music. It felt good. And I got scared, tensed up, and it was over. After the gig the sax player and I made a few remarks about it—“that was nice”—enough to confirm that something had happened to him too. One guy from the audience came up to us and remarked on how fine that section had been. That’s the only time I’ve ever experienced that kind of ego loss in music. For a few years I was very ambivalent about that experience, wanting it again, but fearing it. But the memories faded & the ambivalence too. I’m playing better than I ever did. What I can now do on a routine basis exceeds what I did back then. Had I remained relaxed, I suspect that state would have been SUSTAINED. Lump in the throat Probably between 1990 and 1995 I was asked to overdub a part on a recording a folkish song called “A Still, Small Voice”. It was sung by a woman with a basically small, delicate voice, accompanied by 2 guitars. As an open trumpet sound would not blend well, I used a cup mute. Before the recording session I worked out the general outlines of what I wanted to do. In the session, as I was playing, I could feel a lump rising in my throat, my eyes tearing slightly. I bore down with chest and abdomen and pushed on through. When I walked into the the control booth the smiles told me that my playing had gotten to them. We decided to keep that first take. SUSTAINED Of course, it is not unusual for people to respond to music with tears. I don’t know when music first moved me to tears, but my earliest memory of music moving me to tears goes back, I believe, to when I was in the sixth grade. At that time Disney had a weekly TV show (as it still does, I believe), and periodically they would have a sequence of one-hour shows telling episodes in one story–Davy Crockett may be the most successful of these. There was also a series about mountain men and the theme song from that series was called, I believe, “Blow the Wind from -6- the Mountain.” In the last episode of the series the leader of the mountain men, a man named Jack, dies. As he is dying, the theme song is sung, perhaps by Jack, perhaps by another mountain man, or perhaps it was only on the sound track, I don’t recall. But as the song unfolded, there were tears streaming down my face. I later worked out the pitch sequence for the melody of this tune and transcribed it onto score paper. Prior that I remember being moved to tears during a cartoon about one “Willie the Whale” and, I have the vague sense that my father, who had taken me to that movie, was also moved to tears. A well-formed solo “Cats’ Bossa” is a 32-bar, AABA bossa nova. At our first performance of the tune – after rehearsing it over 2 or 3 weeks – I took my solo, a single chorus. I started improvising with certain material and elaborated in the initial 16-bars. Then I introduced contrasting material for the bridge and followed it through to the end – I forget whether or not I linked up with the material I used in the first 16. When it was done I had a definite sense of completion, of having nailed it. This seemed to be about formal excellence; my musical ideas all made sense and formed a coherent whole. [with Out of Control Rhythm and Blues Band] SUSTAINED with PEAK of modest intensity, but quite precise. Autopilot The following event took place during my senior year in high school, when I marched the left-guide position in my rank in the marching band. As such, it was my job I to help the right guide keep track of the other musicians in the rank, to see that they were in the proper position during maneuvers. This happened during a street parade. We were playing some march, I forget which, and had to execute a right turn. As we made the turn I was watching the others in the rank and I paid no attention to playing my music. When we had finished then maneuver I realized, with something of a minor shock, that I had been playing my music all the while, that I was were I should be in the music, but I had obviously not been consciously thinking about my playing. It seems that the music somehow “played itself” and that “my” attention wasn’t necessary. SUSTAINED for about 10 to 20 seconds. White-out This has happened to me many times and in many contexts, practicing alone, playing with various ensembles. The dizziness I describe is not uncommon among trumpet players. Playing in the upper register can be strenuous and, at times, you may get dizzy and even faint momentarily. It has to do, so I’ve read, with constricting the veins in the neck, making it difficult for old blood to leave the head and thus for new oxygenated blood to get to the brain. -7- I’ve also read that it happens when blowing pressure converges on the diastolic blood pressure in the neck arteries; presumably this restricts blood flow to the brain and induces momentary oxygen debt. In any event, whatever the physiological trigger, it’s not that simple. At its most intense I feel dizzy and very light, warm, and bathed in bright white light. Then, a few seconds later, I come down. Still feeling good, feeling strong and rested. Often it does happen when I am playing a sustained upper register passage, the sort of work that makes the face red, the neck distended. But it’s also happened while playing rapid complex, but not particularly high, lines. And, mere effort isn’t sufficient. You have to be in a groove, the playing must have life and feel natural, not just playing the notes. In that context, you can do it. On a reasonable number of occasions I’ve been able to bring down the warmth and lights simply by playing high, or fast/complex, and bearing down on the sound, working with with chest and abdomen. But, without the groove, it doesn’t make any difference what I do; it doesn’t happen. What interests me here is that this effect would seem fairly specific to brass instruments. But, to other instruments, and voice, have physical limitations which can be thus put to psychological use? When used deliberately, can be TRANSITION or PEAK depending on placement. Confounded expectations I was at the piano working on an arrangement of George Harrison’s “Something”. I was working on the end of the introduction, where I had a very simple rhythm, quarter note followed by two eights, starting on the first beat of a 4/4 measure and repeated several times. Chords changed on beats 1 and 3. I decided to see what would happen if, instead of holding each chord for 2 beats, I would hold each chord for 3 beats. Thus, starting from the beginning of this section: beats: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 chord: HHHHHHZZZZZZXXXXXXKKKKKK The 3-beat chords no longer changed in synch with the rhythm pattern, which was built in 2-beat units. As soon as I played this sequence tears came to my eyes and I got choked up. What caused this emotional reaction? The chords were perfectly ordinary dominant 7th chords in a perfectly ordinary sequence. The rhythm was equally ordinary. What triggered this “opening up” must have been the momentary conflict between the harmonic rhythm and the basis logic of a 4/4 measure. But where did the emotion come from? Note that similar effects are used in poetry. TRANSITION? Pickup Group: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door The following is an email I sent to Charlie Keil about a party I had attended at a friend’s house -8- (Howard Olah-Reiken). Charlie, I attended a great party last night & what made it great was the music. A friend and his wife decided to celebrate their new house and her pregnancy and so threw a big party. As he is heavy into the Hoboken folk scene, there were about a bazillion guitars there, and some other instruments as well, a couple of flautists, a pianist or three (and the upright in the corner), a woman who brought a dozen or so shakers which folks could play, a soprano saxist, and me, on flugelhorn and clave. While I’m a really good flugelhornist, I sometimes despair at the clave. It is really difficult to keep a rock solid rhythm strong enough to ground everything – and I’m not talking about any tricky Afro-Cuban pattern, just a steady beat or back-beat depending on the song and mood. The repertoire was interesting. Perhaps one or two songs as old as dirt, but lots of beatles, van morrison, dylan, and gershwin & others–very 60s. The gerswhin tune was, of course, summertime. My earliest memory of that tune was hearing it in a coffee house my freshman year in college. I must have heard it sometime before then, but that is the first time it really registered with me. Since I heard it in a coffee house sung by a slender woman with blue eyes, long blonde hair, and a delicate voice, I figured it was a folk song–after all, that’s what’s sung in those places, no? Only later did I learn it was by George Gershwin, etc. So, when did it enter the folk (revival) repertoire? The whole setting was nice. The front room on the ground floor was the music room. The music would start and stop, musicians (of all levels of ability) come and go, and the boundary between musicians and other folks was wonderfully fluid. The “non-musicians” (are there any such humans, really?) would sometimes join in to sing a refrain or pick up a shaker and do some rhythm. As much as I love concerts, this kind of experience should be the bedrock of our musical culture. The music was ragged and rambling and occasionally confused and the rhythm would get lost every now and then and all that. But it was also real, functional, immediate, fun. Just a bunch of apes doing the communal chant while grooming one another and munching on some choice leaves and a termite or two. And there was a least one magic moment while I was there. It was 1:30 or 2 in the morning and the tune was Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”–which came out about the time I was at UB, in the mid-70s. I took a flugelhorn solo early in the development of this long jam and, when I was done, went to the bottom of the horn and started a simple repetitive swelling figure which I played more or less continuously to the end. The soprano sax played harmony to my line, & I to his, and sometimes did a little obbligato, and a guitar solo floated up here, a piano solo there, vocal choruses and refrains happened as needed. At some point I decided to see how much I could drive this train by laying in to my simple line and bearing down. About a half minute or a minute after that all of a sudden 4 or 5 or 6 voices chimed in on the refrain at the same time–how do groups arrive at decisions like that?–and a lump came to my throat and a tear to my eye. There we were, knockin’ on heaven’s door. It was a special moment. As I say, real music. Later, Bill B PS. Howard–thanks for the party. The Charlie I’m sending this to is Charlie Keil, pioneering musicologist of urban blues and polkas and a great believer in getting kids to play music and dance. -9- For the Children [strictly speaking, not an ASC, but relevant] So let me tell you about Valerie, the daughter of my friend David. This was some time ago, 15 years or so. David plays a little piano & was laying down a boogie bass line while I improvised on trumpet. Valerie, who was 5 at the time, picked up a tambourine and *really* played it. Just a simple steady rhythm, but solid and deep. I was quite impressed. Then, after we were done with whatever it is we had been doing, she sang the theme song from “Annie” a capella, and she was really in to it like her life depended on it. Again I was impressed. But I also said to myself that I’ll bet she won’t be able to get into music like this (the intensity) 10 or 15 years from now. It is now 15 years or so from then, and I really don’t know whether Val could sing like that or not. She hasn’t taken music lessons etc. But that’s beside the point. If kids can make that kind of connection with music at 5, what’s the culture have to do to keep that connection going into adulthood? One answer is the down-home African-American church. But for those of us without such religious belief, there needs to be another way. Recognition [strictly speaking, not an ASC, but relevant] When I was in college at The Johns Hopkins University, I auditioned for the concert band, directed by Conrad Gebblein, aka Gebby. I prepared for this audition like I had for others before, but had no particular expectation beyond playing several pieces of music. So I arrived, I suppose there was a little chit-chat, and then Gebby asked me to play something. I hadn’t played for very long before he asked me to stop and said something like: “I can tell that you’re very musical. How can I help you?” I was, of course, pleased with his judgment and his offer. But I was also a little miffed that I didn’t get to play more, to strut my stuff as it were. But, most of all, I was puzzled at how he’d made that judgment so quickly, and without me having really run through my routines. Somehow Gebby just knew. Some years later I was working in the Chaplain’s Office at Hopkins as a program assistant. The Chaplain got a letter from a woman introducing herself as a gospel singer who had just moved to the area and would he be interested in sponsoring her in a concert at Hopkins? Dr. Wickwire, the Chaplain, put it in my hands, asking me to audition her and make a recommendation. So I arranged an audition. At the appointed time she arrived at Hopkins with her accompanist and with a garment bag. She changed into performance dress – a billowing white gown – and took her place near the piano. Her accompanist started, she joined in, and seconds later I had made my decision. That is to say, I made my decision before she finished her first selection and I felt no need to hear more. I really don’t recall just how long it took me to decide. Let’s say it was 30 seconds – though it might have been a little less, or somewhat more, but not much more. Of that time, I figure most - 10 - of it was taken up by my left-brain figuring out what my right-brain had decided after, say, 5 or 10 seconds. What was it that I had decided so very quickly? That she was a very musical woman. Nothing more, and certainly, certainly nothing less. That is, I had assigned her to a very high level of competence, and that was all I needed to know in order to recommend that we present her – which we did. Just where she was within that upper league was irrelevant to my purpose. And, I suspect, that if I hadn’t placed her in that league so quickly, I would have had her audition longer. She ’Ight have put herself in that league later on, and she might not have. If not, then I may well have had a much more difficult decision to make. William Parker Workshop On Wednesday 13 February 2002 I attended a workshop conducted by William Parker. It was held in downtown Manhattan at 228 W. Broadway. The participants included two guitarists (electric), a vocalist, a trumpeter (me) and, of course, Parker himself, playing tuba for this occasion (he’s best known for his work on stand-up bass). Not your standard jazz ensemble. Free jazz was the idiom. Of course “free jazz” is a big territory, but it doesn’t much matter just where in that territory we were located. Parker made some general statements about this and that, and had variously wry, witty, and informative comments about the working methods of many of the folks he’s played with – Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Muhal Abrams, and so forth. But mostly we made music. And it really was music that we made. And pretty good music at that. The kind of music where, when it’s over, you don’t want to talk. You just remain silent for a moment, collecting yourself, deploying your parachute so as to slow down your descent into lower Manhattan. We started with something Parker called “Number 14” — which he concocted on the spot. As he said, it starts with four fours. “What’s that?” you ask. You play four notes at a rapid clip, and do that four times in a row. “What four notes?” you ask. “He didn’t tell us, and none of us asked.” We all picked the notes we wanted when it came time to play the piece. But there’s more to “Number 14” than four fours. After four fours there’s a pause, that’s so, just like that, long. After the pause everyone picks a high note and does a long descending gliss(ando) to some low note. “What high note to what low note?” you ask. “Do you really think there’s a specific answer to that question?” says I. And then we play a long trill. “On notes of your choice,” you remark. “ Yes, that’s it.” After that, guitar one plays a simple one two figure and repeats it four times. Then the ensemble does another high to low gliss to trill. That’s the “head” to “Number 14.” After the head, it was up to us and the music to negotiate the flow. So we went through the head a couple of times and then played it down. It must have gone for twenty or thirty minutes. It started out pretty raggedy, but then things started to settle in— though “settle “ is not a particularly good word to use here. There’s no easy way to describe the music that evolved. Sometimes there was a pulse, sometimes there wasn’t. Even when there was a pulse, there where times when some people didn’t follow it. Sometimes everyone was playing, sometimes only one or two were. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always shifting. Sometimes full-tilt bozo, sometimes approaching serene. You need to understand that this is different from, say, your standard mainstream jazz quintet (there were five of us) in various ways. For one thing, the head wasn’t particularly definite; and there were no set chord changes or modes, no set back-up figures or ensemble passages. But, major though that may seem, those differences from the mainstream are, in fact, secondary. - 11 - More profoundly, the traditional instrumental roles were gone. Traditionally there’s a rhythm section (piano and/or guitar, drums, and bass) and a front line (horns, vocal, guitar). The front line players do the head and then they play solos; meanwhile the rhythm section provides support (and gets a bit of solo action as well, depending on the format). Within the rhythm section, the drums, bass, and piano each has a role to play. Well, in our music, all that disappeared. There’s no distinction between front line and rhythm section, and no fixed division of rhythm section responsibilities. It’s all up in the air, to be negotiated and reconfigured moment by moment. What this implies is that the old head-soloshead format disappears as well. There are no solos as such. This is collective improvisation, a conversation among equals, true democracy (to put a Ken Burns twist on the proceedings). Now, at this or that moment, one player might be more out front — either because she stepped out there or the others stepped back — but this is not dictated by any plan. It just happens. So we’ve got a floating mélange of quasi-solos, duos, trios and quartets all within the framework of the overall quintet. How do you cope with a situation like that? I can’t answer the question in general, but I can say a little about how I approached it: With my ears. I’m always aware of what’s going on. Now sometimes I’m focused on what I’m doing and not so much on anyone or everything else. But I’m aware of it nonetheless. And when I’m focused on my own playing I might be doing complex stuff, or I might be repeating a simple three-note riff, or even a long tone. But I also make it a practice to spend some time explicitly focusing on what each other player is doing and to orient myself to those sounds in some way. Perhaps I’ll imitate them, or play an answer to them, or support them, or create a counter line. There are lots of ways to orient yourself to what other people are doing and it’s very important that you do so with each player, one at a time. It’s part of your responsibility as a citizen in this improvisatory democracy. To return to traditional ways of thinking, what this means for me is that some of the time I’m thinking and playing like a soloist — my instrument’s traditional role in mainstream jazz — but that I spend more time thinking and playing like a bass player (though the trumpet is a soprano instrument, but that’s no reason I can’t provide an anchoring ostinato) or pianist (playing arpeggios) or even like a drummer (playing staccato hits). And when the vocalist would sing long tones, I might support her by playing long tones (more or less) with her. It’s like going into a theatrical costume shop and trying on all the different costumes. Everyone else is doing the same thing. You meet in various configurations and improvise a little skit that’s consistent with your costumes. Then you change costumes and do it again, and again. Until it’s over. And that’s the interesting thing. How do you know it’s over? Since there’s no set plan, no check list of things to accomplish (as in the head-solos-head format), you need some other way to end it. You might think that, since William Parker was leading this workshop, that he ‘d end it. But he didn’t. We all ended it, and at the same time. That was the first time through “Number 14.” We did it a second time. Then we worked on some conceptions from other workshoppers. And then it was over. We didn’t have time for “Number 15.” A most satisfying experience. Jamming for Peace 22 March 2003. I got off the PATH train in mid-town Manhattan at about 12:30. Five minutes - 12 - later I was in Harold Square, checking out the demo. I’d agreed to hook up with Charlie at between 1 and 1:30, so I had a few minutes to get a feel for the flow. People filled Broadway from side-to-side for block after block. Here and there I heard drums and bells and a horn player or two, but no organized music. Shortly after the Sparticists passed (they’re still around?) I noticed a trombonist standing on the sidewalk. Just as I was about to invite him to come with Charlie and me he headed out into the crowd. I let him go his way as I went mine. I arrived at 36th and 6th – our meeting point a block off the demo route – at about 1. Charlie arrived about five minutes later, with two German house guests. We were to meet with other musicians and then join the demo, providing some street music for the occasion. None of the other musicians had arrived by 1:45, so we waded into the crowd searching for the drummers we could hear so well – one of our musicians arrived about ten minutes later and managed to find us in the demo. We made our way to the drummers and starting riffing along with them, Charlie on cornet and me on trumpet. I could see one guy playing bass drum, another on snare, a djembe player or two, and various people playing bells, a small cooking pot, plastic paint cans. Then I heard some wild horn playing off to the left. I looked and saw the one-armed cornetist I’d seen playing in Union Square in the days after 9-11. Charlie and I made our way toward him and joined up. Then I noticed two trumpeters and a trombonist a few yards behind us. So there we were, a half dozen horns, perhaps a dozen percussion, all within a 20-yard radius. We’d come to the demo in ones, twos and threes, managed to home-in on one another’s sounds, and stayed in floating proximity for the two or three miles walk down Broadway to Washington Square. Sometimes we were closer, within a 5 or 6-yard radius, and sometimes we sprawled over 50 yards. The music was like that too, sometimes close, sometimes sprawled. When the march slowed to a stop, one of the djembe players would urge the percussionists to form a circle. The horn players executed punctuating riffs as one person after another moved into the circle’s center to dance their steps. These young women clearly had taken African dance classes. When the demo started to move, the dancers dispersed into the crowd, the circle dissolved, and we starting moving forward. Sometimes the music made magic. The drummers would lock on a rhythm, then a horn player – we took turns doing this – would set a riff, with the four or five others joining in on harmony parts or unison with the lead. At the same time the crowd would chant “peace now” between the riffs while raising their hands in the air, in synch. All of a sudden – it only took two or three seconds for this to happen – a thirty-yard swath of people became one. Horn players traded off on solos, the others kept the riffs flowing, percussionists were locked, and the crowd embraced us all. You walked with spring and purpose. Even as the crowd chanted “peace” I was feeling “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in my mind and in my step. The tribe was rising. Things got jammed up as we got to Waverly Place – the street that runs just north of Washington Square, the demo’s end. One of the cornet players looked off to the side. I followed his gaze and saw the trombonist I’d passed when I’d first reconnoitered the demo in Harold Square. His horn was pointed to the sky, slide pumping away, as he worked his way toward us. He settled into “All You Need Is Love” and the other horns joined him in sweet, crude, rough harmony. I was hearing John Lennon in my mind’s ear, along with the sardonic horn riffs answering the treacly refrain. Leave us wanting more, that’s how it ended. - 13 - Trickster 19 September 2005. Not music, but performance. I spent most of the previous three days (Fri – Sun, 16-18) at the Dactyl conference, giving a talk on Saturday afternoon. As part of my presentation I was going to discuss two episodes from the Winnebago Trickster cycle. That meant, of course, that I had either to read the tale, deliver a summary, or tell it myself. I decided more or less on the third alternative. But in mental rehearsal now and then over Wed Thur & Fri, I realized that I didn’t have a good grasp on the list of plants that plays a critical role near the end of the story. I decided that, rather than try to memorize the list, or simply make up my own list, I would read the list from Radin's text. So I place a page marker in the book, jus to. I deliver the opening and middle of the tale with the various gestures and voices I’d imagined in mental rehearsal and, when the time came to read the list, I opened the book, found the starting point, and started reading, starting perhaps here (I don’t quite remember): ‘Oh, my, of what a wonderful organ he has deprived me! But why do I speak thus? I will make objects out of the pieces for human beings to use.’ Then he took the end of his penis, the part that has no foreskin, and declared, ‘This is what human beings will call the lily-of-the-lake.’ This he threw in a lake near by. Then he took the other pieces declaring in turn: ‘This the people will call potatoes; this the people will call turnips; this the people will call artichokes; this the people will call ground-beans; this the people will call dog-teeth; this the people will call sharp-claws; this the people will call rice.’ All these pieces he threw into the water. Finally he took the end of his penis and declared, “This the people will call the pond-lily.’ Nor do I remember whether or not I read quite that far. It doesn’t really matter. Some time a bit before I read about the potatoes I got a hitch in my throat and wondered, momentarily, whether or not I would be able to retain my balance or break down in tears. I kept my balance through the end of the passage and the close of the tale and resumed my talk. As an analogy, imagine riding a bicycle and suddenly hitting a rock big enough that you are in danger. Either you keep you balance and forward motion or go down, and its only a matter of a second or two in which one of these unfolds. This is no time for analytical reasoning. As I said, it’s a matter of keeping your balance. ***** Given, this, one might wonder, so what? One question is about what the audience heard at that point: Did audience members notice something had changed? If so, what did they sense, and when? And what about others who have performed those tales? That, of course, leads to the general question of such “magic moments” and performance, and on that all we’ve got are anecdotes and, on the whole, not so many of them. My default assumption is that that would have happened to Winnebago performances as well, though I am not sure about the performance that Radin used for his text. Radin’s notes are not clear on the exact circumstances (p. 111): The Winnebago Trickster myth (Part One) was obtained by one of my principal informants, Sam Blowsnake, in 1912, from an old Winnebago Indian living near the village of Winnebago, Nebraska. It was written down in the Winnebago syllabary, a script that had been introduced about a generation before that time and which, up to the time of my coming to the Winnebago, had been used exclusively for the writing of letters. I was known only to a relatively small - 14 - number of people. It is clear from Radin's further notes (p. 112) that Sam Blowsnake, himself a gifted raconteur, was not the source of the story. Rather, he obtained it from a Winnebago elder who had the right to tell the story. Blowsnake recorded the stories and two other Winnebagos, John Baptiste and Oliver Lamere made an initial translation which Radin then revised. Radin is, for these and other reasons, satisfied that the text is authentic. But Radin himself did not experience a performance nor do we know just how the elder and Blowsnake collaborated to produce the initial texts. The text, no matter how authentic, is only a shadow of the performance. Beyond this, we might ask: But what does it mean? Here’s what I have said in a paper I am currently drafting: I want to consider the relationship the story asserts between the fragments of Trickster’s penis and the useful plants to which they give rise. It is not too difficult to provide an explicit basis for that connection: The penis is the male organ of generation and so is necessary to human life; those plants are so very useful to humans that they too are necessary to human life. That much is obvious and not terribly interesting as stated. When we talk of there being a symbolic relationship between the penis and those plants – a standard way of dealing with such matters – we are stating that there is something more going on here, that something is being asserted beyond the obvious. Whatever that something is, it seems to be about a fundamental power in the world, a power of generation. It is the suspicion that this story is about that something that leads us analytically to assert its symbolic nature. I think that suspicion is correct, and I cannot account for just how this story works in any detail. But I do want to say – and this is the main point – that the story itself – in a live performance – is the simplest and most primitive way for a group of people to share their awareness and understanding of that power of generation. The prose explication I gave in the previous paragraph does not adequately convey that meaning, nor is that meaning being transformed from some more primitive unconscious “language.” Rather, the story is a way of capturing that meaning and sharing it with others. I have no reason to reconsider that judgment. What I want to know is: How do the brain and body do that? - 15 - ***************************************** PART 2 • Listeners Speak ***************************************** My Music From Susan D. Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, Charles Keil, compilers, My Music, Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1993. This book is a series of interviews with ordinary people about the meaning and significance of music in their life. *** Carley, almost six, p. 14: Q: Sometimes you hum and sometimes you sing little things. Do you do that all the time? A: Well, sometimes in school . . . at recess when I don’t have anyone to play with. I just play with my songs. (laughs nervously) Q: Yeah? A: Yeah, it’s like I . . . I sing them out and then I roll them up into a ball. *** Gail, 21, p. 94-95, talking about listening to Bach cantatas: Q: What do you mean, incredible? That’s one of those words that masks a whole lot . . . that masks all the fine points. A: Great. Wonderful. Overwhelming. Intense emotion, often melancholy. I’ll cry listening, generally, to Bach cantatas. . . . And other times I’ll be singing or conducting as I walk along, enjoying it tremendously. . . . If I have it on, I have to listen to it. With a full-time school schedule you life is sort of limited . . . so mostly Bach. I don’t know why. maybe because I enjoy being overwhelmed. I like losing myself completely, or fantasizing. *** Karen, 37, pp. 138-139: Q: Are there any times that you experience music in a particularly powerful way? A: The mood tapes. I’ve astral-projected with some of them, because of the visual effects it has played on my mind. I have gone with it, and I know I have. It’s just like . . . like the mountain stream, or the backyard stream tapes. Nature. I don’t visualize myself walking some place . . . I am there. *** Richard, late 40s, p. 155: - 16 - Q: Does music affect your mood? A: I’ll say. In fact, sometimes some selection can make me cry . . . you know, a sad sounding piece in a minor key . . . . or, say, sometimes the words are very sad, combined with that type of music. I actually become what I hear. it affects me greatly. In fact, I very often . . . when I’m upset or I need to feel calm . . . I won’t put any music on the radio that’s loud and irritating. I will play something quiet, slow, so I can channel that quiet music, or old-fashioned music . . . . An 8-year old Someone posted this to an online forum. I remember an 8-year-old girl in her sixth week in the choir. After a rehearsal I found her hiding in a corner, in tears. Concerned, I asked her what was the matter. In between sobs, she said she thought she would have to quit the choir. Whatever for? I asked. She explained that the music was so sad that it made her cry. (The song they were learning contained a sentence about Jesus’ death.) We had a long conversation about how sadness was not necessarily a bad thing. This was apparently quite a revelation. At the end of that season, she wrote me a poem: My Choir It is like the part of my heart drifted away. The clear sound of it banging on my body trying to get in sorrows my whole body. It ended on Sunday, my third favorite theme. My heart sank. I can’t wait until September. Alias high on Trane Someone posted this to an online forum. >>I can understand what was said about missing the music. Fortunately, I’ve got John Coltrane. As long as I have a copy of A Love Supreme in my house (and there’s been one, on cassette or CD, since I was 14), I never need to go to a church to get rockin’. << Y’know, I had one of my first “transcendental” type experiences the first time I heard A Love Supreme. . . this guy in my dorm was playing it, I just walked in there and was blown away. “What is this incredible music?” I asked him. I couldn’t believe it, I hadn’t heard anything like it in my whole life. - 17 - Another I-high-on-Coltrane story: A few years later I had a similar type experience driving from NY to Boston, dark winter night, it was like 3am, just me on the highway and I was having trouble staying awake. I put on the song My Favorite Things and just concentrated on staring at the solid yellow lines in the middle of the highway, just staring at the those lines I started to get all hypnotizy, esp. when that soprano sax started going, I started visualizing those notes leaping out of the speakers and soaring thru the air. . . and then it was like time got all suspended and the car was just floating. Nothing like that’s ever happened since. . . just something about Coltrane. Kronos Quartet Told to me by Carrie Starr in September 2002 via email. As an example, I had an experience in the late 70s, when the Kronos Quartet was in residence at Mills college just before they hit it big (I studied there with Pandit Pran Nath and Terry Riley– Mills was way out of my class, but they had GREAT financial aid). This was when they still played classical music–they were playing a Mozart Quartet as I remember, and I heard, unbelievably clearly, the tonic and dominant chords “standing in the air” as Pran Nath would say, above the playing. Positively Schenkerian! Never before heard anything like it, never again. .... As I remember, I was up in the balcony–totally unnecessary, since there were probably only 50 people in the audience. That in itself is amazing, considering that by the next season and ever since, the Kronos has drawn SRO audiences in the thousands. I set up a reception after one of their concerts at Mills; we had fresh strawberries for 300 people and only 30 showed up! We all ate a LOT of strawberries. But the overtones: Very much as you described with the bells–as I look back, it’s almost like I could see them–being in the balcony, I was above the stage, but the ringing chords seemed to be on the stage, above the players. Since they were playing chords, the overtones were chordal, and with the primary tonalities changing, they alternated between the tonic and dominant. A Resonant Sound From the TPIN mailing list, Derek Reaban: Monday 27 Jan 2003 I had quite a dramatic playing experience last Tuesday at my Wind Ensemble rehearsal that I would like to share with the group. It really is amazing what the mind can accomplish if you let it! My personal sound model was with the Phoenix Symphony for many years and played in a number of community groups just for the fun of it (I was in all of these groups with him). His sound is quite simply the most resonant sound that I have every experienced from a trumpet player. His sound contains many of the same qualities as Charlie Schlueter and literally pushes on me whenever I hear him play (and, Yes I got to compare his sound with Charlie’s at a lesson at my house with both of them). - 18 - To understand my experience last week you have to understand all of the different situations in which I heard him play. I cherished my weekly lessons where I could experience his sound sitting to his immediate right. The same with orchestra rehearsals (an evening college group – volunteer for both of us) and several times I got to sub with the PSO and the Phoenix Brass Quintet. In wind ensemble I would just try to soak in his sound. It was literature that was all familiar to me but new at the same time with his tremendous resonance! I heard him playing with the Phoenix Symphony from the balcony of Symphony Hall and from various seats at Gammage weekly. His brass band sound was also extremely present and I felt honored to share the stage with him whenever he soloed with the group. But the experience that is most indelibly etched in my memory is a very hot outdoor concert with the Glendale Summer band. This was shortly after I met him (probably a month or so, and I was just in awe every time I heard his sound). We were playing lots of show tunes on an evening where the temperature was 110F in the shade! There were at least 25 trumpets in the section and to fit well on the stage each row was in an arc. I was at least 10 players away from him so I was actually in front and to the right of his bell. We began playing selections from South Pacific and then we got to his solo on “Some Enchanted Evening”. All that I could think to myself was, “Oh my God! What an amazing sound”. It was the first time that I had been playing in a section with him, and especially the first time that I had been seated in front of him. The volume and resonance was something that I will NEVER forget. In fact, when I hear that solo today, I am transported back to that stage, I can clearly see him playing, I can feel the heat of the evening, and the sea of pink shirts that we all had to wear in that group! Now with that set up, I was at my Wind Ensemble rehearsal last Tuesday and we began the evening with selections from South Pacific. I was playing the solo parts, and when we got to that solo from Some Enchanted Evening, my brain jumped back 13 years and remembered his sound with such pristine clarity that even though I was playing, it was his sound that was coming out my bell. The only thing that I can image is that I was not able to conceive my own sound image as strongly as what was etched into my brain so many years ago. It was absolutely shocking to me! I would have to say that I generally center the horn well, but last night I jumped to “the highest score”! To reference back to one of my earlier messages, I achieved FOG! The best part for me was that I was able to maintain this sound for the entire rehearsal (we are doing A Lincoln Portrait this concert and not only did I have that sound going, but I clearly was able to remember my friend’s sound on this piece with this group many years ago). It was like everything was just absolutely clicking for me. I have read so many of these TPIN messages talking about “flooding the mind with sound”, and “visualize your performance” to be able to let your mind create you own personal best sound. Unfortunately, I could never make that happen for myself. Then, everything just fell together for me, and the visualization and ideal sound (although not my own), just took over, and my body figured out what needed to happen to create that sound. I’ve always thought that if I could just experience what it is like to play like that “ONE” time, I would be able to duplicate that sound based on my experience. Well, I put this to the test over the past week. I tried some Charlier etudes that are very familiar to me. And after I played them, I had such an interesting realization. I sounded just like me! Then I conjured up my experience with “SOME ENCHANTED EVENING”! I tried the Charlier again, and this time I started to let out my newly experienced sound. It is nothing short of miraculous! I’m at a point now where I am finding myself having to think of ways to forget how I would sound, and explore my newly found sound! I’m sharing this experience because it is so different from what everyone has described to me on this list. My personal sound ideal was buried so deeply that I could recognize that I did not sound - 19 - as present as my sound model, but I couldn’t ring that sound in my mind before I played. I still can’t, but I can clearly remember my recent experience. So, maybe this glimpse into a very real epiphany for me will allow some of you to know that it’s possible, but can come very differently to different people. I am just totally shocked! If any of you have had similar experiences, I would love to hear your story. Looking forward to hearing a recording of this next concert! Thanks, Derek Reaban Beethoven moves listeners to tears From O. G. Sonneck, ed. Beethoven: Impressions by his Contemporaries. Dover Publications, Inc. New York. Copyright © 1926, 1954 by G. Schirmer, Inc. Carl Czerny was Beethoven’s student, teacher of Liszt, and a composer. He reports: About the year 1800, when Beethoven had composed his Op. 28, he said to his intimate friend Krumpholz: “I am not very well satisfied with the work I have thus far done. From this day on I shall take a new way.” Shortly after this appeared his three sonatas, Op. 31, in which one may see that he had partially carried out his resolve. His improvisation was brilliant and astonishing in the extreme; and no matter in what company he might be, he knew how to make such an impression on every listener that frequently there was not a single dry eye, while many broke out into loud sobs, for there was a certain magic in his expression, aside from the beauty and originality of his ideas and his genial way of presenting them. When he had concluded an improvisation of this kind, he was capable of breaking out into boisterous laughter and of mocking his listeners for yielding to the emotion he had called forth in them. He would even say to them: “You are fools!” At times he felt himself insulted by such manifestations of sympathy. “Who can continue to live among such spoiled children?” he would cry, and for that reason alone (so he told me), he declined to accept the invitation sent him by the King of Prussia after an improvisation of this kind. - 20 - ***************************************** PART 3 • Testify! – Musicians on Performing ***************************************** This document contains mostly statements by a variety of different musicians—classical, jazz, rock—about what happens in their minds when performing. Sources for the statements are indicated. Leonard Bernstein Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, The Firebird – Suite, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein Edition, Deutsche Grammaphon 431 045-2 p. 5 of notes (CD version), Bernstein: I know when I have achieved a really good statement of a work: that is when I have the feeling throughout that I am composing it on stage, at the event. If I think at the end, “What a fine piece piece I wrote,” then I can be reasonably certain that I have achieved a true and good document. Perhaps the fact of being myself a composer, who works very hard (and in various styles), gives me the advantageous opportunity to identify more closely with the Mozarts, Beethovens, Mahlers and Stravinskys of this world, so that I can at certain points (usually of intense solitary study) feel that I have become whoever is my alter ego that day or week. At least I can occasionally reach one or the other on our private “Hot Line”, and with luck be given the solution to a problematic passage. Those are ecstatic times, those moments, and inform the entire Gestalt with new life. A new difficulty arises after giving such a “true” performance of what seems my own music, and then, suddenly, amidst applause and similar noises, having to become merely Leonard Bernstein again. Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story DVD: The Making of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein, Tatiana Troyanos, José Carreras, Kiri Te Kanawa, BBC Television London, UNITEL 1985. 35:54 (Chapter 14 on the DVD): Bernstein talking to the press: At the moment I’m a little tired, not from the sessions, but from so much listening to playbacks, which I’ve been doing for over an hour now, since we broke. And um, that’s very tiring, listening to many takes. But, otherwise I’ve been very up and I’m feeling very young. And I’m feeling rather the way I felt when I was writing it. And ah it seems . . . this may sound self-congratulatory, and I suppose it is, but every once in awhile, why can’t one be self-congratulatory, and say that it sounds as though I just wrote it yesterday, to me, anyway. It’s a personal and very subjective reaction, but . . . I thought I would share that with you, because that’s the way I’m feeling. Chapter 18, 54:30: An absolutely DEVASTATING performance of “One hand, one heart” by Carreras and Te Kanawa. - 21 - Bernstein is right about that. The performance brought me to tears and you could see that Te Kanawa teared up. Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein Helen Epstein. Music Talks: Conversations with Musicians. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1987. p. 10, Horowitz talking: “The moment that I feel that cutaway – the moment I am in uniform – it’s like a horse before the races. You start to perspire. You feel already in you some electricity to do something.” p. 52, Leonard Bernstein talking to conducting students at Tanglewood about how he had to learn to bring himself under control. As a young conductor he once got so wrapped up in conducting – I think it was a Tchaikovsky symphony – that we was afraid he was having a heart attack. So, he’s had to restrain himself. Then he gets to ego loss: “I don’t know whether any of you have experienced that but it’s what everyone in the world is always searching for. When it happens in conducting, it happens because you identify so completely with the composer, you’ve studied him so intently, that it’s as though you’ve written the piece yourself. You completely forget who you are or where you are and you write the piece right there. You just make it up as though you never heard it before. Because you become that composer. “I always know when such a thing has happened because it takes me so long to come back. It takes four or five minutes to know what city I’m in, who the orchestra is, who are the people making all that noise behind me, who am I? It’s a very great experience and it doesn’t happen often enough. Ideally it should happen every time, but it happens about as often in conducting as in any other department where you lose ego. Schopenhauer said that music was the only art in which this could happen and that art was the only area of life in which it could happen. Schopenhauer was wrong. It can happen in religious ecstasy or meditation. It can happen in orgasm when you are with someone you love.” The students received all this in silence. Then someone in the back of the room raised his hand. “How do you train yourself to lose your ego?” Bernstein had nothing to say about training, but made a comment about relaxed concentration. p. 73, Dorothy DeLay (violin teacher at Julliard), on teaching: “People come in with ideas about themselves – I’m this kind of person, I can do this, I can never do that – and they’re unhappy with their self-concept. If you find a way to bypass that kind of thinking, they find they’re better than they thought they were. I’ve always felt we only use a small part of ourselves.” Pablo Casals Manfred Clynes. Sentics: The Touch of Emotions. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977. The following passage isn’t a musician reflecting on his own experience, but, in that it illustrates the precision of musical feeling, it’s relevant: - 22 - p. 53 Some years ago, in the house of Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico, the Master was giving cello master classes. On this occasion, an outstanding participant played the theme from the third movement of the Hayden cello concerto. . . . Those of us there could not help admiring the grace with which the young master cellist played—probably as well as one would hear it anywhere. Casals listened intently. “No,” he said . . . “that must be graceful!” And then he played the same few bars—and it was graceful as though one had never heard grace before—a hundred times more graceful—so that the cynicism melted in the hearts of the people who sat there and listened. That single phrase penetrated all the defenses, the armor, the hardness of heart which we mostly carry with us. . . . Seymour Bernstein Seymour Bernstein. With Your Own Two Hands: Self-Discovery Through Music. New York, Schirmer Books: 1981. [Note: this book is much more interesting than the paucity of quotations seems to indicate.] p. 74 . . . each feeling has a corresponding movement and sensation . . . All of these sensations are fed into your automatic pilot so that in time your muscles are trained to reproduce feeling involuntarily. A good teacher can induce feeling in you by teaching you the correct physical gestures. p. 74 . . . in practicing . . . allow the music to reveal its own beauty. Once you recognize your response to this beauty, you are ready to pinpoint everything that contributes to musical expression. Only then will you be able to control your feeling when you perform for others. Yehudi Menuhin Yehudi Menuhin. The Compleat Violinist. New York: Summit Books: 1986. p. 126 There are some artists so completely at one with the music that the emotion stems from the work and not from any outside stimulus. This can happen when playing alone, or when reading a composition. The performer’s job is to translate what he sees in a composition, the ideal image of the score, into the sound. There is a wonderful chain of events that happens and reinforces the performance when everything is smooth and working well, when the act of interpretation creates its own momentum and the imagination is enriched by the very palette that one is using. It is a cycle which is benign and fructifying. p. 127 . . . It may be that one sometimes possesses the genuine conviction that this is going to be the best performance in the world. Perhaps it is, and naturally one wishes to recapture at every moment the perfection of that performance. But, of course, it is not possible. Lucky the artist who knows that feeling once every ten times he plays a certain piece. Perhaps once every five, as one gets more masterly. With due preparation on tour it may be possible to achieve it every other time, giving fine performances on five or six nights in succession. Dizzy Gillespie - 23 - Dizzy Gillespie, with Al Fraser. To Be or Not to Bop. New York: Doubleday, 1979. p. 242: I’ve often wondered where that element comes from that makes a phrase or a note coherent, spiritual, and meaningful to someone else besides yourself. How does it trip that valve in the listener? It could come from the audience, or from the musicians you’re playing with, but sometimes it just hits and everything is just right. If you’re lucky, that happens once in your lifetime maybe. p. 491: Records you can listen to and tell the stature of a musician, but with many records, not one record. . . . Of course it’s very seldom that you hear a guy who’s best on records. But you can hear where his mind is going. Sometimes it gets on records and there’s a masterpiece. I’ve never played my really best on records, and I’ve only played my best four or five times in my whole career. But I know records wasn’t one of them—one of those times when everything was clicking. Earl Hines, Art Hodes, Roy Eldridge, Ornette Coleman, Sid Catlett Whitney Balliett. American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1986. p. 87, Earl Hines talking: I’m like a race horse. I’ve been taught by the old masters – put everything out of your mind except what you have to do. I’ve been through every sort of disturbance before I go on the stand, but I never get so upset that it makes the audience uneasy. . . . I always use the assistance of the Man Upstairs before I go on. I ask for that and it gives me courage and strength and personality. It causes me to blank everything else out, and the mood comes right down on me no matter how I feel. p. 151, Art Hodes talking: Now, you can play the blues and just go through the changes and not feel it. That has happened to me for periods of time, and I can fool anybody but me. Right now I’m in a blues period. The blues heal you. When I play, I ignore the audience. I bring all my attention to bear on what I’m playing, bring all me feelings to the front. I bring my body to bear on the tune. If it’s a fast tune – a rag – I have to make my hands be where they should be. . . . I’m trying to get lost in what I’m doing, and sometimes I do, and it comes out beautiful. p. 176, Roy Eldridge talking, about playing the Paramount Theatre with Gene Krupa: When the stage stopped and we started to play, I’d fall to pieces. The first three or four bars of my first solo, I’d shake like a leaf, and you could hear it. Then this light would surround me, and it would seem as if there wasn’t any band there, and I’d go right through and be all right. It was something I never understood. p. 407, Ornette Coleman talking: I don’t think about feeling, seeing, or thinking. I try to have the player and the listener have the same sound experience. I’m not thinking about mood or emotion. Emotion should come into you instead of going out. p. 187, Mel Powell, talking about Sidney Catlett: He’d fasten the Goodman band into the tempo with such power and gentleness that one night I was absolutely transported by what he was doing. Harvey Swartz Philip Booth, Profile: Harvey Swartz. down beat 57, #1: 44-45, Jan 1990. - 24 - p. 44 Sheila Jordan: “I’ve had 10 great musical highs in my life, when I totally was out of my body, and five of those were with the bass; and I’ve been singing jazz for 40 years.” Swartz is her favorite bass player. Ira Sullivan Ira Sullivan (multi-instrumentalist, saxes, trumpet) in a down beat (Feb 17, 1992, p. 14) article: I feel that I’m at my best when I can free myself completely from the effort of trying to put something out and feel more like I am the instrument being played — like opening the channel to God, or whatever it is. I suddenly get the feeling that I’m standing next to myself, but I’m not thinking that this is me playing. Sonny Rollins, Roy Eldridge Sonny Rollins (tenor sax) and Roy Eldridge (trumpet). “Sonny Rollins at Sixty-Eight,” The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 284, No. 1, July 1999, pp. 82-88. “When I’m right and the band is right and the music is right,” Rollins said, “I feel myself getting closer to the place where the sound is less polished and more aboriginal. That’s what I’m striving for. The trumpeter Roy Eldridge once told a guy he could only reach a divine state in performance four or five times a year. That sounds about right for me.” Stephanie Burrous, Terence Blanchard Walt Harrington. Crossings: A White Man’s Journey into Black America. New York: HarperCollins, 1982. p. 196-7 Stephanie Burrous: She had tried to go commercial with her singing and failed, so: Then came November 25th a year ago, a mild, sunny Sunday. . . . She wasn’t singing that day. She was playing the drums, just bopping along, when suddenly she began to cry. She felt sorry and happy at once – sorry she’d lost direction but happy that she was now feeling sorry. . . . Suddenly she found herself standing before the congregation, with people crowding around her praying, singing, and proclaiming the glow on her face. But that is all Stephanie remembers, because at that instant she was gone, touched by the lightning of the Holy ghost in the ancient way of Saul. . . . From that day, no more R&B. p. 198 At her music’s deepest, she can forget the audience is even there, and she can sing not so much to herself but as if there were no distinction between her mind, her body, and her emotions, as if she were not so much singing as breathing. Odd, but it is when she most forgets her audience that her audience is most touched. But it can take a few bars or verses for Stephanie to travel to that private place – a place inexplicably similar to where she traveled when she was struck by the Holy Ghost and, for those moments, became totally devoid of vainglorious selfconsciousness, totally within and without herself at once. Singing at her best, Stephanie feels as if she’s sitting on the back porch of heaven. pp. 214-215 Terence Blanchard speaking: My best performances with Art Blakey sometimes came - 25 - when I was really tired and didn’t have time to think about what was going on. I’m always analyzing things. And on those occasions when I was too tired to do that, I played my best. Those were the times I was relaxed and ideas would come to me and my ego wouldn’t block them. Maurice André, the great classical solo trumpeter in Europe, once said that when he plays he sometimes gets the impression there’s no trumpet. He feels like he’s singing! I have yet to experience that. But when I listen to John Coltrane, I hear it.” Three by Miles Davis On Record: “My Man’ s Gone Now” One of my favorite moments on that album (Miles Davis & Gil Evans, Porgy and Bess) is near the end of “My Man’s Gone Now.” As the title suggests, the tune is a lament, slow and soft to moderate volume. The moment in questions comes as Miles is playing in the lower middle register over a minimal background and resolves down to a first line E. As he hits the E the brass joins him on a low volume chord, which then begins to build in volume. Miles attacks the E again and starts on an octave and a half run up to a B. As he moves up the run, the volume increases and the brass moves higher with a trumpet hitting the B with Miles and then holding it. Miles drops down and starts playing simple figures while the brass holds the chord, increases the volume and the lead comes in on a simple four-note two-phrase line, E to G, G to E. And then the volume drops off and we finish it off softly. That four-note line is hair-raising in its intensity. And the intensity, of course, is not simply volume. It’s soul. What makes the whole passage so powerful is the way it builds up out of Miles’ low E, peaks out at the two E-G G-E phrase, and then dies down. It’s so smooth, so intense. Like everyone was in Mile’s head, or he was in everyone else’s head. Telepathy, ESP, artistry. Twenty instruments and players, but only one mind. In the Recording Studio: Bitches Brew Ian Carr. Miles Davis. New York: William Morrow, 1982.p. 184, Teo Macero talking about the Bitches Brew recording session: I think Bitches Brew came out of a bitter battle that Miles and I had in the studio over my secretary. He wanted me to fire her, and I said absolutely under no condition would I do so. . . . And he kept on and on and on and on, until the point where he and I almost had a fistfight in the studio. And I told him, I says, “Take you and your fucking trumpet . . . And your fucking musicians and get outa here! . . .” . . . Then finally, Miles came over [they were in the control room] and he pushed the key down [intercom to the studio] and says, “I want you to know what the fuck Teo said about you motherfucker musicians—Get the fuck outa here. . . He doesn’t want you”. . . I says, “Well, take your goddam trumpet and go!” He took his trumpet . . . went into the studio . . . and I said “Put the machines on . . .” . . . you know, it was like having a good fight with your wife . . . but you didn’t really mean it . . . and from then on during that whole session,“he kept saying, "Come on out! Come on out! I’m going to get you! I’m going to kill you!” So I pushed the key [intercom] and says, “You make me sick !. . .” And he made all those fantastic tracks. . . . it was just one thing after another . . . bam, bam, bam, bam. I said, “You sonofabitch, you should be this way all the time—mean and miserable!” - 26 - In Concert: “Time After Time” This is a report of a live Miles Davis concert I attended New York’s Avery Fisher Hall in 1987. Miles was deep into jazz-rock-pop fusion, which put off many of his more traditional listeners. But he was drawing a large eclectic audience. I was visiting cognitive scientist David G. Hays to work on some intellectual business–he had once been my teacher and now had become a collaboratorand he had gotten us tickets to see Davis. As a long-time jazz fan, and sometime trumpet player myself, I was of course thoroughly familiar with Davis’s career. Like many, I was not particularly thrilled by the funkified electronisized direction Miles had taken in this, the last phase of his career, but I was certainly willing to hear him out. Hays was a jazz neophyte and knew relatively little about Miles Davis, his music, and his place in jazz. I don’t know what was going on in the musicians’ minds, but judging from audience response, they were deep into some zone. The band was hot, the performance was stunning, and Miles and his band left the audience in grateful shock. “Time After Time” was the strongest song in a set of strong performances. The tempo was slow, very slow, and the dynamics were low, mostly, for there were times when the sound swelled to fill the hall. But the music was so powerful it filled the hall no matter how loud or soft the sound. Even at its softest, which was very soft, Miles’ sound was so intense that you’d think it could suck sound right out of the air. When Miles and the band had finished performing “Time After Time” the audience was completely and actively silent. It took us a few moments to return sufficiently to ourselves so that we could offer up the customary applause. That was one the finest concerts I’d ever attended. David Craig, Lena Horne David Craig. On Performing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987. p. 61 . . . what a performer appears to be is finally all that matters. p. 62 We deal with emotion because it is a basic tool of our trade. But there is a world of difference between experiencing passion in our private lives and calling it into public display for the purpose of interpreting the works of playwrights, librettists, composers, and lyricists. p. 63 Why can’t we open ourselves to passion? We can, but first we must be willing to plumb it. The best starting point I know is to be willing to place it at the service of song. p. 64 Many actors, dancers, and singers speak of their feelings as the mysterious source of their ability to move people. I have always been wary of turned-on feelings that turn off my mind and leave me in the thrall of their insidious power to dominate. . . . . . .My distrust of feelings is justified, for when singers busy themselves exclusively with their feelings, I watch in fascination as they become the reactor to the song and, by so doing, join the audience in dangerous partnership. It is the business of the performer to conduct the emotional responses of the audience and that cannot be accomplished when the job is surrendered up to the artist’s own response to his or her singing. Further, feelings can be self-destructive. They can close throats, make eyes water, shorten breath, and, before performers realize it, cause them to become the victims of their songs – done in by the very weapons that were intended for others. p. 65 Great performing has its own physical laws. You get back what you give. It is like an electric circuit through which the current flows without a chance of shorting. - 27 - . . . . It is in the specific methods performers employ that feelings work for rather than against them. When you find yourself surprised that, although you have felt deeply what you sang, no one else felt anything at all, it is a sure bet you have just lived through thirty-two bars of your musical life unconnected and alone. p. 134, Lena Horne talking: And then when they killed [Robert] Kennedy and Martin Luther King, it seemed like a floodgate had opened. There had been a lot of deaths in my own family. . . . and when I say, I was different. I began to “listen” to what I was doing and thinking. I listened to the audience. Even to the quiet. I had never listened to it before. . . . I was different because I was letting something in. The tone was developing differently. I could do what I wanted with it. I could soften it. I wasn’t afraid to show the emotion. I went straight for what I thought the songwriter had felt at a particular moment because he must have felt what I'd been feeling or else I couldn't have read that lyric, I couldn't have understood what he was saying. And I used my regretfulness and my cynicism. But even my cynicism had become not so much that as . . . logic. Yes, life is shit. Yes, people listen in different ways. some nights they’re unhappy at something that has happened to them. OK. I can feel that knot of resistance. OK. That’s where I’m going to work to. . . . And the second “eight” would be different than the first because the first was feeling it out and the second would change because I could come in “to my mood.” . . . It developed out of this relaxation . . . a tone that was softer, more liquid. Milt Jackson Norman C. Weinstein. A Night in Tunisia: Imagining of Africa in Jazz. Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Metuchen, N.J. & London, 1992. p. 168 Ronald Shannon Jackson talking about a playing experience at Texas Southern University: “I was fooling around one night after some local musicians and I had played a gig – and it happened! Everything that came to mind musically came off perfectly without me having constantly to think about it. I wasn’t aware of doing it. So I floated to the back of the room and was on the ceiling watching myself play, and listening and enjoying it. So I know it could happen on the bandstand. But I had no control over how to get to that point.” Neil Young Steve Erickson, Neil Young on a Good Day. The New York Times Magazine, July 30, 2000, pp. 26-29. p. 28: He pauses an looks out the window. “At a certain point, trained, accomplished musicians”– which is to say, not him–“hit the wall. They don’t go there very often, they don’t have the tools to go through the wall, because it’s the end of notes. It’s the other side, where there’s only tone, sound, ambience, landscape, earthquakes, pictures, fireworks, the sky opening, buildings falling, subways collapsing. ... When you go through the wall, the music takes on that kind of atmosphere, and it doesn’t translate the way other music translates. When you got to the other side, you can’t go back. I don’t know too many musicians who try to go through the wall.” He stops for a moment. “I love to go through the wall,” as if you ever doubted it for a moment. Smyth, Bullard, O’Conner, Marsalis, Starr, Lewis, Clapton - 28 - Jenny Boyd, with Holly George-Warren. Musicians In Tune. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. p. 161 Patty Smyth: “When I have had those experiences, I’m singing by myself. I’ve had those moments when I do feel the voice coming through me, and I know it’s coming from out there. It’s a certain tone in that voice that makes me feel that way. It chokes me up.” p. 161-162 Cece Bullard: “It’s like you leave your body. It’s like you’re dizzy and lightheaded and yet right there. My hands just seem to throb, like a pulse almost. It’s the best feeling in the world, bar none. It took me a lot of singing lessons before I finally connected with that feeling. The first time it clicked and I connected, I nearly fell down, and I started crying.” p. 164 Sinéad O’Conner: “A lot of times I shake uncontrollably. I can’t control the shaking, and it’s not because I’m nervous, it’s because I’m singing. It’s because it’s coming out and it’s making me shake. It feels like being drunk, it’s like an out-of-body experience. There are times when I’ve done gigs — and it doesn’t happen every time you do a show or every time you write something — but they’ve told me stuff I’ve done onstage that I’m not aware I’ve done.” p. 173 Branford Marsalis: “High, you feel high. It’s easy to do it physically, but it’s hard to do it mentally. I feel that musicians who say it happens every time they play are full of shit. The sublime cannot be routine. Three times, and you never forget them. It’s with a combination of musicians, it’s never just me.” p. 176 Ringo Starr: “It feels great; its just a knowing. It’s magic actually; it is pure magic. Everyone who is playing at that time knows where everybody’s going. We all feel like one; wherever you go, everyone feels that’s where we should go. I would know if Paul was going to do something, or if George was going to raise it up a bit, or John would double, or we’d bring it down. I usually play with my eyes closed, so you would know when things like that were happening . . . you’ve got to trust each other.” p. 179 Huey Lewis: “I find it more of a group experience for me. You look around and all of a sudden the song is playing and singing itself. It’s just like a wave that you ride. It’s tremendously exhilarating; it doesn’t take any energy and you look around and say, ‘Yep, this is it!’ It happens quite often but not for long periods of time. Almost at every gig that will happen somewhere for a fleeting moment. Some gigs it happens more often than others, and those are the good gigs.” p. 185 Eric Clapton: “It’s a massive rush of adrenaline which comes at a certain point. Usually it’s a sharing experience; it’s not something I could experience on my own. . . . other musicians . . . an audience . . . Everyone in that building or place seems to unify at one point. It’s not necessarily me that’s doing it, it may be another musician. But it’s when you get that completely harmonic experience, where everyone is hearing exactly the same thing without any interpretation whatsoever or any kind of angle. They’re all transported toward the same place. That’s not very common, but it always seems to happen at least once a show.” Jean-Baptiste Arban Jean-Baptiste Arban, Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, Edited by Edwin Franko Goldman and Walter M. Smith, Carl Fischer, Inc. 1936. p. 284: At this point my task as professor ... will end. There are things which appear clear enough when uttered viva voce but which cannot be committed to paper without engendering confusion and obscurity, or without appearing puerile. - 29 - There are other things of so elevated and subtle a nature that neither speech nor writing can clearly explain them. They are felt, they are conceived, but they are not to be explained; and yet these things constitute the elevated style, the grande ecole, which it is my ambition to institute for the cornet, even as they already exist for singing and the various kinds of instruments. Cuda Brown From Cuda Brown, Meanderings # 5 http://www.newsavanna.com/meanderings/me105/me10501.html: I play bass with a not-very-good-but-trying-to-get-better jazz combo on the weekends. Last week I got lost in a solo on a tune I really love and whose chord changes I know well. Not lost as being in the wrong place. Lost as in being out there. Being somewhere else. Eyes closed. Playing what I felt somewhere inside (or was that trying to feel what I played?). Anyway, it was kind of an emotional experience, and my band-mates commented that the solo was very good, perhaps my best solo ever. One asked me how I had approached the solo, what it was I had done. I didn’t have a clue! I asked them if they had ever, if they could remember hearing a song that made them cry. Not a vocal whose words might have that effect. But music, instrumental music. To a man they said no. And kind of looked at me as if I was crazy. I could only feel sorry for them (and move on). North Indian in studio Daniel M. Neuman. The Life of Music in North India. Chicago and London: U. of Chicago Press 1990. p. 61: Some musicians claim to have had religious experiences through their music, but these all have the characteristic of happenstance. Such experiences can also occur in seemingly unlikely context: One day I was playing in Studio One [at All India Radio] with no one around. I felt myself crying, tears flowing down my face. I did not know why; but all of a sudden I realized this was something Divine. I said “O God, this is the time you have done something for me. You have given me the power to create this music.” p 62: Wahid Khan insisted that he could sing and that if his father, who was also his ustad, would pray for him, he would surely be successful. He climbed onto the dais and faced the direction of Nizamuddin Auliya’s tomb . . . and started with an alap (introductory movement), which he continued for forty-five minutes. After that he gained control of his voice and started the khayal in rag Gujari Todi called “Meri maiya par karo, Ustad Nizamuddin Auliya” (“Let my boat cross, Ustad Nizamuddin Auliya”). After that his music was so inspiring that “ninety-nine percent of the audience was moved to tears. Everyone was equally affected, irrespective of their taste and attitude towards music.” - 30 - William Harvey From: “William Harvey” williamrharvey@hotmail.com Subject: Playing for the Fighting 69th Yesterday I had probably the most incredible and moving experience of my life. Juilliard organized a quartet to go play at the Armory. The Armory is a huge military building where families of people missing from Tuesday’s disaster go to wait for news of their loved ones. Entering the building was very difficult emotionally, because the entire building (the size of a city block) was covered with missing posters. Thousands of posters, spread out up to eight feet above the ground, each featuring a different, smiling, face. I made my way into the huge central room and found my Juilliard buddies. For two hours we sightread quartets (with only three people!), and I don’t think I will soon forget the grief counselor from the Connecticut State Police who listened the entire time, or the woman who listened only to “Memory” from Cats, crying the whole time. At 7, the other two players had to leave; they had been playing at the Armory since 1 and simply couldn’t play any more. I volunteered to stay and play solo, since I had just got there. I soon realized that the evening had just begun for me: a man in fatigues who introduced himself as Sergeant Major asked me if I’d mind playing for his soldiers as they came back from digging through the rubble at Ground Zero. Masseuses had volunteered to give his men massages, he said, and he didn’t think anything would be more soothing than getting a massage and listening to violin music at the same time. So at 9:00 p.m., I headed up to the second floor as the first men were arriving. From then until 11:30, I played everything I could do for memory: Bach B Minor Partita, Tchaik. Concerto, Dvorak Concerto, Paganini Caprices 1 and 17, Vivaldi Winter and Spring, Theme from Schindler’s List, Tchaik. Melodie, Meditation from Thais, Amazing Grace, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Turkey in the Straw, Bile them Cabbages Down. Never have I played for a more grateful audience. Somehow it didn’t matter that by the end, my intonation was shot and I had no bow control. I would have lost any competition I was playing in, but it didn’t matter. The men would come up the stairs in full gear, remove their helmets, look at me, and smile. At 11:20, I was introduced to Col. Slack, head of the division. After thanking me, he said to his friends, “Boy, today was the toughest day yet. I made the mistake of going back into the pit, and I’ll never do that again.” Eager to hear a first-hand account, I asked, “What did you see?” He stopped, swallowed hard, a“d said, "What you”d expect to see.” The Colonel stood there as I played a lengthy rendition of Amazing Grace which he claimed was the best he’d ever heard. By this time it was 11:30, and I didn’t think I could play anymore. I asked Sergeant Major if it would be appropriate if I played the National Anthem. He shouted above the chaos of the milling soldiers to call them to attention, and I played the National Anthem as the 300 men of the 69th Division saluted an invisible flag. After shaking a few hands and packing up, I was prepared to leave when one of the privates accosted me and told me the Colonel wanted to see me again. He took me down to the War Room, but we couldn’t find the Colonel, so he gave me a tour of the War Room. It turns out that the division I played for is the Famous Fighting Sixty-Ninth, the most decorated division in the U.S. Army. He pointed out a letter from Abraham Lincoln offering his condolences after the Battle of Antietam...the 69th suffered the most casualties of any division at that historic battle. Finally, we located the Colonel. After thanking me again, he presented me with the coin of the regiment. - 31 - “We only give these to someone who’s done something special for the 69th,” he informed me. He called over the division’s historian to tell me the significance of all the symbols on the coin. As I rode the taxi back to Juilliard...free, of course, since taxi service is free in New York right now...I was numb. Not only was this evening the proudest I’ve ever felt to be an American, it was my most meaningful as a musician and a person as well. At Juilliard, kids are hypercritical of each other and very competitive. The teachers expect, and in most cases get, technical perfection. But this wasn’t about that. The soldiers didn’t care that I had so many memory slips I lost count. They didn’t care that when I forgot how the second movement of the Tchaik. went, I had to come up with my own insipid improvisation until I somehow (and I still don’t know how) got to a cadence. I’ve never seen a more appreciative audience, and I’ve never understood so fully what it means to communicate music to other people. And how did it change me as a person? Let’s just say that, next time I want to get into a petty argument about whether Richter or Horowitz was better, I’ll remember that when I asked the Colonel to describe the pit formed by the tumbling of the Towers, he couldn’t. Words only go so far, and even music can only go a little further from there. Your friend, William Harvey Martin Luther Forward to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae, a collection of chorale motets published in 1538, as follows: I, Doctor Martin Luther, wish all lovers of the unshackled art of music grace and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ! I truly desire that all Christians would love and regard as worthy the lovely gift of music, which is a precious, worthy, and costly treasure given to mankind by God. The riches of music are so excellent and so precious that words fail me whenever I attempt to discuss and describe them.... In summa, next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts, and spirits... Our dear fathers and prophets did not desire without reason that music be always used in the churches. Hence, we have so many songs and psalms. This precious gift has been given to man alone that he might thereby remind himself that God has created man for the express purpose of praising and extolling God. However, when man’s natural musical ability is whetted and polished to the extent that it becomes an art, then do we note with great surprise the great and perfect wisdom of God in music, which is, after all, His product and His gift; we marvel when we hear music in which one voice sings a simple melody, while three, four, or five other voices play and trip lustily around the voice that sings its simple melody and adorn this simple melody wonderfully with artistic musical effects, thus reminding us of a heavenly dance, where all meet in a spirit of friendliness, caress and embrace. A person who gives this some thought and yet does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs. and - 32 - .... if one sings diligently with skill and application, then music can make man good and at peace with himself and his fellows by providing him a view of beauty. Music drives away the devil and makes people happy; it induces one to forget all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and other vices, quia pacis tempore regnat musica (for music reigns in times of peace). Penn Gillette in the Groove Close to Genius Penn – 7/20/03 http://www.pennandteller.com/03/coolstuff/penniphile/roadpennclosetogenius.html Note: You’ll have to access this through the Wayback Machine as it is no longer live on the web. This link will take you there: https://web.archive.org/web/20031204140411/http://www.pennandteller.com/03/coolstuff/pen niphile/roadpennclosetogenius.html In the pre-show, during “I Thought About You,” Jonesy played the best solo I’ve ever heard. Not just from him. The best solo I’ve ever heard. On any instrument, in any style of music. Man. It was amazing. My heart was pounding. I was playing bass during his solo. As I get better on the bass and Jonesy trusts my time and my intonation, and my ability to follow, he lets himself notch it up a bit. The less he has to baby-sit me through a song, the more he can take off. Last night, I was playing well enough, that Jonesy didn’t have to worry about me too much and he just went. It was so amazing. And I was so close to it. It was hard to keep playing the bass, not because it was hard to follow where he was or the time, it was just so good that my heart was racing, and I wanted to hear every note and remember it forever. But, I kept laying down the four. There was no temptation for me to do anything. I didn’t make any interesting note choices, I didn’t try to follow, I just laid down four and went for the ride. His solo was physical, emotional and intellectual. Now, you have to remember, that I’m used to hearing the best piano player in the world 6 nights a week and I have the best seat in the house. So, the bar is very high. Very high. Every night the music just fills me and means the world to me, so I’m ready for great. I’m ready for the best I’ve ever heard. But, I wasn’t ready for this. He was all over the keyboard. He was just slamming up high. It had the emotion of Jerry Lee and those pure chops. Chops so amazing, that you can forget about them. There are times when you can just imagine that he bangs his hands wherever they happen to fall and they just happen to fall perfectly. He’s so good; it can seem like a miracle instead of skill. Every time his hands came down, it was like he was winning the lottery. How could it be that perfect at that speed? Skill, emotion, and intellect. I’m not sure I could have understood what he was doing as well if I hadn’t been playing. I knew where the harmony was and where we were in the tune. I knew where he was going. I had the structure under my fingers, so I could really get a hold of all those levels. It was beautiful. Just beautiful. I thought I was going to cry. When someone finishes a solo, etiquette says that if it’s good, you’re supposed to say “yeah,” I yelled “jesus christ.” Even as I type this and remember it, my heart is pounding. This is what art is. This is why we do this. To be able to slam that many ideas that quickly into the air. It was all in real time, it wasn’t recorded, it was just a perfect moment. Now, I’m sure Jonesy hits this level all the time. What made this special, was also that I was ready for it. I knew enough to understand. It wasn’t that - 33 - Jonesy hit some level he rarely hits, he always hits this level and I’m sure he’s played better, but I was ready to hear it. I was ready to understand it. It was amazing. Man, this is what life is about. He finished and nodded to me to play a solo.’I guess for the structure of this, I should talk about how inadequate I felt and how I stumbled through. But, I didn’t. I felt great. I’m not good, but that didn’t matter – I had felt what music could do, and that made it fun to just try. It made it fun to just try to say a little something after seeing how ideas could flow in this form. It was great. I tried to talk about it after the pre-show, but, you know, it’s not something you talk about. It’s something you hear. It’s music. All the work I’ve done on bass was worth it, just to feel what I felt from that solo. Penn Paul McCartney Alex Bilmes, Paul McCartney Opens Up About Lennon, Yoko, and More, Esquire Magazine, Julyodada 6, 2015 @ 11:42 AM http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a36194/paul-mccartney-interview/ ESQ: Many of your songs are autobiographical. One of the reasons they resonate is people know what they’re about: ‘Let it Be’, about your mum; ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, about Linda. Are you thinking about those people when you play those songs? Isn’t it painful? PM: No, not always. I’m really doing them just because they’re songs. I mean, when I do ‘Let it Be’ I’m not thinking about my mum. If there’s one thing I know it’s that everyone in that audience is thinking something different. And that’s 50,000 different thoughts, depending on the capacity of the hall. Obviously, when I do ‘Here Today’ as I do, that is very personal. That is me talking to John. But as you sing them you review them. So I go, [sings] “What about the night we cried?” And I’m thinking, “Oh, yeah: Key West”. We were all drunk. We’d delayed Jacksonville because of a hurricane. We got parked in Key West and we stayed up all night and we got drunk – “Let me tell you, man, you’re fucking great” – so I know that’s what I’m talking about. I know the night. I do think of that. ESQ: So you don’t find yourself moved, in the way the crowd is, by the emotional content of the songs? PM: Not all the time. You wouldn’t be able to sing. You’d just be crying. But yeah, there are moments. I think it was in South America. There was a very tall, statuesque man with a beard, very good-looking man. And he had his arm round what was apparently his daughter. Might not have been! No, it was, it was clearly his daughter. I’m singing ‘Let it Be’ and I look out there and I see him standing and she’s looking up at him and he glances down at her and they share a moment, and I’m like, “Whoa!” [He shivers.] It really hit me. It’s hard to sing through that. You see quite a bit of that. If I ever spot anyone crying during ‘Here Today’, that can set me off. I mean, on one level it’s only a song and on another it’s a very emotional thing for me. And when I see some girl totally reduced to tears and looking at me singing it catches me by surprise. This really means something to her. I’m not just a singer. I'm doing something more here. - 34 - Paul Simon Jim Dwyer, Could This Be the End of Paul Simon’s Rhymin’? The New York Times, June 28, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/nyregion/paul-simon-retirement-stranger-tostranger.html The successes mystify him, he said: “All of a sudden you’re there, and you’re surprised. This happened to me at times where some line comes out, where I’m the audience and it’s real, and I have to stop, because I’m crying. I didn’t know I was going to say that, didn’t know that I felt that, didn’t know that was really true. I have to stop and catch my breath.” He paused, then added, “It doesn’t happen too often.” With that gift came popularity, a bewildering force in anyone’s life, he said. Yacub Addy Interview by Josephine Reed for the National Endowment for the Arts, 2010. Odadaa! is Yacub Addy’s ensemble. Amina Addy is Yacub’s wife. https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/yacub-addy NEA: Yacub, what was that first performance in Congo Square like? Addy: It’s hard to talk about. Even when I arrived at the airport in New Orleans, I got shivers, and I made prayers for all those who had died in the storm. When I arrived at the park the day of the premiere, I was thinking about all the slaves and free people who had played there so many years ago and passed away. And I thought about all those who had died in the recent storm. I walked over to the statue of Louis Armstrong with a couple of the guys in Odadaa!. We made prayers there. Congo Square was a center for African religion, as well as music and dance, so I asked the jinn to let us do our concert there that day. It was a very hot day, but I was chilly. I asked the guys if they heard something. They said they didn’t hear anything. But I heard something like whispers. I went to our trailer dressing room. I didn’t feel like myself and I was very cold. Before I went on the stage, I went back to the statue by myself and prayed again. When I came on the stage, the voices became louder, telling me to drum. When I started drumming, they went away. The crowd was so responsive. The music was still developing, but the spirit of all the artists was so strong that day. It is love that made Congo Square work. If Wynton and I did not love each other, the music would never have worked. Amina Addy: Later, on tour in North Carolina, Yacub was overcome with feelings on stage during the first half. It started during “Timin Timin”. Tears were streaming down his face and he was playing like he never played before. Only Wynton, Imani, our vocalist, and I, saw what was happening. Imani and I walked him to his dressing room for intermission. I helped him change his outfit for the second half and gradually he came back to us. Many artists have had experiences like that. - 35 - Hilary Hahn on practice as daydreaming, and on goose-bumps in live performance I’ve transcribed some remarks from a conversation between Hilary Hahn, virtuoso violinist, and Brett Yang and Eddy Chen, who podcast as TwoSet Violin. This podcast was posted on December 22, 2018. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/oIJPIgfKvaI. Starting at roughly 55:54: Hilary: I daydream a lot when I practice. I don’t practice full volume all the time. I don’t practice like I’m performing. I’m daydreaming about the music. I’m playing it but I’m thinking what could I do? Can I do more of this here, or could I do more of that there? I just kind of leave my mind blank to see if something suddenly occurs to me that I wanna’ then practice, expound up on in the practice session. [...] I don’t do visualizations, I guess. I don’t know. I’ll be practicing and I’ll think...Well, I kind of want to... Brett: You talk about tinkering with practice. Hilary: Yeah. Brett: How does that work? Because it’s – I mean – Eddy: I think a lot of people watching this would love Eddy & Brett: to know how to Eddy: Even help their own practice improve in efficiency, right? Brett: What goes on in the mind of Hilary Hahn? There’s a bit of chat back and forth in which they agree that Hilary will give a demonstration a bit later (at 1:22:22). She makes it clear she’s not talking about “spacing out,” that she’s “not giving them permission to not focus” (Eddie’s words). Hilary: I’m not daydreaming about other things. I’m daydreaming about what the music could be. Brett and Eddie with questions: Do you hear it? Do you see like characters playing a story? Do you see yourself doing it? Do you see colors? Do you feel something? Smell? Taste? Hilary: Let’s see. So, I’m trying to think of a parallel in another topic because it’s really hard to describe. It’s like if you just have a blank piece of paper and you have a pen and you draw a line. What else can you do with that line? Are you going to draw another line off of that line? Are you then gonna do like a circle? It’s kind of doodling? It’s mental doodling, with phrasing, with tempo, with everything. I kind of start with a blank slate. I reverse the assumptions that I have. I just neutralize everything and then I’m...Kind of letting my mind wander. I’m thinking - 36 - about what is going on with the orchestra. [Remember: she’s talking about personal practice here, not rehearsal much less actual performance.] Waiting for something to occur to me. I think people don’t ever think that happens in practice. For a lot of people, I think practice is about being more accurate, improving your playing, being more expressive, being more this or that. But for me, yes, there’s that, but... Those are the tools to get to the point where you can let your mind wander and get ideas. Or it’s like having a bunch of Legos. What are you going to build with those Legos? You put one Lego on top of another and it kind of looks like a house. But then you realize, oh, I have these other Legos. Am I gonna build more in this house? Or am I gonna go off in that direction? I’ll think about basic things like do I want a crescendo when it goes up or a decrescendo when it goes up? I’m always trying to trigger in mind into new phrasing ideas, so I don’t get stuck and so that when I’m working with other people, I don’t have a lot of rehearsal time and I need to present a unified concert. So, when I’m working with other people, how can I play it in a way that’s authentic to me, but really coincides with what they’re doing and brings out a better version of the music than we could arrive at ourselves separately. Just a few seconds later after a question from Brett she’s switched from questions of aesthetic interpretation to matters of bottom-level physical technique. That is to say, these may seem to be very different worlds – the highest levels of almost “spiritual” artistry and the brute business of how to hold and manipulate your instrument – but to the skilled performer, one is but the obverse of the other: I change my technique all the time too. I tinker with the angle of my thumb, the angle of my hand and I notice something’s getting explicably tired. So I’m playing and thinking, why is that – why is that tired? [...] Why is this...Is it how I’m...It’s like ... What is it? I’m just asking questions. [...] Why is this happening? Where is this going? What’s that about? Eddy goes on to remark that after he left university things got better because he began to question the traditional way he was taught. And then he began to “play around with it.” But, “how much do you think one should balance between just self-experimentation and that creativity versus have a strong kind of teacher or a guide?” And at this point (1:01:59) I’m going to leave off transcribing. You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to listen to the rest. Hilary (1:02:23): “I know it’s good when I get goose-bumps. [...] Or you feel like the audience was just 100% silent for a second and that second felt like forever. It’s just wow something magical just happened.” Let that be the last word. But, I assure you, there’s some really interesting chat about actual performance from all three of them. Audience interaction makes all the difference in the world. Denis DiBlasio in the Zone – “I don’t know if it’s like a drug induced kind of thing” This is taken from a video interview with Denis DiBlasio that is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LQL5UMLNZ90. - 37 - About DiBlasio: Baritone saxophonist, flautist, educator, composer, arranger, Executive Director of The Maynard Ferguson Institute of Jazz and head of Jazz and Composition programs at Rowan University, DiBlasio is an international clinician/performer. Keeping things simple, honest, and positive keeps his schedule extremely busy booking dates sometimes three years in advance. Relevance, attainability and fun make up the foundation of his friendly approach. This long interview with Brett Primack (‘Jazz Video Guy’) covers DiBlasio’s years with Maynard Ferguson and his three decades as a jazz educator. Starting at roughly 1:07:50 DiBlasio talks about playing “in the zone”: I know right away where it is. I don’t need to, I know how it feels and when you play and you can nail it and the whole band’s working like a unit, it’s that weightless kind of, no I don’t know if it’s like a drug induced kind of thing. But when you hit the zone, you can almost feel what everyone’s doing. You know what they’re doing; you’re all thinking as one organism. And when you hit it, you hit it and you’re doing things as a group and yourself that you’ve never done. Your ego is out of your playing and you're not fighting with the horn; you're prepared musically and you’re not trying to do anything; you’re letting it happen and you’re playing with the right guys, all things being equal. And when you hit those zones, which don’t always happen. In fact most of the time they don’t. But this is why people like to play with certain people. And when you listen to like A Love Supreme and like that quartet with John [Coltrane] and McCoy [Tyner] and Jimmy [Garrison] and Elvin [drums] you know you just kind of hear this place that they get this is just, it’s like zone and sometimes you hit it and you don’t know why. And you’re in it and really it’s weightless. You don’t feel weight, you don’t feel the horn, you don’t even know where you’re at. And it’s all just working together and then you kind of land and come back. And when that happens, like I, I kind of cherish that feeling when it happens. And you could do it when you’re practice, you can do it with other people. But when you hit this zone, for me it’s like man, that really felt great, and then most of the time like you don’t hit it, or whatever like that “Salt Peanuts” thing [which we heard earlier in the interview], if you can’t hear well, you’re not going to be in the zone. You’re going to be working to make sure it doesn’t fall apart. Or if it’s too loud or it’s too soft or whatever, you’re holding it together. That’s a different head, and when I listen back to that recording [“Salt Peanuts”] I think I wish I would have heard better, I wouldn’t have sat on one note for half a minute you know.... But when you do hit the zone, I’m more about that, like I, and you know, you can’t try and hit it. You have to relax your way into it. It’s a real, I don’t know if it’s a Zen thing or whatever it is, but you can hit and man when you hit it, it’s like whooo! this is, I don’t even know what time it is. Primack goes on to note that he sometimes slips into the zone when he’s editing video and that, as a long-time listener, he can always tell when the musicians are in the zone. - 38 - Mulgrew Miller: Why I play jazz This is taken from a statement that Miller https://youtu.be/8W_EYUZUaUk. From the beginning: made on a YouTube video: Playing this music affords us an experience that I think many other people don’t get in other areas of functioning in life and that is playing this music sort of compels us to be in the moment. And we’re not always there most of us but when we get there, when we’re on the bandstand and that something happens when we know that we have performed in a way that we don’t usually perform, you know, that happens on occasion. Where we realize we weren’t even there; it wasn’t really about us. You know we were being a channel for creativity to express itself. And that’s such a profound experience you know that when it happens, we’re driven to try to find that experience again. And I dare say that’s what keeps us coming to the bandstand every night because we’re looking for that high. You know, that experience that we’ve experienced a few or many times somewhere along the way that if we can get in that zone, so to speak, and that’s a rare experience. We’re slaves to that experience and the search for it. The first time Will Smith got in the zone with Jazzy Jeff A friend loaned me a copy of Will Smith’s autobiography, Will (2021). He talks about the first time he jammed with Jazzy Jeff, his DJ partner (82-83): There are rare moments as an artist that you cannot quantify or measure. As much as you try, you can barely reproduce them and it’s near impossible to describe them. But every artist knows what I’m talking about–those moments of divine inspiration where creativity flows out of you so brilliantly and effortlessly that somehow you are than you have ever been before. That night with Jeff was the first time I ever tasted it, the place that athletes call “the zone.” It felt like we already existed as a group and we just had to catch up to ourselves–natural, comfortable, home. Jeff could sense my rhyme style. He always knew when my jokes were coming, when to drop the track out so people could clearly hear the punch line, and I could tell by which hand he was using what type of scratch was coming. He preferred different scratches with his left hand than with his right. Sensing this, I could draw the audience’s attention to which scratch was coming by which hand he was transitioning to. He was choosing the tracks and adjusting the tempos based on what he felt best accentuated the narrative structure and the flow of my rhymes. And just as the music crescendoed, I’d throw down a dagger of a line and Jeff would drop the beat into the funkiest, hottest, party-rocking shit these Philly kids had ever seen in their lives. Earlier he had talked about being in church when he was younger and the visiting pastor, Reverent Ronald West, showed up (p. 35): Reverend West led the choir. He always started off seated, playing the piano with this left hand, directing the choir with his right, calmly leaning into some slow, Mahalia Jackson–style ballad to warm up the elders. This was just the calm before the storm. - 39 - Slowly, he would transform, allowing the music to carry him into a trance. Tears would fill his eyes, sweat building on his brow, as he rummaged for his hanky to clear the fog from his glasses. The drums, the bass, the voices, all rising at his command, as if imploring the Holy Spirit to show itself. And then, like clockwork, an ecstatic crescendo, and...BOOM! The Holy Ghost fills the room. Reverend West explodes from his seat, kicking over the stool, both hands possessed, banging in praise on the piano. Then, with a guttural roar, he blazes across the stage to the three-tiered electric organ, demanding that it do what God intended it to do, swirling massive orchestral Baptist chords, all the while sweat flying; the congregation erupting, singing, dancing; old women passing out in the aisles, weeping; Reverend West pointing, directing, never once losing control of the choir and the band...until his body would collapse in surrender and gratitude for the merciful bliss of God’s love. As the music settled, Gigi [Smith’s grandmother] returned to her seat, dabbling tears from her eyes, and my little heart pounding–not even totally what that sweet vibration was inside my body–and all I could think was I wanna do THAT. I want to make people feel like THAT. Bill Frisell in the moment Rod Brakes, Jazz Guru Bill Frisell’s Top Ten Tips For Guitarists, Guitar Player, June 8, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2ymxkyv4. If you have a really great night, like you’re all high off the gig, you can’t think, That was so great – let’s do that again at the next gig. The reason it was great is because you were all in the moment and you were responding to whatever was going on around you. You just have to be as present as you can at all times. It’s the most amazing thing when the whole band is in the moment. It’s like you’re not thinking. Beethoven moves listeners to tears From O. G. Sonneck, ed. Beethoven: Impressions by his Contemporaries. Dover Publications, Inc. New York. Copyright © 1926, 1954 by G. Schirmer, Inc. Carl Czerny was Beethoven’s student, teacher of Liszt, and a composer. He reports: About the year 1800, when Beethoven had composed his Op. 28, he said to his intimate friend Krumpholz: “I am not very well satisfied with the work I have thus far done. From this day on I shall take a new way.” Shortly after this appeared his three sonatas, Op. 31, in which one may see that he had partially carried out his resolve. His improvisation was brilliant and astonishing in the extreme; and no matter in what company he might be, he knew how to make such an impression on every - 40 - listener that frequently there was not a single dry eye, while many broke out into loud sobs, for there was a certain magic in his expression, aside from the beauty and originality of his ideas and his genial way of presenting them. When he had concluded an improvisation of this kind, he was capable of breaking out into boisterous laughter and of mocking his listeners for yielding to the emotion he had called forth in them. He would even say to them: “You are fools!” At times he felt himself insulted by such manifestations of sympathy. “Who can continue to live among such spoiled children?” he would cry, and for that reason alone (so he told me), he declined to accept the invitation sent him by the King of Prussia after an improvisation of this kind. Maya Deren is ridden by a god (Erzulie) Shortly after the end of World War II a young Russian emigrant journeyed from her new land, the United States, to the Caribbean country of Haiti where should would become a participant observer in the religious rituals of Voudoun. Maya Deren documented these rituals on film and sound recording and in a book, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. As a participant in these rituals, she knew what it was like to become possessed, to be ridden by the god as the horse by a rider–the metaphor used by the practitioners themselves. She describes the experience thus: It is the terror which has the greater force, and with a supreme effort I wrench the leg loose--I must keep moving! must keep moving!--and pick up the dancing rhythm of the drums as something to grasp at, something to keep my feet from resting upon the dangerous earth. No sooner do I settle into the succor of this support than my sense of self doubles again, as in a mirror, separates to both sides of an invisible threshold, except that now the vision of the one who watches flickers, the lids flutter, the gaps between moments of sight growing greater, wider. I see the dance one here, and next in a different place, facing another direction, and whatever lay between these moments is lost, utterly lost. I feel that the gaps will spread and widen and that I will, myself, be altogether lost in that dead space and that dead time. With a great blow the drum unites us once more upon the point of the left leg. The white darkness starts to shoot up; I wrench my foot free but the effort catapults me across what seems a vast, vast distance, and I come to rest upon a firmness of arms and bodies which would hold me up. But these have voices--great, insistent, singing voices--whose sound would smother me. With every muscle I pull loose and again plunge across a vast space and once more am no sooner poised in balance than my leg roots. So it goes: the leg fixed, then wrenched loose, the long fall across space, the rooting of the leg again--for how long, how many times I cannot know. My skull is a drum; each great beat drives that leg, like the point of a stake, into the ground. The singing is at my very ear, inside me head. this sound will drown me! “Why don’t they stop! Why don’t they stop!” I cannot wrench the leg free. I am caught in this cylinder, this well of sound. There is nothing anywhere except this. There is no way out. The white darkness moves up the veins of my leg like a swift tide rising, rising; is a great force which I cannot sustain or contain, which, surely, will burst my skin. It is too much, too bright, too white for me; this is its darkness. “Mercy!” I scream within me. I hear it echoed by the voices, shrill and unearthly: “Erzulie!” The bright darkness floods up through my body, reaches my head, engulfs me. I am sucked down and exploded upward at once. That is all. [Divine Horseman, pp. 259-260] Note that, while Deren danced, she did not play a musical instrument nor did she sing. Those tasks belonged to others. The participants in ritual have different roles to perform. Being host to - 41 - a deity–in this case, Erzuli–is only one of these roles, albeit the one that commands the attention of all the other participants. To paraphrase an African saying popularized by Hillary Clinton, it takes a village to make a god. Masaaki Suzuki conducts Tyler Cowen interviewed conductor, harpsichordist, and organist Masaaki Susuki on October 18, 2023, https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/masaaki-suzuki/. Toward the end, Suzuki makes some remarks about conducting: COWEN: When you’re conducting and recording, what is it you’re thinking about? Do you have to concentrate completely on the music? Or does your mind wander at all? How is that for you? SUZUKI: No, not at all. Basically, I can’t think of anything other than music. COWEN: Than what has happened. SUZUKI: Yes, that happens, or in that bar. I can’t even think of the next bar. I always concentrate on what’s coming next, something like that. Also, the purpose or aim of that part of the music, what kind of atmosphere must be realized, and so on. That is the most important thing. COWEN: You’re never distracted by physical troubles like “I’m tired of standing” or anything? SUZUKI: No. Actually, no distraction, only for rehearsals. When I start rehearsal, sometimes I feel, “Aargh, today, I’m very tired.” But during the rehearsal, I always freshen up, so that’s no problem anymore because of the music. I can get energy from that. - 42 -