My new CD for Origin Arts, street date late 2008
"Songs for a New Century" is what I'm hearing and seeing now, all the time, under the surface of everything I do or say or feel, every day. It's the undercurrent of my life. I feel that it's my best work so far in terms of clarity, focus, and depth of feeling. But then, I can never say that for sure, as I'm too close to it. I remember something that Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington said when asked which of his albums was his personal favorite: "The next one!"
Perhaps it's my favorite because of its optimistic tone. After September 11, 2001, the universal key of life for me and many others, at least those in tune with the laws of nature and physics, was D minor. I have a form of synesthesia, the not-uncommon ability to see colors when one hears sounds. The one color I saw that day was orange - exactly matching our Homeland Security's usual threat level, i.e. "code orange" - or yellow. F major is brown to me, and E minor has always looked red. A minor is blue-green, and C is a cream color. I've never been sure if others with synesthesia see these same colors but I suspect similarities.
There is no doubt that, existentially at least, 9-11 was an orange, D minor event. It looked that way to me. It sounded that way to me. Its place in my heart is coded in that color. I had never before thought that orange could be a color of unimaginable sadness and grief. But it stayed that way for me until quite recently. I suppose I was grieving, and not just for the victims and heroes of 9-11. I was grieving for America, for the very idea of America.
Pianistically, I've always gravitated to "open keys" with brilliant colors. If I were a painter, I would be considered a "colorist". I hear in primaries. B-flat or E-flat, while the keys of choice for many "jazz musicians", have never struck a chord in me. This is perhaps unusual because some of my main influences in American Classical Music (Jazz) have been saxophonists and trumpeters. Particularly John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
To be sure, there are pieces that I've written that belong in these keys, and so I have always let the music choose it's own key, just as I let the melody-line choose its own motion. Also, my art always cycles throughout every key and every color. But "my" keys are E, A, D, G, F, C, and their minor equivalents. E-flat minor does certainly sing, though, and D-flat major remains positively mellifluous to me.
These observations are generalizations, but I mention them here because they comprise the primary colors and keys of "Songs for a New Century".
And now, some years after "The Day the World Changed", I hear and sense and see and smell happiness and hope again. I am so very hopeful that our country becomes the dream it CAN be rather than the nightmare that still lurks in the shadows. This Music is my own very small but personally significant contribution to the re-building and re-fortification of that new America that most of us long for.
The "painting" still contains Orange, but not nearly as much. Now, G major is here! To me it is the color of the sky when it is sunny and cloudless. And earth-brown F major has returned, too, with patches of green, like grasses growing in a once-barren landscape.
G major is so much with me, which is a very good sign, and finds its joyous expression in two personal favorites rendered here: Fantasia and If Only. They are very new right now, and will remain in a state of becoming as long as I play them. The new that I'm hearing is so vastly different from the old, and the shift in thinking so profound, that it seemed like alien territory to me for awhile. But in many ways, it's full circle, back to my childhood, my years at Peabody Conservatory, and my youthful search for the creative center of my existence. This has been my life of late. It's the return to form in it's truest sense. It's still improvised, extemporized, and spontaneous, while relying almost entirely on emotional power, visceral content, and heartfelt longing. I can not explain the feeling I have while it's happening to me. It is like "automatic playing". It has to do with grace and intent and genuine amazement. I am amazed it is happening. I am hypnotized.
Take If Only for an example. Literally simple beyond belief, it could be played by any proficient third-year piano student. But the density, the gravity, the fulcrum of the piece is not it's melody or its chords: they're wonderful but not the center. The center is its raw emotion. Emotion of such intensity can only be expressed on an instrument that responds to the slightest variations and the smallest permutations of touch. Since touch and tone production have become so central to my playing, I should share a few discoveries that might contribute to someone's similar quests.
It has been noticed (and remarked upon, not always favorably) that I sit very low - a mere 16 inches off of the ground at last measurement, with a strong inclination to go even lower if my chair would only allow it - because I do not wish to push the keys down.
I neither wish to push the keys down or "strike" the keys. I want instead to pull the keys down, thus imparting an almost imperceptible weight - or gravity - to the sound each key can produce.
Likewise, I want to use my fingers for the strength or softness, the loudness or almost inaudible quietness, of each note. I NEVER use my upper arms and shoulders for "power" anymore. Older videos of me playing exasperate me. They are studies in awkwardness to me. The fingers have to lift higher to attain maximum expressivity, and this can't be easily done by sitting high up. When I sit on a piano bench these days I can not believe that I ever made any real music way up there!
And since I never read music (I do write it, very, very fast) because I believe that one can not have their ears and eyes fully focused and "on" at one time, I always remove the piano's music stand. I can't understand how anyone can possibly think that they might play to their optimum potential while reading a blueprint or a roadmap or a novel. If they don't know the music, and are reading it off of a page, how in the world can we be expected to believe in it when we hear it? Obviously the musician playing it can not even remember it, much less play it with total immersion!
Similarly, I remove the fall-board, that piece of wood that your fingers bump into sometimes, the piece of wood that comes down to meet the keys. With the fall-board off, you can play much closer to the fulcrum of the key. Even onto the unfinished wooden part of the key. And, amazingly (but not surprisingly when you think about it) the sounds one can get are inaccessible when the fall-board is left on. I have been accused of disassembling the piano before playing it. The truth is that, for me, those parts are superfluous - even impediments - to playing.
I also "lower the flap" on the hood. At full-stick, the piano looks longer, and that's nice for appearances, but the main reason is that the sound now has another foot-and-a-half to bounce off of, and it is deflected down around the player. I am very careful when I stand up so I don't knock myself out on the overhang.
And all three pedals are fundamental. necessary. Absolutely indispensable. The soft pedal is my friend. Some critics say I over-use it. That's their opinion and they're entitled to it. The middle pedal is for, among other things, those beautiful drones and single notes that ring out and hold while other staccato notes fly by with precision and clarity. The best-kept secret of the piano is the middle pedal. Its absence on some Bosendorfers is unforgivable!
These are not things I worked on or even consciously understood. They were things that just happened. The low chair was inspired first by a fascination with Glenn Gould. I wanted to try that. It worked. But it is different for me: I need a certain kind of back to that chair, and it needs to fit the curvature of my spine so that I can lift both legs out in front of me at times and simply fly, feet-first. There seems no speed-limit in this somewhat ridiculous posture, and I'm going to continue pursuing these unusual-looking activities for as long as they serve me. My present chair is a height-adjustable, swivel, armless office chair with a bit of padding for comfort. 16 inches is its lowest limit and that will be addressed on my next visit to Office Max.
The focusing of powerful feeling through such a stripped-down vehicle is breath-taking to me. I don't care if it sounds or looks like this or that, like so-and-so, like me or not like me. It is right because it allows and encourages my heart to beat in symphony with all of life, and pour forth like a river, unimpeded by fall-boards and high perches.
So here we are. It is NOW, no longer 9-11, and even if it's in D minor (as are three of these entries) it is pure joy and for this I am so grateful.
Intention:
Seeking Beauty and Truth in Music for the healing of people, for the healing of the self. MY self included. This is the intent of my Music now, as it is the intent of my very life. It must be clear and true and without the shackles of a tired and unhealthy past: the "hang", the promoter's greedy whims, the record producer's "brilliant" ideas, the critic's pompous decree, the rule of art by committee, and the general sense that being a Musician is somehow about being popular, accepted, approved of, and lauded by all.
That is no way to live. That is no way to make Art! There is no return in making billions of manic notes spin through the air like so many kernels of popped corn. That's exactly how I feel when I hear that kind of "music". I feel assaulted, I feel as if someone is hitting me with thousands of pieces of flying popcorn. It doesn't hurt, but it isn't pleasant, and it's a waste of time.
And of popcorn.
One lesson I've learned is directly from Star Wars' Yoda: "TRY, and you will not DO. There is no trying. There is only DO and NOT DO." All doing comes from love, and all love comes from a heart filled with peace. Conversely, all trying comes from the drive to compete, impress, and garner love. To get love we will usually always try, and we will usually always fail, because love is in one's heart, and letting it be free to speak and fly and soar is the only way to do anything creative. Setting it free is the wall and the obstacle we have to face. It is enormous. It is daunting. And when that is done, one must live with, and love, the results. It doesn't much matter what anyone critical or jaded or invested in reactionary thought-patterns will say or think.
It matters what a child will think, what a loved one will feel, what a stressed person will take away from it, what a sick person will get from it to help them heal themselves. It matters because we are human and frail and mortal, and that we will all, at the end, be the same ...as if we are not already... The Beatles said it on Abbey Road:
"And, in the end, the love you take
is equal to the love you make."
All of us have been changed by the events of our world, and the events of the past decade have left many of us off-balance, seeking deeper meaning in our life. Love is the answer - we know this - but our material world is not always kind to affairs of the heart. It doesn't matter, it can't matter to the true artist. We make art because it MUST be made. We play because it is our one reliable source of inexhaustible wonder. And we ALL must believe in love as a force, a force as real and as immutable and as universal as gravity or electromagnetism, because it is literally what binds the planet and its peoples together. It may not look like it sometimes, but we really do love each other. Otherwise, we'd be extinct by now!
Here is my Music now, at this very moment, with its strengths and its weaknesses - which I suppose are my strengths and weaknesses. This is a very transparent album, from me, to you. It pleases me most of the time, and I hope it pleases you. It also speaks to me of new ideas and things that need to be done next. It is one more step. I really hope you enjoy it. It IS for you, from the depth of my heart.
It's my way to finally start off this Century
Reviews and Purchase details of “Songs for a New Century” are here: jessicawilliams.com
August 3, 2008
August 1, 2008
Todd Barkan
Life is like a circle sometimes. You think that what’s done is done, and you file it away as a memory. But in some cases those memories come around and become real again, and remind you that life is never predictable or certain.
Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I was in the process of learning more in a few years than most folks learn in a long lifetime. I was privileged, too, to have the very best tutors and teachers on the whole planet! I didn’t know at the time that I was learning so much, and I had no idea that the lessons I was getting would be so valuable and durable and important to my whole life.Life is like that. You’re in the middle of one of the most important periods of your existence, and you’re clueless.
But it’s been almost 30 years, and I know now what was going on.
I’m talking about my years playing piano at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. I got to play with Stan Getz for two whole weeks, in a duo situation. I got to play a whole week with Airto and Flora. I got to play ballads late at night with Dexter Gordon. I got to play melodica in the horn line next to Freddie Hubbard. I got to play opposite Randy Weston and George Cables.
The list of the things I got to do and the people I got to play with is long and quite amazing.
The people I met and the people I learned from in those three years at the Keystone were the people that helped form my music, gave it fire, direction, momentum, and gave me the courage (thank you, Mary Lou Williams) to continue on with my music, against all kinds of adversity.
And, as anyone who ever set foot into the hallowed hall of fame known as the Keystone Korner knows, the whole machine was made to run, and was somehow made to keep running, by a man by the name of Todd Barkan.
Now, thirty years later, I’ll see Todd again soon, as he’s now the musical master of ceremonies of The Lounge at JAZZ AT THE LINCOLN CENTER (Dizzy’s Coca-Cola Club), an unwieldy name if ever there was one, and I’ll be playing there very soon with my trio (my mates are two absolute masters: Ray “The Bulldog” Drummond on bass and Victor Lewis on drums.)
While I was at the Keystone, still relatively young and green, Todd would pass by the piano as I was playing (sometimes opposite monster bands like Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers!) and whisper “you’re gettin’ it. Sounds good.” Or "that's the way it's supposed to sound... you're cookin'".) And I’d forgotten all about those whispers and mutterings.
Todd heard something in me that he didn’t hear in any of the other “local” pianists, who would have given their right foot to do what I was doing, and he gave me three full years to work my demons and multiple weaknesses out on the bandstand. He’d walk by on his way to the back room and smile or show some sign of approval. And, to be honest, there were plenty of times when I received no signal or no approval at all.
This was school. This was the real deal. This is what made people buy my CDs while other pianists were playing twice as fast and working ten times as much.
Todd was always a little mysterious to me, but he let me stay there, in the middle of this musical maelstrom - with Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Kirk Lightsey and the Chicago Arts Ensemble and Pharoah Sanders and Max Roach and Elvin Jones - and sometimes he'd put me up there with the giants. Even when I got out of hand, he was forgiving and patient. He’d introduce me to people I thought I’d never meet (the initial meeting with Freddie Hubbard was particularly warped and incendiary) and he'd invite me into the back room to attend the sacred and secret meetings of the “luminaries and their esteemed colleagues.”
It’s funny to me that it would take me over a quarter of a century to realize that Todd Barkan had practically arranged and paid for my schooling.
He believed in me a long time before I believed in myself.
I’m going to see him again soon, and I’m going to tell him about my revelation. I’m sure he’ll take it in traditional Todd Barkan manner: “yeah. I knew that. Where were you?”
Thanks, Todd, for my education, for paying my student loan, for my inspiration. See you soon.
---
NYC, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sept 9, 10, 11, 2008, 7:30 & 9:30pm only, at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club Coca Cola. 4th Annual Coca Cola Women In Jazz Festival. The Jessica Williams Trio with Ray Drummond & Victor Lewis: The Music of John Coltrane. Reservations on-line or call 212 258 9595. Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York City
Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I was in the process of learning more in a few years than most folks learn in a long lifetime. I was privileged, too, to have the very best tutors and teachers on the whole planet! I didn’t know at the time that I was learning so much, and I had no idea that the lessons I was getting would be so valuable and durable and important to my whole life.Life is like that. You’re in the middle of one of the most important periods of your existence, and you’re clueless.
But it’s been almost 30 years, and I know now what was going on.
I’m talking about my years playing piano at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. I got to play with Stan Getz for two whole weeks, in a duo situation. I got to play a whole week with Airto and Flora. I got to play ballads late at night with Dexter Gordon. I got to play melodica in the horn line next to Freddie Hubbard. I got to play opposite Randy Weston and George Cables.
The list of the things I got to do and the people I got to play with is long and quite amazing.
The people I met and the people I learned from in those three years at the Keystone were the people that helped form my music, gave it fire, direction, momentum, and gave me the courage (thank you, Mary Lou Williams) to continue on with my music, against all kinds of adversity.
And, as anyone who ever set foot into the hallowed hall of fame known as the Keystone Korner knows, the whole machine was made to run, and was somehow made to keep running, by a man by the name of Todd Barkan.
Now, thirty years later, I’ll see Todd again soon, as he’s now the musical master of ceremonies of The Lounge at JAZZ AT THE LINCOLN CENTER (Dizzy’s Coca-Cola Club), an unwieldy name if ever there was one, and I’ll be playing there very soon with my trio (my mates are two absolute masters: Ray “The Bulldog” Drummond on bass and Victor Lewis on drums.)
While I was at the Keystone, still relatively young and green, Todd would pass by the piano as I was playing (sometimes opposite monster bands like Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers!) and whisper “you’re gettin’ it. Sounds good.” Or "that's the way it's supposed to sound... you're cookin'".) And I’d forgotten all about those whispers and mutterings.
Todd heard something in me that he didn’t hear in any of the other “local” pianists, who would have given their right foot to do what I was doing, and he gave me three full years to work my demons and multiple weaknesses out on the bandstand. He’d walk by on his way to the back room and smile or show some sign of approval. And, to be honest, there were plenty of times when I received no signal or no approval at all.
This was school. This was the real deal. This is what made people buy my CDs while other pianists were playing twice as fast and working ten times as much.
Todd was always a little mysterious to me, but he let me stay there, in the middle of this musical maelstrom - with Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Kirk Lightsey and the Chicago Arts Ensemble and Pharoah Sanders and Max Roach and Elvin Jones - and sometimes he'd put me up there with the giants. Even when I got out of hand, he was forgiving and patient. He’d introduce me to people I thought I’d never meet (the initial meeting with Freddie Hubbard was particularly warped and incendiary) and he'd invite me into the back room to attend the sacred and secret meetings of the “luminaries and their esteemed colleagues.”
It’s funny to me that it would take me over a quarter of a century to realize that Todd Barkan had practically arranged and paid for my schooling.
He believed in me a long time before I believed in myself.
I’m going to see him again soon, and I’m going to tell him about my revelation. I’m sure he’ll take it in traditional Todd Barkan manner: “yeah. I knew that. Where were you?”
Thanks, Todd, for my education, for paying my student loan, for my inspiration. See you soon.
---
NYC, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sept 9, 10, 11, 2008, 7:30 & 9:30pm only, at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club Coca Cola. 4th Annual Coca Cola Women In Jazz Festival. The Jessica Williams Trio with Ray Drummond & Victor Lewis: The Music of John Coltrane. Reservations on-line or call 212 258 9595. Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York City
July 31, 2008
Dedication
"I want to be a force for good. I know there are bad forces here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the force which is truly good." - John Coltrane
July 29, 2008
In love with my CD318
I bought my new piano from Classic Pianos in Portland, Oregon. My new piano is a 7'6" Conservatory Concert Grand, refitted with Renner Blue Hammers, and is a 1984 Yamaha, adjusted to my specifications. Notice my chair, cut to spec, 14" off the floor. As for the Yamaha naysayers, let's not forget that Gould himself chose a Yamaha over all other models and makes of pianos to 'replace' his irreplaceable CD318. And the great pianist Chick Corea plays a Yamaha, as does the piano genius Alan Broadbent -
I've had my new piano for about two weeks now, and it has been a very illuminating experience.
First, let me say that it is MY piano, the one I love. I will never sell this one. This one is with me 'til death do us part. It fits me like no other piano has. This is a combination of great craftsmanship, superb advice, sound judgment on my part (as far as knowing what I wanted), and sheer dumb luck. Make no mistake. There are very few great pianos out there in the world. Most of them are in various levels of disrepair, and many of them are beyond help. The majority of pianos are absolute junk. That junk can cost an unsuspecting buyer upwards of $200,000.
America makes bombs now, not pianos. And very few people are pianists. There are many people who claim to play the piano but most are not pianists. The Chinese make pianos. Not very good ones at the moment, but one can be certain that this will change. The Chinese piano-makers are improving constantly. In America, the land where almost every household had a piano, the land in which almost every woman played at least a few tunes on the piano, the land in which the Steinwegs brought piano-making to an art in the early 1900's, pianos are now just so much kindling. The repetition/action of the new Steinways is deplorable. In 1953 they used teflon to supremely ill effect. Now they may as well be using rubber. It feels like that. Rubber action. Almost every piano I have played, with the exception of an occasional Bosendorfer or Fazioli, is virtually unplayable by a discerning pianist. The one, the only exception is the Yamaha. Even their 6-foot grands sound and play well.
Needless to say, my Yamaha seven-foot, six-inch Conservatory Grand from 1984 with Blue Renners is a dream come true.
Strange thing about this instrument... there is not one single mark on the fall board.
The fall board is always subject to little hits and dents from the fingernails as one plays. Fall boards are never clean except if they have been replaced, or if the piano has not been played. Judging from the pristine keyboard, the absolute absence of any mark anywhere on either black or white key, indicates that this piano was hardly ever played. If ever.
There are no wear-marks on the pedals! None at all. I have looked in vain for any sign of usage and wear, and can find none.
Was this the piano that was owned by the "little old man in Oswego" who only played Moonlight Serenade on it once a month? And even then, very very very sloooowwwly?
An instrument can be an assemblage of parts, or it can be alive, a living and breathing animal. That's what I have in my studio. This piano has bouquet. It is filled with possibilities, and not unfulfilled ones, either.
It can sound like a soft symphony. I can make it sound like a guitar. I can make the bass soft and round or hard and square. It can roar like a lion. And there are miles between it's whisper and its roar. It is that infinitely delicate touch. There is so little escapement friction that it will occasionally repeat a note on a bounce-back. No, it is not supposed to do that, but I wouldn't change it for anything. It's idiosyncratic, like mayonnaise with your fried chicken. Don't make me eat fried chicken without a little mayo on the side!
There is an aura about this instrument. And a mystery. Where has it been? How did it get to be this way? Who worked on it and adjusted it to be so sensitive and sonorous?
Only a very astute craftsperson could have done this. This piano is also in tune, and yet I have not yet had it tuned, because it needs to settle for several months. And it's in tune. It came 150 miles to me, by truck, and was bumped and wheeled around and turned sidewise and this way and that way and it's in tune. And it sings, perfectly. You tell me. I've never experienced anything like this.
There is a problem I see arising. There will come a time when someone else will want to sit at my piano, touch my piano, and perhaps play my piano. What will I do then? Risk losing a friend? Of course not. I just won't let anyone play my piano. That way I will NOT lose a friend.
I can't imagine someone else touching this. I know it so well. I knew it after it was here for a day. Like an old friend I hadn't seen for ages.
I've had other pianos. I've had movers drop them. I've even had one person break an entire pedal assembly with a size 13, 300-pound foot. This will not happen to my piano. I have a mover. He better stay alive for a long time. His name is Helge and he is a master. One must be a master mover trained in the art of piano moving to move such temperamental, delicate beauties.
And never will a piano tuner touch this piano. Only a piano expert - a superb technician - will tune and adjust this piano.
I have fallen in love with a piano!
I've had my new piano for about two weeks now, and it has been a very illuminating experience.
First, let me say that it is MY piano, the one I love. I will never sell this one. This one is with me 'til death do us part. It fits me like no other piano has. This is a combination of great craftsmanship, superb advice, sound judgment on my part (as far as knowing what I wanted), and sheer dumb luck. Make no mistake. There are very few great pianos out there in the world. Most of them are in various levels of disrepair, and many of them are beyond help. The majority of pianos are absolute junk. That junk can cost an unsuspecting buyer upwards of $200,000.
America makes bombs now, not pianos. And very few people are pianists. There are many people who claim to play the piano but most are not pianists. The Chinese make pianos. Not very good ones at the moment, but one can be certain that this will change. The Chinese piano-makers are improving constantly. In America, the land where almost every household had a piano, the land in which almost every woman played at least a few tunes on the piano, the land in which the Steinwegs brought piano-making to an art in the early 1900's, pianos are now just so much kindling. The repetition/action of the new Steinways is deplorable. In 1953 they used teflon to supremely ill effect. Now they may as well be using rubber. It feels like that. Rubber action. Almost every piano I have played, with the exception of an occasional Bosendorfer or Fazioli, is virtually unplayable by a discerning pianist. The one, the only exception is the Yamaha. Even their 6-foot grands sound and play well.
Needless to say, my Yamaha seven-foot, six-inch Conservatory Grand from 1984 with Blue Renners is a dream come true.
Strange thing about this instrument... there is not one single mark on the fall board.
The fall board is always subject to little hits and dents from the fingernails as one plays. Fall boards are never clean except if they have been replaced, or if the piano has not been played. Judging from the pristine keyboard, the absolute absence of any mark anywhere on either black or white key, indicates that this piano was hardly ever played. If ever.
There are no wear-marks on the pedals! None at all. I have looked in vain for any sign of usage and wear, and can find none.
Was this the piano that was owned by the "little old man in Oswego" who only played Moonlight Serenade on it once a month? And even then, very very very sloooowwwly?
An instrument can be an assemblage of parts, or it can be alive, a living and breathing animal. That's what I have in my studio. This piano has bouquet. It is filled with possibilities, and not unfulfilled ones, either.
It can sound like a soft symphony. I can make it sound like a guitar. I can make the bass soft and round or hard and square. It can roar like a lion. And there are miles between it's whisper and its roar. It is that infinitely delicate touch. There is so little escapement friction that it will occasionally repeat a note on a bounce-back. No, it is not supposed to do that, but I wouldn't change it for anything. It's idiosyncratic, like mayonnaise with your fried chicken. Don't make me eat fried chicken without a little mayo on the side!
There is an aura about this instrument. And a mystery. Where has it been? How did it get to be this way? Who worked on it and adjusted it to be so sensitive and sonorous?
Only a very astute craftsperson could have done this. This piano is also in tune, and yet I have not yet had it tuned, because it needs to settle for several months. And it's in tune. It came 150 miles to me, by truck, and was bumped and wheeled around and turned sidewise and this way and that way and it's in tune. And it sings, perfectly. You tell me. I've never experienced anything like this.
There is a problem I see arising. There will come a time when someone else will want to sit at my piano, touch my piano, and perhaps play my piano. What will I do then? Risk losing a friend? Of course not. I just won't let anyone play my piano. That way I will NOT lose a friend.
I can't imagine someone else touching this. I know it so well. I knew it after it was here for a day. Like an old friend I hadn't seen for ages.
I've had other pianos. I've had movers drop them. I've even had one person break an entire pedal assembly with a size 13, 300-pound foot. This will not happen to my piano. I have a mover. He better stay alive for a long time. His name is Helge and he is a master. One must be a master mover trained in the art of piano moving to move such temperamental, delicate beauties.
And never will a piano tuner touch this piano. Only a piano expert - a superb technician - will tune and adjust this piano.
I have fallen in love with a piano!
FTL Pianist Catatonia
Faster than light. Fast and furious. Bulls$#@, in other words. That’s what this article was going to be about. But why write it? You already know what I mean if you’ve heard the new wunderkinds. No emotion. No talent. Chops abound. It makes me feel positively catatonic.
Thoughts from 1999
I'm very fortunate to be playing on only very fine instruments now.
On the Fujitsu tour of Japan, I played Steinway 9- footers, and had the option of using a Bosendorfer Imperial King. I stuck to Steinway.
I like a piano with a strong bass, mellow treble, and a high end that doesn't 'scream.'
Baldwins are too slow, although every piano is different and I've encountered a few friendly Baldwins.
Never trust a white piano, or a piano with no middle peddle. The middle peddle constitutes 50 percent of my (new) approach, and I'm always horrified to walk into a hall and see a piano with only two pedals.
I always remove the music stand as I sometimes sporadically reach inside the instrument to strum or pluck or damp strings.
I usually raise the top to full-stick, and, if a piano is less than 7-ft, I'll close the flap before raising the lid. (I joke that it makes the piano 'look bigger', and it does, but it also gives me more sound for where I'm sitting, as the overhang deflects the sound down and around me.)
Since grand pianos always 'open to the right', your right side is the side that audiences will always see.
So this is the side of your face that will break out before a concert. This has no bearing on pianos, but seems to be a universal law, like gravity.
Interviews
Talking about music is like having a meaningful discussion on religion: I'm not sure it's possible.
Art is a different experience for everyone, and no two people hear music in quite the same way.
And another interview fave of mine- 'Where do your ideas come from?'
Actually, most of them come from a place within me that I know very little about.
There might be a specific name for the place in question, like the terminus striata of the medulla oblongata, or Fresno, but I can't say.
Some things are not meant to be understood.
Questions about how much practice- time I put in daily always come up.
I try to explain that music to me is an organic event, a biological activity, a flow of event and nonevent, a melting into the fabric of time and space.
I usually wind up just settling for: 'not enough!'
Truth is, I never really 'practice' (although, listening to Benny Green is enough to scare me into it).
I play at home. I listen all the time, mostly to the 'giants': Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane and Monk and Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins and Miles, Earl Hines and Erroll Garner and Elvin Jones and Paul Chambers ... so alot of what you hear when you hear me play is from what I hear and have heard and absorbed (subconsciously) all of my life.
Their music is the very fabric of space and time, for me.
Nerves
Some musicians have the 'jitters' before a performance. And nervousness during a performance can be painful to the artist and audience alike.
Conversely, a stoic, laissez-faire, disconnected attitude can equally mar a performance.
I've seen musicians play who were so laid-back they were clinically dead.
A few 'butterflies' is a plus, I think. If playing for an audience doesn't excite or enthuse you, you may have lost that spark that grabs people's attention and holds it. And most folks can relate to a little 'settling in' period at the beginning of a concert. They know that, if it were them up there, they would be quaking in their boots.
Nervousness is different than excitement, though, and can get in the way of self-expression.
Several ways I've found to overcome it when it hits me (and, after so many years of performing, it still does, occasionally):
Having a really UP conversation with a friend on the phone or in person just before you go out there to play. It opens up your communication skills, and allows you to carry that 'up' feeling onto the stage. Playing IS communication.
If the audience is particularly uptight (sometimes you get 'nervous nights', where everyone is a little on edge), I usually do or say something to put us all at ease. It may be nothing more than looking at the piano for a second and murmuring, 'let's get her on the road and see how she handles', or removing the music stand in front of the audience, or fussing with the height of the piano bench.
Sometimes I walk out, rub the instrument lovingly, and say 'I'm HOME!' Each concert presents a special opportunity for that instant of relaxation. (Tripping over a microphone cord works too.)
Never drink or take drugs to 'take the edge off'; it doesn't work for long, and the playing suffers.
I also do a chant (Buddhist) before I play, backstage and alone.
When you start to play, and you fall into the right-brain activity, all nerves are gone.
To get to the right-brain place: while playing, with eyes half-closed, look down to the left and up to the right (the optic nerves cross each other) and BREATHE. Soon your body will sway (you won't notice it) and you'll be in the zone. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
Always, always: believe in your own song.
Not Just Notes
I'm occasionally asked where I studied to learn to do what I do; who taught me, what 'tricks' are involved, what secrets enable me, how does the process occur... how does one 'distill magic out of the air?'
The truth is that there are no practice techniques, no miracle drugs, no mantras, no shortcuts to creativity.
I tell them that I've played piano since I was four, that I've played jazz since I was 10, that I've never taken another job doing anything except what I've always known I should be doing in this life: playing music. And maybe that's a part of the answer, if indeed there is one.
It's about Castenada's PATH, Campbell's BLISS; you follow it no matter where it leads, and over many years you learn to control it, channel it, allow it to happen.
You become the bow, the arrow is the gift.
You never fully own it, just as you can never explore all of its depths, because it springs from the infinite possibilities within you.
In this realm, your only ally, your only guide, is intuition.
It is seeing instead of looking, knowing instead of believing, being instead of doing.
It is Coltrane on the saxophone, Magic Johnson on the court, Alice Walker on the printed page; it is the primary intuition of 'right-brained' activity, the birthing of idea into existence.
Perhaps it cannot be taught, but it certainly can be shared, and it is in the sharing that we all experience the best parts of ourselves.
We instinctively intuit our organic truth; when we learn to live it, our planet could be paradise.
Your dreams are your sacred truth.
For those of you who have purchased my many records over the years and attended my concerts, it's probably obvious that I'm very comfortable on the stage (whether alone or with my band), doing what I do and sharing the magic with the audience. Over the last six or seven years, I've often remarked that the stage is my favorite place to be. I feel totally relaxed and at home, and the more people that attend, the better. And I can just sit there, introduce a tune, and then try to come at it from an angle that will 'say something', both to the audience and to me.
I'm not into this music for ego-gratification or competition, and certainly not for the money(!) Jazz is not a huge moneymaker, as I'm sure you know.
I do what I do because I love it and I do it really well and I'm always trying to learn and grow with it.
Jazz music to me is just MUSIC, because I don't feel that it should restrict itself by putting itself in a box.
And music to me is not about being FAST or about having 'CHOPS':
Anyone who has a few of my CDs knows that I can 'burn' with the best of them. But that's kind of like being a gunslinger: there's always someone FASTER than you.
So over the years I tired of being known as 'the fastest' or 'the coolest'. Frankly, I don't have the edge that it takes to stay in that 'competitive fast-lane' and I don't WANT it!
When Miles started playing his 'NEW' thing, some folks still wanted to hear 'Dr Jekyll' or 'Walkin'' at quarter-note=460.
A Miles quote: 'Man, that's heart-attack music.'
Go, Miles.
So music, to me, is a beautiful language, a form of communication and self-expression that doesn't need to impress the critics or scare the audience half-to-death with pyrotechnical displays of daring-do.
While hardly being Methuselah, I AM too old for that sort of thing. I want to have fun while I play, and I only enjoy playing with others whose primary motivation is to have fun and share the love.
I believe in the power of music to heal, and I believe that each true musician has something special to contribute.
On the Fujitsu tour of Japan, I played Steinway 9- footers, and had the option of using a Bosendorfer Imperial King. I stuck to Steinway.
I like a piano with a strong bass, mellow treble, and a high end that doesn't 'scream.'
Baldwins are too slow, although every piano is different and I've encountered a few friendly Baldwins.
Never trust a white piano, or a piano with no middle peddle. The middle peddle constitutes 50 percent of my (new) approach, and I'm always horrified to walk into a hall and see a piano with only two pedals.
I always remove the music stand as I sometimes sporadically reach inside the instrument to strum or pluck or damp strings.
I usually raise the top to full-stick, and, if a piano is less than 7-ft, I'll close the flap before raising the lid. (I joke that it makes the piano 'look bigger', and it does, but it also gives me more sound for where I'm sitting, as the overhang deflects the sound down and around me.)
Since grand pianos always 'open to the right', your right side is the side that audiences will always see.
So this is the side of your face that will break out before a concert. This has no bearing on pianos, but seems to be a universal law, like gravity.
Interviews
Talking about music is like having a meaningful discussion on religion: I'm not sure it's possible.
Art is a different experience for everyone, and no two people hear music in quite the same way.
And another interview fave of mine- 'Where do your ideas come from?'
Actually, most of them come from a place within me that I know very little about.
There might be a specific name for the place in question, like the terminus striata of the medulla oblongata, or Fresno, but I can't say.
Some things are not meant to be understood.
Questions about how much practice- time I put in daily always come up.
I try to explain that music to me is an organic event, a biological activity, a flow of event and nonevent, a melting into the fabric of time and space.
I usually wind up just settling for: 'not enough!'
Truth is, I never really 'practice' (although, listening to Benny Green is enough to scare me into it).
I play at home. I listen all the time, mostly to the 'giants': Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane and Monk and Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins and Miles, Earl Hines and Erroll Garner and Elvin Jones and Paul Chambers ... so alot of what you hear when you hear me play is from what I hear and have heard and absorbed (subconsciously) all of my life.
Their music is the very fabric of space and time, for me.
Nerves
Some musicians have the 'jitters' before a performance. And nervousness during a performance can be painful to the artist and audience alike.
Conversely, a stoic, laissez-faire, disconnected attitude can equally mar a performance.
I've seen musicians play who were so laid-back they were clinically dead.
A few 'butterflies' is a plus, I think. If playing for an audience doesn't excite or enthuse you, you may have lost that spark that grabs people's attention and holds it. And most folks can relate to a little 'settling in' period at the beginning of a concert. They know that, if it were them up there, they would be quaking in their boots.
Nervousness is different than excitement, though, and can get in the way of self-expression.
Several ways I've found to overcome it when it hits me (and, after so many years of performing, it still does, occasionally):
Having a really UP conversation with a friend on the phone or in person just before you go out there to play. It opens up your communication skills, and allows you to carry that 'up' feeling onto the stage. Playing IS communication.
If the audience is particularly uptight (sometimes you get 'nervous nights', where everyone is a little on edge), I usually do or say something to put us all at ease. It may be nothing more than looking at the piano for a second and murmuring, 'let's get her on the road and see how she handles', or removing the music stand in front of the audience, or fussing with the height of the piano bench.
Sometimes I walk out, rub the instrument lovingly, and say 'I'm HOME!' Each concert presents a special opportunity for that instant of relaxation. (Tripping over a microphone cord works too.)
Never drink or take drugs to 'take the edge off'; it doesn't work for long, and the playing suffers.
I also do a chant (Buddhist) before I play, backstage and alone.
When you start to play, and you fall into the right-brain activity, all nerves are gone.
To get to the right-brain place: while playing, with eyes half-closed, look down to the left and up to the right (the optic nerves cross each other) and BREATHE. Soon your body will sway (you won't notice it) and you'll be in the zone. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
Always, always: believe in your own song.
Not Just Notes
I'm occasionally asked where I studied to learn to do what I do; who taught me, what 'tricks' are involved, what secrets enable me, how does the process occur... how does one 'distill magic out of the air?'
The truth is that there are no practice techniques, no miracle drugs, no mantras, no shortcuts to creativity.
I tell them that I've played piano since I was four, that I've played jazz since I was 10, that I've never taken another job doing anything except what I've always known I should be doing in this life: playing music. And maybe that's a part of the answer, if indeed there is one.
It's about Castenada's PATH, Campbell's BLISS; you follow it no matter where it leads, and over many years you learn to control it, channel it, allow it to happen.
You become the bow, the arrow is the gift.
You never fully own it, just as you can never explore all of its depths, because it springs from the infinite possibilities within you.
In this realm, your only ally, your only guide, is intuition.
It is seeing instead of looking, knowing instead of believing, being instead of doing.
It is Coltrane on the saxophone, Magic Johnson on the court, Alice Walker on the printed page; it is the primary intuition of 'right-brained' activity, the birthing of idea into existence.
Perhaps it cannot be taught, but it certainly can be shared, and it is in the sharing that we all experience the best parts of ourselves.
We instinctively intuit our organic truth; when we learn to live it, our planet could be paradise.
Your dreams are your sacred truth.
For those of you who have purchased my many records over the years and attended my concerts, it's probably obvious that I'm very comfortable on the stage (whether alone or with my band), doing what I do and sharing the magic with the audience. Over the last six or seven years, I've often remarked that the stage is my favorite place to be. I feel totally relaxed and at home, and the more people that attend, the better. And I can just sit there, introduce a tune, and then try to come at it from an angle that will 'say something', both to the audience and to me.
I'm not into this music for ego-gratification or competition, and certainly not for the money(!) Jazz is not a huge moneymaker, as I'm sure you know.
I do what I do because I love it and I do it really well and I'm always trying to learn and grow with it.
Jazz music to me is just MUSIC, because I don't feel that it should restrict itself by putting itself in a box.
And music to me is not about being FAST or about having 'CHOPS':
Anyone who has a few of my CDs knows that I can 'burn' with the best of them. But that's kind of like being a gunslinger: there's always someone FASTER than you.
So over the years I tired of being known as 'the fastest' or 'the coolest'. Frankly, I don't have the edge that it takes to stay in that 'competitive fast-lane' and I don't WANT it!
When Miles started playing his 'NEW' thing, some folks still wanted to hear 'Dr Jekyll' or 'Walkin'' at quarter-note=460.
A Miles quote: 'Man, that's heart-attack music.'
Go, Miles.
So music, to me, is a beautiful language, a form of communication and self-expression that doesn't need to impress the critics or scare the audience half-to-death with pyrotechnical displays of daring-do.
While hardly being Methuselah, I AM too old for that sort of thing. I want to have fun while I play, and I only enjoy playing with others whose primary motivation is to have fun and share the love.
I believe in the power of music to heal, and I believe that each true musician has something special to contribute.
July 28, 2008
Life as a contest
I told a friend the other day that now, nearing my sixth decade, I couldn't make my body do what my spirit had never much liked doing all along. He had asked me to record a certain tune for him, and offered to pay me well to do it.
Truthfully, it would have taken about an hour to learn it and record it.
It was a pop tune, and it was not something I particularly liked. It wasn't awful; it just wasn't me. And since we artists and musicians must make a living, we get tempted all the time to just do what ever job comes our way and not think about it. Get that money.
I refused the offer politely and then tried to explain why I couldn't do it. I wound up sounding a bit sanctimonious (to my ears) but it was true: I simply couldn't bring my fingers to play what my heart wouldn't participate in.
I can't speak to what he felt or didn't feel; but I got the feeling that he was a little surprised that I would turn down a good amount of money for what seemed to be such a routine task for a talented musician.
It got me to thinking about the music business and the way that it's perceived by those not in it. A lot of silly misconceptions exist, like famous musicians all live in castles with moats and have boyfriends or girlfriends in every room and eat pheasant under glass and drive fancy sports cars and just hang out with their friends and party all night.
And it seems pretty simple.
You get out on stage, play a few tunes, everybody loves it, and you leave with your $100,000 check and party all night. Or you get driven around in your town car for a while and then you party all night. Or you go to the all-night supermarket and get your favorite junk food and then you party all night.
Now, most people know that most of that is pure myth. But the truth is a bit more egregious.
The truth is that most musicians who work in nightclubs and bars average considerably less than $100 a night for a full 5 hours of music (from 9pm to 2am). The bartender, waiters, and waitresses make more, much more. My gardener makes three times that much (and deserves it). This wage has changed not at all in 25 years.
Some musicians make $50 a night, and most make $75. Those musicians lucky enough to land a steady hotel job in a rich area (such as Monterey, CA) may make $200 per night. That's unusual, and considered excellent pay.
Sorry, folks. The truth is out there (as Agent Mulder was fond of saying) and sometimes it hurts.
And it hurts me too. Don't get the idea that I'm casting any aspersions here. I admire the musicians who work for little or no compensation 'in the trenches'. At least they're making music and turning a few people on to jazz.
I can't cut the wages, the environment, and the attitudes. I get sick and depressed in that 'scene'. That's my problem. But I do admire those musicians.
Many people also believe that no discrimination of any kind exists in the arts, and that Music in particular is dominated by totally evolved, open-minded people.
Some people have the strangest notions.
One man (a retired doctor) recently said to me 'well, all the big shots in the music business are queer, right?'
I said no they weren't, and then I told him I found the 'q' word offensive. Some folks think the word is pretty cool; they say it's 'owning their heritage and taking the power out of the word'... Lenny Bruce did that for years, by the way , using every ethnic slur he could think of to take the power out of this word or that word, going to jail almost every night in San Francisco when he worked at the Purple Onion.
And those same evil words still have the same evil power.
I said that the 'q' word was a little like the 'n' word to me. I said I felt it was degrading, dehumanizing, and archaic. I said that GLBT people (at least the ones that I knew) were people who mainly worried about things like the gas bill and the rent or the mortgage payments, and that they didn't spend their lives in sweaty nightclubs dancing to disco music and going to hot parties like they do on some TV shows.
Once you've been with a partner for 15 or 20 years, you watch DVD's, walk the dog, eat dinner together, do the dishes together, and enjoy each other's company. As you grow old together, you wonder what the fuss is all about, and how your life could be adversely affecting the life of Jack and Jane down the street, who just recently burned a cross on your lawn and blew up your mailbox with a pipe bomb. (Being Black or Jewish or Asian can cause this sort of mild reaction, too.)
I can tell you from experience that most people are pretty decent at the base (if they weren't we all wouldn't be here) but there are institutionalized prejudices that won't go away in our lifetimes, even if we live to be older than Methuselah.
And yes, it's true, regardless of what you've heard; being a woman jazz musician is not easy. A European agent wanted me to play in 'his' country until he found out that I was white and Jewish.
It's always something, as the saying goes.
Ageism is also rampant in the performing arts, and for women it's twice as difficult. Once you hit forty, start thinking 'facelift'.
We are programmed to think in certain ways, and to expect things to look a certain way. We don't expect to see a white Jewish woman playing jazz piano. And if she plays trumpet or drums, she's in for even more trouble!
We are all programmed, and our job is to de-program ourselves until our mind and our heart is as clear as the starry summer sky.
(In South Korea, I boarded a plane piloted by a female captain. She had boarded an hour earlier, because, as was later explained to me by a flight attendant, had she been seen by the passengers, some of them might have objected and refused to board the aircraft. It had become policy for her to board early.)
In music, one would expect a broader mind-set to apply. Not so. Women are expected to 'play the game' a certain way, and board early if necessary.
But when you can't or won't 'play the game'... when you can't get all made up like a cheap painted lady of the night and sing a siren song to the boys in the bar (not because you're not nice looking... it's just that you look cooler at this age dressed like Sigourney Weaver in Alien), when you can't play 'Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head' (not because it's difficult, but because it causes your psoriasis to flare up), when you can't 'hang with the cats' until 6 am (not because they're bad cats, but because you're a recovered alcoholic and you have emphysema from smoking and you don't do any drugs and you're tired, you want to go to bed) and when you can't schmooze with the hot- shot agents (not that you don't know how... you could give schmooze lessons and have offices on Park Avenue, but it seems so... well... so meaningless); when you can't 'play that game', your ability to hustle up work is seriously curtailed.
'Hustle' is such a wicked word.
And 'competition' is right up there with it.
There are those of us who are characterologically incapable of breaking our own (admittedly silly and expensive) rules. We get blamed for being intransigent, stubborn, and self- destructive... and we probably deserve the castigation. Howard Roark was lauded for his intransigence, but that was a book ('The Fountainhead' by musty old Ayn Rand). In life, we're rewarded for being 'producers'...
How much do we own? How many cars and houses do we have? How did we get them? What are we willing to do to buy into the American Dream? Are we willing to give up our beliefs and our core sense of fairness to 'get ahead'? Obviously, for most of us, the answer is yes.
The American Dream doesn't mean much to me anymore. I couldn't play that pop song for my friend, and I can't play in 'joints' anymore. I can't schmooze or kiss butt or 'be what a man wants me to be' anymore. I'm self-defined. I'm me. This is the way it is, and the Music I play now is mine.
Every single note means something to me and I can't play a note that isn't in my heart.
I know that this somewhat limits my prospects for a future in the music business, and I've accepted that.
I like puppies and computers and web design and writing and poetry and friends and truth and natural beauty and freedom and enjoying life without cell-phones.
I enjoy not playing dumb pop songs.
I really love NOT playing 'Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head'. It's one of the tunes that I enjoy NOT playing the most.
Just thinking about NOT playing it is enough to make me smile.
I know a lady, she's my age, and she still 'plays the game' because she's scared that if she stops she'll wind up destitute. She still spends hours getting ready for a performance, fixing her hair, putting her makeup on with a trowel, wearing feather boas... you know the routine.
It's like that scene in 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane' where you see a close-up of Bette Davis and her face looks like the surface of Mars.
It's just not us, all that war paint. We get old, and our age makes us beautiful if we let it.
There sure are things I do NOT like about getting old, but most of it is an increase in freedom and a decrease in time spent looking 'right'. Once I forgot to put on my shoes for a performance at the Kennedy Center, and found myself on-stage in my bedroom slippers. Someone remarked in amazement, 'are they bedroom slippers?!' and I looked down and darned if he wasn't right. They were bedroom slippers, no doubt about it. And without missing a beat I said 'next year it's the bathrobe, too.'
That's pretty much how I feel now about competition. I have a lot of thoughts going on right now (and probably a lot of rage, at least enough to keep several psychologists in bagels for years) and one thought is that competition is killing us. It's turning us into mean little critters. It's about power. Better than. More than. Much more than. Lots lots more than. Bigger than. Richer than. Faster than holier than prettier than nicer than meaner than ...eeeeeee!
Then I think about leaving the Music behind.
And, wouldn't you know it, I see a frazzled woman in a deli or a restaurant somewhere and she's dripping with jewelry and she's precariously balanced on 4-inch heels and she's got a cell-phone stuck to her ear while she's trying to eat a sandwich without getting mayo on her tight little gray suit (tailored, of course, nothing off the rack) and she has this voice, it's a shrill, plaintive, almost hysterical cry and yet it has a drone-like quality, it's like a poorly-played sitar; she's selling or buying another house, she's closing, she's dripping mayo, her battery is low, she's breaking up (her phone and her self), she's got that lean, hungry look of desperation that one gets just before the other shoe drops, just before the dam breaks. The market could crash, the hubbie could run off with the secretary, or those tech stocks could go broke. The bubble could burst. Alan Greenspan isn't terribly reassuring; he said on CNN that the bubble was sprouting little bubbles, like foam; that this wasn't a good sign, and he'd do what he could to patch up the bubble and make it all bouncy again, but he didn't look too confident, and he didn't look too healthy, either...
Her movements are jerky, uneven. She's been the top producer in her department for seven years running now and she has to make this one number eight. Her BP is 180 over 110. She smokes alone in her BMW. She's 36 but looks 48.
She's wired, like she's been speed-balling.
She's a producer.
She might be on oxycontin. She might drink herself to sleep. She might not sleep much at all. Those myriad houses take up all of her time. If she goes to the beach, she takes her cell and her laptop with her and she doesn't really enjoy it anymore anyway (the beach)...
And I feel bad for her, and I feel like maybe my life, with all of its insecurity, is really quite a feat of engineering. Having one person love me so much, having a puppy and a kitty and a place to live (for the moment) and a few memories, the waves and the sand and the sky, just a few memories, but that's all we get, isn't it?
I'm not better than that lady in the deli.
I just lucked out.
So, no 'Raindrops'.
Ever.
Truthfully, it would have taken about an hour to learn it and record it.
It was a pop tune, and it was not something I particularly liked. It wasn't awful; it just wasn't me. And since we artists and musicians must make a living, we get tempted all the time to just do what ever job comes our way and not think about it. Get that money.
I refused the offer politely and then tried to explain why I couldn't do it. I wound up sounding a bit sanctimonious (to my ears) but it was true: I simply couldn't bring my fingers to play what my heart wouldn't participate in.
I can't speak to what he felt or didn't feel; but I got the feeling that he was a little surprised that I would turn down a good amount of money for what seemed to be such a routine task for a talented musician.
It got me to thinking about the music business and the way that it's perceived by those not in it. A lot of silly misconceptions exist, like famous musicians all live in castles with moats and have boyfriends or girlfriends in every room and eat pheasant under glass and drive fancy sports cars and just hang out with their friends and party all night.
And it seems pretty simple.
You get out on stage, play a few tunes, everybody loves it, and you leave with your $100,000 check and party all night. Or you get driven around in your town car for a while and then you party all night. Or you go to the all-night supermarket and get your favorite junk food and then you party all night.
Now, most people know that most of that is pure myth. But the truth is a bit more egregious.
The truth is that most musicians who work in nightclubs and bars average considerably less than $100 a night for a full 5 hours of music (from 9pm to 2am). The bartender, waiters, and waitresses make more, much more. My gardener makes three times that much (and deserves it). This wage has changed not at all in 25 years.
Some musicians make $50 a night, and most make $75. Those musicians lucky enough to land a steady hotel job in a rich area (such as Monterey, CA) may make $200 per night. That's unusual, and considered excellent pay.
Sorry, folks. The truth is out there (as Agent Mulder was fond of saying) and sometimes it hurts.
And it hurts me too. Don't get the idea that I'm casting any aspersions here. I admire the musicians who work for little or no compensation 'in the trenches'. At least they're making music and turning a few people on to jazz.
I can't cut the wages, the environment, and the attitudes. I get sick and depressed in that 'scene'. That's my problem. But I do admire those musicians.
Many people also believe that no discrimination of any kind exists in the arts, and that Music in particular is dominated by totally evolved, open-minded people.
Some people have the strangest notions.
One man (a retired doctor) recently said to me 'well, all the big shots in the music business are queer, right?'
I said no they weren't, and then I told him I found the 'q' word offensive. Some folks think the word is pretty cool; they say it's 'owning their heritage and taking the power out of the word'... Lenny Bruce did that for years, by the way , using every ethnic slur he could think of to take the power out of this word or that word, going to jail almost every night in San Francisco when he worked at the Purple Onion.
And those same evil words still have the same evil power.
I said that the 'q' word was a little like the 'n' word to me. I said I felt it was degrading, dehumanizing, and archaic. I said that GLBT people (at least the ones that I knew) were people who mainly worried about things like the gas bill and the rent or the mortgage payments, and that they didn't spend their lives in sweaty nightclubs dancing to disco music and going to hot parties like they do on some TV shows.
Once you've been with a partner for 15 or 20 years, you watch DVD's, walk the dog, eat dinner together, do the dishes together, and enjoy each other's company. As you grow old together, you wonder what the fuss is all about, and how your life could be adversely affecting the life of Jack and Jane down the street, who just recently burned a cross on your lawn and blew up your mailbox with a pipe bomb. (Being Black or Jewish or Asian can cause this sort of mild reaction, too.)
I can tell you from experience that most people are pretty decent at the base (if they weren't we all wouldn't be here) but there are institutionalized prejudices that won't go away in our lifetimes, even if we live to be older than Methuselah.
And yes, it's true, regardless of what you've heard; being a woman jazz musician is not easy. A European agent wanted me to play in 'his' country until he found out that I was white and Jewish.
It's always something, as the saying goes.
Ageism is also rampant in the performing arts, and for women it's twice as difficult. Once you hit forty, start thinking 'facelift'.
We are programmed to think in certain ways, and to expect things to look a certain way. We don't expect to see a white Jewish woman playing jazz piano. And if she plays trumpet or drums, she's in for even more trouble!
We are all programmed, and our job is to de-program ourselves until our mind and our heart is as clear as the starry summer sky.
(In South Korea, I boarded a plane piloted by a female captain. She had boarded an hour earlier, because, as was later explained to me by a flight attendant, had she been seen by the passengers, some of them might have objected and refused to board the aircraft. It had become policy for her to board early.)
In music, one would expect a broader mind-set to apply. Not so. Women are expected to 'play the game' a certain way, and board early if necessary.
But when you can't or won't 'play the game'... when you can't get all made up like a cheap painted lady of the night and sing a siren song to the boys in the bar (not because you're not nice looking... it's just that you look cooler at this age dressed like Sigourney Weaver in Alien), when you can't play 'Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head' (not because it's difficult, but because it causes your psoriasis to flare up), when you can't 'hang with the cats' until 6 am (not because they're bad cats, but because you're a recovered alcoholic and you have emphysema from smoking and you don't do any drugs and you're tired, you want to go to bed) and when you can't schmooze with the hot- shot agents (not that you don't know how... you could give schmooze lessons and have offices on Park Avenue, but it seems so... well... so meaningless); when you can't 'play that game', your ability to hustle up work is seriously curtailed.
'Hustle' is such a wicked word.
And 'competition' is right up there with it.
There are those of us who are characterologically incapable of breaking our own (admittedly silly and expensive) rules. We get blamed for being intransigent, stubborn, and self- destructive... and we probably deserve the castigation. Howard Roark was lauded for his intransigence, but that was a book ('The Fountainhead' by musty old Ayn Rand). In life, we're rewarded for being 'producers'...
How much do we own? How many cars and houses do we have? How did we get them? What are we willing to do to buy into the American Dream? Are we willing to give up our beliefs and our core sense of fairness to 'get ahead'? Obviously, for most of us, the answer is yes.
The American Dream doesn't mean much to me anymore. I couldn't play that pop song for my friend, and I can't play in 'joints' anymore. I can't schmooze or kiss butt or 'be what a man wants me to be' anymore. I'm self-defined. I'm me. This is the way it is, and the Music I play now is mine.
Every single note means something to me and I can't play a note that isn't in my heart.
I know that this somewhat limits my prospects for a future in the music business, and I've accepted that.
I like puppies and computers and web design and writing and poetry and friends and truth and natural beauty and freedom and enjoying life without cell-phones.
I enjoy not playing dumb pop songs.
I really love NOT playing 'Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head'. It's one of the tunes that I enjoy NOT playing the most.
Just thinking about NOT playing it is enough to make me smile.
I know a lady, she's my age, and she still 'plays the game' because she's scared that if she stops she'll wind up destitute. She still spends hours getting ready for a performance, fixing her hair, putting her makeup on with a trowel, wearing feather boas... you know the routine.
It's like that scene in 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane' where you see a close-up of Bette Davis and her face looks like the surface of Mars.
It's just not us, all that war paint. We get old, and our age makes us beautiful if we let it.
There sure are things I do NOT like about getting old, but most of it is an increase in freedom and a decrease in time spent looking 'right'. Once I forgot to put on my shoes for a performance at the Kennedy Center, and found myself on-stage in my bedroom slippers. Someone remarked in amazement, 'are they bedroom slippers?!' and I looked down and darned if he wasn't right. They were bedroom slippers, no doubt about it. And without missing a beat I said 'next year it's the bathrobe, too.'
That's pretty much how I feel now about competition. I have a lot of thoughts going on right now (and probably a lot of rage, at least enough to keep several psychologists in bagels for years) and one thought is that competition is killing us. It's turning us into mean little critters. It's about power. Better than. More than. Much more than. Lots lots more than. Bigger than. Richer than. Faster than holier than prettier than nicer than meaner than ...eeeeeee!
Then I think about leaving the Music behind.
And, wouldn't you know it, I see a frazzled woman in a deli or a restaurant somewhere and she's dripping with jewelry and she's precariously balanced on 4-inch heels and she's got a cell-phone stuck to her ear while she's trying to eat a sandwich without getting mayo on her tight little gray suit (tailored, of course, nothing off the rack) and she has this voice, it's a shrill, plaintive, almost hysterical cry and yet it has a drone-like quality, it's like a poorly-played sitar; she's selling or buying another house, she's closing, she's dripping mayo, her battery is low, she's breaking up (her phone and her self), she's got that lean, hungry look of desperation that one gets just before the other shoe drops, just before the dam breaks. The market could crash, the hubbie could run off with the secretary, or those tech stocks could go broke. The bubble could burst. Alan Greenspan isn't terribly reassuring; he said on CNN that the bubble was sprouting little bubbles, like foam; that this wasn't a good sign, and he'd do what he could to patch up the bubble and make it all bouncy again, but he didn't look too confident, and he didn't look too healthy, either...
Her movements are jerky, uneven. She's been the top producer in her department for seven years running now and she has to make this one number eight. Her BP is 180 over 110. She smokes alone in her BMW. She's 36 but looks 48.
She's wired, like she's been speed-balling.
She's a producer.
She might be on oxycontin. She might drink herself to sleep. She might not sleep much at all. Those myriad houses take up all of her time. If she goes to the beach, she takes her cell and her laptop with her and she doesn't really enjoy it anymore anyway (the beach)...
And I feel bad for her, and I feel like maybe my life, with all of its insecurity, is really quite a feat of engineering. Having one person love me so much, having a puppy and a kitty and a place to live (for the moment) and a few memories, the waves and the sand and the sky, just a few memories, but that's all we get, isn't it?
I'm not better than that lady in the deli.
I just lucked out.
So, no 'Raindrops'.
Ever.
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