Lazaro Vega

16 June 2009 From the pool report: The White House Music Series opened Monday afternoon with a jazz studio, featuring a series of classes for about 150 young musicians, and then a performance in the East Room by Paquito D'Rivera and an ensemble of up-and-coming young artists. If you hadn't already known about the jazz event, you would have if you walked into the main part of the building at any point during the afternoon. The entire entry hall level was ringing with instrument tuning as your pooler was escorted into the building. Thanks to Semonti Mustaphi in the FLOTUS press office, your pooler sat in for about 20 minutes in each of three classes. In the Diplomatic Room, about 30-40 middle school-aged kids from the Capitol Jazz Project, the Sitar Arts Center and the Levine School of Music were sitting down to begin a lesson on the blues and expressing experience and emotion through jazz. Instructors were Eli Yamin, a pianist and the director of the Middle School Academy at Jazz at Lincoln Center; Todd Williams, a saxophonist and a member of the music faculty at the Tuxedo Park School; and drummer Tony Martucci and bassist Amy Shook, who the kids knew from other classes in the D.C. area. "Today is a very special day," Yamin told the kids. "It is the first time there's ever been a jazz education session at the White House." He had them each say their name and what instrument they played, then asked them to call out things that made them sad, or gave them the blues. Highlights included "losing my phone," "not being able to play football," "cleaning y room," "certain kinds of school work," and "when somebody steps on my brand-new sneakers." Then he had the kids make noises that would represent sadness -- first they groaned, then they growled, then they sighed. He gave each noise a number, and had them repeat the noise when he called out the number. And then, he and the other instructors started playing a blues called "I'm So Glad," and had the kids "play" their blues noises in rhythm with the song for a few verses. At that point, your pooler went up to the next class. In the State Dining Room, a slightly older, slightly smaller group of kids was watching a lesson by Stephen Massey, chairman of the music department for the Foxboro, Mass., public school system. He and jazz trumpeter Sean Jones were reviewing a swing ensemble from D.C.'s Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts. The theme of the lesson was "Duke Ellington and swing," according to FLOTUS aides. Massey had the kids playing Ellington's "Perdido," paying particular attention to keeping themselves all on the right time together. "The bass sound is the harmonic center of the band, and so you have a lot of pressure on you in that regard," Massey told the band's bassist. "You sound fine, so that's not a problem." He danced around the room conducting the band, calling out the song's time and clapping his hands when he wanted the trumpets or the trombones to join the saxophones playing the main theme. In the East Room, a band of Marsalises -- trumpeter Wynton, saxophonist Branford, trombonist Delfeayo, drummer Jason and their dad, pianist Ellis -- was teaching a lesson for high school-aged musicians, mostly from two places in New Orleans, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Fourteen students had come to Washington for the event. Paquito D'Rivera sat in on clarinet and saxophone, as well as a bassist whose name your pooler didn't have (and who your pooler didn't think was a member of the Marsalis family). The theme of this class was "improvisation and expression through sounds and moods." Leading the session, Wynton Marsalis had the students come up on stage and play a chorus each with the band. Some of the kids had dejected looks on their faces after they finished playing, possibly because they missed notes; Marsalis told them afterwards they had to keep a positive attitude. "You played good," he said. "Sometimes the people who played the best had the worst attitude." Then Marsalis started playing riffs on his trumpet, which he had Branford Marsalis repeat on his sax; Delfeayo Marsalis and D'Rivera did the same thing, with Branford Marsalis copying them note for note each time. The students then came up and tried the same thing, with the sax players following Branford Marsalis and D'Rivera, the trumpet players following Wynton Marsalis and the trombonists following Delfeayo Marsalis. The class wrapped up, and all the students from the other sessions came into the East Room to hear the performance. Wearing a white suit, FLOTUS walked in from the side of the room while everyone was eagerly looking toward the back of the room, near the Grand Foyer; she joked that she had come in through a different door to keep them all on their toes. You should have a transcript of her remarks soon, but she talked about the importance of jazz in her life and how proud she was to hold the event in the White House. "At Christmas, birthdays, Easter, it didn't matter, there was jazz playing in my household" when she was growing up, FLOTUS told the students. After brief remarks, she sat in the front row and listened to the band. "Jazz at the White House -- mmm, mmm," D'Rivera said. He played alto sax and a beautiful wooden clarinet, and a combo of young jazz musicians -- pianist Tony Madruga, from south Florida; bassist Zach Brown, from Columbia, Md.; drummer Kush Abadey, from Suitland, Md.; and tenor saxophonist Elijah Easton, from Washington -- played with him. They did two songs, and then D'Rivera started playing little snippets of famous jazz tunes. When he played the chorus to Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," the whole room called out, "Salt peanuts," including FLOTUS. "Ahh, Michelle knows it!" D'Rivera shouted. Wynton Marsalis came back to the stage to join them for Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia," and the event ended.

Kind of a dull recorded sound, especially on the drums. Worthwhile performances though: http://www.espdisk.com/official/catalog/e029.html

Bill McHenry Quintet: Live At The Village Vanguard http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...558&sc=emaf

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=37284

Up for Tuesday night's finale broadcast with Big O recording artists The Cooper/Hay/VanLente Group and special guest trumpeter Sweet Willie Singleton (including a tribute to Freddie Hubbard). 10 p.m. edt June 2nd.

Up for tonight. Happy Memorial Day everyone.

Up for this Saturday morning's re-broadcast of the Big O with Matt Brewer's Dad, AND Monday night's "Live From Blue Lake" with The Hot Club of Detroit.

The less well recorded pieces in his "Listen" section are more recent -- you can hear him gaining confidence.

At 26 this Muskegon, Michigan, native, with a degree in music education, is one musical trumpet player. He's moving out to Portland this week to stay with a cousin and see if he can live on playing music as the struggle continues here in Michigan. In any case, he's been a very good reason to go out and hear live music around the area over the last several yers. The first few tracks on this "Listen" segment were from a radio program done "Live From Blue Lake" with a saxophonist named Caleb Curtis who went to Michigan State and now lives in Brooklyn. Both will be teaching at Blue Lake again this summer. http://www.chrislawrencemusic.org/live/

The Tristano.

Sansabelts are not silly. Don't pimp my ride, GN.

May 13, 2009 The Jazz Datebook: Regular Hits: Saturdays and Sundays from 6 to 10 p.m. The What Not Inn features a revolving cast of local musicians: May 10, vocalist Mary Rademacher and pianist Mark Kahny; May 16th Entourage; May 17th, the Michael Holmes Trio; May 23, the Lakeshore All Star Blues Band; May 24th, Christy G.; May 30th Jack Tabler. Then on Mondays a jam session open to musicians and vocalists and featuring local, regional and international jazz musicians sitting in with the “house” band with pianist Wally Michaels, bassist Jeff Beavin and drummer Jack Wilkins. No cover charge. Music also presented Saturdays and Sundays. www.whatnotinn.com. The What Not Inn is located at M89 and the Blue Star Highway, 2405 68th Street, Fennville, MI. (269) 543-3341. Tuesdays, June 2nd and June 16th from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 The Truth In Jazz Orchestra plays swing and improvisational jazz at The West Side Inn, 1635 Beidler St, Muskegon, MI. They’ve recently added some Gordon Goodwin arrangements to their book and have developed a feature for their fearsome trumpet section. Fronted by West Michigan's legendary drummer Tim Froncek the TIJO is 16 Muskegon’s crowning glory. More from www.tijo.org. Thursdays from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Baton Rouge, LA native Sweet Willie Singleton, or varying cast of Grand Rapids jazz musicians, swing at Gill’s Blue Crab Lounge in The B.O.B., 20 Monroe Ave. N.W., Grand Rapids. Fridays from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. live music in the Peter M. Wege Pavilion at The Grand Rapids Art Museum, 101 Monroe Center, Grand Rapids, with a Jazz Encore from 7:45 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, May 15th, The Clifford Music Group; 22nd, pianist Dick Reynolds Trio; 29th, The Neil Gordon Trio. (GRAM is also presenting classical chamber music Sunday afternoon from 2 to 3 p.m.). See www.artmuseumgr.org or call (616) 831 – 1000. Three Fridays a month trumpeter/vocalist/entertainer Sweet Willie Singleton plays jazz in Ada during the dinner hour (6 to 9 p.m.) at the Thornapple Daily Grill, 445 Ada Drive, Ada, MI. (616) 676-1233 www.thegilmorecollection.com/Thornapple/thornapple.html. Fridays and Saturdays from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. live local jazz, blues and other musical forms at The Grand Seafood and Oyster Bar, 24 Washington St., Grand Haven. Live local jazz or blues guitarists on Wednesday evenings from 8 to 11 p.m. (616) 844- 5055. Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Pumpernickels, 202 Butler St., Saugatuck, guitarist Chip Kristi plays jazz for breakfast. (269) 857-1196. Timely Hits: Thursday, May 14th at 7 p.m. the west Michigan jazz collective Mind’s Eye joins the Spring Lake High School and Middle School Jazz Bands for an evening of swing at the Spring Lake High School Auditorium. Information from www.springlakebands.org. Mind’s Eye includes Rob Smith on trumpet and saxophone; Steve Talaga, piano; Tom Lockwood, bass; and Keith Hall, drums. Thursday, May 14th at 8 p.m. Vibraphonist Stefon Harris and Blackout appear in the Dalton Center Recital Hall, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, as part of the Fontana Chamber Arts Winter Season. See http://www.stefonharris.com or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-klKGVbV2hE . Information from (269) 382-7774. The Fontana Chamber Arts is located at the Epic Center, 359 S. Kalamazoo Mall, Suite 200, Kalamazoo, MI 49007. www.fontanachamberarts.org. Friday and Saturday, May 15th and 16th at 7 p.m. jazz cum blues guitarist Rick Hicks kicks off a new summer season of Jazz at Gull Landing, 438 South Hancock Street, Pentwater, with his unique mix of rhythm methods. Then Friday May 29th drummer/vocalist Tim Johnson’s Trio with Andy Frisinger on saxophone and Wally Micheals, piano is featured; followed on Saturday, May 20th by Mary Rademacher with the Tim Johnson Trio. On Friday and Saturday June 5th and 6th Ricks Hicks returns, guitar in hand, to team up with Detroit R&B/soul sensation Doc Woodward. Summer officially kicks off Friday, Saturday and Sunday, June 19th, 20th and 21st with the legendary jazz organist Mel Rhyne ( ) as a member of the Juli Wood Trio. Information from Gull Landing: (231) 869 – 4215. Saturday, May 16th at 6 p.m. vibraphonist Jim Cooper plays for the Jazz Vesper’s Service at First United Methodist Church, 227 E. Fulton, downtown Grand Rapids. Monday, May 18th from 6 to 9 p.m. Michelle Covington sings with pianist Scott Patrick Bell with percussionist Bob Thompson in the West Michigan Jazz Society’s Jazz Gumbo Showcase presented at The Kopper Top Guest House, 634 Stocking N.W., Grand Rapids. Phone (616) 458 – 0125 for more information. Tuesday, May 19th at 7:30 p.m. Wess Warmdaddy Anderson appears with the West Ottawa High School Jazz band, including guests Max Colley III on drums; Matt Heredia, bass; and Mike Jellic, piano. Wednesday, May 20th from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The Beltline Big Band plays for dancing at The Univeristy Club in the 5/3rd Bank Building, Grand Rapids. See www.wmichjazz.org for information. Wednesday, May 20th at 9:30 p.m. Organissimo opens for the Chicago jam band Lubriphonic at Billy’s Lounge, 1437 Wealthy S.E., Grand Rapids (in Eastown). (616) 459 – 5757 or www.billyslounge.com Sunday, May 24th at 8 p.m. The Hot Club of Detroit plays gypsy inspired jazz attended by swing dancers at The Saugatuck Center for the Arts, 400 Culver Street, Saugatuck. Information from (269) 857 – 2399. Experience the sexy, infectious rhythms of “Gypsy Jazz” with this five-time Detroit Music Award winning group and live swing dancers. The Django Reinhardt inspired sound originated in the night clubs of Paris during the 1930’s and is today heard throughout the world. The Hot Club of Detroit features guitarist Evan Perri, accordionist Julien Labro, soprano and tenor saxophonist Carl Cafagna, rhythm guitarist Paul Brady and bassist Shannon Wade. The fibrous accordion tones of Labro, a native of Marseilles, France, links the Detroit quintet to the French musette style -- a waltz style played in the working man’s watering holes of 1930’s era Paris -- from which gypsy jazz partially sprung. Carl Cafagna, a former Blue Lake faculty instructor, pushes out a robust saxophone sound and has introduced bop and post-bop elements to this gypsy jazz band. Monday, May 25th at 10 p.m. The Hot Club of Detroit plays live on Blue Lake Public Radio at 10 p.m. with support from The Holland Area Arts Council, The Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs and The Gilmore Collection of local restaurants, including The B.O.B. in downtown Grand Rapids, The Thornapple Dailey Grill in Ada and The Kirby House in Grand Haven. See www.thegilmorecollection.com for more information. Sunday, May 31st from 3 to 6 p.m. the Chicago-based Red Rose Jazz Band, led by Michigan-born pianist Joan Reynolds, plays ragtime music by Scott Joplin and jazz by New Orleans pioneer King Oliver amongst others, at The Oakridge Country Club, 513 West Pontaluna Road, Muskegon. Information from The West Shore Jazz Society: (231) 759 -0071; or by mail, P.O. Box 175, Muskegon, MI 49443. The series of early jazz parties continues Sunday, July 12th with Bob Adams Buffalo Ridge Jazz Band; August 9th, Dave Greer’s Classic Jazz Stompers; September 6th The Chefs of Dixieland; October 4th the West End Jazz Band; November 1st, The Chicago Salty Dogs. Monday, June 1st through Thursday, June 4th The Gilmore Collection Summertime Jazz Series features a variety of jazz pianists – Mark Kahny, Wally Michaels, Steve Talaga and Nick Ayoub – at several of the Gilmore Collection restaurants. Music from 7 to 10 p.m. at each venue and musicians are welcome to stop by and sit-in. Monday, June 1st at the Red Jet Café, 1431 Plainfield N.W., Grand Rapids (616) 719 – 5500; Tuesday, June 2nd at The Bluewater Grill, 5180 Northland Drive S.E. (616) 363 – 5900; Wednesday, June 3rd at Mangiamo, 1033 Lake Drive S.E., Grand Rapids (616) 742 - 0600; and Thursday, June 4th at Gills Blue Crab Lounge in The B.O.B., 20 Monroe N.W., Grand Rapids (616) 356 – 2000. More information on line at www.thegilmorecollection.com. Friday and Saturday, June 12th and 13th at 8 p.m. The Boogie Woogie Babies perform their original music revue right out of the big band era with harmonies styled after The Andrews Sisters sung by Francesca Amari, Mary Rademacher and Barbara Wisse at The Red Barn Theatre, 3657 63rd Street (Blue Star Highway and 63rd, just east of exit 41 off of 1-196/US31) Saugatuck. (269) 857 – 5300 or www.redbarnsaugatuck.com for more information. June 14th through June 19th, the 2009 Aquinas College Summer Jazz Camp takes place at Aquinas College, 1607 Robinson Road S.E., Grand Rapids. This years the list of instructors includes bassist Matt Brewer and trumpeter Jason Palmer, two of the busiest young musicians in jazz today. For application forms and other information please see: http://www.aquinas.edu/music/pdf/jazzcamp09.pdf . Monday, June 15th The West Michigan Jazz Society kicks off their new series of Jazz at the Zoo, which continues every Monday for ten weeks, at John Ball Park Zoo in Grand Rapids. Sunday through Friday, June 14th through June 19th the 2009 Keith Hall Summer Drum Intensive takes place at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. Open to middle and high school students as well as adults, with scholarships now available, the drum intensive offers study in jazz rhythm section concepts; drum set choir; master classes; transcription; listening and analysis; private lessons; and evening jam sessions. Final concerts take place Thursday and Friday, June 18th and 19th at 8 p.m. at the Union Grill in downtown Kalamazoo. Tuition is $400; room and board $325. A non-refundable $50 deposit is due by April 15th. Information from (201) 406 – 5059, or keith@keithhallmusic.com. Thursday, June 18th at 8 p.m. the six piece improvising dance band NOMO returns to Founders Brewing Company, 235 Grandville Avenue S.W. in Grand Rapids. You must be 21 years old to attend. See www.foundersbrewing.com or www.ubiquityrecords.com/press for information on NOMO. Tuesday, June 23rd through Sunday June 28th at 7 p.m. the 18th Annual World Class Jazz Mini Tour gets under way in northern lower Michigan with guitarist Rick Hicks, “Michigan’s answer to B.B. King, Wes Montgomery and Albert King.” The tour opens on Tuesday night at First Street Beach in Manistee; then Wednesday heads over to The Gull Landing in Pentwater; on Thursday riles up the Rotary Pavilion in Cadillac; Friday swings the City Camp Ground in Reed City; Saturday bops the Wenger Pavilion in Baldwin (behind Jones’s Ice Cream!); and Sunday returns to the Gull Landing in Pentwater. The tour will run every week through Labor Day. June 30th to July 5th features Soul/Blues Album of the Year award winners Root Doctor with singer Freddie Cunningham and organist Jim Alfredson; July 7th through July 12th, the New York City All Star Quartet featuring saxophonist Jerry Weldon; guitarist John Hart; organist Akiko Tsuruga and drummer Rudy Petshauer. July 14 – 19th Chicagoan Petra van Nuiss sings with the Andy Brown Quartet; July 21-26, vocalist Rick Reuther with the Tom Hagen/Cherie Lynn Trio; July 28th to August 2nd, vocalist Mary Rademacher with the Mark Kahny Band. August 4th through the 9th, Alberta Adams and Cee Cee Collins Rhythm Rockers; August 11th – 16th, Organissimo with vocalist Freddie Cunningham; August 18th – 23rd New York City area vocalist Nicole Pasternak with saxophonist Ralph Lalama and the Steve Sandner Band; August 25th – 30th the New York City Teachers Band featuring Side-Order and Sax Appeal (a septet of professional musicians who teach in NYC plus west Michigan’s own Tim Froncek on drums). Saturday, June 27th at the Dogwood Center for the Arts in Fremont, The Harry Goldson Big Band presents a tribute to Benny Goodman with clarinetist Harry Goldson and drummer Chris Ames plus special guest vocalist Claudia Schmidt. Information from www.dogwoodcenter.com or (231) 924 – 8885. Thursday, July 31st and Friday, August 1st the Saugatuck-Douglas Jazz Festival returns. July 31st at 7:30 p.m. the festival kicks off at Saugatuck Brewing Company, and then continues on the afternoon August 1st at Coghlin Park and the evening of the 1st at Saugatuck United Methodist Church, Saugatuck Christian Reformed Church and Saugatuck Brewing Company. Musicians to perform include Detroit jazz vocalist Shahida Nurullah, bassist Marion Hayden, the Cooper/Hay/VanLente Group, “One For All” an all-star New York ensemble featuring tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, trombonist Steve Davis, trumpeter Jim Rotondi, pianist David Hazeltine, and bassist John Webber), The Flat River Big Band, guitarist Ron English and many others. Produced in co-operation with the Idlewild Foundation. Information from (313) 965 – 0505 of www.saugatuck.com.

Loosen the Sansabelt and slide into those white Bucs with the heels crushed down. Shuffle! The performance was multi-tracked and the new mix will be featured in the rebroadcast of Organissimo "Live From Blue Lake" on Saturday morning May 24th at about 8:30 a.m. Happy Memorial Day weekend. Then on Memorial Day Night at 10 p.m. The Hot Club of Detroit. http://hotclubofdetroit.com/ Thanks to all the Big O board members for tuning in -- had a nice spike in on-line listenership for the broadcast.

Set up is under way. Nessa is off listening to the Truth in Jazz Orchestra in Muskegon (The West Side Inn, a converted victorian cottage/neighborhood bar = great hang) and might stop in later. Looking forward to tonight. Care to join us?

Up for Tuesday with 'the boys.' LV

She comes out of a classical music background, though been playing jazz for years. Like the way Randy Brecker plays "Wrapped Around Your Finger." He can deal a pop melody like this with authenticity and is able to find some beauty in what is otherwise, lyrically, anyway, a rather unattractive song.

Ahk! He was supposed to play live on Blue Lake during our James Dapogny broadcast, but went home for his anniversary. Good player.

Is that "Wadin'"?

http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2009/...ps_at_50_1.html

You guys are a riot. Thank you thank you. 49 and everything's fine. Ella tonight on the radio......

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works. The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works. One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp. He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire. Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.” On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost. And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night. From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds. Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does. I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship bet ween invisible internal objects. I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago. I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during Worl d War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation. Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece. When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in t he front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself. What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?” Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters. What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft. You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevys. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives. Karl Paulnack, Director Music Division The Boston Conservatory 8 The Fenway Boston, MA 02215 www.bostonconservatory.edu

Duke's birthday. Lots of his music tonight on Jazz From Blue Lake, 10 p.m. - 3 a.m. At midnight, though, the rebroadcast of the Ralph Jones/Adam Rudolph duo in the series "Live From Blue Lake" first broadcast Easter Sunday. Then back to the maestro. www.bluelake.org/radio or http://bluelake.ncats.net/

Up for James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band Monday night at 10 p.m. edt "Live From Blue Lake." Since Dapogny and Chicago drummer Wayne Jones founded this octet in the mid-1970's, the group has enjoyed an on-going career playing music from the first 40 years of jazz, including several recordings and a number of concerts at the Smithsonian. Then, Wednesday night at midnight until Thursday morning at 1 a.m. edt the re-broadcast of Easter Sunday's performance by percussionist Adam Rudolph and woodwinds virtuoso Ralph Jones. Hope you can join us.

Long way to fly....fly fly fly

ALOC!!!!! It sounds better after a glass of wine; or Lemoncello. Looking forward to a program tonight on Bennie Green.