Top 10 Favorite Elvin Jones Tracks

Elvin Jones for me is the secret ingredient. Have you ever discovered the secret ingredient in your food? You go along eating stuff and there are many things you like, and then one day you discover that a particular ingredient (be it garlic or ginger or high fructose corn syrup) is present in a disproportionate amount of the stuff you like? Me either, but I have had that experience in music. The first Coltrane to really knock me out . . . and the first Wayne Shorter . . . and the first James Williams . . . oh man, Larry Young . . . wow, Art Pepper didn’t just play “cool jazz” . . . and on and on. It was kind of eerie to trace back how much of this great music was great in large part because of Elvin’s drumming. I’m always hesitant to offer definitive “favorites” for most anything (Top 10 lists are better because I can hedge my bets and don’t have to pick just one) but Elvin is my favorite drummer, period. Heck, I named my cat after him.

2 bad cats: can you see the resemblance?

There is some room for interpretation, of course, as to what constitutes a top “Elvin Jones Track.” I could focus on his drumming as a sideman or his own records or great historical moments of which he was a part. The fact is that there are so many great moments in his discography that I’ll be drawing from all of this and still leaving out many profound musical moments that he provided us. Likewise, I’m going to limit myself to two Coltrane tracks on the list of 10, as that partnership could easily produce a list of its own (and worry not, ‘Trane will get his own list before long). The number of great and historically significant tracks that I have to omit is large, so remember these are totally subjective favorites.

1 ) “Pursuance” (from A Love Supreme by John Coltrane)

I wanted so badly to cheat and include the whole album, as it encapsulates so much of Elvin’s contributions to the Impulse-era Coltrane “classic quartet.” This track begins with a drum solo for which I am at a loss for adjectives (Elvin-esque is a pretty lame solution to that, but it’s the best I can come up with). And then the time comes in and the propulsion and groove just don’t quit. And the intensity goes up and up and up and up into the stratosphere and then up some more and up . . . whew! As much credit as Coltrane justifiably gets for the heights of intensity his music reached, there is no question in anyone’s mind (as there wasn’t in his own mind) that Elvin’s drumming was an absolutely necessary element.

2 ) “Witch Hunt” (from Speak No Evil by Wayne Shorter)

Elvin was an essential contributor to some of Wayne’s most essential music (also providing a fascinating contrast to Tony Williams, Wayne’s cohort in the Miles Davis Quintet), and I could have just as easily picked Juju or even Night Dreamer to represent that. Ron Carter and Elvin also had an amazing hook-up, which also could’ve been represented by many albums, perhaps most notably McCoy Tyner records like The Real McCoy and Trident. I chose this track in part because the McCoy/Elvin partnership is already well-represented here on the Coltrane tracks and Elvin’s hook-up with Herbie Hancock on Speak No Evil is brilliant and makes one wonder why they collaborated so seldom. I also chose it because it is simply put one of the most grooving, creative and interactive cuts in modern jazz history and totally rocked my world back in 1991 (and has done so repeatedly since).

3 ) “Shiny Stockings” (from Heavy Sounds)

Another aspect of Elvin’s playing that gets comparatively little attention is his use of brushes. This trio track with bassist Richard Davis and tenor saxophonist Frank Foster (both essential collaborators of Elvin’s) demonstrates how essential his brushwork was. It’s hard to play with this kind of power on brushes and it’s similarly hard to create this much fullness with neither a chordal instrument nor the reverberation of sticks on cymbals. But Elvin does all of this effortlessly while helping to transform Foster’s tune, which had been most associated with the Count Basie band’s tightly arranged large-ensemble rendition.

4 ) “As We Used To Sing” (from Ask the Ages by Sonny Sharrock)

First of all, there is no joy quite like the rhythmic stew cooked up by Elvin playing in waltz time. Second of all, this whole (vastly underrated) record is full of vintage Elvin, years past the point when he was in his purported “prime” as an artist. His fiery interactions with Sharrock on guitar and old cohort Pharaoh Sanders on saxophone would alone be worth the price of the record, but the rest of it is burning as well.

5 ) “Night Has A Thousand Eyes” (from Coltrane’s Sound by John Coltrane)

What the heck do you call the groove that Elvin plays on the quasi-Latin section of this tune (more or less replicated a few years later when he and McCoy Tyner played on Wayne Shorter’s “Yes or No” from the Juju album)? Whatever it is, it makes me smile giddily every time I hear it. And the swing part is awesome too. And even though they go back and forth between these grooves over and over throughout the tune, it’s dramatic and exciting every time. Oh yeah, and that saxophone player is pretty good too.

6 ) “Crisis” (from Ready for Freddie by Freddie Hubbard)

One of my Rutgers professors, William Fielder (a.k.a. “Prof”) used to talk about differences in rhythm section conceptions. Elvin’s playing to him was emblematic of forward motion, where the individual beat operates in the service of the overall momentum of the phrase. As much as prof respected the bassists Jimmy Garrison and Reggie Workman, he felt that the pinnacle of this conception could be heard in the collaborations between Elvin and bassist Art Davis on this record and on McCoy Tyner’s Inception. We also get more Wayne and Elvin, more McCoy and Elvin and a great opportunity to compare Elvin’s approach to this song to that of Art Blakey, who recorded another classic version (also with Freddie and Wayne) less than 2 months after this session.

7 ) “Lullaby of the Leaves” (from Magical Trio 2 by James Williams)

I’ve mentioned this album on several different Top 10 lists, and it’s bordering on criminal that it’s out of print. Aside from my personal affection for the music on this album (which is reason enough to include it here), I’m also including it to show Elvin’s ability to play a bluesy, hard-swinging groove like nobody’s business. Above I mentioned Prof Fielder and his citation of Elvin as representing the pinnacle of rhythmic forward motion. Well Ray Brown, the bassist on this track, was one of Prof’s primary examples of the opposite conception, one in which every beat is driven home with authority and the longer phrases get comparatively less attention. As such, you’d think this collaboration (which had previously occurred in a trio with Cedar Walton and on several Phineas Newborn, Jr. sessions) wouldn’t work. But throughout the record, they find incredible middle ground. And particularly on this track, the pocket is just so deep and swinging as to render that sort of analysis pretty much irrelevant (sorry Prof) – perhaps the blues, when in the hands of artists like this, can simply be such a unifying force that it can trump any comparatively more subtle musical differences. I don’t know, but if your booty remains still when listening to this, I hope you have a note of explanation from your doctor.

8 ) “Thorn of a White Rose” (from Elvin Jones Is On the Mountain)

Have you ever wondered what Elvin would have sounded like as a rocker? The most obvious answers to this query can be found in the music of some of the drummers who incorporated his energy and polyrhythmic grooves in the late 1960s such as Ginger Baker (of Cream), Keith Moon (of the Who) and Mitch Mitchell (of the Jimi Hendrix Experience). But you can also get some insight from performances like this electric trio track with Gene Perla and Jan Hammer. Based on this evidence, I still wonder how Elvin would have fit in with a bona fide rock mega-band, given the contradiction between the elasticity of his beat and the rigidity of a typical rock song (which I suppose is only relevant when I think about him playing “Hey Jude” or “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”). In this context, though, boy does he rock. The groove is hard and deep, as virtually all of his grooves were.

9 ) “Sweet Mama” (from Elvin Jones Live at the Lighthouse)

It is interesting, though not surprising, that so much of Elvin’s career as a bandleader was defined by his hiring a series of powerful tenor saxophonists. Some of them were directly and clearly coming out of the vocabulary established by Elvin’s former boss, John Coltrane (Joe Farrell, Pat LaBarbera, Steve Grossman, Dave Liebman) and some were older and already had well-formed conceptions coming in (Frank Foster, Frank Wess, George Coleman). Two of the most important post-Coltrane tenorists to work in Elvin’s band were Grossman and Liebman, both represented on this fiery record, considered by many to epitomize Elvin as a bandleader. Props also to bassist Gene Perla, who also composed this catchy tune (which was re-done by Elvin a few years later featuring Grossman, LaBarbera and Foster, as well as some gnarly work by bassist David Williams and guitarist Ryo Kawasaki).

10 ) “You Are Too Beautiful” (from Elvin!)

Because of his remarkable fire, Elvin’s ability to play with sensitivity often gets short shrift. There are lots of great examples of this, of course, but I find that his elegant side was brought out particularly well when he collaborated with his brothers Thad and Hank, who are the featured soloists on this ballad. I could write pages on the sheer awesomeness of having three of this genre’s heaviest contributors as brothers, but I’ll simply focus on encouraging you to check out this record! There’s a lot more where this came from in the sense of Elvin’s collaborations with Thad and/or Hank (with Hank’s Thad-tribute Upon Reflection album warranting special mention).

Honorable Mentions (so I don’t toss and turn at night for failing to at least mention certain other facets of his legacy):

* Elvin with his fellow Detroiters (aside from the other Jones Brothers): “All of You” (from Kenny Burrell by Kenny Burrell) with Burrell, Tommy Flanagan and Doug Watkins, or “I’ll Remember April” (from Into Something by Yusef Lateef) with Yusef and Barry Harris (and that doesn’t even address stuff with Curtis Fuller, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Billy Mitchell, etc.)
* “Broad Way Blues” (from New York Is Now by Ornette Coleman): Elvin, Jimmy Garrison, Dewey Redman and Ornette, an underrated period in the careers of all of these men.
* “Shaw” (from African Exchange Student by Kenny Garrett): Elvin contributing to the music of those who grew up inspired by his music, like Garrett and pianist Mulgrew Miller.
* Elvin with Joe Henderson: “Punjab” (from In & Out by Joe Henderson) or “Inner Urge” or “Isotope” from Inner Urge or anything from McCoy Tyner’s The Real McCoy or Larry Young’s Unity. . .
* “A Night In Tunisia” (from A Night at the Village Vanguard by Sonny Rollins) debatably the most essential pre-Coltrane Elvin. And who needs piano?
* “Caravan” (from Complete Village Vanguard Sessions by Art Pepper): Elvin adding fire to the music of someone associated with “cool jazz” (other examples of this include Stan Getz and Tony Bennett)

And now I must stop before this gets ridiculous . . .

No Comments by noahjazz on January 27, 2012

filed in Uncategorized

MLK and How to Measure Success

I’ll start with the core belief on which this post is predicated: all we can control is doing the right thing to the best of our ability – to a large extent, the specific outcome is out of our hands. As such, when we try to affect positive change, the tangible outcome is an inadequate measure of success. Doing the right thing with commitment, sacrifice and clarity of purpose has an impact that can’t always be seen. This is especially true if we are looking at the short-term outcome and it’s similarly true if we have very specific criteria for success.

That’s all fine and good, but a couple weeks ago Kate and I had dinner with a couple who are foster parents in the midst of a difficult situation. From my view (and given my experiences) I would say they are doing heroic work (both in the general sense and in the more specific aspects of what they’ve done) and we told them that. To them, though, the unharmonious present and uncertain future make the whole thing feel like failure. I offered reassurance that even if the whole thing blows up beyond repair, there is no way in which what they’ve done could be deemed a failure – they’ve loved openly, sacrificed tremendously and taken a risk that too few are willing to take, and the positive reverberations go far beyond what they can see now. The counter-argument was then offered that if even the humblest positive outcomes aren’t reached, how can they deem it to be anything but a failure? What does success mean if it can’t be seen in any measurable way? At that point I had to step back, and since then I have been contemplating whether my philosophy on the subject has intrinsic merit or whether it’s simply a quasi-utopian coping mechanism. The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a point of reference I often use when hashing out a moral conundrum, so what better time to contemplate this than on the holiday set aside to celebrate him?

So here’s the $64,000 question: when you try to do something to make the world a better place, however humble or grandiose the specific goal may be, how do you evaluate whether you succeeded? Is it legitimate or sane to deem someone successful who has failed to meet the tangible objectives of a task? Okay, I guess that’s two questions, sort of – does that make it $128,000?

Let me point out up front a few things that I am not trying to state here. I may believe them, but the “argument” in this post is not based on

1) This is not based on the oft-repeated principle that risk leads to failure which leads to discovery (e.g. all of Edison’s failed inventions). I believe that strongly, but that alone doesn’t make any of those individual failures into successes.

2) I’m not talking about the feel-good notion of taking comfort in “giving it your best shot.” That is a whole ‘nother can of worms (click here if you missed [and are interested in] my post on the topic of “doing your best”) and one I would say is largely irrelevant to this discussion. On a personal, emotional level I put a lot of stock in how people feel, but this is not about self-esteem, this is about efficacy – did you really succeed?

3) Because we’re talking about doing good for the world, personal goals probably don’t count. If your goal is to write a novel or begin an exercise regimen or learn to make homemade eggrolls (yum, eggrolls), this is probably about personal fulfillment and self-actualization. These things are very important, we all need them, and they exercise many of the “muscles” that we use to pursue other goals. But their personal nature also means that we are entitled (obligated, even) to choose our own means of evaluating success.

4) If your goal does intersect with the world outside, but the outcomes are personal, the same is true. If you want to get a job that earns lots of money or get recognition for things you’ve done or woo the hot chick who works at the donut place, there are a lot of external factors but in the end your own needs being met is the basis of evaluating success. No judgment there either, but this doesn’t quite “fit” if the goals are not to impact the world but rather to get the world to conform to our own desires and needs.
After all, the purpose of this discussion is to take it out of the realm of the touchy-feely world of affirmations and such (I “feel” like I succeeded, so that’s all that matters) and look at really affecting positive change in the world outside. And that way you don’t have to be a sensitive guy like me for this outlook to have relevance. So with all that out of the way . . .

When evaluating “success,” there is a sense in which the focus and sincerity of effort leads us to a different and potentially more genuine conclusion than the measurable outcome. This is especially true when looking in the short term without the benefit of greater hindsight. Do you feel more proud of working your butt off and almost but not quite achieving an ambitious goal? Or do you feel better when with minimal effort or by dumb luck you get something you wanted?

This principle can be illustrated with a brief examination of my work with two teenaged students this year. Both students are smart and gifted and expressed significant ambition. And both were attached to short-cuts and resistant to my attempts to draw attention to inconsistencies of word and deed (another topic to be addressed in a future post). In both cases I insisted that it would be completely legitimate to adjust priorities and change their levels of ambition, BUT that their current actions were not consistent with their stated goals. And in both cases, I strongly suspect that I am among the first people (maybe the first) to have challenged them in this way. In one case, I dug in my heels and accepted nothing short of an acknowledgement that this dissonance was unsustainable – if he wanted to learn to play jazz, he needed to practice certain things and there was no loophole. I was subsequently informed by email, mid-semester, that he was switching to classical piano. In the other case, there has been incremental progress, but the shortcuts persist. This student is exceptionally gifted, so he sounds great and continues to get better at the impressive aspects of his playing (most of which fall outside of what I’m trying to teach him), while continuing to neglect certain “holes” that I warn him will bite him in the a** some years down the line. In the meantime he sounds great, and anyone who heard him would wonder who his teacher was and assume that I must then be a great teacher.

I challenged the first student to make a clear-headed choice and he thus opted out of a pursuit to which he wasn’t committed and which was reinforcing a delusional sense that he could just skirt around that. Did I fail? The second student sounds terrific, yet the greatest impact I am having will likely manifest years from now when he hits a wall and remembers my words of warning, hopefully at that point heeding them and filling in those “holes.” In the meantime, should I feel proud and successful because his good playing reflects well on me? Me, I reject that way of thinking. And again, this is not about feeling good about a job well done. This is about trying to measure whether I tangibly succeeded at the task before me. How my students sound is the most obvious yardstick by which to measure my success in teaching applied music, but it seldom feels like the most accurate.

For many of us this evaluation process is complicated and kind of tangled – doing something positive could have any number of intentions behind it, after all. Maybe being charitable is a way to gain attention or to repair a damaged image. Maybe trying to affect change is a way to legitimize a self-serving desire (e.g. a crusade to liberate your town’s citizens from oppressive gun control laws sounds better than “cut me some slack, I like to shoot stuff”). Maybe the cause to which you’re committed is actually based on principles that are questionable in terms of their benefit to the world (e.g. “saving” kids in foster care from the “horror” of being adopted into the loving homes of same-sex couples – boy do I wish I was making that one up).

But it’s not always this ambiguous! I think we can agree that there are certain things that are virtually universally agreed upon as good, positive, necessary, virtuous, and so on. All people have rights. Living in war is bad. Children deserve families, safety and the meeting of basic needs. Sure, plenty of folks deflect responsibility to do anything about these things (e.g. my personal interests are more important and I don’t want to sacrifice for others, especially if I don’t think they deserve what’s rightfully mine) or to even think about them, but I don’t think anyone really debates the these principles on the grounds that they’re true.

Once you’ve been “called” to do something important that impacts other people, it is difficult to turn back mid-stream. And this could be as simple as having kids in the most traditional sense (two parents, stable home and finances, lots of love and attention, planned from the beginning). Many reading this have parented, and the rest of you have at minimum known people who have parented and/or been parented. It’s a tremendous responsibility, and one that revolves around countless subtle, unglamorous actions that are for the greater good of the young person. Whether you are saving the life of a child on the edge or whether you are tending to the needs of a perfect little angel there are a lot of choices to make – and, frankly, we have a lot less control than we think we do over which sort of situation we end up when agreeing to be parents, regardless of the child’s DNA!

So contemplate this for a moment. Have you ever known good parents whose kids still have a hard time, maybe even growing into adults who struggle with jobs or relationships or healthy life decisions? Have you ever known successful people (whether kids or adults) who seem to have succeeded in spite of, rather than because of the quality of the parenting they got? This is not to imply for a second that parenting doesn’t impact the outcome of a child’s development, quite the contrary. The point is that we’ve all surely seen examples that indicate that the playing field is inherently uneven. Even if I rule out foster/adoptive families (lest I weaken the argument for anyone skeptical about them), I have certainly seen outcomes that span the possibilities. I have seen people parent with tireless energy, courage and integrity, with outcomes that are humble to the outside world. I have also seen parents with half-hearted commitment who bask in the validation of being associated with a successful child.

Now contemplate this – how much does the outside world validate the real work being done? Have you ever (without having the background information to judge this) assumed that a delightful child must have delightful parents? Have you ever seen a kid throwing a fit in a supermarket and passed judgment on the parent you see feebly attempting to control it (or to ignore it and just grab the damn Cheerios and get out of there)? It’s tempting, right? I can certainly say as a parent that if I were to list the things I’m most proud of are almost all so far under-the-radar that they are imperceptible to other people. I don’t expect a trophy for biting my tongue and finding love in my heart when I’m tired and cranky and feel the welling-up of a snarky response to an annoying situation, but those are the sorts of moments where the real work is done. As I said above, this is not a responsibility from which one can turn away. If you expected your adorable baby would grow up and get a PhD from Harvard, yet you wind up with an oppositional 16 year old battling depression and substance abuse, it’s still your job to do right by him every day.

So (and, by the way, thanks for your patience) what does all of this have to do with Dr. King? Well, if I measured success in the traditional manner, I could take the approach that he was a big failure. Has racism in this country been eradicated? Are all citizens protected from discrimination? Are all workers afforded dignified working conditions? Was the war in Vietnam stopped due to his campaigning, or at least did it become an object lesson that prevented subsequent wars? No, no, no and no. Epic fail.

Of course this is absurd. What he did achieve was obviously colossal. Even further, though, I feel that he was driven by a spirit that in some ways superseded the specificity of his goals at any given protest, speech or act of civil disobedience. He was committed to putting forth a love of his fellow humans that was deep, unconditional and at the same time peaceful and courageous. He was guided by this in his decision-making, but I also feel that it was a potent element unto itself. If everybody loved with even a fraction of that potency, can you imagine how the world would be? Can you imagine how many needs would be met? Can you imagine how many “failures” would be rendered moot by the surplus of resources for those in need? And if that kind of genuine love of fellow humans is indeed so potent (as I believe it is), then can anyone love this way without somehow shifting the energy of our world in a positive way? Not just in a new-agey good-vibey kind of way. If you love people that much, they will be moved. They may not transform instantly and they may not appreciate you directly, but love has every bit as much ability to heal as hate and neglect have to wither. Once you love in this way, the transformation begins, but the form it takes is out of your hands.

Or maybe I’m just full of crap. Maybe this is just a long-winded way of defending the cult of the loser (of which I suppose I am a high-ranking officer) from further ignominy. Maybe us idealistic losers will look back at the end of it all and determine that all the love, growth and courageous risk-taking that peppered our lives was for naught and we’d trade it all just for the opportunity to “win.” If that’s the way the world turns, though, I’m opting out and hopping onto a different orbit. If Billy Joel would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, I think I’d rather toil, struggle, persevere and love to earn the vice-presidency of the ILS (Idealistic Losers’ Society) than find a shortcut that allows me to hoist a shiny trophy. I would rather try to transform a life and “fail” than shy away from trying (in which case the outcome would be even worse, but I would have felt able to absolve myself of responsibility for it, so I wouldn’t have “failed”). I never met Dr. King, of course, but when I look at his legacy, he embodies this courageous rejection of “failure” as society defines it . . . just one of the many reasons to be grateful for him.

No Comments by noahjazz on January 16, 2012

filed in Philosophizing

Tomato Sauce – Basic and with Variations

It’s actually quite easy and relatively cheap to make a tomato sauce that’s better than anything you’ve ever had from a jar.
Since super-fresh produce is hard to come by this time of year (at least in New England) there are certain foods that help to fill in the gaps as we await the thaw. A good tomato sauce is a great for coating pasta or spreading on pizza, and it’s a multi-purpose way to spruce up vegetables or soups or even sandwiches. And this is a case of maximizing what’s available in winter, as canned tomatoes do a better job (for this recipe) than fresh anyway.

I learned to make sauce very early in my cooking “studies” and I have only had to make minor adjustments in the years since then, thanks to a couple of basic principles that my older brother Matthew taught me in the summer of 1993 in a life-altering hour in the kitchen.

1) Especially for something this simple, good ingredients beget good results. There are few ingredients in a tomato sauce, so it stands to reason that there is no magic formula for making it good unless those component parts are of acceptable quality. You don’t have to necessarily use organic tomatoes (though I do and it surely tastes better), but the difference between the $2 can imported from Italy will most likely taste better than the 50 cent generic brand. If you use the finest tomatoes available, that’s the only way the cost is greater than that of pre-made sauce, but that’s assuming you’re comparing to low-quality pre-made sauce, which is essentially a whole different animal. Just use good olive oil and good tomatoes.

2) Cooking for a good while is important. There is a certain acidity to canned tomatoes (I’m inclined to just call it “canned tomato taste” and most of you will know what I mean) that goes away if you cook it for long enough. This doesn’t really require any extra effort, but it does necessitate thinking far enough ahead to start early and give yourself adequate simmering time.

Add to this another principle I learned nearly 10 years later from Seth Bloom, a brilliant circus performer who is now co-leader of the Acrobuffos (click here to check them out – unrelated to food, but it’s super-cool). People generally add sugar to combat the acidity of the tomatoes, but in addition to sufficient cooking time, throwing in a chopped carrot or potato can absorb that acidity equally well. His suggestion was to add large chunks (and simply remove them and eat ‘em separately when you’re done with the sauce) but I like to add smaller chunks and incorporate them into the sauce. Either way is cool.

Once you get the hang of it, there are tons of variations possible – the recipe is simple, though, to help you get the basic technique and to see how satisfying it can be as-is. This recipe makes enough to coat about a pound and a half of pasta generously (or 2 pounds more stingily and/or accompanied by other things) or to just have around as a multi-use thing for up to 2 weeks in the fridge in a well-sealed container.

- 2-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (more if you like it rich, less if you’re concerned with fat intake)
- 2 cans (28 ounces each) of tomatoes – ideally a mixture of textures (e.g. 1 crushed and 1 ground or 1 pureed and 1 whole peeled, crushed by hand as it’s added to the pot).
- 4 large (or 6 medium) cloves garlic, crushed or minced
- 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped finely (roughly 1/4″ cubes)
- 2 tsp salt (and possibly more to taste)
- freshly ground black pepper to taste

1) In a sufficiently large pot, heat up the olive oil over medium-high heat.

2) Once hot enough that a drop of water flicked into the oil sizzles immediately, add the garlic and stir constantly for about 1 minute, until fragrant and very slightly brown. Then add carrot and sauté for another minute.

3) Add the tomatoes, standing back to make sure you don’t get splashed. Add salt and a generous amount of pepper. Stir together, turn heat down do low and cover pot.

4) Simmer, stirring occasionally (maybe every 10-15 minutes) for about an hour. You can get away with as little as 30 minutes, but the more the better, up to 90 minutes.

5) Remove from heat and taste for salt and seasonings. You can serve right away or, better yet, let sit for an hour before serving to let the flavors meld. Believe it or not, this sauce tastes better reheated the next day.

VARIATIONS (just a few obvious ones – knock yourself out beyond this):

* Finely chop an onion and add to the oil first, sautéing for 5 minutes before adding the garlic.
* Add 2 Tbsp of red wine along with the tomatoes
* Add the garlic cloves whole and remove them before adding tomatoes. You can eat them or dispose of them, but the garlic flavor will embed itself in the oil (this is a good option if for whatever reason you don’t want any chunks).
* Instead of the carrot (or in addition, if you like it sweet) add 1 Tbsp of sugar with the tomatoes.
* Replace the carrot with 1 finely chopped potato
* Add up to a tsp each of oregano, dried basil and/or thyme. And if you have fresh basil, add it liberally (chopped) right at the end, once you’ve removed the sauce from heat.

No Comments by noahjazz on January 9, 2012

filed in Recipes

Common Decency and Obeying the Muse

It’s end-of-year reflection time, right? These days my reflections keep coming back to two quotes. One is a Kurt Vonnegut quote* in which he offers a plea for “a little less love, and a little more common decency.” The other quote is attributed to Rudyard Kipling in explanation of his creation process: “Drift, wait and obey.” When I look back at 2011 and any real growth or insight I may have experienced, the notions of waiting (e.g. patience), obeying (e.g. relying on compelling inner truths, even when not entirely convenient) and common decency (pretty self-explanatory, I hope) come up reliably.

* the book, “Slapstick,” is admittedly not his greatest, but subpar Vonnegut is still pretty damned insightful.

At the beginning of the year, I made a few resolutions that revolved around principles as opposed to concrete actions, and the one that stood out was “sincerity.” Not that I had been particularly insincere in previous years, but this year I wanted to see if I could take my basis for evaluating decisions and turn it inward. Part of this was related to my eternal quest for self-knowledge and part of it was a practical recognition that the outside world is changing so rapidly that playing catch-up is a wearying task.

One fairly unsurprising result of this focus on sincerity was the crystallization of some core beliefs. To cite one specific example, I have wondered about the “problem” of my being a bit too generous of heart. When I perceive that I can help somebody, I can get sucked in to an extent that exceeds my duty (whether it be the length of a music lesson, my level of responsibility to give support to a relative stranger experiencing physical challenges, or what have you), but this year I decided to relax about that. As a musician, I have little enough hope of “coming out ahead” by the traditional criteria that I wondered what if I just replaced the formula altogether? That sounds more dramatic than it really is – on a basic level it just means be generous when it seems like it may make a difference and I have the resources to do it, and then move on without watching to see if it “pays off” in any measurable way. If I’m living in a way that feels genuine (for example, focusing on common decency more than tangible gain), is that not reward enough? Don’t rich people spend a lot of money trying to buy the feeling that you get when you look in the mirror at the end of the day, knowing you lived that day in sync with your beliefs? (Maybe not, how would I know what rich people do?) The “drift, wait, obey” edict fits here as well, in that the belief system in question can’t really grow out of intellect. As much as I love to think, this truth is born of a deeper place – I hesitate to say that (lest I draw comparisons to George W. Bush’s “go with the gut” rationale for atrocity), but inner wisdom can’t be dismissed entirely.

This started to work its way more into my music as well. In an era where terms like “image” and “branding” are glued to the space where art and commerce meet, I had to ask myself whether being myself in that way (concerned with kindness, serious about my work but also kind of a goober) makes for a “sellable” product. For the moment my conclusion is probably not, but it doesn’t matter. I am who I am and trying to be cooler or edgier or whatever would reek of an insincerity that would far outweigh any benefits. And that’s just from the commercial angle – from the angle of feeling real, it’s a no-brainer.

A more surprising result of my deepened quest for sincerity came in the direction of my music. After I completed the composition, development, premiere performances and recording for my “Know Thyself” project late in 2009, the creative tank was very much on “E.” I made good use of my musical time through other forms of study (including a re-upping of my piano regimen that led pretty directly to this year’s “Turtle Steps” recording) but wrote less music in 2010 than at any time since I was 14. I wrote a handful of tunes early in 2011 to fill “gaps” in the programming for “Turtle Steps” and then put my energy into getting through those recording sessions.

Then in July a very funny thing happened. Ha ha ha ha. Oh, sorry, I’ll explain. My lovely wife Kate jokingly suggested a competition revolving around which of us could come up with a song based on our recipe for granola. She promptly forgot about it, but I had a bee in my bonnet for a week or so until one day I sat down and had a song come out – I could say I wrote it, but it feel s more accurate to say it wrote itself and I transcribed it. A little while later I had a day off and decided it’d be fun to record it. I own one microphone and a pretty low-tech recording setup (that I’d never really figured out how to use), and my MIDI chops are atrocious. So I just stuck the mic in front of a guitar, played the song, and then layered additional tracks, including slide guitar, bass, melodica and “drums” consisting of playing brushes on a sketch pad that was lying around. And then I sang it. And results be damned (save for melodica, these are not instruments over which I have much mastery, and my singing is notorious) I felt engaged and had FUN. If you’re curious, here it is – no teasing, please.

(Click here to hear “Granola”)

That would be a cute and innocuous little story, except that this was when the floodgates opened. The day after I made that recording, another song came to me – about 2 and a half hours elapsed from genesis of idea to completion of recording, this one roughly in the style of Neil Young’s work with Crazy Horse and with lyrics borne of some difficult experiences from the recesses of my past. It felt cathartic and genuine and expressive and . . . not fit for public consumption or in any way relevant to my career as a jazz musician. Uh oh. At that point I had the good sense to realize that the music-creating facet of my muse, mostly dormant for a long while, was now speaking loudly. My choices were to obey without qualification or to insert the filters of perceived usefulness/relevance, self-judgment, projected judgment of others and so on. I chose to obey and the songs kept coming. Though the ensuing months were extremely busy, I wrote and recorded an average of a song per week until I had (as of this writing) two dozen tracks – two full albums’ worth of material. Between the personal lyrics and the primitive musicianship, there are multiple layers of being unfit for public consumption. And yet, this is clearly what I needed to do, and I continued to obey, keeping at bay the questions of how this would “help” me.
These thoughts of sincerity and decency have been percolating for a good while, and strangely enough it all seems to be coming together this morning through the convergence of four disparate and unrelated events over a 24 hour stretch.

1 ) Yesterday we got to spend time with a brilliant artist whose work spans multiple disciplines. Like most artists, the tangible rewards (money, recognition, etc.) have not come on a level commensurate with her level of achievement. As such, there is an ongoing struggle between the awareness that these things can’t be controlled and the almost desperate need for a transformative event to make it all less difficult (yep, every art form has its equivalent of the jazz musician’s quest for the gig or record deal that makes the struggle less daunting). She was slightly taken aback to hear me marvel at her output, as it’s hard to see the forest from the trees when immersed in frustration over the paucity of material success.

Even when we try to rid ourselves of that fantasy, there is the temptation to seek a loophole once we start to see some benefit to our attempts to distance ourselves from the rat race (e.g. I’m just going to let my choreography flow and not worry about what others think . . . hey, that came out pretty well, let me figure out how to do more of it and then market it and then . . .). We know that concrete benchmarks of success are unpredictable and often unreliable, and we know that worrying about these things can sully the joy of the creative process, yet it’s so difficult to compartmentalize it all and to resist the lure of dreaming of the external forces that could make it all better. I certainly don’t advocate chucking all business-related concerns out the window, but it can eat us up if we’re not careful.

2 ) Yesterday Kate (and I, peripherally, while driving) spoke with a new acquaintance (let’s call her “Gladys”), a wife, mother and professional in her early 50s who recently and fairly unexpectedly took in a homeless and severely traumatized teenager in her community. The teen has a lot of stuff to work out, having essentially been victim of a system-wide failure to keep her safe on the most basic of levels, and Gladys and her family are having a predictably tough time. Okay, freeze, and evaluate your instant reaction to Gladys, with the limited information you now have. Does it closely fit one of these?

a) Wow, what a brave, awesome woman. God bless her, and I hope she gets the support she needs.
b) Wow, I totally can’t relate to taking a risk like that for someone outside of my immediate family. Seems kind of wacky, but good for her and I guess it’s great that there are some people in the world willing to stick their necks out like this.
c) Wow, what a delusional idealist. What does she think she’s trying to do, and what gives her the right to subject her “real” family to this sort of stress?

I’m well aware that my experiences as a foster and adoptive parent make “a” a more obvious choice for me than for most, and choice “b,” what I perceive to be the most common choice, largely passes the buck of responsibility but at least recognizes that civilized society depends on people like Gladys. What I wasn’t prepared for was the discovery that her “support structure” has largely reached conclusion “c.” If “a” is donating your time to a humanitarian charity and “b” is either donating a pittance or abstractly recognizing that it’s important that other people donate, “c” is spitting on the relief workers as they walk by.

Frankly, it’s hard for me to reconcile that this reaction could emanate from a person with a soul and a clue. I’ll save a full-fledged rant on the topic for another post, but is there any excuse for failing to at least offer a moment of moral support to someone engaged in a sacred service to humankind? And while I recognize the self-defeating nature of insulting my readers, let me say that if your reaction to the scenario above was “c,” now is an appropriate time to be ashamed of yourself and to begin contemplating where this comes from. The impulse to cling protectively to a blemish-free version of life is understandable, but I haven’t met many happy people who live this way. But, then, maybe I just don’t get invited to the right parties . . .

3 ) I woke up yesterday morning to discover that Sam Rivers, a vital contributor to the music world, passed away. There have been some particularly heated debates in the jazz world recently (“jazz” vs. BAM, this artist vs. that artist, whatever), but what’s most striking is not the perfectly compelling content of the debates, but rather how some intelligent, functional and generally classy adults have been reduced to threats, name-calling and other behavior typically not seen outside of a schoolyard or a pro wrestling event. Sam Rivers is now one of this music’s ancestors, alongside Hank Jones, James Moody, Paul Motian, Dr. Billy Taylor, Bob Brookmeyer and others who have left us in the last two years. What these musicians also shared was a great deal of dignity in how they carried themselves. However we feel about the responsibility to carry on any particular musical traditions, the tradition of valuing class and common decency towards fellow humans is one that it would be a shame to let go.

4 ) Last night I had a vivid, disturbing dream (literally, not metaphorically). I’ll spare you the largely surreal details, but in it, there was corruption, exploitation and violence. The young and vulnerable were in danger, the violent and exploitative were in power, and those with the capacity to step in and easily make a difference were apathetic and indifferent. I literally woke up with my fists clenched in anguish. Thank God it was just a dream, but clearly on a deep level I have my doubts that we’re comfortably far from this outcome.

So let’s summarize. Sincerity = cool. Common decency = also cool.

And so how has this all turned out for ME? Well, it just so happens that through opening myself up to the muse and embracing common decency, I made a musical and personal impression on a high-powered agent. In turn I wound up with a big-money 6 album major label record deal for my jazz work, an equally lucrative 4 album deal for my songs-with-words, a week at the Village Vanguard with my own group and “Granola” got signed up to be the theme for General Mills new line of oat cereals, with the million-dollar licensing fee going straight to a foundation to provide support for teens in foster care and the people caring for them. See what happens when you trust and obey the muse?

Oops, actually that whole last paragraph is a total lie. Dammit, I guess letting go of those dreams is still kind of tricky. But you know, I have to grudgingly admit that it’s better this way. If gaining that sort of tangible reward was my main way of “proving” the validity of sincerity and decency, then that would sully the purity of the whole thing, not unlike supporting a progressive cause because it’s what the cool people are doing. Ultimately the reason to follow that path is because its validity speaks for itself. Maybe I’m crazy, but I plan to renew for 2012.

2 Comments by noahjazz on December 28, 2011

filed in Uncategorized

The Underbelly of Race and Jazz

It seems like everyone is throwing their hats into the ring in the aftermath of the scrum catalyzed by Nicholas Payton’s thought-provoking and surprisingly controversial blog post this week (suggesting that the word “jazz” be replaced by BAM, an acronym for “black American music”). Yesterday I read the 100+ comments on George Colligan’s excellent “JazzTruth” blog and another thoughtful blog post by Bay Area trumpeter Ian Carey. I also had an interesting conversation at a party and heard a fascinating interview (thanks Bob Hart) with Gene Simmons of the band Kiss. Wondering how I’m going to pull all of THAT together in a blog post?

While some of the dialogue going on consists of angry taunting (largely surrounding the words of an extremely combatative critic with questionable qualifications and even more questionable command of the English language), there is some real discourse going on. I will admit that I don’t really have strong feelings about the term “jazz,” so I’m not going to express a real opinion on that detail (is that wrong of me? I don’t know. BAM does sound pretty good.). The issue that is striking to me is how there could be any question about whether jazz is, in fact, black American music.

I like Bill Evans (and Bix Beiderbecke and Lee Konitz and so on) as much as the next guy. But really? I could get into “historian mode” or “musician mode” to explain the overwhelmingly African roots of the music, and I suppose there are valid counter-arguments – frankly I’m not interested in getting into that. I’m more interested in going into “amateur psychologist” mode (for which I’m even less qualified), because my feeling is that this is where much of the debate comes from.

Anyone who has read my posts about my struggles with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome knows that I’ve spent a lot of time observing the phenomenon of “belonging” (in this case struggling to “belong” in the world of the able-bodied). This leads to amateur psychologist observation #1: “I don’t like to feel like an outsider.” As it pertains to jazz, there are a whole lot of white people involved in the music, whether as players or educators or people involved in (one might say) more peripheral aspects of the music, such as business and journalism. While Caucasians represent a statistical majority in the jazz world, we are outsiders, and it’s not easy. However, as Carey points out eloquently in his blog, get over it! We’re not talking about being a person of color in Apartheid-era South Africa here. If being white and involved in jazz makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s a pretty small price to pay in the grander scheme of things.

Meanwhile, people really like to feel like they have the moral high ground, which leads to amateur psychologist observation #2: “I don’t want to feel morally ambivalent about pursuing success.” If you’re white, success for you on some level means yet another example of a deserving African-American musician (of which there is no shortage) being shunted aside. This is assuming, at least that we view “success” in quantifiable and finite terms. That is a suspect rubric, but I have to concede that ultimately every teaching job, gig or record review I earn is inherently not being given to a person of color. How do I justify this? Me, I do my life’s work with as much integrity as I can, while recognizing that there is a degree of moral ambivalence in there and trying to simply opt out of the unwinnable battle of justifying what I do (studying the blues earnestly for example, without trying to self-consciously achieve Honorary Blackness, if you will). I remember having the formative experience of spending time with the great pianist Dick Katz in the mid-1990s (thanks Phil Schaap!). I naively came right out and asked him how he felt about being a white jazz musician. His very dignified response was, in essence, that of the many African-Americans who hired him (Oscar Pettiford, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, etc.) some were strongly anti-white and some were totally color-blind. Ultimately he felt that the nation’s civil rights history was so intense that he had no right to begrudge any musician of color his opinion on the subject, regardless of personal consequences.

The conversation at the party? So I met a perfectly nice gentleman at the Wesleyan holiday party yesterday (not a musician) who, upon learning of my line of work, asked what I’ve been listening to that’s “new and fresh.” The truth was that most recently I’ve been listening to Nicholas Payton’s “Bitches” album, and I explained in the briefest of terms the corresponding buzz going around the jazz web-o-sphere. When I made mention of BAM, his immediate response was to furrow his brow and say, “but . . . WHITE people have contributed a lot to the music too, right?” I gently (as gently as one can yell, anyway – it was a loud party) responded that yes, that’s true on one level, but ultimately it is an overwhelmingly African-American music. He persisted, saying “well, I guess, but it’s not EXCLUSIVELY African-American.” I explained that this is factually correct, but nobody goes around saying that what we call Western classical music isn’t the creation of dead European white people or that samba is anything but Brazilian, even though some non-Brazilians helped to expose the world to it. He relented (I gathered as much out of embarrassment as anything), I soon began conversing with someone else and that was that. But it was striking to me that someone who isn’t even a musician would feel so emotionally invested in protecting white people (yeah, we have it tough, I know) from being deemed outsiders or interlopers in this way.

And then, upon returning home, I was compelled to listen to an archive of a several-years-old NPR interview with Gene Simmons, founding member of Kiss and (I’m told by people with televisions) modern-day reality show star. I’m not sure if he was just trying to push buttons or if he really is a total prick, and I don’t particularly care. But I found it interesting that when Terry Gross persisted in asking for his feelings about music (as opposed to money or fame or adding to his list of 4600 sexual partners), he ultimately said “I believe in my heart, that anyone who gets up there and says that what they’re doing is art, is on crack and is delusional.” When taken in the spirit intended, I think that the only logical conclusion is that Gene Simmons is not someone with whom I would enjoy having lunch (unless, I suppose, he was buying).

However, there is one presumably unintentional germ of truth in there: devoting one’s life to music is a “calling” and not a rational decision. I’ve written plenty about this as well. People (or at least smart, sane people receiving good guidance) do not look at a list of career paths on paper and conclude that “jazz musician” is the safest and most responsible one to take. We do it not because we want to, not because it’s smart or sane, but because we must. This is true of many things in life – is having a baby sane on paper? Is falling in love sane? Is there any logical way to describe what compels one to make a beautiful painting? What would our world be if we all only engaged in activities that were deemed prudent in entirely objective terms? I don’t know, maybe it would be better, but I certainly don’t think we would recognize it.

Therein, I suspect, lies the “answer” that so many white people are looking for to make emotional sense of this inherently uncomfortable debate (and have been looking for since the beginning of jazz, with a steady crescendo corresponding with African-Americans’ gradually increasing empowerment in society). By the logic above, I went into this music with a pure heart and a delusional mind (or, perhaps, a sane one that was no match for my drive). I do it because it “called” me. If that makes me an outsider, that’s no different from my choice to be a foster/adoptive parent, no different from the countless people in history who have fallen in love with a person whose race or gender makes the union socially unacceptable. That is, my siren song comes from the emotional truth, not from a calculated assessment of the tangible outcome – that outcome is something to navigate, for sure, but not the arbiter of truth. Being an outsider is, then, neither an unfair circumstance that should be rectified nor a cross that I bear out of some weird sense of solidarity with people who have in some way been genuinely oppressed. Because (at least I like to think) my relationship with the music is pure, that other stuff is static. It is vitally important on a socio-political level, but on a personal level (insofar as it impacts my art and career) it is simply one among a big and complicated web of circumstances, different from but no bigger or more complicated than anybody else’s.

And ultimately this is the spirit that I perceive in the most civil and upbeat portions of this week’s lively discussion. Beyond the vitrol, beyond the pettiness, there is a great community of people who love this music and value both its roots and its future. In the end that’s what it all comes back to. And whether or not “jazz” (the word) is in fact dead, this musical spirit and community is alive and well.

2 Comments by noahjazz on December 9, 2011

filed in Philosophizing

Overcoming Overeating Without Deprivation

If I said that it was possible to eat less and simultaneously feel less deprived, would that make me sound crazy? Or maybe opportunistic? Well, I assure you I have no book or magic pill to peddle. Last winter I decided that for both mental and physical health I needed to take off some weight. Over the next few months I dropped 20+ pounds and have kept the weight off for over a year now, even though I feel like I’m enjoying food more than ever and even indulging with some frequency. Since many of us in the U.S.A. now find ourselves smack in the middle of the biggest period of food-excess of the year (even bigger for me, with a birthday that falls between Thanksgiving and the December holidays, plus our big pizza experiment), it seemed like a good time to discuss the insights that have allowed me to pull this off. If you’re not interested in the process but want the tips, skip to the very end.

Let’s get one thing straight first off: I freakin’ love food! I know people who have lukewarm feelings about food, and thus are equally content to eat pizza or salad or not eat at all. I like to eat for enjoyment of food, I like to eat for comfort, I like to eat for the sake of feeling full. I don’t know how much of this is nature vs. nurture, but I do find it to be a curious trait, given that I’ve never actually found myself having to “go hungry” for any significant period of time. You know those lab experiments where you give a guinea pig access to a dose of cocaine at the push of a button and it keeps pushing it until it dies? That’s me at a buffet if I’m not exercising any self-control. It doesn’t matter that I’m full, it doesn’t matter if the food is mediocre, it doesn’t matter that I rationally know that this is not likely the last opportunity I’ll ever have to eat mashed potatoes. Put me in that environment and remove my inhibitions and it’s as if I’m hoarding up calories in preparation for months of hibernation.

As such any “diet” built on a model of self-denial would be unsustainable and/or make my life miserable enough to be only debatably worth prolonging. Okay, maybe that’s a little melodramatic, but it’s important to note that in this process I have never perceived myself to be a “diet.” It does help that I enjoy certain healthy foods quite a bit (I generally prefer whole-grain to white, I like vegetables) but most of these principles apply equally well regardless.

Ironically, it was after years of dealing with body image issues and finally convincing myself that my body was okay that my weight crept up to the point where I actually did need to do something – I still wasn’t technically overweight according to doctors and BMI indexes, but my fragile joints do better the less they have to carry. The deal-breaker, though, was that I realized that I was seldom eating mindfully. I was often eating when I wasn’t hungry, or going back for seconds because I had been thinking about something else while I chowed on the first portion. Body image notwithstanding, I needed to repair a relationship with food that had gotten further and further away from basic principles of eating when hungry and eating only until no longer hungry.

There were a few authors who I found particularly helpful along the way, from food writers Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “Food Rules”) and Mark Bittman (“Food Matters”) to others like tennis player Monica Seles (“Getting A Grip” – not a great book, but an inspiring story) and Buddhist Jack Kornfield (“A Path With Heart”). Mostly, though, what I came up with relied less on information about science or nutrition and more on tuning into basic intuition. So for me, there are some “ingredient-based” principles that are fairly important – whole grains are better than white flour, sugar and fats should be limited, plant foods are better than animal foods, whole and homemade foods are better than processed ones and so on. More importantly, though, the science basically comes down to Every Calorie Counts – I try to look at this not from a woman-magazine-readin’-diet-nut perspective, but rather from a mindfulness perspective.

So f I grab a handful of chips or chow on the fried noodles at the Chinese restaurant while waiting to order or a waitress/caterer hands me a spinach pie while I’m chatting at a reception, my stomach doesn’t distinguish that from (or make it calorically less significant than) the food I sit down and savor later on. This also applies to “condiment calories” – salad dressing counts too, for example, as does that extra quarter inch of sour cream on the potato.

A variation on this is recognizing things that are not as healthy as they seem or are genuinely healthy but still not calorically zero-impact. Examples of the former include candy disguised as health food (I have a weakness, for example, for Clif “Mojo” bars, but eventually reconciled that, while better than a Snickers bar, these are treats and not zero-impact snacks) and things that purport to fulfill certain catch-phrases like “whole-grain” (even if only 40% whole grain) or “low-fat” (which doesn’t necessarily mean low-calorie or low-sugar or otherwise low-impact). It’s amazing how many things SOUND healthy but only are if you compare them to other, less healthy things (for example, the bakery muffin that may be better than a donut but is essentially a large cupcake without frosting). Another variation is the snack that somehow doesn’t seem like it should count. Anyone who has ever nibbled on appetizers at a party and then wondered why you weren’t hungry at dinnertime knows what I’m talking about there.

So that’s all fine and good, but my goal was not to become rigid about food intake, either in terms of what or how much I eat. I still wanted to experience treats, to enjoy ice cream cone even if it was large and unhealthy, to eat pizza when in New Haven and so on. What I began to realize was that there were a huge number of emotional factors pushing me to overeat. What follows is a partial list of questionable reasons I might find myself eating:

* Because it’s there. It’s a lot harder to resist something staring at you. Willpower is useful, for sure, but with particularly tempting treats, I generally manage this by having it NOT be there – so I don’t keep cakes or ice cream around; if there’s a birthday and we wind up with cake, I struggle more and try to avoid winding up with the leftovers (though, as with all these things, if it happens only occasionally it’s okay).
* It’s mealtime. This is generally fine, but does not take into account actual hunger, which is especially problematic after overeating in another recent meal. So if I eat too much for lunch but eat a “normal” portion at each subsequent meal, I can actually go days where I eat at mealtime and am never genuinely hungry.
* I’m bored (especially at something like a lame party with lots of snacks).
* I’m restless (often occurring when alone and with a chunk of unstructured time too short to get involved in something else)
* I’m over-stimulated (and therefore don’t even notice what or how much I’m eating)
* I’m stressed.
* I “earned” it (through some action other than days of sensible eating).
* There’s cause for celebrating/I deserve a treat (see above).
* I need to wind down (a double whammy, because this usually means the end of the day, the worst time to be packing in calories).
* It’s so good that I want to have more.
* It’s so mediocre that that I want to have more (because I’m not satisfied after 1 portion).
* It’s free (historically a particularly tough one for me on a gig, where it feels like part of my “earnings”)
* It’ll spoil if I don’t eat it, and that would be wasteful (a variation on the age-old “There are kids starving in China”).
* There’s not enough for a leftover (I’ve historically been great at that one, pacing the size of portion 1 to ensure that what’s left is “not enough for another meal”).
* I’m still hungry (sometimes legit, obviously, but also tempting to cite without first taking the requisite time of about 20 minutes to digest . . . so I eat until I feel full, and then the digestion kicks in and hoobaby am I full)
* I already “blew it” (by eating junk/sweets, for example) so I might as well live it up (which almost seems sane, except that the body doesn’t have a threshold where after 5 brownies it stops keeping track).
* It would be rude/socially awkward to say no (occasionally true, but probably true a lot less often than I used to think, PLUS I’d typically then eat a lot rather than having a little and saying WOW this is GREAT). Worth noting that if there’s someone who consistently DOES pressure you to overeat or eat unwisely, then it’s probably worth having fewer meals with that person.
* It’s healthy (generally better than overeating cheese fries, but if you’re full, even celery is probably overkill).

I could go on, but you get the idea. Sometimes 3 or 4 of these factors might be acting simultaneously. As I started to focus my awareness, though, a crazy thing happened – I began to enjoy food more. As Michael Pollan says, “food is expensive therapy,” and he’s right most of the time. A variation on this, though, is that food is usually ineffective therapy, insofar as it doesn’t address what’s really going on. So as I began eating less, I began savoring my meals and snacks more, enjoying being hungry and eating satisfying amounts of good food and enjoying being attuned to my body. And sometimes the best therapy I can get IS a big ol’ ice cream cone, and I “budget” several substantial treats into a given week. Only now I am more conscious of what constitutes a treat and I am more aware of how hungry I am. As a result, I am enjoying those treats more than ever – there’s nothing like having ice cream every day to make it cease to be special.

I go back often to some advice I got from Dr. Ric Liva, my first naturopath. He gave me a lot of sensible rules about food intake, but also pointed out that what matters is not what you do occasionally but rather what you do most of the time. So whether you have that indulgent pile of sweets occasionally matters a lot less than the daily donut breakfast (fortunately, I like oatmeal better than donuts in the morning anyway – phew!). As such, the opportunity for frequently breaking rules is kind of built into my approach. I aim to be totally mindful and sensible all the time about what I eat and why I’m eating it . . . and one of the factors above comes around to bite me in the butt with some frequency. Sometimes I catch it and sometimes I succumb. And when I succumb I take note (without shame) and move on from there.

It seems on one level like I should have gained all the weight back by now given the frequency with which I stumble, but I haven’t. What that says to me is that the core habits I have established as my default are strong enough and sufficiently healthy to give me that “wiggle room” to falter some of the time and still wind up ahead of the game. It also says that I’m enjoying this way of eating enough that it simply feels preferable to the alternative – I can’t say I miss going days on end without actually ever being hungry.

So here is my baker’s dozen of “rules” for keeping overeating in check. I’m no expert, and I acknowledge that all of them won’t work for everyone, but if you love food the way I do (and struggle to be moderate with it), I suspect you’ll find something useful in here.

1 ) Establish level of hunger before deciding what and how much to eat.

2 ) If necessary, predict future eating opportunities (whether eating less to “save room” for a forthcoming large meal or eating more because you will have to wait a long time to eat again).

3 ) Be observant about your appetite and eating habits. Learn how much food it takes to quell hunger, how often you get hungry, how different foods impact you, how external factors (exercise, sleep, time of day, etc.) impact your appetite and so on. It can be extremely helpful to simply know these things and to factor them into your planning.

4 ) Whenever possible, sit down and pay attention to what you’re eating. And if you must “multi-task” and eat while driving, working, etc., try to stick to simple and unprocessed foods (e.g. carrot or celery sticks).

5 ) Have a moderate helping and then stop to digest before deciding whether to eat more. This can double as an opportunity to bask in what was just eaten. If there’s no time to bask, then just stop eating and get on with your life.

6 ) Shop and plan in such a way that healthy options are easily available and of high enough quality to be desirable. For me this includes making sure there are carrots and celery around at all times and that when I’m on the road (even for a few hours) I have something like a bag of home-made trail mix with me. And don’t use poor planning as a passive-aggressive way to enable yourself (oops, no carrots, guess I have to eat chips; oops, didn’t bring trail mix, guess I have to stop at Burger King for some fries). Yes, this takes a little more time and money, but it’s a lot cheaper and more convenient than the alternative consequences!

7 ) Be cautious about stocking unhealthy things in your home that you don’t rationally think you should be eating (see “because it’s there” above). For each of us this is different (whether snack foods, sweets, etc.), but it’s a lot harder to avoid something that’s right there. On one level, getting a large single serving of ice cream at an ice cream parlor may actually be MORE calorically high-impact (and is certainly less cost-effective) than having a gallon in the freezer and eating a little every day. For me, though, it’s more of a big-picture thing – keeping dessert as a treat that needs to be planned and savored, as opposed to a daily struggle with the “eat me” voice coming from the freezer.

8 ) Try to minimize exposure to environments (such as buffets) that encourage gluttony. If in those environments (e.g. big holiday meals/parties), try to set guidelines (e.g. fill one plate, not heaping, then wait and/or stop) and remember that you don’t have to eat everything that’s there, certainly not in large amounts.

9 ) If tempted to eat for emotional reasons, take a few minutes to look at the emotions and see if the food still feels necessary. And remember that being hungry is not generally cause for panic

10 ) When you do indulge, GO FOR IT. This doesn’t mean to let go of all common sense, but if occasional indulging is helpful (or pleasurable or whatever) then excessive compromise ultimately defeats the purpose. If what you love is to go to your favorite steakhouse and get a 16 oz porterhouse, then do that once in a while – going to the same place and only eating salad is obviously more nutritionally sensible, but if it leaves your cravings unaddressed, those cravings will be more likely to express themselves the rest of the time and interfere with your otherwise sensible eating. A corollary to this (10a, if you will) is that the surrounding meals provide a great opportunity to compensate. If you take this trip to the steakhouse, some of the “impact” can be mitigated by having salad for lunch that day and a simple breakfast of fruit the next morning.

11 ) Since the idea with treats is to enjoy them, it’s a shame to waste the “indulgence quota” on something that isn’t even satisfying or good. For me it’s surprisingly effective when I think this way (“That bag of chips may look tempting, but wouldn’t I rather skip it now and treat myself to something even better later? Yum, something even better later . . .”).

12 ) If you slip up a little, just shake it off and get back on track. Eat less until your appetite comes back legitimately and then resume your sensible habits.

13 ) If you slip up significantly (a large unintended indulgence or several consecutive days of lower-grade “issues”), don’t judge yourself, but do take a moment for some sober observation. Why did temptation get the better of me in this case? Were there precautions I could have taken that I neglected or that didn’t even occur to me? How bad do I feel physically? Is there something I could do differently next time, and how important is it that I do so? In addition to helping you to make positive changes, it also shifts the overall perspective. Modifying eating habits becomes less of a battle of wills and more of an ongoing journey of self-discovery and growth.

No Comments by noahjazz on November 29, 2011

filed in Philosophizing

The Grand Pizzexperiment Part 1: The Preparation

This week began Kate’s and my systematic quest to find the best pizza in Middletown, CT. Pizza is so simple and it can be so good or so crappy. In its most standard form, there are just three components: the sauce, the crust and the cheese. Of course there are virtually infinite variations (toppings, accommodations for people allergic to any number of ingredients), but this basic foundation of wheat, tomato and dairy is plenty flexible in and of itself. And, as my brother taught me when I first learned to cook, the simpler a dish is, the more important the quality of the ingredients becomes. To make a sublime pizza is not actually that difficult, but you need to spend some time with the dough and making the sauce, and you need to spend some money on ingredients. If you throw one together as quickly as possible with the cheapest ingredients available, the results will correspond.

My relationship with pizza has evolved over time. Growing up near New Haven, CT taught me that pizza can be really, really good – if you’ve been to Wooster Street (and/or know somebody who has and who talks about it in reverent tones) you know what I’m talking about. I have thus far had only one experience of bringing someone to one of those pizzerias without a great response, and I’m pretty sure she was grumpy for other reasons. But I also chowed down on plenty of mediocre pizza as a teenager, operating on the widely accepted principle that sauce + cheese + crust = pretty good even when it’s pretty bad, as long as it’s warm. I ultimately saw these as two different phenomena, one a wonderful gourmet item, the other a step up from fast food in providing relatively tasty and cheap calories. Think of it this way: Sally’s or Pepe’s Apizza are to Dominos what John Coltrane is to Kenny G – described using the same word and containing some elements in common but otherwise pretty different in presentation and quality.

When I got to New Jersey for college, I was not prepared for the shift. The mediocre pizza was abundant, and still served the function of cheap fast food that was healthier than a cheeseburger, but the absence of the good stuff was striking. I found few Italian-run pizzerias in all of New Brunswick (most were Lebanese, interestingly) and it required 15-20 minute trips to the suburbs to get something that at best was almost as good as the places I used to go to near my suburban CT home when it was too much effort to go into New Haven proper. The highest-quality options were highbrow restaurants offering gourmet items, or as I derisively called it, “yuppie pizza” (telltale signs of yuppie pizza include toppings such as artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese). My stance on yuppie pizza has softened – a yuppie pizza with quality ingredients certainly trumps a bad but more “legit” one – and when we make our own pizza it often bears a lot more resemblance to that than to the straightforward Neapolitan pie (think whole-wheat crust with kale, fresh tomatoes, feta cheese and walnuts). That said, I still have both culinary and philosophical allegiance to a place where the three fundamental elements are just so good that one is inclined to limit or avoid toppings simply because they would distract from the real joy of the pizza itself.

If growing up in New Haven was phase one and New Jersey was phase two, I am now more than a dozen years into phase three, life in Middletown, CT. As one might expect from a college town, there is lots of pizza (per capita, anyway). As one might not expect from a town that is disproportionately Italian, however, not much of it is very good. Part of me has been holding out for the little hole in the wall that has the REAL stuff that I just haven’t found yet (after all, getting pizza in New Haven is only fruitful if you know where to go), but sadly I don’t know if it’s rational.

Meanwhile, my diet has evolved, and both white flour and big piles of cheese have gone from being sustenance to indulgence – I eat pizza maybe every 6 weeks, and most often it’s homemade with whole-grain crust and minimal, high-quality cheese. In one sense this has made the search for the best pizza in my town less relevant – I mostly don’t eat it and can just go to New Haven a couple times a year. In another sense, though, it has amped up the quest even more – every once in a while I just want to indulge in a pizza, and as nutritionally disciplined a person as I may be, I love food and it is therefore a sad thing when I blow my “indulgence quota” (whether on pizza or dessert) and it isn’t even good!

So last week Kate suggested that we just systematically figure out, once and for all, where you can or can’t get good pizza in Middletown. As insane as that idea is (e.g. eating lots of potentially bad pizza, with a likely outcome of determining we should just drive to New Haven), I was hooked. I do, ultimately, have a sense of civic pride towards my town . . . and am pretty stoked about the idea of eating lunch with Kate several days a week for the couple months it’ll take us to do this. So we agreed on a plan that would allow us to evaluate this conundrum as objectively as possible, while not turning it into a sequel to “Super-Size Me” in terms of physical impact.

There are two premises going in that may be proven or debunked. One is that while it’s highly unlikely that we’ll find any “A” (much less A+) pizza, an A-minus or two is likely, and we may even be pleasantly surprised. Two, more cynically, because most consumers don’t have high expectations, most pizza places are going to provide something at a “B” or lower level because it’s simply more time-efficient and cost-effective to do so. And three, most of these places’ pizza will be virtually indistinguishable because they’re using virtually (and in many cases literally, if they have the same distributors) the same ingredients.

Let me point out at this point that for all my food snobbery I DO admire the hard work and dedication of the small business owners and their employees who work really hard and do their best at a demanding job. It is possible that what I consider to be a mediocre and generic sauce is, in fact, homemade from a 100 year old family recipe. At the same time, though, the difference between high quality mozzarella and tomatoes and industrial-grade pre-shredded cheese and factory-canned sauce is noticeable, and if it’s not going to be above a certain level of freshness and flavor, it’s just not worth the gut-bomb. This, of course, makes it kind of ludicrous that I’ll be potentially eating a couple dozen pizzas in the near future, most of them below this threshold I’m describing, but sometimes you’ve gotta take one for the team (the team, in this case, being the enlightenment of Middletown-area pizza fans, plus the strangely irresistible philosophical draw of systematically addressing an otherwise vague question such as “where’s the best pizza in Middletown?”).

Our research brought us to a list of approximately 18-20 places we will need to sample. The number is approximate for a few reasons. One, in the internet age, there’s a lot of old information out there, so there are some places that simply may or may not be open for business by the time we get there. Also there are a number of places in Middletown that are not pizzerias per se but do offer pizza – we think we’ve identified them, while, but are open to information from others who realize we’ve neglected a place (Middletown area readers – scroll to the bottom for the list). As pointed out in the rules below, this does not count places that only offer interesting gourmet pizzas or pizza-esque things – I love garlic paste and exotic cheeses as much as the next guy, but for the purposes of this study, if you can’t do it with sauce, mozzarella and crust then you’re in a different category altogether.

The rules:

1 ) We will cover every place where we can walk in to get a small (or small-ish) plain cheese pizza any day they’re open and sit down to eat it. This includes restaurants that aren’t necessarily pizzerias, but excludes places that only offer “gourmet” pizza with comparatively exotic toppings. It includes places with limited seating, but excludes delis and markets that only offer slices and/or special-ordered catering pizzas, as well as places that only offer pizza certain days of the week. If someone points out that we’re fools for neglecting a particular place for these reasons, we will reconsider.
2 ) To ensure an “even playing field,” we will order a small plain cheese pizza and eat it there, right out of the oven.
3 ) To ensure we don’t get sick or gain weight, on pizza days we will be correspondingly chaste with our consumption of dairy, salt and processed white stuff (white flour, sugar) as well as total food intake.
4 ) We will grade each pie in four categories: crust, cheese, sauce and “general impression” and compute a total grade from those.
5 ) We may observe other factors (cost/value, speed and quality of service, aesthetics of the restaurant, intriguing menu items or toppings) BUT they will not factor into the grade – we’re looking for the best pie, not the best place to eat it or the best “value.”
6 ) Ties in the rankings will be possible. If there is a tie for the top ranking, we will make return visits with additional criteria.
7 ) There need not be a consensus – Kate and I may grade a given pie differently, and our final rankings may not be the same.
8 ) We will thank the powers that be that there is no longer a Pizza Hut in Middletown, which would have challenged us in that their sauce isn’t vegetarian.

If you’re interested in the grading scale, here it is:

A+ = we frequently fantasize about our next opportunity to eat here
A = we look forward to our next opportunity to eating here
A- = the next time we find ourselves wanting pizza, we would likely choose to eat it here
B+ = this would be a perfectly decent pie if we found ourselves here for whatever reason
B = if we’re really craving pizza and/or really hungry and this is all that’s available, it’ll be fine and reasonably enjoyable
B- = if we’re hungry enough and this pizza is what’s available, it will get the job done
C+ = this is kind of gross, but maybe still satisfying (in the same sense that a pile of fast food french fries would be) for that first slice that coincides with the brief moment when it’s still piping hot
C = barely tolerable, but better than getting stomach cramps from hunger
C- = debatable whether it’s better than getting stomach cramps from hunger
D+ and lower = couldn’t even finish it, research methods be damned

The restaurants that we’ve more or less confirmed will be part of the study(do let us know if we’ve missed any):

Aldo’s
Alpha Pizza House
Big Cheese
Dominos
Empire Pizza
Famous Pizza
First and Last
Illiano’s
Jerry’s Pizza
Mondo
The Nest
Newfield Pizza
Pizza King
Pizza Palace
Roberto’s
Sammy’s
Tommy’s
Tuscany Grill

2 Comments by noahjazz on November 17, 2011

filed in Uncategorized

The Ethics of “Doing Your Best”

Normally I don’t give a rat’s ass about college football, but the scandal at Penn State has transfixed me. A fascinating element is how each implicated person (including Coach Paterno) must grapple with the question of whether they did the best they could to deal with the situation. There is a legal component that is far beyond my understanding. I am, however, quite interested in the moral component, and I’m realizing (particularly upon hearing the hearteningly widespread disgust with how little the people in charge at Penn State did to protect Jerry Sandusky’s victims) that evaluating whether any of them did the best they could requires a deeper philosophical look at what that actually means.

Not only do we want to feel we have done our best, but there are numerous situations in which we encourage others to do the same. Parents, teachers and coaches are entrusted with the task of helping people (often young people) maximize their potential and so seek pride in doing so. This is not to say that there aren’t those whose standards are different (e.g. telling your kids that winning and/or getting away with stuff is all that counts – if that’s where you’re coming from, perhaps you should stop reading here because you won’t agree with anything else I’m saying either).

“I did the best I could” could be translated in any number of ways.

1) I genuinely did everything I possibly could have done and did so to the greatest of my abilities. Any limitations to my success were 100% a product of forces completely beyond my control.

2) I did everything I could have done and did so to the best of my abilities. There were, however, elements that in hindsight I realize didn’t even occur to me and/or required knowledge or skills I didn’t have at the time. I recognize that in the abstract I could, if aware, have looked more broadly at the situation and/or acquired those skills, and will now do so, lest I find myself in the same situation without having heeded what I learned from this experience.

3) There were other limitations at play (unusually difficult external life circumstances, unusual obstacles) and while I know I would have done better under more neutral circumstances, all things considered I did the best I could have done at that moment in time.

4) On a conscious or unconscious level I calculated the relative importance of the task or responsibility. I then did as well as was reasonable within that context. I could have put more into it and done better, but doing so would have been out of sync with my general sense of priorities.

5) I calculated what others expected, and I put in the necessary effort to deliver precisely that.

6) I actually didn’t try that hard, but there was some effort involved.

7) I didn’t do crap, but will pay lip service because I don’t want anyone to be mad at me.

Honestly, I can’t find fault with any of these – there are instances in which any of the above would feel completely appropriate to the situation.

If (as in number 1 above and possibly 2) you can put the lie-detector on and say with total confidence that you did EVERYTHING you could, that’s pretty straightforward. Likewise it’s pretty straightforward if “I did my best” is (as in numbers 7 and perhaps 6 above) really just an evasive way of saying “dude, get off my back – I did what I’m willing to do, which may be virtually nothing, and have no intention of apologizing or going back to put in any more effort. But I’m trying to be nice about it.” I find the grey area most interesting, though, particularly in the “middle tiers.” I think that’s where most people are most of the time, and it cuts to the core of broader issues of integrity, commitment and honest self-assessment.

Before going any further, let me say that this is a lens that I find crucial to turn inward and one that is complicated when used to turn outward. That is, I can’t speak highly enough of looking within to understand ourselves and achieve greater consistency of word and deed, and that is one of the most important values I try to impart to students, far more important than any of the musical details. If you are bullshitting others by saying you did the best you could, then that may be fine in some circumstances – IF you are aware that you’re doing that and not instead trying to convince yourself of the sincerity of a false (or at least only semi-true) statement. Presuming to know where others are on this continuum is, of course, a very slippery slope. Surely you have on at least one occasion suffered the embarrassment of judging someone’s effort (perhaps even openly) only to later discover some extenuating circumstance that frames that person’s behavior as forgivable and makes you feel like a jerk. I’ve spent a lot of time with trauma survivors and people with disabilities (two categories that apply to me as well), and there are a lot of factors beneath the surface that can impact what somebody’s “best” really is in a particular situation.

In any case, I find that in most cases where we sincerely feel like we did the best we could, we would change that stance if the stakes were raised. If my livelihood were at stake, I would probably proofread this blog post one more time before posting. If I perceived my piano student to be at a musical crossroads, I could probably find a slightly more nuanced set of assignments at the conclusion of that week’s lesson. If I were being chased by a shark, I could probably find it in me to swim just a little bit faster.

This is certainly not to say that I encourage people to live their lives in a state of self-criticism for failing to meet the ideal, but I do think it’s worthwhile and important to “keep it real” about what criteria we’re really using when evaluating whether we’re doing our best.

When the welfare of others comes into play, that’s where those middle tiers become even more morally complicated. Definitions 4 and 5 are pretty reasonable when we’re talking about cooking yourself some lentil stew on a busy night. Sure you could probably make it tastier if it were a dinner party for someone you needed to impress or if you had no other obligations that day, but “doing your best” by a more rigid definition would be kind of a silly allocation of your time and energy in that case. But when those watered-down standards are applied to something REALLY important, that’s when the landscape changes. Any parent (and for that matter most pet owners) can relate to the experience of feeling like there’s nothing left in your tank, but if you have a young, vulnerable person in your care and an emergency arises, you damn well FIND something in that tank.

I think few people would disagree that when it comes to the well-being of kids, the standards for doing one’s best increase. Certainly I’m hearing virtually nobody disagree with this in response to the Penn State scandal. Whatever legal consequences these men manage to evade (my guess: most or all) will not save them from this knowledge in their own hearts and in the eyes of the throngs of people who know that they had a chance to do the right thing and blew it.

Like everyone who has been drawn in by this story, my greatest sympathy goes to the victims and the others harmed in the wake of these crimes. But I will also (in my own non-denominational way) pray for the souls of those whose consciences will forever have to wrestle with a definition of “I did my best” that will likely wither every time they look in a mirror.

1 Comment by noahjazz on November 9, 2011

filed in Uncategorized

Lessons Learned from Kenny Barron

Pretty much every time I play the piano is an opportunity, however indirect, to appreciate all that I learned from 6 years of study with Kenny Barron. This year has been a particularly fertile year for that sort of reflection, as he played two concerts in CT this summer. Beyond that, I’m currently gearing up for my own trio concert of Kenny’s music on October 16, not to mention the release of my solo piano record, on which all of the tunes are tributes to important mentors of mine (and he is the obvious one to top that list).

Also, the more I teach, the more I find myself sharing the important lessons he taught me, both directly musical and otherwise. I entered Rutgers in 1992 with a doe-eyed expectation that he would just show me how to play. I left in 1998 with a Master’s degree and a trove of lessons about how one should operate as a human being. This was during, debatably, the height of his popularity – multiple Grammy nominations, placing first in DownBeat polls, appearing in high-profile NY clubs as much as anyone. He would have been forgiven had this long-earned success gone to his head, so the absence of this sort of ego-inflation was all the more striking to me.

I’ll present some of the most resonant lessons he taught me (mostly by example and not in any self-consciously didactic way) as a “Top 10” list, simply because if I don’t, this will go on forever . . .

1) Have No Laurels

In 2004 I took my daughter Rebecca to the Village Vanguard to meet and hear Kenny for the first time. He told us about a project he was preparing for (collaborating with a kora player, as I recall) that was entirely new for him. When I told him how inspiring it was that he still was refusing to rest on his laurels he laughed and said “I wish I HAD laurels, it would be nice to rest on them.” There are plenty of people who have learned to mimic humility as a socially desirable affectation, but he is the real deal.

2) Humility = Room for Growth

Perhaps this is a variation on the first one, but still worthy of mention. While this may not be true in every case, Kenny did an amazing job of modeling what I have found to be an inverse proportion between ego and level of accomplishment. That is, the more attached you are to what you have accomplished or how great you are, the more of your energy goes into protecting that (or at least protecting the appearances that go with that). Keeping that stuff in perspective allows you to grow, to accurately self-assess and be open to all that you could still be learning.

3) Don’t Deploy Your Ammunition Just Because You Have It

Have you ever heard Kenny Barron walk a bass line on the piano? My goodness, it is seriously badass (side note: he can walk a mean bass line on upright bass as well). But the answer to the question is most likely “no” (unless you, too, have studied with him) because he very seldom does it on recordings or in performances. He would do it frequently in lessons, to simulate real-life playing situations for his students, and it sounded so good (including coordination between bass line and right hand soloing that would be the envy of most organists) that for years it bewildered me that he didn’t do it on gigs and do it at every opportunity. I eventually realized that possessing a skill does not mean that one should be gratuitously displaying it, and that particular skill was one of numerous examples of things that he could do, yet which didn’t often fit into his artistic goals.

4) Value Consistency (or Be Good Always)

When I got to college, most of my focus was on trying to achieve the most spectacular peak moments possible, and I was most impressed by the players whose best moments were the most impressive. That’s all fine and good, but Kenny was one of the most valued band-members on the scene less for the impressiveness of his peaks (impressive though they were) than for the absence of valleys. Playing an old standard or sight reading an original tune, a trio gig with Ben Riley and Ray Drummond or a pick-up gig, a good and healthy day or in the midst of a cold and deep in sleep debt, I never heard him sound less than excellent. While I still believe there is validity to developing one’s strengths, I now see that the systematic cleaning-up of weaknesses is even more important.

5) Ballads Are Freakin’ Hard

As I tell my students when they get discouraged with ballad playing, Kenny and I had a routine for about 3 years. He’d send me off to learn a new ballad. I’d listen to multiple versions, often learn the lyrics, develop a relationship with the song and try my hardest to make it sound good. And then I’d come back a week later and he’d listen and tell me (very patiently) “nope, not yet.” He would invariably give me good suggestions, but the “not yet” was the most resonant part, and the part I grappled with for that whole time. I remember one week when I tried playing more lushly (on “The Very Thought of You,” I recall) and eagerly anticipated his response . . . which was “um, that kind of sounded like Liberace.” Initially I was puzzled that I wasn’t being given the secrets to great ballad playing, the elusive common thread that in one shot explains the mastery of Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Billie Holiday and every other great ballad interpreter. And, while there are certainly helpful little tricks of the trade, there is no such common thread, only the long, laborious and totally worthwhile process of wrestling with all those nuances, week after week after year until it all starts to come together.

6) Nurture the Next Generation

Both as a teacher and as a bandleader, he has embraced his responsibility as an “elder” (sorry, Kenny) by helping younger musicians and thus doing his part to keep the music alive. An obvious manifestation of this is through the former students of his like Steve Nelson and David Sanchez who subsequently went on to work in his band. Employing gifted young musicians is hardly unique in jazz history, of course, and having a teaching job while also being a performer is also not unusual in the modern era. In Kenny’s case, though, I always felt this to be not only musical, but reflective of a general spirit of open-ness and generosity. He didn’t (and still doesn’t) seek credit for the successes of his “disciples,” and he never limited his attention to those who were most obviously deserving (as evidenced by accepting a scrub like me as a student!) – after all, you can never quite tell who will ultimately go on to carry the torch.

7) The Sustain Pedal Is Overrated

Once, in a lesson, I was marveling at the lushness of something Kenny was playing, so I looked down to see what sort of wizardry he was applying to the sustain pedal. And I saw that his feet were curled up under the bench. The conclusion: there are things for which the pedal is very useful, but covering up deficiencies in fingering shouldn’t be one of them.

8 ) Treat Everyone with Dignity

You can certainly learn a lot about musicians’ place in the jazz world by seeing them interact with other “cats.” But you’ll learn more about their basic sense of human decency from observing their interactions with less “important” people. I saw Kenny come into contact with a lot of people in this latter category, and the man I saw interacting with the biggest names in jazz was no different from the man I saw interacting with the least advanced students or the music building custodian.

9) Organic Transcription

I used to think of transcribing as primarily a means of data-collection, with the secondary benefit of helping with ear-training. Picture me with my little portable cassette recorder and a manuscript notebook, listening to 2 or 3 beats from Wynton Kelly’s solo on “Someday My Prince Will Come,” rewinding, listening, rewinding, trying to play along, eventually writing down and moving on to the next couple beats, and you get the idea. What Kenny (and, later, Ted Dunbar) taught me is that one can have a different relationship with the process of transcribing. Instead of beginning a transcription with the rewinding and the manuscript book, I learned to begin by listening intently (and repeatedly) to whatever I intended to transcribe. If doing my job properly, I would know the music (including all the subtle nuances that can’t be captured in notation) deeply before I ever tried to figure out the notes, and would know the notes confidently before I ever tried to write anything down (if, indeed, there was still any reason to do so).

10) Do Your Job

When I would tell other people that I was studying with Kenny, often their first question would be “is he ever actually there?” True, there might be two or three weeks in a semester when he would send in a sub (invariably an excellent one) because he was on the road. Aside from that, he was there every week, putting in long days, showing up for committee meetings and student recitals and so on. If he was in town, he showed up, even if it was the Thursday of a week at Bradley’s (with sets at 10, 12 and 2 every night and a daily commute from Brooklyn to NJ on a pittance of sleep). He appreciated his job and he showed up and did it – for most of us that seems fairly obvious, but it is significant that I never saw him take the diva-esque approach that it was an imposition for this to be expected of someone as accomplished or “important” as he. He did not see himself as any more “above” working than any roofer or bank teller, instead choosing to be grateful to be able to earn his livelihood from something he loved.

1 Comment by noahjazz on October 13, 2011

filed in Important People, Philosophizing

tagged music

Pesto (with variations)

I’ve enjoyed pesto since I first discovered it as a teenager (as I recall) and now that I’m married to a gardener who produces copious amounts of basil, it’s become a staple (albeit a little less so since I started cutting down on pasta last year, though it’s still great in many other settings too). For over 10 years now a late-September ritual has been making a huge trough of pesto with the remaining basil (before the cold weather kills it), which then goes in ice cube trays to be defrosted one serving at a time throughout the ensuing year.

The recipe below represents an approximation of what we typically do (tested for legitimacy, though in practice we “eyeball it”). It’s interesting to note, however, that there is a lot of variation possible with not only amounts (you’ll learn how you like it best) but also actual ingredients. My last pesto, for example, was half-basil, half-cilantro. Many nuts work well (which is good, as the traditional pine nut currently costs about $50,000 per pound) and there are satisfying variations (discussed below) for people who have allergies and sensitivities.

PESTO (enough for 1 pound of pasta):

- ½ cup toasted walnuts

- 2 medium cloves garlic

- 4 cups basil leaves (washed, drained)

- 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

- ½ cup grated parmesan or romano cheese

1) Get pasta water going (throwing in pasta when ready). If the nuts are still raw, put in a skillet over low heat for about 5 minutes (until fragrant and slightly browned), shaking or stirring frequently.

2) In a food processor, combine the nuts and garlic and process until it looks gravelly.

3) Add the basil and continue to process, adding the oil gradually to make a coarse paste.

4) Remove from processor and stir in cheese (salting or cheesing additionally to taste)

5) Optional: add a Tbsp or 2 of the pasta water to the pesto before coating pasta to thin it out and make it spread better (I like to do this, Kate doesn’t, it’s cool either way).

6) Coat the pound of pasta and serve with additional cheese as a garnish (a few toasted pine nuts also make a good garnish). Or coat some pasta and store the rest (in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for up to a year). Or store it all and use it in salad dressings, omlettes, soups or whatever else.

Variations:

* Nut-free pesto: instead, add the same amount of sun-dried tomatoes. Note that this is a great addition to “regular” pesto as well, added along with the nuts and garlic

* Vegan pesto: instead of the parmesean, add ¼ cup miso

* multi-herb pesto: substitute other flavorful herbs (suggested: oregano, cilantro, parsley; in smaller amounts, rosemary, sage, thyme, chive) for some or all of the basil

* multi-nut pesto: substitute other nuts or seeds for some or all of the walnuts (suggested: almond, hazelnut, pecan, sunflower seed; use pine nuts if you can afford it)

No Comments by noahjazz on August 5, 2011

filed in Recipes

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