The Words Project: Process and Evolution

I wish I could say that I've been a lifelong reader of poetry and that this venture evolved naturally out of that. This couldn't be less true, actually. I've always loved reading fiction, but never could achieve the quietness of mind that poetry demands. I read and memorized the requisite poetry fed to us in school, but beyond that I wasn't exposed to much of it. Given how marginalized it is in our culture it's easy to ignore. I can't even say that I was ever very interested in song lyrics, even. I've always loved listening to music of any style with singers, but like many musicians I tended to ignore lyrical elements in favor of musical ones.

I spent a number of years in New York in search of what my own contributions here would be, dipping my feet into as many waters as I possibly could. I was involved with a few groups with singers and started to feel a shortage of new vocal pieces that involved lyrics (rather than wordless vocals), and many of the newer works I heard didn’t have very challenging lyrics or content. Having long loved the art-song tradition, I set out to find some initial poems to set, and started calling singers over to sing through my work. The directness to the human voice and its mysteries were thrilling for me, and I found myself thinking and working differently than ever before. Fortunately, I also began to discover a deep well of talented young singers eager to take on new material, which furthered my interest in this venture.

The first pieces I set were by Lithuanian-Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, whose work I’ve continued to set to this day. There’s a certain simplicity to his work that makes it highly typical of the kind of work I enjoy setting. The ideas in his work are by no means simple, but the use of language has a direct quality that makes his work conducive to musical setting. When poetry reaches a certain level of abstraction, there’s no longer room for the kind of music that I would like to write. Similarly, there’s a lot of poetry that tells something akin to literate story, which also doesn’t intrigue me as a composer. It’s difficult to define what lies in the middle of these two extremes, but I do tend to know whether I can set a work within the first few lines of it.

I’ve sometimes wondered whether it’s the poetry that I set to music or music I set to poetry. It’s probably a little of both… There have been times when everything has started simply with the words in front of me, a musical gesture or phrase that arises from the first stanza, with nothing else preconceived. Other times, there is a more intentional process, where I’ll employ a musical idea I’ve been toying with or use a certain stylistic notion in crafting a piece.

I don’t tend to dwell too much on the meaning of a poem before I start working with it. Perhaps this is out of impatience or over-eagerness, but I feel strongly that my job is not to filter the meaning of any work for the listener. I try my best not to interpret these poems or put any sort of definitive stamp on them. I simply want to color them and make them come alive in a unique way. Great works of poetry, like great works of music, can mean different things to us at different times. This is one of the beauties of art in genearal. Certain works can fill us with sadness one hour and be completely exhilarating the next. We bring our own experiences to whatever we take in, and it’s not my intention to subjugate this process by governing the experience of a poem. By the time it lands in my hands, the poem is a complete work of art on its own. It doesn’t need my efforts to be read or to thrive. It already exists in its full flowering, and this is a humbling thing that I always try to keep in mind.

One of the greatest challenges of this genre for me continues to be how to fit all this into the jazz continuum, one that is based on improvisation. Many of the longer works I’ve set demand long forms and it’s difficult to know where improvisation should fit in, or whether there’s a place for it at all. Personally, it’s unappealing to simply use words as a launching point for extended improvisation. I’ve always wanted to frame my work primarily around the poems themselves, and always have them be at the center of my work. Thus, I want any solos or improvisation to function somehow within the poems themselves, to make this all feel like one, creating the illusion that the words and the music came out of the same mind. All the principles of tension and release in music really come to the forefront. Sometimes improvised sections function as a release and other times they build tension or intensity from a place where there was not before. Other times they simply function as a breath within the poem, a chance for the listener to take in what has come before.

Melodically, my own voice tends to guide me when I write. I do my best to forget my background as an instrumentalist and try to think like a singer. I also keep the use of melody in everyday speech in mind. We all use varying degrees of pitch inflection and rhythm when we speak, and thus we’re so easily able to accept lyrics that are sung as a natural extension of everyday speech. Perhaps this is what makes so many of us want to be singers, to further the expression that language allows us, and possibly communicate things where speech falls short. To this effect, I tend to use mostly close intervals in my writing that mirror the intervals of everyday speech.

Words Project III: Miniatures comprises material that I’ve written spanning back to 2006, primarily songs that had never fit into the framework of what I’ve done previously both live and in the studio. The project started quite spontaneously…. I called Michael Leonhart to sing through some songs I had written for male voice, and he hit the record button and we started tracking. A few months later, vocalist Sunny Kim was in New York, and I decided to bring her into Michael’s studio to record a few things. Based on how well these two experiences went, not long after I chose material for an entire record of short songs.

Sometimes I had conceived arrangements and instrumentation before going into the studio, and other times these things came together as we worked. Most of the tracking was done individually, which allowed Michael and I plenty of room for editing and experimentation. I wanted to create a unique world of sound for each piece on the record, and used a lot of uncommon instruments and sounds in order to achieve this. Sometimes I had a good idea of what a piece would end up sounding like and other times tracks unfolded themselves from something more unknown.

The miniature aspect to each piece is really what holds this record together through all the changes of texture and instrumentation. These are musical portraits or glimpses, maybe akin to a collection of short poems or stories. I’ve always loved listening to collections of short pieces, whether they be art song or piano preludes. I love the challenge of creating interest in a piece quickly, constructing something that is short yet feels complete, taking a more microscopic look at the arc of a piece of music, and connecting a collection of short pieces to one another in order to assemble a larger work.

The broad mix of styles reflects the many kinds of music that have shaped me, perhaps never so apparently as on this record. There are very few improvised solos on any of the tracks, but to me the way this record was recorded gives it the feel of a jazz record, and most everybody who appears on it comes from a jazz background, although they all bring much more than that to the table. In any case, I’ll leave this to the listeners to decide where they want to put this album…

Got Poetry?

Go here.

The Quiet Coup - Simon Johnson

Read it in the Atlantic Monthly.

and the band plays....

After spending so many months guarding any optimism, obsessively reading the news and checking polling sites, repeatedly thinking this is to good to be true... what a feeling. I'm still going to the New York Times website obsessively, only this time it is to remind myself that what is happening is real.

We've seen so much damage done in the last eight years, more than anybody could have imagined possible. So much has been based on fear, isolation, and divisiveness. McCain/Palin repeatedly, to the end, played to people's worst, lowest, and most base instincts. We couldn't help but cringe as we saw John McCain, one of our bravest politicians, give up his values and literally sell his soul to appeal to the worst of the Republican base. As the gauntlet descended, his people tried every possible way of attack and refused to repudiate some of the lowest, most dangerous things ever said in a campaign. At last, people have finally begun to wake up to how far we have moved backwards, how much less of a voice we have when everything comes down to blue and red... Obama's decisive victory is a repudiation of eight years of a move away from democracy in this country, away from the values of tolerance, imagination, openness, leadership, and accountability that this country is supposed to represent. Yes, Obama is a politician, and despite the poetry with which he so often speaks and the exuberance he embodies, we must not forget this. Over the last two years, he often fought fire with fire, accepted large sums of money from special interests, and played into the sad, television-dominated electoral system that has so compromised real political debate in this country. He is no doubt a realist, somebody who often plays the odds and in many circles is known for playing it safe. Those of us who dream must remember this and urge him to face the ills of our system before it is too late.

Without doubt, he faces immense challenges, challenges beyond all measure, systemic problems too great to be solved in just one or two presidential terms. Nevertheless, let's hope that he can live up to his promise of something better and do some things to really heal this world, move it forward and inspire us all to lead better lives. This man is the American story in so many ways. By ascending to the top in so short a time, defeating political machines thought to be invincible, he has reawakened people around the world to the possibilities that exist here that make this country what it is. My heart is touched when I think that people in all corners of the world are smiling today as they read the news. As the son of immigrants, I've always been reminded that despite all of America's faults, it's a place that offers things that are unattainable to most of the world. Just thirty five years ago, my parents came here with next to nothing and have gone on to create a life for their children and themselves that they could have never have dreamed possible. There is a reason that millions of people dream of someday coming here, and it is time to act in way that embodies the vision that defines this nation and acts in every way to spread it to the rest of the world. We are an important part of the world, and our actions, both positive and negative, have impact on everybody. Regardless of who becomes the world's next superpower, what we do as a nation can determine the direction this world takes. Future generations will learn not only from our failings, but also from our triumphs.

Not only does Obama's story remind us that anything is possible, but also that it is patriotic to criticize your country when you feel it errs, that dissent truly does lie at the fabric of democracy, and that it is only when we and our leaders ask ourselves tough questions (and, yes, look at the nuance in things) that we can move forward and bring about a change of direction. Let us all be vigilant in holding on to the excitement we all feel right now, but not let our sense of victory at the present moment lull us into complacency. No public servant ever deserves a free ticket into office, and as citizens we have to work to remind our leadership who put them there and maintain a vigilance in making sure that we never again allow ourselves to be lead down any of the disastrous roads of the last eight years.

Cheers.

Kucinich on the Wall Street bailout

This just landed in my mailbox this morning. I think it's really important that the Wall Street collapse be seen in a larger context.

Protecting the public interest in any economic "bailout"

Dear Friend,

The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt "de-leverages."

Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration's growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff?

This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real - not imaginary - growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class.

The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.

The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.

This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed.
In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.
I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:

1. Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
2. Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
3. Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down:
a) resignations of management
b) givebacks of executive compensation packages
c) limitations on executive compensation
d) admission by CEO's of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout
4. Demands for transparencey
a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down
b) with respect to Treasury's dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
5. An equity position for the taxpayers
a) some form of ownership of assets
6. Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
7. A sunset clause on the legislation
8. Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.
9. A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts
10. A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts

And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure.

These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow.


Dennis J Kucinich
www.Kucinich.us
216-252-9000 877-933-6647

leave that bottle on the shelf

Walking in NYC yesterday I was so pleased to see that an organization (whose identity seems to be secret) has started plastering signs around the city condemning bottled-water consumption as wasteful and unnecessary. I think the reasons are quite compelling, especially given the new awareness of our society's oil dependence, and hope that we can see some state or municipal action against it in the near future.

TEN REASONS NOT TO BUY BOTTLED WATER

Since 1976 there has been an increase of 1625% in the consumption of bottled water. In 2006 people in the US consumed 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water, or 30 billion actual bottles, a 9.5% increase from the year before.[i]

1. Research shows that bottled water is not purer than tap water. Recently, Pepsi was forced to admit that its bottled water, Aquafina, is actually certified tap water. 60-70% of bottled water is tap water with carbonation, seltzer, etc. In fact, an “estimated 25 to 40 percent of bottled water really is just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated, sometimes not.”[ii] According to the National Resources Defense Council, 25-40% of bottled water is tap water that has been treated, but sometimes not.
2. Tap water is regulated by the EPA, and is tested 3 to 4 times DAILY; bottled water is regulated by the FDA, and is tested once a week at the most. A recent Cast Western Reserve report found that 15 of 19 samples of bottled water had bacterial counts almost 2 times as high as Cleveland tap water.[iii]
3. If bottled water is derived in-state, then there may be no regulation. One in five states have no regulations for bottled water “made” in that state; there are no requirements that bottled water has to ban e-coli or fecal matter.
4. More water is used in making the plastic bottle that holds the bottled water than is in the bottle. At Coke’s India plants according to the company’s own report “3.9 liters of water are needed to produce each liter of beverage” because of the need to wash bottles, floors, and equipment in addition to the water used in the drink itself. Coke has 50 plants in India, using “hundreds of thousands of liters of water” per day.[iv]
5. The cost is much more: $1-$1.50 per bottle = $10/gallon for bottled water vs. $.04-$.05 per gallon for tap water. In Los Angeles you get 450 gallons of tap water for the price of one bottle of Evian![v]
6. The environmental impact is great. Bottled water impacts stream and river flows by drawing down water, reducing the water for vegetation, bird and animal needs. Bottled water is connected to global warming, using huge amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport them bottles. The National Resources Defense Council estimates that 4000 tons of carbon dioxide is produced yearly—which is equivalent to the emissions of 700 cars yearly—by importing bottled water alone, not to mention the amount produced by transportation in the US.[vi]
7. It takes 1.5 million barrels of crude oil to create the plastic in one’s year’s supply. That would fuel 100,000 cars a year. Distribution requires the equivalent of 37,800 18 wheel trucks.[vii]
8. Plastic bottles create 2.7 billion pounds of plastic garbage in the US per year![viii]
9. There are cheaper alternatives: a carafe (e.g. Brita) = $.31/gallon; faucet filter = $.34/gallon; undersink filter = $.42/gallon
10. Coke and Pepsi bottled water factories in India (one of the largest sources) draw water from aquifers, depleting the water for farmers in the surrounding areas.

[i] “The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept., 2007; Bryan Walsh, “Back to the Tap,” Time, 9 Aug., 2007.

[ii]. Quoted in Cameron Woodworth, “A Clean Drink of Water: Choices and

Responsibilities,” Sound Consumer (August 2006), 4.

[iii]“The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept., 2007.

[iv] “Around the Globe,” Seattle Times, 22 Sept. 2006.

[v] “The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept. 2007.

[vi]Brian Walsh, “Back to the Tap,” Time, 9 Aug., 2007.

[vii]“The High Price of Bottled Water,” The Week, 7 Sept. 2007; Editorial, “In Praise of Tap Water,” The New York Times, 1 Aug., 2007.

[viii] Bryan Walsh, “Back to the Tap,” Time, 9 Aug., 2007.

Information on Water Conservation:

www.h2ouse.org

www.wateraware.org

www.wateruseitwisely.com

www.weathertrak.com

www.friendsofwater.com

www.smarter.com

www.watersavingtips.com

WATER FACTS

–The minimum amount of water that the average person needs daily for drinking, cooking, bathing and sanitation is 13 gallons. The average person in the U.S. uses between 65 to 78 gallons of water daily.

–Gallons of water needed to produce:

One pound of potatoes – 100 gallons

One pound of rice – 340 gallons

One pound of chicken – 460 gallons

One pound of beef – 4200 gallons

One 6 inch silicon wafer (computer) – 1892 gallons

One gallon of gasoline – 9 gallons

One average US automobile – 39,000 gallons

internet fads

Things seem to pass so fast on the internet, especially the various social-networking websites that seem to be all the rave of anybody under forty. I tend to be pretty uninspired (maybe even a little bit intimidated, frightened, and lazy too) by things that beckon me to spend even more time online than I already do, and thus I've been relatively late to get on board with the social-networking sites of our times. One minute everybody is crazy about Friendster, then it's MySpace, only to have that replaced with Facebook, which seems to have left MySpace strangely passe in the past few months, likening it to a once indie band that is just not what it once was.

Once I stopped holding out, I remember being genuinely excited about the possibilities of MySpace... I found a few people I didn't expect to find and spent a lot of time going to people's pages, listening to their music, and would even check most every friend request that came my way, with the same hopes that people were checking mine. Just a year later, it all feels strangely dead to me, and slightly loathsome. It feels like most people have moved on, and it's become yet another e-mail account that I have to check regularly, on the off-chance that someone has used it to contact me for work, which has happened a few times and is certainly a good thing. I'm not quite sure what Facebook offers that's so different or new, but it leads me to think that maybe we're all seeking something that just can't be found online, something based more actual human warmth and connection, somewhere we can share music without it being so shrouded in self-promotion. Maybe this unsatisfied desire keeps us flocking from one site to another. Or maybe it's all just for dating... who knows? In the end, maybe we're all just excited by online presence, where we can show people what we want them to see (none of those awkward smiles that take place when we actually see people in passing), where we know people from our distant past (and maybe even that attractive person from the bar whose number we lost) can find us. For musicians today, any online presence is a good thing, so it seems hard to justify not spending an hour or two setting up a page (or a blog, shame, shame, shame). Certainly these sites are compelling in a lot of ways and still free(!), but the way in which users flock from one to the other every few months leaves me thinking that in the end, they're places that largely remind us of our loneliness (or if you're a musician using them, the fact that you might not be performing as much as you would like to). Are we really happy, absorbed, gratified being when we spend an hour modifying our profiles? What are we really expecting from all this time we spend socially-networking online?

Oh well.... off to check my latest friend requests.

Cannonball Adderley

A few months ago, after having spent way to many consecutive hours traveling in subways, cars, airplanes, and vans, Frank Basile and I had one of those conversations most people stop having when they're fourteen years old, one that began, "If you could play in a frontline with any other horn player, living or dead, who would it be?". Pretty dorky, I know, but then again, if you're reading this blog, likely indoors on a beautiful, sunny day, it might be time to make some similar personal admissions.... However, it was something I hadn't really thought about, and pretty entertaining to mine jazz history for an answer.

Somehow, Cannonball Adderley has consistently come into my world over the years, and ended up the object of my adolescent fantasy that day. There are so few improvisers who've been able to combine such an combination of elegance, virtuosity, unpredictability, lyricalness, blues, and swing like he did. Every time I hear him, he still sounds modern to me and totally surprises me in how he weaves in and out of changes, even just simple turnarounds. He had one of the most distinct alto and soprano sounds in the history of the saxophone, and conveys such a profound joy in his playing, no matter what the material. This man could make you cry and smile at the same time, and thankfully a few YouTube videos have surfaced recently and allow us to watch him in action. Most people know him for the Miles Davis albums he was on, and later for the original recording (and memorable pre-tune monologue) of Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, but check out the stuff in between and you'll definitely find one of the hippest bandleaders of the sixties and seventies. Much of what Joe Zawinul later did with Weather Report certainly came out of Cannonball's band, and even the more commercial ventures that Cannonball released as a solo artist are incredibly compelling and inspired.

There's a pretty impressive tribute site and discography here.

Perfect Pitch

Musicians and non-musicians alike are often fascinated by people who have perfect pitch, often referred to as absolute pitch. It's one of the most mysterious phenomenons in the musical world, and perhaps the cognitive/neurological world as well. Numerous studies continue to try to pinpoint the roots of it, often with surprisingly different conclusions. Perhaps it is one of the only concretely definable aspects of innate musical ability, one that typically makes its presence known early on and remains elusive to many of the most gifted and accomplished musicians on the planet. Many great musicians have not had it, and it's by no means a guarantee of musical talent or ability.


Despite the fact that both my parents are professional musicians with perfect pitch, I don't remember having any knowledge of what it was when I started playing music. Unlike many musician parents, overeager to gauge their children's musical abilities, my mother and father never did any of the tests to determine if I had perfect pitch (or if they did they never told me anything about it). After about a year playing saxophone, a year in which I started to listen to a lot of music as well, I realized that I could identify the notes that I heard other alto players play. Without really having an understanding of transpositions of different instruments, it didn't go any further than that in the initial stages, and it seemed pretty dependent on being able to recognize the timbre of specific notes on the instrument. Not knowing what perfect pitch was, I didn't think anything of it, and assumed that it was something any musician could do. It wasn't until people pointed it out to me that I realized that this ability wasn't something that all musicians had.

Never having not had perfect pitch, it's difficult to describe. The Psychology of Music defines it as "the ability to identify the frequency or musical name of a specific tone, or, conversely, the ability to reproduce a frequency, frequency level, or musical pitch without comparing the tone with any objective reference tone, i.e., without using relative pitch." The closest analogy I can come up with is that it is like the ability to recognize basic colors. Once you learn them, it is basically instant, and done on a level more basic than thought. Nobody ever needs a reference color to identify the color before them. Somehow, you just know what's before you, instantly, without having to consider it in any way. It's not an ability you need to practice once you know your twelve notes, and despite the fact that I've never been away from music for too long, I'm sure it wouldn't escape me if it wasn't used for a while. Some musicians with perfect pitch have it to the degree of being able to identify pitches to exacting measure, and can tell you if pitch is in tune or how out of tune it is, sometimes within a few cents. (A cent is 1/100th of the way from one pitch to the next closest pitch.) I can certainly identify when a note is egregiously far from our tonal system, but can't make such small distinctions of pitch. In fact, it wasn't until I tried to play along with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, famously sharp in its original version (supposedly the tapes on which it was recorded were running slow that day), that I realized just how out of tune it is. I rarely experience the physical pain that some musicians refer to when music is out of tune, and often struggle not to play sharp, which is a common tendency for saxophonists. I'm more bothered when pitch isn't even from note to note or between register than by a single pitch that's slightly out of tune.

One of the most common questions with perfect pitch is whether it's something that can be learned or acquired. There's a company that persistently runs ads in music magazines and journals that not so slickly claims to teach perfect pitch. However, I'm skeptical, as are most people who have it, but it might just be a matter of definition. I think that with practice somebody can learn good pitch memory, perhaps by identifying specific moods and colors with certain tone centers, and from there develop a relative sense of pitch that allows them to identify notes with some degree of consistency and accuracy. As far as I know, this is what the perfect pitch course accomplishes for some. Some studies have proved that perfect pitch is a genetic trait, and that somebody is much more likely to have it if a sibling has it. One study even identified a relatively enlarged left planum template in the brain in people with perfect pitch. The presence of it in my family supports the genetic theory, although my two siblings don't display it. However, the presence of perfect pitch can only be known once somebody has some degree of musical training, making it difficult to study conclusively.


I won't deny that perfect pitch helped me develop quite quickly as a musician early on. I listened to jazz obsessively from about the age of thirteen to twenty, and could internalize musical vocabulary without having to go through many of the motions that somebody without perfect pitch has to go through. As a jazz musician, it's incredibly helpful to be able to easily identify what is going on around you and thus interact with a group. Professionally speaking, it's great to be able to recognize the key that any song is in without having to ask or make efforts to find it. I've also been able to work over the years as a music transcriber, something that I can do quicker than most musicians without perfect pitch.

However, I think that along with perfect pitch comes some common limitations. Most basic, it isn't something that can ever be turned off by people who have it. Thus, somebody with perfect pitch will never experience music the same way most other musicians and non-musicians experience it. Music always enters the brain as specific information, thus subject to a greater degree of analysis than commonly experienced. No note, or even common noises, can enter the consciousness simply as sound. It's always subject to a degree of categorization that most don't experience.

Also, because I can instantly identify notes, my retention for music is not very good. I can instantly play something back to you, but most likely won't be able to remember it the next day or the next week, because I haven't had to grasp the musical relationships in order to learn it. Because music enters my mind as little bits of information, it took me a long time to learn to identify the larger, mostly systematic categorizations that help musicians
learn and understand material. I tend to be slower at transposing than many musicians, probably because I hear pitches as single events and not as much in terms of their relationships, which also affects my ability to identify chord qualities, where most often I first have to identify all the individual notes before I can identify the quality of the chord. Also, I have a lot of trouble playing instruments not pitched in C or Bb, as I tend to be confused when everything around me doesn't relate to my own instrument in a familiar way. When I play alto saxophone, I can hear the notes on the instrument itself quite clearly but hear everything around me in a different pitch center. (Playing the alto flute, which is in the key of G, is a total mess, despite my love for the instrument!)

All in all, I don't want the long list of gripes above to be any sort of whine about how I feel about perfect pitch. Basically, along with many great things about it, I think there are some drawbacks and limitations to it, and thus it's not something to be quite so idealized or coveted. Other than the various party tricks that somebody with perfect pitch has at his/her disposal, I think good relative pitch can benefit any musician as much, if not more, than perfect pitch. However, it's undoubtedly a mystery that continues to fascinate musicians and non-musicians, and hopefully with more study and advancements in genetics and brain-mapping more can be learned about it.

If anybody wants to read more, particularly on the science of it, the Wikipedia entry on it (found here) is quite good and has a lot of good links.

composition, illusion, and inevitability

Composition is a strange world. Very strange. A skilled composer is one who consistently surprises you, showing you that he or she has the depth and skill to take a composition in any direction, that they own the composition at hand and are effectively its master. Yes, we could go there, could go there too, but we're going here, whether you like it or not. Since any composer worth his or her salt commands a broad and developed language, I like to think that some of my favorite works could have been quite different and still exist as masterpieces.

However, an outstanding composition, much like a great novel or movie, damningly creates the illusion of inevitability. Bovary had to kill herself in the end... Chinatown had to end in bloodshed. Once the opening gesture or mood of a piece is established, the composer must convince us that all that happens from there must happen. In music, it's not enough just to listen to a series of events if a work is to demand repeated listening. Successive musical events must flow from one another seemingly effortlessly, temporarily convincing you that each one only could have lead to the next. For a piece to exist as itself and preserve the special identity we give to it, each event within it is crucial, unavoidable, and cancels any other possibilities that might have existed otherwise. Later on, upon analysis, we can say that this chord might have lead here, this part could have been played by the oboe instead of the clarinet, this gesture could potentially be sequenced a certain, perhaps more obvious way. However, in the end, these possibilities didn't happen, and that just is. If a piece is going to momentarily transform us, we accept this and go along for the ride, dismissing any serious thought that it might have been any different .

Within all this, though, one can't underestimate the importance of surprise. While creating this myth of inevitability, the composer must constantly create a feeling of expectation in the listener. Depending on the whim and skill level of the composer, this expectation is then either fulfilled or broken, leaving the listener constantly on edge, never knowing whether or not to trust his or her instinct. In the end, however, once that next idea comes, whether it fulfills expectation or jolts the listener out of any sense of comfort they might have achieved, the listener simply accepts it as part of the ride, part of a vision that is greater than the human involved in creating it, a vision that has transformed the work at hand into something timeless, something that despite all the options a composer might have considered, ended up like this, and now exists and has an identity all to itself.

Jazz and the amateur

One of the great opportunities of the past six months was the chance to teach an improvisation clinic at Hunter College in Manhattan recently. Thanks to Ryan Keberle, a professor at the school and one of the most fantastic trombonists on the planet, I was invited to go there and do a ninety-minute class on improvisation. Never having met or heard the students there, it was very difficult to know where to begin and what level to teach at. Improvisation is a difficult subject to address in any setting and demands that the teacher have a deep understanding of the student's strengths, weaknesses, and background.

One of the things that I emphasize with anybody who I teach is that there is no one path to becoming an improviser. If one was to ask a hundred jazz musicians how they learned to play, one would get a hundred different answers. Most people worth listening to are on a consistently evolving path, one that constantly reexamines itself and revises any stable notions or ideas. Though there are many tangible aspects to the traditional jazz vocabulary, one can arrive at them in so many different ways and everybody has to find what works best for them. In the end, the teacher only teaches one to teach themselves.

Thus, coming in to teach a group of strangers for ninety minutes and leave them with something valuable was a daunting notion. However, the attitudes and hunger for guidance and knowledge that I found there was so warm, humble, and open that my fears and concerns were quickly set aside. The students at Hunter are not people looking to pursue careers as performers. Many are education majors or are studying something completely different and simply taking music classes for the joy of it. There are also several older students in the class who have taken up music as a hobby.

So much of my musical existence is spent around people seeking a career as artists and performers. How refreshing to get out of this world and work with people playing without this immense weight upon their shoulders. I remember reading some essays by Paul Hindemith that talked about so much of the classical music before the mid-20th century being written so amateurs could play it, thus keeping it accessible and blurring the distinction between professional and amateur. As contemporary music became more and more difficult (and the television replaced the piano as the center of many households), the rift between professional and amateur widened, and many lost touch with it as it grew increasingly insular, unaccessible, and unpopular. Hindemith believes that the resurgence of classical music is largely contingent upon this being addressed.

I feel very similarly about where jazz is right now. We have to make the learning process of it accessible to people who take it up later in life. How fortunate we professionals were to immerse ourselves in this elusive process so early in our lives, before our lives became so crunched for time and paralyzed by the adult mind so easily overwhelmed by the massive amount of information that one feels must be absorbed in order to learn this language. The most valuable thing that I thought I could give the students was to encourage them to search for their own paths, never to let themselves become overwhelmed, and most of all, to continue enjoying the process. Of course there were some technical tidbits - leading tones, rhythmic development, etc.- but I tried to always come back to these main ideas. Over the course of the clinic, so many of them opened up to me with their questions and frustrations that forced me to question my own process and practice, which is what teaching should be about and why it's an important activity for every musician to engage in. The amateur musician is one of the most crucial parts of the music community, and I think it is the job of every musician to become involved with them and make sure that there are practitioners of jazz beyond the increasingly insular world of professionals.

Jazz and poetry

*This article originally appeared in the Megaphone section of All About Jazz in June 2007.


When most people think of jazz and poetry coming together, they immediately think of the jazz tradition of poems being read over a musical background, the famous image of the quintessential beatnik (you know, the beret, striped shirt, funky glasses...) fronting a band that plays a cool cool blues behind him. Though limited, this spoken-word tradition has helped to highlight the common ground that exists between jazz and the mostly beat (sometimes freestyle) poetry that accompanied it. However, its' prominence in jazz has too often overshadowed the art of actually basing composition on poems, which has long existed in other genres and is relatively uncommon in jazz.

Basing a composition on a poem presents a multitude of challenges artistically and musically. A poem, regardless of form or verse, exists on its own, its own entity, possessing a rhyme, rhythm, and a music within. I constantly ask myself whether poets actually want this done to their work. It can often feel like clothing a great nude sculpture or framing an unframed work of art, and thus must be approached with great delicateness.

After selecting a text (sometimes the most difficult part of the process), the composer must dig to find the essence of the poem, the unshakable, immovable aspects of the work that transform it from a collection of words or ideas into a work of art. This is deeply connected to a musician's art, bringing creativity and vitality to a work without ignoring the intents of the composer, much like an actor brings himself to a character without compromising the script.

In setting the poem, the composer must pay careful attention to preserving the clarity of the work, its flow of ideas and subtle manipulations. He/she must caress each word, each line, as if the poem were being read to an audience hearing it for the first time. Balance is key, as music can easily distract from the poem, especially if the work is dense and abstract to begin with. No matter how much I wrestled with them, some of the greatest poets, such as Hart Crane (whose poetry is so full of references and has to be read almost backwards to be understood) and Sylvia Plath (who wrote some of the most powerful and evocative lines of the English language) were unappealing candidates due to the density and sheer intensity of their work (though I could not resist writing a spoken-word setting of Plath's beautiful poem to the child being conceived inside of her, "You're"). Conversely, works that have too literal of a tone, especially narrative poems, did not contain the aura of mystery that I like for a composition to have. Poems with too simple a rhyme scheme felt constricting musically, and length was also critical, since my goal was to create songs with simple forms for improvisation rather than any extended works. Much like great music, ideal poems for settings, though they can be enjoyed on the first encounter, leave room for re-imaginings and reinterpretation, and may leave one conflicted with what the subject or message of the poem is, or perhaps wondering there is one at all.
I must confess at this point to having never been a serious reader of poetry before starting The Words Project, nor do I tend to even listen to song lyrics attentively. I have always had an analytical mind, sometimes rather impatient, one that first tries to discern the meaning of what I read before appreciating its more visceral or sensual aspects, always hungry to get to what is next. Poetry teaches us to slow down, to quiet the mind, to enjoy the subtleties of language, its' sounds and minute expressions.

The deeper I have gotten into poetry, the more I have found it shares with jazz. Though many people have tried to define jazz over the years, its' definition remains murky and unattainable, leading me to think that its closest definition is its precious indefiniteness. The most sure way to ignite controversy in the jazz community has always been to try to rigorously define it. Similarly, what defines a poet, or a work of poetry? Many passages of literature are considered "poetic" but are not classified as poetry, while William Carlos Williams' sixteen famous and simple words about a red wheelbarrow (The Red Wheelbarrow) stands as one ot the pillars of modern poetry. As a novice to poetry, I am not qualified to delve into this topic nor I am the least bit interested in an objective definition of jazz. However, this sense of indefiniteness intimately weds jazz and poetry as art forms.

I am certainly not the first to use poetry as a vehicle for song, and am much indebted to a great tradition of combining words and music. Hymns, opera, folk song, art song, musical theater and popular song, have been doing it for years, and a number of jazz artists have preceded me, most notably Steve Lacy (listen to his version of Herman Melville's "Art" or his settings of Lao Tzu), Fred Hersch (his recent Leaves of Grass CD, which is quite programatic in scope, is a marvel), and Frank Carlberg (his numerous recordings for Fresh Sound New Talent are extraordinary). Certainly the lyrical depth and inventiveness of people like Patricia Barber, Bjork (whose own setting of an e.e. cummings poem on her album Medulla was an initial inspiration), and Monika Heidemann (one of four singers on the Words Project ), as well as singer/songwriters like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, can be considered poetry itself and is certainly advancing modern song.

The use of words in music can provide a much needed entry point for the average listener and an interesting challenge for composers. Despite the complexities of the process, I hope my music can be enjoyed with or without taking in the content of the poems. After all, it is a vehicle for some of my favorite musicians as well as four distinctive, beautiful voices (Monika, Heather Masse, Becca Stevens, and Noam Weinstein)... Skillfully used, jazz and poetry can complement one another, especially when the complex meeting of the two does not overshadow the truest and deepest components of jazz: creativity, interaction, and spontaneity.

The New Independent Music World

Things have changed a lot recently, and it is virtually inarguable that musicians have been emancipated over the last decade by a number of social developments and new technologies. With the collapse of the major record labels and the the emergence and of online sales of music and alternative distribution, any artist can now promote their music via their personal websites, MySpace, blogs, and a myriad of other online opportunities and can thus compete for the attention of the consumer. The current vacuum of major labels has also helped several small labels become larger players in the jazz scene, several of whom have taken some of the big names recently abandoned by the major labels and given them a fairer deal than they had before. On the consumer end, this liberation has come in the form of the option to now hear samples of most anything that is available, to read (and contribute) extensive reviews, to obtain previously obscure items at the touch of a button, and to purchase singe tracks at a reasonable cost.

This is all very exciting, but, perhaps because of the speed at which the music world has changed, very few people seem to be asking the question of whether this will be good for the music itself, and if there is long-term sustenance for musicians in this new world. When the day is done, there is still a bottom-line that must be met in order for music to thrive and maintain a high level. Many artists can dig deep into their own coffers for that pivotal first recording, but how many second and third recordings will surface given current sales numbers? What are the true economic realities of releasing your own music these days, and will these realities really allow for artistic growth?

A lot of media attention seems to go to the independent rock scene, which, at least by jazz and classical standards, is thriving. Obviously, this scene has a larger, more mainstream audience to tap into, but there is another important difference that allows this scene to thrive. Due to the musical nature of most indie rock, it can be recorded on a very small budget, often at home recording studios, without compromising the integrity of the music itself. Chamber music and jazz, however, are acoustic styles that demand that the players play together, at the same time, in a carefully designed space that complements the natural sounds of the instruments involved. To record this music well, the costs are quite substantial. Aside from paying the musicians on the recording a respectable amount for rehearsals and the session(s), a good recording studio that offers adequate tracking rooms, quality gear, a good piano, and a good engineer starts at about $1000 per day. Mixing can then cost another few thousand dollars, and mastering, the final step that makes a bunch of varied songs seem to fit together into a unified body, another $500-1000. Add to this graphic design, printing, licensing and various logistical and basic distribution costs and you have arrived at a substantial sum, often over $10,000 for a basic small-group release.

A lot of talk also is about established artists who are beginning to skirt the big labels by releasing their own music. These artists, most notably Branford Marsalis, Dave Douglas, and Bill Frisell, are likely thriving with the new model. However, unlike emerging artists, these musicians have substantial reputations to draw on and a wealth of invaluable recording experience making CD’s for sizable labels over the years.

Despite this new restructuring of record production and sales, an outdated consumer mentality still dominates the marketplace and is keeping sales figures quite low. This mentality is dominated by the conviction that there isn’t a connection between true listeners and the people at the top deciding what is produced and that artists are not seeing anything from sales. As the corporate structure bent on short term gain took over the record industry, many buyers felt that a record purchase only went to pay for the next bubble-gum music production, lucrative reissue, or fluffy adult-contemporary album, leaving serious music listeners without a voice in the marketplace.

Given the high cost of production and the marginal sales most artists are experiencing today, much of it due to this old mentality and the sheer glut of music on the market that this democratization has produced, today’s climate is decreasingly viable for emerging (and many established) jazz artists. With the vast amount of music that one can hear for free through promotional downloads, MySpace, artist websites, and, let’s face it, rampant burning of MP3’s and file-sharing, it is easy to take recorded music for granted and to forget that there are economics involved in its production. If the consumer wishes to hear a continuing crop of adventurous, noncommercial, and developed jazz recordings, it is essential that they shift their attitudes and see the direct impact their purchases now have in the marketplace. Unless sales increase, there will come a point where worthy recordings will disappear, and we will only be left with recordings by the top players and rookies willing to lose money in order to gain some crucial initial exposure.

The new, independent movement in music (if one can still call it a movement - I think it is more simply the reality for most artists) clearly offers something wonderful and liberating to the consumer, something that drives the people involved with New Amsterdam Records, the artist-run label with which I am affiliated with. Now that the artist is getting a fair share of the pot, proceeds from sales will directly allow them to continue to record and release music. Without the corporate structure and vast number of middlemen previously involved in music production and distribution, the general public now becomes a true arts-supporter when they purchase the music they hear. No, purchases won’t be tax-deductible, but the listener now enters a relationship and becomes an integral part of this brave new continuum by purchasing music. Next time you hear live music that you like, read a glowing or intriguing review of a new release, or are trolling the internet listening to music samples and find something that captivates you, please remember the important role you can now play and do your part in ensuring that artists continue to be able to produce the high level of music that you demand.

Health Insurance and the music community

Some very sad situations in the jazz world recently have put this at the forefront of my mind, and I would like to share some thoughts and information. In the past month, two great jazz musicians, bassist Dennis Irwin and saxophonist Andrew D'Angelo were both diagnosed with spinal and brain cancer, respectively. Both are acclaimed musicians who have established themselves both in New York and internationally, are widely recorded, and still unable to afford health insurance. While there has been an outpouring of support for both musicians, including numerous benefits for both around the world, fellow musicians and fans can not carry the weight of this problem and give others the money they need to get through these ordeals. (For further reading about both cases, there is an excellent article by Nate Chinen in the New York Times about Irwin and D'Angelo and the larger problem at hand. You can contribute to both via websites set up for them that can easily be found. D'Angelo, who I don't know personally, but lives in my Brooklyn neighborhood, has been keeping a very candid diary about his recent diagnosis, surgery, and treatment that is very brave and powerful).

It is not news to anybody to say that this country urgently needs to create a universal system like the rest of the civilized world. Sure there will be problems and it will reek of ugly, ugly socialism, but we are at a point where this issue is bankrupting the country and affecting lives. Unfortunately, the wheels of a government run by special interest money grinds slowly. Though some degree of change seems to be on the way, I do not have much hope that even a new, possibly Democratic administration in the White House will take the leap to create something truly visionary and profound in the near future. It will take a continued pressure from the outside, and a real mass education in the way that the rest of the world is operating on this issue and the deep cost our bankrupt system inflicts on our society before we move towards a single-payer system.

Meanwhile, what is a freelance musician or artist to do about things? Few of us make enough money to pay the ridiculous monthly premiums here in New York, and the high deductible plans leave people with substantial bills to pay and only moderate savings every month. Personally, over the past few years sporadically I would do enough union work to temporarily qualify for their bare-bones plan which does not cover hospitilazation and has a $5,000 annual cap, but it had way to many holes in it for anyone to rest assured, so despite having it I was living largely uncovered for a while. However, I recently found a program in New York state that not many people seem to know about called Healthy New York. If you have not had health coverage for the last 12 months, make less that $25,000 a year and are ineligible to receive coverage through an employer, you can get full coverage through a choice of private insurers through this program. Once you qualify (the application is very easy), the state subsidizes your coverage by agreeing to pay for catastrophic coverage (over $10,000 a year I believe), thus substantially lowering your monthly premium. You get the same private health plan that you would get for a lot more money otherwise. I registered through a provider called Atlantis and my monthly premium is $200, still a substantial sum of money and beyond reach for many, but far less than any other coverage options available. Even the popular and widely advertised Freelancer's Union coverage costs far more for a higher deductible plan, and much more complicated to apply and qualify for.

This Healthy NY plan is definitely a band-aid and not a permanent solution. It still does not address the enormous waste in our system, but it is there and is a small step forward, and I hope more people check it out so we don't have to see too many more stories of uninsured musicians facing life-threatening health emergencies and huge medical bills to pay.

Here is Andrew D'Angelo's website: www.andrewdangelo.com

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra has set up a fund for Dennis Irwin: www.vanguardjazzorchestra.com

Here is the Healthy New York website:

http://www.ins.state.ny.us/website2/hny/english/hny.htm

New York Mills

In many ways, New York Mills, Minnesota (pop. 1200) is your typical Midwestern outpost town. A train practically runs through it, almost every thirty minutes around the clock, which you can hear from Main Street, where you will find the local diner, library, post office, bank, bakery, Lutheran church (one of three in the town), town bar, antique shop, and hair salon. The town struggles with many of the typical problems of small towns in America... the decline of small farming and the joblessness and social problems that result, an aging population resulting from much of the young population leaving for the cities, the behemoth Wal-Mart that has moved into the neighboring town, and possibly a feeling some people have of being trapped, not to mention the harsh, seemingly endless Minnesota winter.

However, New York Mills has something that makes a truly exceptional place... Housed in the most beautiful building on main street is the New York Mills Cultural Center, a haven for culture in a place largely devoid of public venues for art. Thanks to the dedicated work of its employees, volunteers, and members, the center presents art exhibitions, community events, concerts, classes, and also brings artists to do retreats in the town, which are generously sponsored by the Jerome Foundation.

Thanks to my friend Anat Fort, a pianist and composer in NYC and former artist-in-residence there, I was introduced to their retreat program and was chosen to participate and recently spent two weeks living there. The cultural center owns a small house, just several blocks from the town, that they use to house the recipients of the grant. Other than eight hours of community outreach over the course of the two weeks (they also offer one month retreats), artists are given full freedom and solitude to do their work, as well as access to the resources of the cultural center. Partly because of the name of the town I suspect, they place a concentration on bringing artists from New York City, but also bring many local Minnesotans and people from other parts of the world as well, poets, writers, painters, and sculptors among them.

Why would an artist living in one of the cultural meccas of the world want to go live in a remote town of 1200 people? I am sure everybody who has participated in the retreat would give a different answer. Personally, small-town life is something very novel to me. I grew up in suburban Los Angeles, in a relatively populated place that did not have much history to it, and little identity, where people live at a fast pace and there is little that ties them together. Although I have traveled through most of the U.S. and seen much of small-town America, I had never really lived in it for any length of time, and saw this as a great opportunity to do so.

Also, there is the general need to once in a while escape the maddening pace of living in a big city, the constant noise and stress of everyday existence here which can provide a wonderful edge, but can be incredibly overwhelming and distracting. As a musician here, you live surrounded by people on all sides, forcing you to tailor when you can make noise and the type of noise you can make. Living in the retreat house, I had total freedom to play any time of day or night, to listen to music at whatever volume I wanted and not have to think twice about it.

Most of all though, the retreat was an opportunity to pare things down to the basics and really look inward, to embrace the solitude and ask some deeper questions, and, when ready, really dive into creative work more intensely than usual. Having a period of time away from any of the distractions of everyday life and having little to no responsibility is an extraordinary gift that this retreat and others like it offer, something that I hope to make a regular part of my personal and creative life.

And on top of this solitude, you do meet a truly unique breed of people over the course of your stay there. Many creative people and artists call rural places home, and have learned to thrive on the solitude, away from the ambition and noise of the urban world and the general rat-race of our culture. Beyond this, however, among the general population of the town, there is a wonderful sense of community, of "we" and not just "I", of calmness and simplicity, and a powerful sense of place that is difficult to find in cities. As far as the culture that the center brings, there are certainly people in the town whom are largely indifferent to it. However, enough people care about it to allow the center to survive and to serve not just the town but also be a sense of pride for the larger region.

In case you were wondering, I am not writing this just to encourage others to apply for the retreat program, but also to give my thanks to all the extraordinary people who make this program both possible and richen it with their warmth and generosity. Giant thanks to Lynn, Jamie, Marcia, Alice, Pam, Gary, Hope, Bob, Beverly, Elisa, Cheryl, Dennis, and the many others, and the Jerome Foundation for their generous support.

To find out more about the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center and the retreat program there, visit www.kulcher.org.

Liner notes

In his recent review of the Words Project, Budd Kopman writes:

"The Words Project raises many questions. Why these particular poems? Does listener response to them matter? What if the listener is repelled by a poem's message? What if the listener does not comprehend them at all?

Should the poems be read before listening? Should the liner notes be read while listening? Is it even possible to keep a poem in one's mind when only hearing it, especially when part of one's attention is directed towards the music? Since the music presumably came second, as settings of the words, is its function to help bring forth the poem's meaning? Then again, how can that be when the music draws attention away from the words?"



Though I am thrilled to sell copies of the record in any form (digital, hard copies, singles...), those who buy the album digitally are unfortunately missing out on the ability of being able to read the poems that the songs are based on, which I believe essential to the experience with this music. If you are like me and tend to listen to musical content over lyrical content, it is very important to have a visual when listening to vocal music, and thus I made it a point to include all the poems in the liner notes of the CD. Many people have told me over the past year how much this has enhanced the music, and it saddens me a bit that those who bought the record digitally are not experiencing this.

If there is anybody who has bought the album online and wishes to have a copy of the poems, please contact me through the site and I will be happy to send you a PDF containing them.

R.I.P. IAJE

The jazz world was taken aback this week by the announcement that the IAJE (International Association of Jazz Educators), an organization that grew from humble beginnings to become a major force in the jazz world, has declared bankruptcy and ceased operation. As jazz has become more institutionalized over the last few decades and has taken a firm place in the educational world, the annual IAJE conference became a major place to present music, knowledge, concepts and products. It became the Cannes of the jazz world, where for a meager $300 conference fee you could walk down the halls proudly wearing your conference badge and mingle with the biggest names in the biz, and perhaps feel like one of them for a few precious days every year.

Personally, I attended three of the conferences, one in Chicago as a high-school recipient of the IAJE/NFAA Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Fellowhip and two conferences in New York while I was a student in college. The first conference was any jazz-obsessed eighteen-year-old's dream... I probably hardly slept and ate over the course of those four days, eager to take it all in. The fellowship program offered many aspiring kids an incredible opportunity that I remain thankful for and do not wish to seem ungrateful for in what is to follow.

Over the years what I saw at the IAJE conventions increasingly bothered me and made me feel uncomforable, to the point where if I knew the convention was in New York I made it a point NOT to go out that week to hear any music. The conventions came to symbolize to me just how insular and out of touch jazz is with the mainstream world. Instead of coming together to celebrate the music and figure out ways of expanding its place in our world, I felt like I was seeing thousands of people there fight over the crumbs that exist in the current music marketplace. So few people seemed to be asking the deeper questions that plague jazz currently... What are the literally thousands of people who graduate every year from iniversity jazz programs worldwide going to do in a world largely indifferent to this music? Shouldn't we have been asking why people aren't listening to this music, why is there an ever decreasing number of performance venues that offer artists a real possibility of advancing the music and perhaps bringing it back to a place of social relevance again? How can we create real jazz listeners for the future, and make what we do more digestable to the general public without compromising the art form?

Eventually, any educational world artificially constructed to fill a void of opportunity will topple if it does not teach something relevant to the society in which it operates. From my limited knowledge of what was or was not happening at the IAJE conferences (I didn't go to one since 2000 or so) I think this depressing realization drew the most promising and vital people away from the organization and eventually led to its demise, probably along with some bad financial management, which the courts are now left to decide on. I do believe that teaching jazz in schools passionately and effectively does help create audiences for the future, and I am sure this originally motivated the people who created IAJE. However, I think it eventually was hijacked by a number of short-sighted individuals who saw the organization as a vehicle for self-promotion instead of a place to train effective educators and engage in a serious and broad-minded dialogue. I hope that the jazz world can learn a lesson from this and create something more effective and sustainable in the future.

Kiva.org

Once in a while the internet really does challenge our view of the world, becoming something more than just of way of looking up old friends from high school, checking the weather, and ordering things we don't really need. (Just this morning, I bought online two books, a collar for my cat, and a pet fountain for the water-deprived little princess as well.)

A few months ago, the NY Times did a story about a website called kiva.org that arranges interest-free microloans to entrepreneurs and small businesses around the world, many in countries that don't have institutionalized and supportive lending practices. What this means is that ordinary people with a bit of disposable income can make loans to people anywhere in the world, allowing impoverished people who otherwise would not be able to start or sustain their business access to non-predatory credit. Ordinary citizens can now band together by loaning often trivial amounts of money and help somebody in Sierra Leonne who wishes to invest in his small pharmacy and thus bring needed medicine to his community, or a Bolivian father of three wishing to start an auto-repair business to support his family. Over the course of the loan, you can track the recipient's progress and once the loans are repaid (they have a very high repayment rate), you are notified by Kiva and can either withdraw your money or redistribute it to others in need.

Beyond charitable-gift giving, Kiva offers a vision, one of ordinary citizens bucking the monetary systems of the globe and lending one another a hand, with very little organizational overhead. Part of the reason we live in a world of such horrible inequities of wealth is due to corruption and corporate control of the marketplace, which puts emphasis on quantity and global markets over community. Kiva and the micro-lending movement that the internet is now making possible has the potential to impact this.