Gear & Promo

It’s been some time since posting about gear or doing much promotion for that matter, so here’s a little of of each…

Somewhere along the line in the received history of saxophonistic wisdom came the idea that one should always play the largest mouthpiece tip opening that can be managed without too much difficulty.  I don’t know who started it but I last heard it from mouthpiece maker Fred Lebayle (who passed last year) when visiting his shop.  Fred was adjusting one of his mouthpieces to my liking and seemed to think I should be playing a number 8.  I talked him down to a 7* and that’s been it for the past ten years or so. For you non-saxophonists, smaller tip openings tend to deliver a more consistent core tone across the range of the horn while larger tip openings tend to be louder and bigger sounding and lend themselves to a greater range of tonal color.  When the saxophone was invented (in the 1840’s) the mouthpiece that was designed for it was perhaps the equivalent of a number 2 or 3.  Over the years this gradually increased due to the musical requirements the instrument was placed in.  By the 1950’s jazz players were typically playing on a number 5 or 6.  Lester Young was playing a number 7 around that time which he considered “very hard on the chops”.  Today, few jazz saxophonists play on anything less than a 7 and some folks have played on pieces as large as a number 10. Wayne Shorter comes to mind.  Don’t ask me how, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to get a sound out of it.

I recently went through a period of three or four months practicing mainly Bach on a small tip mouthpiece of the kind preferred by classical players.  One day I decided to pull out the Lebayle, which sounded like an air-raid siren by comparison.  Keep in mind, this is all relative.  Once acclimated I felt right at home again but it got me to thinking.  The last solo concert I did (using the Lebayle) reminded me that I could easily overpower the room if I wasn’t careful.  That’s a distraction I’d prefer to do without so I decided to explore the possibility of finding something in between.

Fortunately my friend Derrick Michaels (wonderful saxophonist from Baltimore) shares an affinity for vintage saxophones and mentioned that he had a Morgan mouthpiece 6 tip opening, offering to let me try it out.  It’s sold as a classical mouthpiece but it’s actually larger than most any classical saxophonist would use.  I’ve gotten one of my own and have been playing it for the past few weeks.  Pianist Ethan Iverson came by recently to do some playing and it passed its first real test.  I’m looking forward to getting more acquainted with it over time.  

Have a listen to Derrick playing this mouthpiece on his solo recording, “Live at An Die Musik”. 

And then the other thing…

Seems I’ve lasted long enough to become re-issuable.  Some months back I mentioned that this was pending and now it’s official, the first two recordings by “Trio New York” have been remastered and reissued as a double CD set on the ezz-thetics label.  ezz-thetics is a recent venture by record producer Werner Uehinger who established the Hat Hut label fifty years ago this year.  Trio New York took a free approach to the great American songbook featuring organist Gary Versace and drummer Gerald Cleaver.  The original recordings date from 2011 and 2013 respectively and were released on my own label, prime source.  I’m pleased that this music might now have a bit wider reach and invite you to consider adding it to your collection should you not already have the original releases.   I have a limited number of the double CD package which I’m offering for direct mail order in the US.  Have a look under the “merch” tab of the Band Camp page.  If you're outside the US you can find a list of distributors on the Hat Hut website.  Or if you are digitally minded you can get the music from the ezz-thetics Band Camp page.  

The cover of this reissue is a photo taken in Greenwich Village by Luca Buti at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Barrow street.  It’s just a couple of blocks from the former Cornelia Street Cafe and the 55 Bar, places where the band often played.  Still going in the neighborhood are The Village Vanguard, The Blue Note, Smalls, Mezzrow, Arthur’s Tavern, the Cellar Dog, Zinc Bar and The Stone which are all within walking distance.  I’m also reminded that when I arrived in NYC in 1983 there was Sweet Basil about a block away as well as Lush Life where I once heard the great Dexter Gordon.  

All About Jazz has posted their review. 

Looking into the crystal ball…

Wednesday, February 18th, 2026 at The Stone here in NYC…duo with pianist and force of nature Sylvie Courvoisier!  Do stay tuned…

Is it True?

The New York Times ran a couple of articles on music this past week, one offering a poignant expression of our shared humanity, the other raising issues that might challenge notions of exactly what our humanity amounts to.  In an odd way, they seem to be obliquely related.  

The first is titled “What I Learned From Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a Sublime Voice”, written by vocalist Benjamin Appl as a reflection on the relationship with his mentor on the centennial of his birth.  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (who passed away in 2012) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest singers.  I’d aways found his voice possessed of a natural warmth and clarity that was captivating.  Towards the end of the article Benjamin Appl shares this moment with the reader:

What moved me most was his emotional state in the final weeks of his life. He had devoted himself to music, to art, with almost complete surrender — relentlessly, unflinchingly and at great personal cost. He spoke openly about not having been the ideal father or friend. That honesty still echoes in me today. 

Our last meeting, just weeks before his death in 2012, was cloaked in a quiet stillness. As I entered his home near Munich, a space he had largely designed and furnished himself, bearing his unmistakable touch, I sensed the atmosphere had shifted. We worked on Schubert’s “Harfner Songs” — music about solitude, transience and death. He often wept, asking the great questions of life, wondering whether his career had meant anything, or if he was already forgotten. Then suddenly, through tears, he fixed his gaze on me and said with a trembling voice: “Forgive me, I always tried to sing these songs truthfully, but I never succeeded.”

It was a devastating moment. I knew it would be our last. A few weeks later, he passed away — quietly, peacefully, as if one of his songs had simply faded into silence.

I hesitate in writing anything at all about something this personal but it raises real questions to which any artist can relate.  Let’s allow it to sink in a bit while considering the implications raised in the second article which is an obituary of David Cope.  Unfamiliar to me until now, David Cope was considered the “Godfather of A.I. Music” given his work in the 1980’s using algorithmic composition in the development of computer programming generating music in the style of various classical composers.  While this is in no way my domain the issues his work raised at the time (and now) challenge our notions around the very human process of music making.  In the article, Douglas Hofstadtler (who was involved with David Cope in an early experiment involving a program called “Experiments in Musical Intelligence”) is quoted as saying:

"EMI forces us to look at great works of art and wonder where they came from and how deep they really are," he told The Times afterward. If it were possible to reduce music to little more than various combinations of riffs, he added, then "it would mean that, to my absolute devastation, music is much less than I ever thought it was."

Towards the end of the piece we read:

Over the course of his career, Mr. Cope aroused the ire of so many other composers that he developed a sort of immunity to it, and even reveled in the discomfort his computer-generated music caused. “I want the negative reaction,” he said in “Opus Cope,” a 2021 documentary about his life’s work. “I feed off it.”

In a 2015 article published by the Computer History Museum, he was questioned about whether machines have the capacity to be creative, and he was adamant in his response: “Yes, yes, a million times yes.”

He added: “Creativity is simple; consciousness, intelligence — those are hard.”

To be honest, I’m really not that interested in discussions about A.I.  I understand its implications but there’s something off about the “for and against” analysis.  Also, the idea of A.I. as a creative tool is not that compelling even though I’m reminded of those years working with Andrea Parkins who used her computer sampling program in a kind of “chance operations” manner.  She spoke of it as a Rube Goldberg approach in which there was a “slippage” (her word) with respect to a sound and any sense of meaning it might convey.  It was often unpredictable in ways that were sometimes vexing and I loved it.  While I’m not against the principle of using technology in creative ways I’ll admit that I do have a negative reaction embedded somewhere in all of this so out of respect for Mr. Cope’s challenge let’s see where this leads.  

There seems to be a threat involved but what is it?  

Is it personal, a threat to my own intellectual and emotional territory?  Or is it more general, a threat to the music, culture and traditions that make us who we are?  I will say that I agree with David Cope’s statement that creativity is simple although I doubt we’d have shared the same reasoning as to why.  Simple processes, set in motion, unleash tremendous complexity in interaction with everything they touch, everything there is, process simply being a form of motion.  The idea that consciousness and intelligence are separate issues, apart from creativity, is an assumption I’m not ready to make.  Where would the dividing lines be drawn?  Speaking of dividing lines, is your consciousness different than that which you are conscious of?  Is it different than anything you may think of as not having consciousness?  

At this point we should pause.  Consciousness, creativity and intelligence may have no borders but human beings take the form of human beings and machines take the form of machines.  Seeing process being mimicked by a machine does not mean that intelligence exists in a conscious or creative form within it even if the calculations involved exceed human capacity.  We may think we are speaking about something called A.I. yet it is our own minds, our own thinking, that is at issue.  As cosmic as some of this may sound, common sense works well in this domain.  

Reducing music to information, and by extension assuming this information takes on a life of its own, seems an excellent example of how the technological enterprise of our time is predicated on a false assumption.  Assuming that our humanity and our lives (mine, yours, everyone’s) is any less profound by virtue of the machinery we create is an unfortunate misunderstanding, to put it mildly.  The threat we feel is actually the threat of our ignorance and delusion, about ourselves and each other.  When we offload our humanity to a machine it’s like pouring gasoline on those fires.  Thing is, there is nothing outside of us that can help us, but fortunately our ignorance and delusion are fundamentally human and can be embraced, with compassion.

Getting back to that first article…

Regret and a sense of failure are also human qualities.  They too can be fully embraced with compassion.  I have no doubt in the sincerity of what Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau confided to his student, it is to be honored unquestionably.  We may not be able to say for sure whether it was an expression of failure but I’m not sure that’s the real issue, his sincerity unlocks something much larger.  In “giving it our all” we include everything, the parts we esteem and the parts we’d prefer to reject.  I can think of no artist, no matter how highly their work may be regarded, as being immune from some degree of self doubt, knowing that as much as they loved their work, what they strived for their whole life was always just out of reach.  Certainly there were moments of transcendence, but they too slip from our grasp.  There is no way of knowing, no way of measuring a life’s work in the grand scheme of things.  

This is by no means a statement of futility, quite the contrary.  A large part of making music is not knowing.  This is what makes it real, what makes it true and what makes it creative.