No essay to offer, just a few things to mention, each of which seem to invoke the consideration of time…
On Sunday, May 3rd at 3 pm I will be performing a solo saxophone concert in Brooklyn, at the Zen Center where I performed a couple/few years ago. That concert was my second public performance since before the pandemic (the first being a solo performance at James Madison University in 2021). I plan on recording this one. More information to come.
Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and I performed in duo a couple of weeks back, at The Stone here in NYC. That brings my total to three and so it seems like maybe we’re on a roll. Sylvie and I played quite often at one time and so I decided to look back at the calendar to see just how long it’d been. Ten years. Almost exactly to the month. Which came as a shock. I told this to Sylvie just before we went on and it was the first thing she mentioned to the audience. And yet, as soon as we began to play it felt as if no time had elapsed at all. One thing I did notice was that there seemed to be greater trust in the music, less need to make things happen. Afterwards Sylvie said that it felt “more mature”. That seems fitting.
One the subject of live gigs, pianist Denman Maroney has released a recording from a live concert done in 1995 (just over thirty years ago) called Mean Times. I believe the title has something to do with the math behind some of his compositional processes although you could probably read any number of things into it. It features the late Herb Robertson on trumpet (1951 - 2024), myself on saxophone, Mark Dresser on bass, Phil Haynes on drums and Denman on “sampled hyperpiano”, which means that he sampled himself playing all manner of sounds from an acoustic piano (otherwise known as extended techniques) and used these sounds as the basis for the sonic textures that he created using the sampler. While the use of a sampler is commonplace nowadays this was still rather early in the game in terms of performance in improvised music. Given his involvement in the creation of the original sounds Denman made the process sound warm and organic. You can listen to this at Band Camp.
Ken Peplowski - I was shocked and saddened when confronted recently with the obituary of clarinetist Ken Peplowski in The New York Times. Ken was one of the great clarinetists. We first met in 1983 playing in a big band led by trombonist Buddy Morrow playing the music of Tommy Dorsey. Upon my arrival in NYC that same year Ken helped me get a foothold in the scene, calling me to sub for him in a variety of musical situations ranging from society gigs (I recall once playing in a big band that had no music, making arrangements on the fly) to neighborhood jazz joints such as Mr. Hicks’ Place in Freeport Long Island (in which organist Reuben Wilson often played). A few years later I found myself in sudden need of an apartment. One well timed phone call to Ken solved that problem and I took over the lease to a place he was leaving. We wound up in very different musical scenes but would occasionally cross paths. Just this past December we had the chance to catch up again at the Vandoren showroom in midtown. I came in to try some mouthpieces and Ken was sitting at the other end of the room in conversation with one of the staff. Thing is, neither of us recognized the other right away, it took a little while. But as soon as we realized, it was just like picking up again from where we left off, Ken’s sense of humor being fully intact and in full force. He had experienced some health issues but was doing well, still traveling and performing. I’m really glad we had that chance to see each other. I looked through my collection of road photos and found this…taken in 1983 on our way to Brazil to begin a tour of South America. That’s forty-plus years ago and it feels just like yesterday.
Makes me want to say…let’s take good care…of ourselves and of each other…always...
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