Dial "M" for Musicology

The Dark Within The Dark

At the beginning of my final year—quarter, actually: fall 1979—enrolled at UCSB, there appeared a green, hyper, talkative violist and composer, an odd mix of self-confidence and neurotic insecurity named Gregory Michael Amov.  For reasons never became clear, Greg apparently decided I was someone to know and began to affect certain aspects of my manner: growing something vaguely beardlike, smoking black cigarettes (I smoked Shermans MCDs at the time), shadowing me.   Friends would badger me about it in a good-natured way—“Like father like son, eh, Jon?”—and I did not really know how to respond to them, except that there was something indefinable that prevented me from saying something crushing to him in the heartless way I might otherwise have done.  The only time I went volcanic on him was when he proudly showed me a pendant he’d bought at a head shop—a Jewish star with a coke spoon on it.  That was the last time he misjudged me that radically.

And we went our separate ways when I left Santa Barbara at the end of that year.  We spoke on the phone every few years, though; he called my parents, discovered my whereabouts, and we were able to reconnect.  I pursued the academic-music route, and he went virtual, becoming proficient in an operating system called Pick, which led to jobs and consulting and so on.  My father even asked him, at one point, if he could help me “get started in computers”!  (I was suffering on the job market then, and Greg gallantly assured Dad that he could.)  He was gleeful about the amount of bulletin boarding he was doing, in the days of bulletin boarding, and positively exultant in telling me about his first conversation with Diane, an author who was to become his wife, everything they had in common, how they had already decided on the names for their three children, and so on. 

I began to hear about different kinds of musical activities; ambient soundscape music, how being a rock star was now completely democritized and non-mass media dependent since one could post one’s own music on the internet and have people on the other side of the world respond with riotous approval, and so on.   “And I’ll tell you this, Jon: being a rock star feels GREAT.”  Greg sent me a couple of CDs of his work (though he promised several more I never got): a CD of his own music called The Dark Within The Dark, and a collection of demos by his “band” Systems Theory, a collaboration between (primarily) himself and his longtime friend Steven Davies-Morris.  I twitted him about never having kids—why name them if you end up not having them??—and I remember a lot of laughter on that subject.  And a year or two ago, he shared his “successful” battle against esophageal cancer with me.  All the medical drama, the recovery, the gradual venturing back to work.  My God, I thought.  What did he do to deserve this?  I don’t think his smoking went beyond the occasional Russian Sobranie at UCSB; his music is making him happy, professionally things are hitting a kind of stability…  Then we friended each other on Facebook, and could bounce wisecracks off each other on a regular basis, and all was right with the world.

Recent months, however, saw a diabolically vicious recurrence of the cancer—now in the brain, and other places—and an agonizing but fast tailspin.  Last night, Greg Amov (1959–2009) took his last breath and went on to the Big Soundscape, three says short of his fiftieth birthday.  I have not actually seen Greg since UCSB, and was (unsurprisingly) unable to get back to California during his last days, so—I ask myself—what can I do?

I am listening to the Systems Theory demos and The Dark Within the Dark.  I have never been into ambient music, particularly, so when I first heard it I thought it was nice, and reflected on how far Greg had evolved from playing string quartets…and that was that.  Today it sounds very different.  Now these pieces are rather like distillations of everthing in the air back then, including wisps of Celtic, world musics, drum patterns etc. all interwoven on long sonic canvasses: “The Dark Within The Dark,” “The Cathedral At Ys,” The New Worship Of Old Gods,” “Nightfall On Io.”  Of course, I have no computer chops at all, and so cannot begin to imagine how music like this is produced, realized, and so on.  What is hard to describe is the odd familiarity this music has, as if I can hear the real Greg in these tapestries.  I’d love to discuss these with him 

In some inconceivable dimension, maybe.  Until then—

Forn gezunt, my friend; soar high and far.  Gregory Michael Amov: may his memory be for a blessing.

Guidance, or Not

Phil forwards me a letter from someone who thinks he would like to be a musicologist, and who desires guidance along this rocky road.  Do I want to take a crack at this?  Sure.  For protection of those intimately involved, I will not mention any names.  Here’s the other thing: I apologize if I repeat sentiments offered in previous blog posts, and (contrariwise) I warn you in advance that I’m not going to be offering a bland YOU CAN DO IT message.  So:

Dear Sir,

You write as a dissatisfied 27-year-old, interested in musicology, who (initially) was not accepted for a music degree at Canadian Maritime University I and so opted to attend Canadian Maritime University II in music.  Although you subsequently decided you should have been more persistent at CMU I, you enjoyed your time at CMU II very much, and subsequently finished an English degree back at CMU I.  You are now working on a Music and Culture minor there at CMU I, which you also enjoy, and you tell me that you’ve gotten above 70 in all courses for the minor.  You feel directionless, though; friends tell you to get a government job or something that would use your English degree, but you want to do music somehow somewhen.  Can we help?  What about music librarianship, and do we know any good Canadian universities for that?

What is clear, here, is that you are a young man with regrets.  You left to attend CMU II but should have stuck with, you say, CMU I.  You are not happy with the advice you have gotten from friends—telling you to get a job for which an English major might be qualified, or get a government job.  You inform us that your—ah—love life it not what you’d like it to be.  (However much this is on your mind, you should never volunteer information like this.)  You’re feeling time’s relentless march, but still cling to musical aspirations—you’ve played bass in lots of bands, etc.  And, ultimately, you say: “I am not getting any younger, and without pursuing my dreams, I have found that life isn't much worth living!”  Maybe Music Librarianship, you think, as a middleground between music and writing.  Well, yes, maybe, but what do we know?  And when you mention the musical accomplishments—playing in bands, good grades, etc., a Yank like me really has no frame of reference.  I don’t know what “above 70” means (I’m assuming it doesn’t just mean better than 70%, because that’s not all that wonderful). 

Now look.  It seems me that you have received lots of advice you that you feel has not been helpful, and that you have not been satisfied with a lot of things that have happened thus far.  If I may be so bold: given this impression, who would venture to give you any advice at all, now?  As far as I can tell, you’ve been a student most or all of your life.  Nothing wrong with that, but…sorry, I can’t help but ask: has the government been paying for this?  Even a pro-education liberal such as myself cocks an eyebrow at a government this generous. 

Musicology is something that makes me very happy, as does my job in particular, so I can certainly understand why that would be enviable.  You are 27, have peregrinated from University to University, and are clearly (to paraphrase Shakespeare) out of mirth with yourself.  I don’t know what to tell you about musicology, or music librarianship—the best music librarians command several languages, and I don’t know if you do or not—but it is a fact that if someone gives you advice, and you follow it and it doesn’t lead you to happiness, that becomes another entry on your growing list of regrets.  One thing I am certain about, from your letter, is that it is time to change that pattern.  It seems likely that another course—with its structure of Authorities and Learners, and Assigned-Tasks, Completion-of-Tasks, and Evaluation-Thereof—is (ultimately) well-charted territory, beginning to end, and won’t solve your problem.

My recommendation is to get out in the world—find some kind of job, keep your musical interests up on the side, work steadily on your writing skills and musical knowledge.  What you need right now is to dig deep into your own independence, initiative, ambition, and drive, NOT yet another program.  Perhaps there is a part-time gig available writing program notes, CD reviews for a website, whatever—these are credible things to do when you’re not working.  You mention that you are not getting any younger, and that is true (who is, after all?), but it’s time for some experience Out There, now.  Getting out of the Canadian government-supported education pipeline might, paradoxically, open some doors you are not habituated to looking for, and it might afford you some new tools to use in making yourself happy.

But no, I won’t give any advice about you and musicology, you and music librarianship, you and this or that Canadian university.  It’s down to you, now, whatever choices you want to make, and you might just take a deep breath and make this decision on your own, and then go all out to make it the right one.  Rear up on your hind legs and get something going.  For decades, the people who have become successful are those who have forced it, with weirdly checkered backgrounds, atypical skills, and (above all) prevailing diehardism, as I called it years ago.  Somehow, we squeezed through a crack, or forced out way in.  If you want to get anywhere even remotely associated with music, you need to adopt this mindset and stop asking for guidance.  What is more, prepare yourself for failures, reverses, and disappointments—if you can’t deal with those, music is not a good place for you.  (I’m not saying you have to like failure; just withstand it and learn from it.)

Other choices tend to fall into place and make more sense when viewed from a perspective of motion and activity as opposed to stasis.

Thus endeth the sermon. 

Jonathan

The moving soundscape meditation

Lyle Sanford just added a wonderful quote from Daniel Goleman's Vital Lies, Simple Truths to my last post:

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

It's wonderful because it gets at the heart of what it is we want from music, art, learning, love, religion, philosophy, sports -- pretty much everything worthwhile we do -- which is personal transformation. And it suggests why that transformation ("change") is so difficult. 

Actually, calling it "personal" is a bit wrong, because the most powerful experiences of art, love, etc., tend to be unitive: they tend towards the subject's total immersion and identification with the object (self with music, self with the beloved, self with the divine), such that the distinction between subject and object disappears. (I've written about one particular kind of unitive experience before.) But getting to that experience, to say nothing about integrating it into one's normal life (so it's not just like a theme park ride or something, a momentary trippy diversion, but something that changes the way you hear music, relate to your spouse, etc.), demands something very hard: we have to change the way we sense and think about the world around us. We have to break old cognitive habits, which (as Goleman notes) is especially hard because we don't even know they're habits. 

So how do we break our cognitive habits? How do we notice what we fail to notice? I've gotten interested in the idea of doing . . . well, I don't quite know what to call them. "Existential exercises," maybe, or "experiential exercises" -- EE for short. (Works either way.) Meditation is one kind of EE: it's a practice where you pay attention to how your body and mind are tuned, how the total organism is working in its environment, what you're thinking about, how you feel. Yoga is a similar sort of thing -- it looks like what we usually mean by exercise (you move your body and get stronger), but it's also a way of paying attention to the body's functioning more generally. (Your mind is a part of your body, too.) And there are other things -- playing the piano, doing judo, etc. -- that can function in similar ways. Sooner or later these practices will all converge on the same discipline: an awareness of how we pay attention, or don't, what we pay attention to, and how well we sustain our concentration. 

At a certain point when I was getting really serious about piano playing I realized that I was getting stuck, not because I couldn't physically move my fingers in certain ways, but because I didn't know how to focus my mind the right way to train my hands to make those movements. I learned one of my great enduring truths of piano playing: learning to play means learning to practice. You have to figure out what you're paying attention to, how you pay attention to it, how your consciousness is organized when you're concentrating (are you self-conscious? what does that feel like? what does it feel like to let go of self-consciousness?), how long you can concentrate, what it feels like to lose focus, and so on. And this is something that is actually very good for one's general happiness and health. When you get good at this meta kind of self-monitoring in your chosen practice, you get better at it all around. You notice things. The world becomes a more beautiful and mysterious place. 

But not everyone plays the piano, so what are they supposed to do? I remember going to a Michael Colgrass workshop about 20 years ago where he did all these exercises in . . . I don't know exactly what the name for it is, but his exercises pertained to that habitual and largely hidden meta level where we structure the various things we do every day. These are what I'm calling EE. (I don't remember what Colgrass called them.) Anyone can do them. 

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, which I found at an esotericist site I stumbled on:

Exercise: 

1. List all of those habits that you maintain that have no benefit beyond the experience itself; 2. Stop doing them for a period of two weeks (you can always start again after this period of time, so you won’t be losing those things you really can’t live without forever); 3. At the end of the two weeks, compare the old habits from step 1 with the new habits that have formed over the last two weeks. 4. Now choose who you are.

Interesting. Here's a more musical EE, which takes the form of a composition that uses an "event score" (i.e., a set of verbal instructions for a performed act). My cultural studies class just did a week on John Cage and the post-Cagean avant garde and read Liz Kotz's badass article on George Brecht's event scores, which I recommend for anyone wanting to go deeper into this phenomenon. Anyway, here's the score of Pauline Oliveros's "Tuning Meditation," which I often use in classes when I want to illustrate the concerns of the American post-1950s avant garde. (I heartily recommend doing this, by the way.) 

Begin by taking a deep breath and letting it all the way out with air sound. Listen with your mind’s ear for a tone. 

On the next breath using any vowel sound, sing the tone that you have silently perceived on one comfortable breath. 

Listen to the whole field of sound the group is making. 
Select a voice distant from you and tune as exactly as possible to the tone you are hearing from that voice. 

Listen again to the whole field of sound the group is making.
Contribute by singing a new tone that no one else is singing. 

Continue by listening then singing a tone of your own or tuning to the tone of another voice alternately.

Commentary: 

Always keep the same tone for any single breath. Change to a new tone on another breath. Listen for distant partners for tuning.
Sound your new tone so that it may be heard distantly. 

Communicate with as many difference voices as possible. 

Sing warmly!

OK, so I made an event score of my own, which I tried out yesterday as I was walking across campus after getting my flu shot. Call it the "moving soundscape meditation." 

Go for a walk by yourself. As you walk, pay attention to every sound that comes to your ears. 

Listen to how each sound in your environment arises and passes away. Pay special attention to the beginnings of sounds.

Listen to the sounds of your own body -- your breathing, your heartbeat, your footsteps, and so on. 

Treat all sounds as equally important.

Commentary:

You will find it surprisingly difficult to notice when sounds begin. Often you will be following how one sound dies away and won't notice another sound beginning to enter your field of hearing. Or you might get distracted by something you see, or start thinking about something else. When you notice this happening, redirect your attention back to the sounds in your immediate environment. Pay attention to how often you need to refocus your attention. 

Pay enough attention to your surroundings that you remain physically safe. You should walk with your eyes open, though if visual stimuli are too distracting you may focus your gaze on the ground in front of you.

The composition is over when you reach your destination. Take a bow.

Aloha 'Oe

Apologies for the lack of blogging.  The semester was a punishing one (papers, performances), and the END of said semester even more punishing, in terms of grading and so on.  Since then, I’ve been doing program notes for a couple of summer concerts, and indexing my book manuscript.  It was my first major indexing project—I used the MS Word indexing function—so there was a learning curve, do-overs etc. involved, and thus a hell of a lot of time.  But when I get the proofs, most of the work will be done.  High time!

So I’ve forced myself not to respond to comments, critical and supportive alike, and I’ve not picked up on other matters that I would in other circumstances have run publicly amok about, like a certain idiotic piece in the New York Times by Mark C. Taylor.  Simply no time.  And we’re off to Hawaii tomorrow (tomorrow being our 25th wedding anniversary, as it happens), to return around the first of June, and I have errands to run…

So I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.  Stay cool, everyone.

A Conversation from 1975

Spring 1975.

Dramatis personæ: 

DR. SANDRA EAGLETON, my Advanced Placement English Teacher, my senior year at Claremont High School, who had also taught English part time at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in my father’s department.

JON, a long-haired, mouthy legend in his own mind.

 

SE:  Jon, would you like to be an English professor like your Dad?

JB:  God, no.  Anything but.

SE [consternation]:  Why not?

JB: I know what it’s like when I write papers for you—beating my brains out the night before it’s due.  I do NOT want to spend college like that, trying to think of something to say.

SE [smiling knowingly]:  You’d be surprised how many English majors are like that.

JB:  I know, but…

*            *            *            *            *            *            *            *

Dear Dr. Eagleton,

I know you’re no longer among us, having lost a long battle to cancer some years ago, and I regret that we never reconnected after I found my way to a somewhat different career choice, but an academic one that involved writing papers.  Perhaps you saw something I didn’t yet know was there.  What I can say is that in most cases I’m done with my papers much further in advance than I seem to be right now.  OK, so it’s two nights before, not the night before, but still.  I do find myself smiling and thinking of you tonight, though, and of our conversation so many years ago.  Thanks for everything you provided us, not least the challenge and attention and modeling of what teaching really could and should be.

And yeah, I’d better get back to my impending local AMS paper now.  Wishing you and all with you in the Empyrean every eternal Joy.

All Best,

Jon (Bellman; Sam’s son)

The Ancient Arms of Bellman

The internet, bless it, is (as former senator Ted Stevens might agree) quite an effective series of tubes.  Today it provides me the background on my glorious name, including our—umm—family coat of arms.  I was unaware that Ashkenazim that escaped eastern Europe (in this case Lithuania) in the first part of the twentieth century had coats of arms, but, y’know, learn something new every day.  Turns out the Bellmans are of Pictish descent, which will come as a surprise to an English friend I oftern accuse of Pictishness and Jutishness.  (Which is odd, because he doesn’t look Jutish.)  “Their name is thought to have originally been occupational for a ringer of bells or a town crier.”  Well!  Vocal and instrumental accomplishment and expertise!  Unbeknownst to every other member of my family, then, it’s a tradition from way back. 

Of the early immigrants to the colonies is listed a Christian Bellman, in 1932.  My suspicion is that he was not a relative.  But for the “noteworthy people of the name Bellman,” they list Richard Bellman, the famous mathematician (American Jewish), the composer Carl Michael Bellman (Swedish), and (weirdly) me.  Lest I consider myself too “noteworthy,” though (Debbie frequently carries a hatpin for use on my ego, so no worries), I also learn about the existence of Bellman jokes among Swedish schoolchildren.  It seems best to refrain from sharing my new knowledge of these jokes with my parents. 

Noteworthily Yrs, I remain…

Off to Minneapolis

A grab bag of things today:

1. A fascinating article in TNR on the dissonance between Burkean conservatism and movement conservatism in American politics by Sam Tanenhaus, whose biography on Whittaker Chambers is one of the best books on cold war politics ever written.  

2. Maybe I'm the only person who reads The Onion's AV Club more regularly than The Onion itself. I love the smart thinking and writing on pop culture that finds a home there -- the kind of writing that, at its best, treats contemporary pop culture as an immensely rich, endlessly absorbing total system of meaning and reference. (Which is exactly what it is.) Every now and then they have a kind of symposium on some question of cultural import, the most recent of which is, What are your pop-culture "sacred cows"? This elicited one of my favorite pop-cult-crit paragraphs from Tasha Robinson:

But what I absolutely can't stand, and what puts me into a fighting mood faster than anything else, is people blanket-dismissing an entire genre or subculture or area of effort, especially with the always, always, always-uninformed "I'm not interested in that stuff because it's all the same." So here's my pop-culture sacred-cow statement: Every genre is deep, nuanced, complicated, and diverse to its knowledgeable fans. That doesn't mean every genre is for all tastes. You don't have to like industrial or classical or conscious rap or Chicago blues or Beat poetry or fantasy novels or reality TV or whatever else. You aren't even obligated to try them, much less to make the effort to immerse yourself in them enough to tell the classics and the keepers from the trash. Life is short, the world is big and full, and there's nothing wrong with walking away from things that don't speak to you. But people who get snotty or self-righteous about it, as though their personal tastes reflect some sort of immutable reality, steam the hell out of me. Ignorance isn't attractive, but saying "I've never really gotten into [Westerns, opera, FPS games, whatever], and I'm not really interested" isn't nearly as ignorant as lumping together every example of a genre as unnuanced and unworthy. People who do sound exactly like caricatures of '50s parents, squawking about how Elvis and The Beatles are all just stupid noise.

3. I'm doing a talk as a part of the University of Minnesota School of Music academic area convocation this weekend. It's a new version of my Holmes acetates talk (another version of which I did at AMS this year). 

There it is. See you when I get back.

Pickup Truck, Piano, Chinese Food

I thought I wrote this anecdote up already, but I can’t find it.  I apologize if I’m repeating myself (an ever more common occurrence).

Terminaldegree has a nice story here about her acquiring a piano and the strong student backs that moved it to her place.  Having done my pre-Thanksgiving cleaning, I’ll contribute my own cognate memory:

It was, I think, early fall quarter 1979 at UCSB, on a Friday night.  A fellow music student, Paul Lewis (later known as Pablo Luis, doing missionary work and singing in Mexico), needed to fetch an old upright piano his sister had left with friends in Santa Barbara proper, years before.  He would put it in the apartment he shared with some other guys, including my friend James.  They recruited a group of us to help, with the following plan:

Everyone except one roommate would go and somehow get this thing in a borrowed pickup truck and bring it back.

Brilliant!  Even more brilliant was the fact that the other roommate was one Tom Tong, an incredible Chinese chef who made this killer dinner for everyone to share when we returned with the piano.

So we arrive at the piano’s current location.  No problem, the people were nice and cooperative, except that the casters were (of course) ravaged, there was a gap in concrete walk to the car, and an awkward incline from the home.  Things looked ugly, until one of our company, the Taiwanese conducting student John Lau, says, “We will make a ramp.  Very Chinese.”  He used just a tiny piece of wood to connect the surfaces the piano needed to cross.  I told him not to be ridiculous, it would never work, and he insisted: “No, let me.  Very Chinese.”  Of course, it worked.  I think he also used telekinesis, magic, and rearrangement of molecules, but however he did it, between our backs and the toothpick-type piece of wood, we got the piano to the truck.  After heaping suitable adulation on John, we piled in and drove back. 

Waiting for us maybe the most splendid Chinese meal I’d ever eaten.  Being Christians, they all did this big grace, Jesus this and Jesus that (you know what I mean), while I waited patiently.  I looked at the wine in front of me, remembered it was Friday night, and when they finished and before anyone could eat I picked up my wine glass and announced “Excuse me—equal time,” and chanted the full Kiddush, the prayer over wine.  Everyone was astounded and thanked me (I gathered they’d never heard it done), and a sense of utter bonding pervaded the entire evening.  I still glow to think about it; what more worthwhile experience then a cooperative effort to redeem a musical instrument to give it more of a future?

Two special moments:  when we arrived back in Isla Vista, the student community where the apartment was located, everyone got out to help with dinner, except…James, who was driving, commanded “All right, Bellman, in the back, NOW!”  No explanation was necessary; I sat on the side of the truck (at a certain amount of risk, I should say), improvising ragtime while he drove slowly around Isla Vista business district, at that point peopled mostly by stoned casualties from the 1960s.  “Whoa…jam on, man!” called one such—weakly—as we tooled deliberately by in the twilight.  I wonder what that…well, visitation must have looked like: ghostly ancient pickup rattling by, longhaired kid rattling on the piano in the back, disappearing in the mist.  The poor man’s Flying Dutchman…

At the end of the evening, we were warmly bidding each other good evening in the way that new blood-brothers do, and the girls upstairs (also friends; two were music students) came out of their apartment to see what the noise was, the familiar voices, etc.  One insanely beautiful one hung on the railing and opined that we/they (it wasn’t my apartment) should have invited them along for the evening, which was sort of awkward, but look, we were moving the piano, and, y’know, and…

Anyway, the two of us got better acquainted, and some years later I married her.  At the moment—as I write this—she’s preparing to feed some guests and our wonderful teenage son and my sorry tail also. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  I’d better get back to cleaning and helping, don’t you think?

Getz Postscript

I decided to write my old friend Charles for more information about the piece Stan Getz played at Stanford, mentioned here.  He said:

Re the piece for Stan, sure: Tenor Rhapsody, by William Thomas McKinley of the New England Conservatory.  His wife was some sort of Wiccan who cast various spells and hexes before every rehearsal, and the concert, sitting in the front row for the purpose.  Altogether nuts.

Charles also recalled:

I well remember that concert. When we started the first half we had no idea whatsoever if we would have a second—but Mem Aud was full, and even Herb Caen was there. Toth and I also cajoled Stan like the sycophants we were…

 

I was the one who spent night after night at his home…pounding out his notes on the keyboard—but that’s yet another lamentable story.

 

Fun days!

After I stopped laughing and wiping my eyes, I searched “Tenor Rhapsody McKinley” and found the following program notes to a recording of the same composer’s work Night Music, which is apparently a rewrite:

Night Music

This work owes its existence in no small part to the legendary jazz tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. It was Getz who, after having heard some of McKinley’s music in the mid- to late 1980s, approached the composer with an invitation to write a new piece for tenor saxophone and orchestra, which McKinley quickly accepted. Almost immediately it became clear to McKinley that the work would be a dramatic, rhapsodic composition of significant proportions. After consulting with Getz, it was further agreed that the solo part would be fully notated, even as it evoked Getz’s improvisational style. The Tenor Rhapsody for Solo Tenor Sax and Orchestra was completed in April of 1988, and its premiere followed less than two months later on 10 June 1988 in Palo Alto, CA. Getz was the soloist with the Stanford University Symphony Orchestra, with Andor Toth conducting. There is no record that Getz ever played McKinley’s Rhapsody again in public, and less than three years later, on June 6, 1991, the jazz giant lost his battle with cancer.

In the small world department: these notes are by my friend Scott Warfield, whose work I quote in the second edition of my Short Guide to Writing About Music because he’s so good at it.  My wife has done notes for MMC also.  And, to come full circle, I find this review of the CD by David Denton for Fanfare at the bottom of the same screen:

This is Volume 12 of MMC’s indispensable anthology of world-premiere recordings of 20th-century North American music. At the core of this new release is a work by the founder of MMC, William Thomas McKinley, one of the few composers who have successfully brought jazz and classical music together, and to such an extent that you can no longer find where on [sic] ends and the other begins. ‘Night Music’ is a reworking of the 1988 score ‘Rhapsody for Solo Tenor Sax and Orchestra’ originally intended for legendary saxophonist Stan Getz. The work came late in Getz’s all-too-short life, and McKinley subsequently decided to rewrite the score to take into account the exceptional skills of Michael Rossi, the remarkable soloist in this highly enjoyable performance.

So the redoubtable McKinley, founder of MMC, must be the guy I met backstage at Memorial Auditorium.  And the event was a couple years earlier than I thought, when I was a lad of but 30.  The composer’s notes to the piece are found on pp. 78–79 of this Googlebooks link.

I only heard the original Tenor Rhapsody, be it said, not the Night Music rewrite.  To be totally honest, my unfortunate meeting with the composer aside, I enjoyed the piece; it was like post-Gershwin, a style that I have always felt had much more in it than we ever heard.  I would welcome more performances of it.

Me and Stan Getz (and a Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra)

OK, Re-Pete: by popular demand, here is my one rather unfortunate connection with the late Stan Getz.  Late in my time at Stanford—I believe it was the last year of my doctorate, 1989–90—I got an eleventh-hour call from Charles Barber, a friend and at the time a conducting student there.  He was organizing the Stanford Orchestra concert, which was some kind of mixed program with Stan Getz, the titular head of the Stanford Jazz Program.  Getz had, I think, almost nothing to do with Stanford other than showing up periodically, being a figurehead, disseminating misinformation about the Jazz Program on Johnny Carson, and so on.  There was a commissioned work on the concert, a symphonic Jazz concerto for tenor sax and orchestra composed for Getz by I can’t remember who (it is NOT THIS ONE, but MAYBE THIS ONE, though I don’t think it was by Bill Holman).  This piece, as it turned out, had a small piano part.  Since a Jazz combo was going to do a few numbers with Getz early in the program, the pianist had agreed to play the part, until…he saw it, and demurred.  He doesn’t read much, he’s an econ grad student, he’s really busy.  Jon, please, could you…?  It’s not that hard…

It was true; the piano part was not that hard—just some strummed chords and stuff, so I agreed.  When I showed up, though, I found that the combined insecurities of Getz (who didn’t like playing from music), the conductor Andor Toth, Sr. (who was not comfortable with Jazz, though he was called upon periodically to do it), and the logistics of the Jazz combo earlier in the program meant that I was to be playing with my goddamned back to the conductor.  To see him, I would have to look backwards over my left shoulder while simultaneously, one presumed, playing from my unmemorized part.  I tried to object, but no, Jon, we’re sorry, we can’t do anything, you’ve got to understand, you’ve got to work with it, Andor is already upset enough, no don’t bring it up to him, Getz has decided he won’t even play the piece anyway, feelings are running so high…

Apparently Getz was not confident about his music-reading ability.  Another Stanford student had made him a tape of the solo sax part played on piano, so Getz could learn it by ear, but he was still insecure, and had decided at the last moment not to perform the work.  Everyone was at sixes and sevens, and in walks yours truly, unhappy enough for my own impossible situation, completely uninvested in Jazz per se and neither knowing nor caring much about the fact that Getz was bona fide Jazz Royalty.  Backstage, I meet…the composer, whoever he was.  He sounded to me like a fast-talking Hollywood Mr. Smooth-It-Away type, full of strutting self-promotion (“I mean, you can see what I’ve accomplished with this piece!”), with his tux, big pink tie and equally strutting adolescent son by his side.  Since I was the only ear this guy could get, he began playing me: I should go talk to Stan, get him to do the piece, I’m in the piece, he’ll listen to me, it’s fine really, Stan should just improvise the cadenza rather than play the one written (complete with fulsome faux-flexibility: “That’s the feel I wanted anyway,” he claimed), etc.  I was raised in Los Angeles county and have a lifetime’s experience with the L.A. type, but still couldn’t fend this guy off.  So, somehow, I—a largely Jazz-ignorant doctoral-candidate last-minute walk-on—was given the assignment of convincing The Great Stan Getz to please play this guy’s concerto.

Well!  Wasn’t this a recipe for success! 

What tack to take?  Getz doesn’t know me from Adam, and he wasn’t even there for the rehearsal.  Maybe friendly familiarity… [those of you thinking “Uh-oh; cue the Don Giovanni D Minor chord” have it exactly right.]  So, I go to jolly him up; he’s nervously talking to the strutting, oh-so-cool Jazz combo (you know how Jazz guys can get when a classical musician is in the room).  He’s reluctant, and I’m trying to jolly him up (this is a stranger, remember) and I wound up with, “Oh, come on, schmuck…”

FREEZE-FRAME.  PLEASE.

In my mind, I have always heard “schmuck!” in my father’s voice, kidding and above all affectionate.  Yes, thanks, I do know what schmuck means literally, but in my family it always had a kind of “ah, geddadda heah’ ya joik” sense; Dad would say “you’re a schmuck!” when I scored a point on him about his driving or an unsavory aspect of his youth or my mother’s zinging him or whatever.  So for me the word was always a slight elbow in the ribs, always warmly meant.  OK, so my house was the only one I knew that had any discernible yiddishkayt in it, and so I thought our unique take on the various family dialects was standard, government-issue American Yinglish.  Wrong again, Jon!  This was brought home in a very uncomfortable way when Getz snapped back

“DON’T YOU CALL ME A SCHMUCK, SON!”

Oh, sh--.  So I apologized, immediately, profusely, and resentfully, turned and walked away, mentally washing my hands of the entire situation.

The order of the program was changed, to put the concerto at the end so Mr. Getz could change his mind at any point.  Piece by piece the concert progressed, and at the end we all went on.  Getz played, improvising during the cadenza rather than playing the written one. I craned my neck wretchedly throughout and (if I recall correctly) made hash of the piano part.  After the concert, I was about to exit stage left, and turned around once more: there was Getz in the stage right wings, looking at me fixedly. 

I thought this at the time, and it looks this way in my memory, and for the rest of my life I will believe: there was regret in his face.  Probably I’m giving myself far too much credit, but that’s what I saw: he was looking at me, sadly, as if knowing our previous contact hadn’t gone right.

A mensch would have walked gingerly up to him, expressed regret at our previous conversation, and congratulated him on his performance.

I turned back and left, sick of the entire situation: sick of blowing my conversation with him and getting dressed down like a fourteen-year-old (I was probably 32 or so), sick of the stupid, manipulative composer's having put me in that position, and above all sick of the way I had been forced into embarrassing myself on the piano.  Two years later Getz was dead. 

What was I saying about the strutting pride of those awful stuck-up Jazz musicians?  God knows classical musicians never present any such behaviors.

It’s a shameful story, I freely admit.  I was insecure and unhappy about my own inglorious role and the untenable position I was put in, and I was resentful about the way he snapped back at me—but this does not belong in the category of That Stan Getz and How He Treated People.  One ought to know better than to call a stranger, particularly someone of Getz’s profile and accomplishments, a schmuck of all things!  I have always been a slow learner, though.  This one was my fault, not his, and it is a memory I will forever be ashamed of.  I do, however, hereby publicly own it.  And yes, I warned you that it was a long story.