SST Blog

12/3/2018   Every year on December 7th I can’t help but think about my father. It was the singular day in his life that he participated in an event that changed the course of world history. He had a minor role, but he was in the midst of it. He was an ordinary man placed in an extraordinary circumstance.   In 1941, he was only 22 years old—a poor kid from the Bronx who got drafted. He hardly ever spoke of his time in the army. He loved our country and felt it was the least he could do to...

12/2/18   With the upcoming American Federation of Musicians Local 802 election in a couple of days, I’ve been thinking about the dilemma at the core of making a living in the arts, or as my old buddy Joe Temperley used to say, “Art for art’s sake, but money for Christ’s sake,” and his other expression, “Music by the yard.”   Centuries ago in Europe, there were patrons of the arts. The aristocracy was so rich, that supporting artists was no more of a financial strain for them than owning a pet. Domesticated animals never criticize their masters, but art...

11/19/18   By the end of World War II, jazz musicians across the board were embracing the bebop innovations that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had shocked the music world with only a few years before. Popular swing big bands dipped their toes into these waters for novelty tunes like Gene Krupa’s Calling Dr. Gillespie (cleverly referring to both Dizzy and Dr. Kildare’s mentor from the movies).   A young white tenor saxophonist (soon to switch to baritone sax) wrote a few arrangements for Krupa at this time, most notably Disc Jockey Jump, which differed greatly from the Parker/Gillespie approach,...

(If you missed part one, you can read it here)   11/19/18   After our premiere in Arizona, we hit the road, spending a week each in a few cities before we returned to New York for our much-awaited homecoming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.   I had Jimmy Madison on drums and Isaac ben Ayala on piano with me. I could never have done it without them. They were the backbone of the show. No matter what musicians we picked up in our travels, they held down the fort, gave the dancers the tempi they required and infused...

11/16/18 In 1975 I was hired to play trumpet and transcribe Duke Ellington’s Night Creature for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. Ailey had danced with Ellington 20 years earlier in the TV production of A Drum is a Woman, and remained a lifelong fan. After the initial success of Night Creatures, Alvin decided to do a full season of Ellington. I became a busy beaver between all the writing and rehearsing.   While rehearsing Black, Brown And Beige, I found myself on a break sitting on the City Center stairs next to Alvin. He told me that he was cancelling...