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SST Blog

What’s So Ordinary?

David Berger

9/14/17 In his excellent book, Cultural Amnesia, Clive James relates an anecdote about the Viennese writer who inspired Little Joe Gould, Peter Altenberg. “One of Altenberg’s many young loves had tearfully protested that his interest in her was based only on sexual attraction. Altenberg asked, ‘What is so only?’”   I could go on about the beauty of sexual attraction and its importance in love relationships, but that is a subject for another day. What I have been thinking about for the past few days is the relationship of the ordinary and the original (or unconventional).   Somewhere in high...

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Family Feuds

David Berger

9/12/17  How can parents and siblings be so close and then not speak to each other for decades? Are the differences so insurmountable that they cancel all the shared experiences and the familial blood ties? And why does this sort of thing get passed down for generations in seemingly “normal” families? This is no intellectual exercise for me. I grew up in such a family, and have suffered the consequences. A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with my cousin Joanie, who I didn’t know for almost 50 years. In fact, we would never have even met if it...

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Passion

David Berger

9/6/17 I know that I’m supposed to be writing 2 charts today and putting together my set list for tomorrow night’s gig, but I’ve been thinking about Lenny G this morning, and I’ve got to sort out my feelings. You know how when you are in high school, there is one teacher who is the students’ favorite? In my recent travels around the country, working with high school music programs, I’ve seen this many times.   It’s often one of the music teachers because of his passion for music. Sometimes these teachers cross over the line and have sexual affairs with...

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Who’s Taking Care of Whom?: Reversing the Order of Things

David Berger

Waking up to hurricane warnings in Texas, I was reminded of my childhood growing up on Long Island. Although Jones Beach formed a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and us, we got hit with some pretty scary and damaging hurricanes every August and September. Mostly they would knock down trees and power lines. It was a miracle that no one I knew got killed or that the big, old trees didn’t crush houses on their way down. Pretty close, but no cigar.   We kept a Coleman stove—one of those portable little stoves that run on a small gas...

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A Repertoire-based Program

David Berger

I have long promoted the idea that, like classical music, jazz should be taught by learning the repertoire of the past up to the present.  Every culture and art form on earth has developed over a period of time by honoring the past and building on it.  Severing our art and culture from the past is as detrimental as it would be to live with amnesia or to disavow who you are and where you came from.   I remember once reading an article saying that if you want to learn to play like Charlie Parker, don’t just study Bird,...

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