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SST Blog

Blah, Blah, Bland: Actually it's much worse than that.

David Berger

Full disclosure: I’ve been a professional jazz musician in New York for the past 50 years during which time I have written orchestrations for a number of Broadway shows and have composed several original musical comedy shows.   In The Producers, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, in order to insure a flop Broadway show, choose the worst book they can find and hire the most incompetent director, cast and crew. To their surprise and financial ruin, the audience loves their show, and it is a smash hit. The real-life Hollywood musical version of Mel Brooks’ Broadway fable has just been...

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Fences: The Enduring Price of Fame

David Berger

I just spent the afternoon enjoying the moving film adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences directed and starring Denzel Washington and costarring Viola Davis. A few years back I got to work with Denzel Washington on a film that he also both directed and starred in. In the two days that I spent on the set, I got to know Denzel a little bit.   Sitting next to him, I got a sense of his directing process and his personality.   In the scene that I was involved in, Denzel shot from a number of different angles. I had written about 8...

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Mingus, Mingus, Mingus

David Berger

In 1973 I was 24 and rehearsing some of my new music with my big band one Monday afternoon on the 5th floor of an old church in midtown Manhattan.  There was no elevator, so it was a bit of a struggle to get the drums up 5 flights.  After a while, Charles Mingus walked in covered in sweat from carrying his bass up the stairs.  He found an empty stool in the corner and just sat there for an hour listening to us.  He didn’t say anything, and I was so in awe of him that I didn’t approach...

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R.I.P. Concept Album

David Berger

Stream of consciousness:  I got an email the other day from my buddy Mark Stryker (Arts editor at the Detroit Free Press) asking me why I omitted Pepper Adams from my triumvirate of baritone saxophonists.  I responded that the focus of the blog had more to do with tone than improvisation.  I never considered Pepper a warm and fuzzy ballad player.  That led me to think the same criticism of his fellow Detroiter, Thad Jones.  I don’t know why Harry Warren’s great ballad Serenade In Blue popped into my head at this point.  I then sat down at the piano...

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Is the Saxophone Following the Clarinet into Jazz Extinction?

David Berger

In the mid or late 1960s I heard an interview with Duke Ellington on the radio. The interviewer asked the Maestro, “All the other bands have stopped using clarinets, are you considering dropping them from your band?” Ellington responded by saying that the clarinet is the sound of New Orleans music and is at the heart of the feeling of jazz. As long as he has a band there will be a clarinet in it. He went on to say that he was not subject to musical trends. If something is great, it is great forever. That conversation took place...

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