SST Blog

[10 or 15 years ago, my buddy, bassist and composer Chuck Israels was in New York for a few days visiting. We discussed writing a book about jazz. We sat around my coffee table in my living room one afternoon and turned on a cassette recorder. I’ve divided the conversation into 6 parts to make it less imposing, or as Groucho Marx said, “Just the right length to take into the bathroom .”] Part I   Chuck Israels: You asked me the other day if I thought jazz was dead, and I thought that it was a good place to...

7/5/19   When I was in high school, I read somewhere that all the aspects of creating music could be learned intuitively except for harmony, which we must be taught. I began my study of Bach chorales at the tender age of 12. Mrs. Whitman, my piano teacher, was very strict. The harmonic possibilities of every possible melodic phrase were prescribed. I fought valiantly to use my intuition to create alternate solutions, but ultimately learned the tradition. The reverse has been my process over the subsequent six decades.   Very early in his career, Duke Ellington studied with Will Marion...

6/13/19   There was a recent question on the Jazz Arrangers’ Facebook group: “What is your favorite last chord?” There were quite a few responses, including mine, which was “It depends on the context.” Over the course of writing in excess of 1000 arrangements, I’ve employed many different last chords, but after thinking about this question for a week, I thought it might be interesting to take a sampling. Here are the titles on my Hindustan CD with their corresponding final chords:   Stompin’ On A Riff: G13 (tonic 13th) No Refill: unison C (tonic in Cm) Hindustan: Bb13+11 (bVII7...

6/2/19   My son is a serious foodie with the means to eat at the finest restaurants in the world. I'm the lucky occasional recipient of his generosity when he takes me to Michelin starred restaurants in New York. For my birthday this year, he took me to Italy this past week. Although we saw some sights and went to the Ferrari Museum, the focus of our trip was food.    We started in Bologna, then went to Modena, and then on to Rome and Naples. The entire trip was planned around a special event at the #1 rated restaurant...

5/30/19 Since I was a small child, I've been fascinated by melodies. I passionately learned songs that I heard. I like the words, but I loved the melodies. Those notes spoke to my soul. The way I related to them was special. Nothing else reached me like they did. I was thrilled to be able to sing them, then later to play them on the piano and even later on the trumpet. They became my songs. They expressed who I am.  I didn't distinguish between styles of music. I was open to everything from folk songs to classical music to...