Paul Motian. Hearing him live was always such a privilege - a lesson in creativity, listening, true improvisation and playing with purpose. I'll miss him terribly.  

Wishing you a happy, healthy and sweet New Year!

In the New Yorker this week Dr. Atul Gawande asks, what makes top performers better?  "Few can achieve their personal best alone", he writes, highlighting the potential benefits of coaching, specifically in the medical field: reduced complications and death, lower costs, better care.

Itzhak Perlman, for instance, arrived at Juilliard, in 1959, at the age of thirteen, and studied there for eight years, working with both DeLay and Ivan Galamian, another revered instructor. Among the key things he learned were discipline, a broad repertoire, and the exigencies of technique. “All DeLay’s students, big or little, have to do their scales, their arpeggios, their études, their Bach, their concertos, and so on,” Sand writes. “By the time they reach their teens, they are expected to be practicing a minimum of five hours a day.” DeLay also taught them to try new and difficult things, to perform without fear. She expanded their sense of possibility. Perlman, disabled by polio, couldn’t play the violin standing, and DeLay was one of the few who were convinced that he could have a concert career. DeLay was, her biographer observed, “basically in the business of teaching her pupils how to think, and to trust their ability to do so effectively.” Musical expertise meant not needing to be coached.

The sort of coaching that fosters effective innovation and judgment, not merely the replication of technique, may not be so easy to cultivate. Yet modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things: operating inside people’s bodies, teaching eighth graders algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with, building a highway through a mountain, constructing a wireless computer network across a state, running a factory, reducing a city’s crime rate. In the absence of guidance, how many people can do such complex tasks at the level we require? With a diploma, a few will achieve sustained mastery; with a good coach, many could. We treat guidance for professionals as a luxury—you can guess what gets cut first when school-district budgets are slashed. But coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.

As a bonus, here's a letter from Sonny to Coleman Hawkins:

10/13/62

My Dear Mr. Hawkins,

Your recent performance at the 'Village Gate' was magnificent!! Quite aside from the fact that you have maintained a position of dominance and leadership in the highly competitive field of 'Jazz' for the time that you have, there remains the more significant fact that such tested and tried musical achievement denotes and is subsidiary to personal character and integrity of being.

There have been many young men of high potential and demonstrated ability who have unfortunately not been 'MEN' in their personal and offstage practices and who soon found themselves devoid of the ability to create music. Perhaps these chaps were unable to understand why their musical powers left them so suddenly. Or perhaps they knew what actions were constructive as opposed to destructive but were too weak and not men enough to command the course of their lives. But certain it is that character, knowledge and virtue are superior to 'MUSIC' as such. And that 'success' is relative to the evolution of those qualities within us all. That it has been positive and lasting for you Coleman is to the high honor and credit of us, your colleagues, as well as to your own credit. For you have 'lit the flame' of aspiration within so many of us and you have epitomized the superiority of 'excellence of endeavor' and you stand today as a clear living picture and example for us to learn from.

It has always been a task to explain in words these things which in nature are the most profound and meaningful. Now you have shown me why I thought so much of you for so long. Godspeed in your travels and may I be fortunate enough to hear you play the tenor saxophone again in person.

Yours truly

Sonny Rollins

John’s wife introduced us in 1958. I was working with Horace Silver in New York. When I first saw him play, it was at Birdland; he was with Miles. He was doing lots of short phrases, all over the place. I knew there was something to that, that he was going to develop it, and as time went on those short phrases got longer and longer. Eventually they weren’t the same anymore. But that night with Miles, he was playing against everything, and when we talked about it later he said he was tired of playing against “Billy Boy” and things like that. After a while he stuck out like a sore thumb.  So he had to go with his own band, where it would all blend in.

When he was stretching out those notes with Miles, he knew he had to move on because it’s the only way his playing could crystalize. It would work better if he was the only one in the front line. He was actually orchestrating by instinct by not having another horn player up there with him. He would have to navigate that band alone. At that time I called the rhythm section the vessel. John was the leader. McCoy would join in with the navigation. He and McCoy were the front line.

After we met he invited me to his house. He said he wanted to get together because we were playing…not the same way, but in the same areas of the horn. He said, “You’re playing some funny stuff.” He wanted to sit down and talk about it. He’d play, I’d play, we’d talk about it. He was playing piano mostly, I think it was the beginnings of “Giant Steps,” those augmented thirds over and over again. Then he’d get his horn and play two notes over and over again. Then two others. Then two others. For a long time. We also talked about doing impossible things with your instrument. Not just thinking of your instrument for what it is, but trying to do things that couldn’t be done on it – going beyond the limitations. Like what Paganini did, and since then what other violinists have done. We also talked about starting a sentence in the middle, and then going to the beginning and the end at the same time. Musical sentences and conversation.

Other people came by, too. George Tucker the bassist. Cedar Walton, Freddie Hubbard. They’d all leave and he’d ask me to spend the night. We’d cook food. Then he came to my parents house on Thanksgiving. He talked with Albert Ayler; he liked him. He wanted to check out what was going on with the scene. Not just tenor, but flute and other things. I think that’s why he grabbed the bagpipes towards the end. Music is all encompassing. Charlie Parker realized that towards the end, too.

He would never crack jokes. Miles said Trane’s humor came out early. In the dressing room before the gig he’d start playing like “Lockjaw” Davis or Chu Berry, or someone real comical. Miles said Trane could do that really well, and that’s the sign of  a good musician, when you can impersonate someone with your horn. Obviously you try to stay away from that when you’re working your own thing.

From about ’55 on he had a sense of urgency, like he couldn’t get everything out that he wanted. I think he knew something about his health, even if he couldn’t pin it down. Maybe he went to the doctor and and the doctor said, “Hey, it might be soon.” Maybe he knew more about that around ’65.  But I imagine he got a hell of a physical. Being a serious person he might have taken that prognosis and used it as a yard stick to  see how far he could go.

I played onstage with him twice. After he and Lee Morgan did Blue Trane together. I was just home from the army and the phone rang – it was Lee saying, “C’mon, man, come play with us!” I went and joined them on “Night in Tunisia.” It was a long night in “Tunisia;” Trane was dissecting the tune, and Lee was playing in a way that he didn’t with the Messengers, because he considered Trane a hometown guy. He called Trane his “Philadelphia homeboy,” even though he was from North Carolina. He said, “We’re just going straight head tonight.” So I jumped in there with him. The next time we played together was a couple weeks later. He called for a Birdland gig, and I said sure. I was still out of work. He was trying out some songs he’d gotten together for another album after Giant Steps. We didn’t record, we just played the gig. It was Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton shared the piano with Tommy Flanagan, George Tucker, Trane and myself. I didn’t know who the drummer was going to be, but when we were at Birdland, in walked Elvin Jones. We rehearsed these new kind of harmonies with three parts. He knew we were all kind of onto the new tonality ourselves. We didn’t play with vibrato or anything. About 16 years later I was talknig to people in California and they’d been at the club that night and they’d never forgotten it. They were right; it was a bad night, a real sharing thing.

I like the later stuff. It’s a process that has to be done. Meditations and Expressions, those are the kind of things you can listen to once. He didn’t want to repeat that over and over. He was going on to “Nature Boy” and the bagpipe stuff. I don’t actually listen to those things anymore because I can hear the essence of them right now as we’re talking. I was never the kind of person to play a record over and over.

Miles told me that as a unit working together, the second Quintet covered a lot more ground, was more innovative as a group. The first Quintet, with Trane and Paul Chambers, made more individual contributions.

One of John’s legacies is that any melody has  a flexability beyond the one that initially shows itself. Nothing is as frozen as  it seems. He said that everything can be opened up. It’s a lot of work. There are people who say you have to do “Nature Boy” just the way it is. Or the “Star Spangled Banner.” Hey, you can really take the “Star Spangled Banner” out!

From Down Beat, August 12 1965:

The al fresco environment of the museum´s statuary garden offers listeners the same informality and relazation of past summers but now without the former crowding and lack of seating space. The garden has been enlarged and there is a new location for the performers.

Shortly after Rollins´ sidemen positioned themselves and their instruments, a light drizzle began and the faint sounds of a tenor saxophone playing Will You Still Be Mine? could be heard in the distance.

Instead of running for shelter from the rain, the enthralled listeners turned toward the sound and saw Rollins in a green jacket and blue beret emerge from behind a tree in full musical flight. As the sidemen joined the playing, the strolling saxophonist improvised his unique phrases incisive and witty, apparenthly oblivoius to the rain. He bobbed his head and continued to wander as he played. His tripping steps, almost a dance, were synchronized to his improvisations. At one instance he was facing up into the rain and the next moment staring into the black pool that separates the performers from most of the audience.

This unusual opening set the tone for the entire hour and kept everyone´s mind off the drizzle (the only notice taken of it was by Rollins, who, in midconcert, looked up and remarked, "We´ll have to see if the management can´t do something about this," but the rain fell until the last note).

For this concert Rollins played mostly well-known ballads, interpreted in his style or meditative ideas and driving riffe. He frequently checked back to familiar melodic lines - and back to familiar melodic lines - and back as well to jazz roots; more than once the ghost of Lester Young was momentatily standing beside him.

When he wasn´t strolling the length of the playing area, Rollins took a stance midway betwen the two drummers. (Higgins, Roker, Cranshaw, and Flenagan gave sensitive support throughout the concert. Flanagan filled Rollins´ short rest periods with well-conceived solos.)

Among the tunes played were Three Little Words, a medley in which the Kashmirf Love Song seemed to turn into To A Wild Rose; and the effective closing, There Will Never Be Another You.

Jaleel: Another thing I've noticed about you is that you are a very centered, focused, and humble. On the gigs I've done with you, it sometimes seems like you are meditating before you play. Sometimes doing yoga too. How has this helped you today and do you think it has had an influence on your playing?

Mark: I just try to keep things in perspective and maintain mindfulness on the task at hand. Perspective (what is really important in the relative and absolute, what is one's role/intention in a given situation) helps keep the ego (belief/clinging to an inherently existent I/self. Which includes all things associated with self such as... my body, my mind, my hopes, my fears, my desires, my aversions, my friends, my enemies, my material possessions, me, me, me and on and on etc) in check. Besides, ego is the killer of imagination...drags you down. Have no time for it. Mindfulness/Meditation help to keep the mind clear, focused, pliable. Yoga and running help to keep body/mind reasonably healthy. I'm a slow learner so I need time. Don't want
this body to fail too soon.