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Piano Lesson
As the boys put it, many can sing or carry a tune, but there are those who SING. The boys' voices twist and rise as they say it: "SAING!" As in, "She don't sing, she SAINGS!" You know what they mean.
One Saturday last spring, Juquan called his cousin Damarco. He had rewritten and rearranged a gospel hymn for him. He wanted Damarco to come over and learn it, then sing it the next day at Loving Hill.
Juquan played the hymn on his organ for Damarco. He had rearranged it to showcase his cousin's rich alto. He moved to the piano and played it again, in two tempos, fast and slow. He asked Damarco to choose. "Slow," Damarco said. Then they sang it together.
This was their first duet. The effect was overwhelmingly melodic: Juquan's silky tenor, Damarco's old-soul alto. It was the kind of singing that makes the hair stand up on your neck.
Juquan Lucas is 15. Damarco Fleming is 12. The music in their bodies is a "gift." Their mothers have it. They have it. They found it at Loving Hill, surrounded by mothers and grandmothers and elders and old heads. The boys come each Sunday in white shirts and black pants like the old heads once wore and learn how to become men as it was taught through song a century ago. Loving Hill is a different place from a different time. Everyone believes it takes a song to raise a child.
At a family picnic in 1997, the two young wives of the Fleming brothers wandered out onto the wooden deck. Kim and Sonya didn't know each other well. "It was just us in lawn chairs," Sonya said. "We started singing gospel songs."
Kim had grown up in Tampa's Belmont Heights. "I always had a broom in my hand, or a stick, pretending it was a microphone," she says. "But I was on the shy side. It's horrible to be shy, and that's why I've never allowed my kids to be that way."
Sonya had grown up singing in the choir with her mother at a little chapel in the Seffner woods, Loving Hill Primitive Baptist Church. It's a whitewashed building with dark-paneled walls. Children, tin badges pinned to their white shirts, serve as ushers. It has a piano in front of the pulpit, an organ and drum set in the corner. You can hear the music from down the road.
Official documents date Loving Hill to 1887, but Sonya held the post of church clerk as a teenager and remembers finding old books, pages falling apart, that dated the church decades older. The old books, which were later lost in a fire, hinted at a spiritual tradition rooted in slave times: the "hush arbor," a secret place in the woods where slaves gathered to pray and sing spirituals.
Loving Hill's earliest meeting place was the black cemetery on Bessie Dix Road. Hymns were sung outdoors. Singers sat on planks stretched across tree stumps.
Sonya's mother, Leona Hudson, remembers walking to Loving Hill as a child from the far side of Seffner. Children carried their best shoes and socks in their hands until they got there. From a distance, they could hear the singing. "They had an old, rough wood piano," Leona said. "We'd hear the old settlers and deacons singing, and we stepped it up a bit. We'd go to running."
They're the same hymns Juquan and Damarco now sing every Sunday.
* * n
From the start, there was one song for Juquan. Kim taught him to sing it when he was 3. It was a 1905 hymn, His Eye Is on the Sparrow. They sang it together on car rides.
People said they sounded alike. Except that Juquan would hold back, would sing softly, would only hint at the range and fullness of his gift. "He wouldn't sing from his belly," Kim said. "I'd say, 'NO! Sing from HERE!' I'd grab his diaphragm. 'You don't hold back. God gave you that gift. He'll take it back if you don't use it.' Then one Sunday at church, it came out different. He was about 7. It came out different."
Three years later, Kim was stricken by an attack of lupus, an illness she had struggled with for years. One day she was at work, the next day she lay paralyzed in intensive care.
"It was a Friday evening in June 2001," she said. "I was waiting for my kids. I couldn't lift my hands to fix my hair. I took the kids to my mother's house, then my husband drove me to the hospital. I prayed I'd come back."
She lay in a hospital bed for a month until her doctor allowed her to go home. She wasn't better. She was afraid she'd die from depression if she stayed. Her hospital room "felt like an asylum," she said.
For the rest of the year, all she remembers is looking out the window from her bed, waiting for the mail. "I couldn't walk, I couldn't get up." Kim's mother lost 30 pounds taking care of her.
Juquan had to be forced to go back to school. Kim's marriage was ending, and the boy was the man of the house. "I had to show him I could sit up so he could go to school with peace," she said. He helped her put on her shoes and fixed her breakfast.
As Kim recovered, she was able to stand up with a walker. She used it to get to the piano to exercise her hands. She had never learned to play, but she could pick out notes by ear. Juquan sat beside her and would take over the song. "That was how he began to learn to play," she said.
* * n
When Damarco was 2, his grandmother, Leona Hudson, babysat him in her home, a mile from Loving Hill. He was surrounded by family history: photos of Hudsons, Moores and Hendrys who pioneered Central Florida as freed slaves. There was said to be some Indian blood, too. All were farmers. They constituted a long line of singers. "The roots of the church," said Loving Hill's pastor, Elder Leroy Turner Jr. "All great voices."
Damarco sat with his grandmother Leona at her dining room table. She'd start with standards, Precious Lord and Amazing Grace. They sang those. "Then I'd get the hymn book out," she said. "We always had a hymn book. I'd show him how to raise his voice, then drop it, then mellow out." His mother, Sonya, began hearing him in the shower. "He'd sing Old MacDonald like it was a hymn."
At Loving Hill, music director Therman Wortham said he had noticed "a round little guy" in the children's choir when he arrived two years ago. It was around Christmastime. Wortham was getting to know everyone. The round little guy, Damarco, was about to sing Oh, What a Pretty Little Baby.
"I'm expecting a 10-year-old voice. When he opened his mouth, I was nearly knocked down. It was somewhere between a baritone and a tenor. It was powerful. And it was LOUD. I sat with my mouth open."
* * n
Juquan's home lies across the street from a pasture populated by grazing horses. Past the pasture, off in the distance, the gritty gray skyline of downtown Tampa rises up. The city is only 30 minutes away but looks as foreign as another planet.
In the fall, Damarco will start sixth grade at Progress Village Middle Magnet School. Juquan will be a sophomore at Blake Performing Arts High School.
All their lives, Loving Hill has been their spiritual Shangri-La. A different place from a different time. Somehow, in the shadow of the towering city skyline that looms over their futures, their white shirts and tin badges don't seem to offer much protection.
But the music is something else. The music that has shaped their childhood is older and stronger than anyone or anything. The hymn Juquan loves most goes like this: "I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free, for his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me."
Sonya sings at many funerals and would like Damarco to sing with her, but she's not sure he's ready. Damarco's preferred audience is the family circle. Their presence when he sings reassures him, calms him. On Sundays, his father, Wilbert Fleming, a church elder, sits just below the choir, beside Pastor Turner. Other loved ones fill the pews.
Crowds make Damarco nervous. "When I sing at church, I don't look at the people," he said. "I look at my Auntie Urania his favorite aunt; she's 24. She sits in the middle, and we look right at each other."
When Juquan sings, he's usually standing beside Kim, his hand always near her elbow, to steady her. He said he doesn't think about anyone in the church. "I'm conscious of everyone there, but I'm thinking about the words of the song, what they mean to me. I go into my world. It's just me and God."
When his mother lay in bed with lupus, most of the family believed she would die. "Her doctors gave her a time period," Sonya said. "She had one foot on the banana peel. We all felt that."
So Juquan, now 15, tries to explain how that shaped him as a small boy, how it changed him, how music was part of it. When he was 10, did he make a deal with God? Does he sing to keep his mother alive?
Juquan answered the question as he leaned back on the living room sofa. He spoke softly, carefully. "If I had asked God to do that, it would have been against everything I believe in.
"I sing because I'm happy," he said, echoing his favorite hymn. "God has taken care of her. He has his master plan. I can't control that."
Yes, he goes to urban high school. "They accept me, or they don't," he said. Yes, he would someday like to win American Idol. "I like to have fun," he said. "But I think what I went through made me stronger. I was always mature. I put it this way: There's a time and a place for everything."
His time is coming. "I know that one day I'm going to make it as a singer. I can't wait until she actually sees that. When she sees me up there. Maybe I can bring her onstage to sing something with me."
John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com.
[Last modified July 13, 2006, 13:59:23]
Brandon Times headlines
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Letters To The Editor: Your turn
Piano Lesson
In recent years Lacie Craven has been very busy. She has started her own business, learned to play the violin, helped to run the family farm and composed a litany of poems and stories, one of which won her a national prize.
The 14-year-old will start at Washington Academy in East Machias this fall, but the education she has received during years of home schooling with her parents has given her an intimate knowledge of many things besides the basics. How to plant a garden. How to spin yarn. How to shear sheep. How to care for lambs abandoned by their mothers.
These rural skills have fired the Bucks Harbor girl's imagination and found their way into her more scholarly pursuits. After reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "The Yearling," Lacie was inspired to write a related essay and entered it - unbeknownst to her family - earlier this year in the Library of Congress "Letters About Literature" contest. To her surprise, she wound up winning the competition's national seventh- and eighth-grade category. Her essay was picked from among 15,000 entries representing every U.S. state.
For the contest, participants write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre, explaining how that person's work changed their way of thinking about the world or themselves.
In "The Yearling," the main character, Jody, cares for an abandoned fawn that eventually dies. Lacie identified with Jody, having lost of one of her own sheep - a lamb named Mattie, which she bottle-fed after it was abandoned by its mother.
"I always loved the book, and I read it before I even had Mattie," she said. "It affected me in a totally different way after Mattie died. I love it because I can relate to the different characters in the book. Jody is my favorite because he went through the same things I went through, and he and I made some of same the conclusions."
Cathy Gourley, who oversees the "Letters About Literature" contest, says Lacie's letter was particularly well organized.
"She hooks the reader with vivid details in the second paragraph and then beautifully links the story of the orphaned lambs to the themes in Rawlings' book," Gourley remarked. "[It's] succinct and well-expressed."
"I live near the ocean, under a mountain, on a farm. We raise a lot of different animals, but mostly sheep. We also hunt for our food. These things made me feel very close to the characters in The Yearling. If you have sheep, you have orphaned lambs. If you have orphaned lambs, you have true friends. They get into a lot of trouble [a lot like Flag!], but it's all worth it to have a little lamb that follows you and is dependent on you."
As a prize, the Bucks Harbor youngster won a $500 gift card to Target and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for her and her parents in September, where she will receive her award and meet first lady Laura Bush at the National Book Festival.
"I knit her a sweater," said Lacie, smiling to herself. "I can't wait to see the Smithsonian."
While Lacie loves to write, and composes poems and stories for family and friends, her main goal is to become a veterinarian. She wants to work with livestock - mainly sheep, of course.
"I love sheep," she declared, barely able to contain her enthusiasm. "I'm like a fiber fanatic. I love the wool. I love the way it smells and the way it feels."
The Craven family lives in a farmhouse overlooking Bucks Harbor. The Cravens built and have worked on the house over the past 20 years. They named the property Wild Wind Farm after moving in.
On the farm, the Cravens grow vegetables, and also raise chickens, pigs and cattle for meat, but the official family business is sheep management. They tend 200 of their own sheep, as well as hundreds of others belonging to various Down East farmers. Income from the sale of wool and meat helps sustain the family throughout the year, though David Craven, Lacie's father, also works for the Maine Warden Service. Some of the flocks are on the mainland, while others are scattered on islands off the coast, which the Cravens visit every week.
"She's my right arm. She and the dogs," said David, referring to Lacie and the four highly trained border collies the family keeps.
Youngest sister Candace takes care of her dairy goat, which is stationed outside with the pigs and chickens. Oldest sister Cassie has a few head of cattle. Older brothers Travis and Barrett now live elsewhere, but remained involved in the farm throughout their childhoods.
There's some friendly sibling rivalry between Lacie and Candace over sheep versus goats.
"Sheep are a lot better than goats, because they don't get into trouble all the time," Lacie said. "I have a special bond with them. I just understand them. I can tell the difference between each one."
A musical family, the Cravens all play instruments, which they practice every day, in between morning lessons and farm chores. Cassie plays piano, Candace plays the bagpipes - a set of small pipes, because at 12 she's not quite ready for a full set of Great Highland Bagpipes - and both David and Lacie play the fiddle. David even serenades the neighbors with his renditions of traditional Scottish and English tunes. Lacie, though sometimes shy in conversation, performs at weddings and for the congregation at her family's church, Laramie Baptist in Bucks Harbor.
"I took lessons for classical, but I didn't like it as much as Celtic music," said Lacie, who practices jigs and reels with her dad.
A few miles up the road from the family farm, there's a long, sloping, green pasture with a couple hundred sheep in it, where Lacie keeps the lambs that she sheared last month. The wool she sheared will wind up as yarn, which, in turn, may end up in one of the sweaters, scarves, socks, hats or gloves she knits and sells to locals.
A spinning wheel costs anywhere from $400 to $1,000. How does a preteen get that kind of money?
Lacie's pet pig, an enormous sow named Big Mama, had a cameo role, along with her family's other farm animals, in the PBS series "Colonial House." Her father was hired as an animal consultant for the segment shot in Machiasport in 2003. In the show, 24 people inhabit four tiny cottages designed to mimic the experiences of early colonial settlers in 1628.
"The animals you saw on the show were our animals," said David Craven. "[The producers of the show] saw Big Mama, Lacie's sow, and they paid her so they could use her for the show. They leased her, and when Big Mama had piglets, they paid for those, too. At the end of taping she sold the sow and the piglets, and with the money she bought her spinning wheel and carding machine."
Lacie is also now making a profit from her knitted goods. This summer, her energies are focused on the farm before she embarks on her next big project: high school. Is she nervous about starting at Washington Academy, after home school?
Lacie Craven's handmade sweaters and other creations can be purchased by contacting the Craven family at wildwindfarm@gwi.net. The full text of her winning essay can be accessed online at http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/2006-LAL-nationalwinners.html. Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net.
Lacie Craven's father David uses an electric shearer. His father and paternal grandfather both raised sheep.
Piano Lesson
Gordon fights off Phish nostalgia to play in the moment
The day after Mike Gordon played a gig in Bethel, N.Y., at a new concert venue built where the original Woodstock was held, he was high-spirited, in a talkative mood. The show Sunday had been great, he said.
Gordon is on tour with Trey Anastasio, his longtime bandmate from Phish, and the Benevento/Russo Duo. The group is sharing a bill with Phil Lesh and Friends, a show that comes this afternoon to the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction.
"Trey and I are always going to have a certain magical chemistry, as is probably the case with any two Phish band members," Gordon said, "cause it was so many years of getting all attached."
Gordon talked Monday afternoon about what it's like for him and Anastasio to play in a quartet with different musicians on drums (Joe Russo) and keyboards (Marco Benevento). He described the acoustic challenges of being a bass player, and the joy when the sound is right.
He spoke about being "a big fan" of Lesh, and spending time each night listening to the former bassist for the Grateful Dead, whom he said has been a big influence. He admires the "flow and confidence" of Lesh's playing.
And Gordon said it was essential that musicians stay focused on the now; otherwise the music suffers. "We're really not focused on the past too much," Gordon said. "Being a musician really requires you to be present in the present moment. We don't think too far into the future, either."
But the past -- and the gig in Gordon's future today -- will perhaps be difficult to set aside when he and Anastasio come together on a hometown stage just miles from the Barn, where Phish played together for so many years.
Asked if drummer Jon Fishman and keyboardist Page McConnell might join him and Anastasio on stage at the fairgrounds, Gordon had a moment's uncertainty.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe. But that would be too predictable."
Still, he acknowledged that returning home to play without Fishman and McConnell would be "a little strange."
"We have so much respect and longing for Page and Fish and so it's a little strange to come back to play near home and not be playing with them," Gordon said. "It's strange to be playing anywhere without them. We love their playing so much."
The quartet with Benevento/Russo represents a different approach to jamming, Gordon said. This has meant some ups and down, "but generally is very joyous."
"Joe is a very, kind of, wild and thrashy drummer and Marco is almost a jazz piano player," Gordon said. "They come from very different backgrounds. They're younger than we are, and filled with excitement. ...
"It's been sort of a feeling out situation, in terms of figuring out how to get to those deeper places in the music with a new quartet."
Gordon said that he thought Phish was still reaching deep places and discovering new places in the music when they band stopped.
"At the same time, I'm glad we stopped when we did," Gordon said. "I've had a lot of time and opportunity to do things that I might not have done."
Both he and Anastasio have "twinges of nostalgia," Gordon said, but mostly he's excited by the promise of new musical experiences and challenges.
"I personally got to a really good place with the ending of Phish, and I was the one who didn't want it to happen at first," Gordon said. "For some reason, I had a really successful grieving process, in a natural kind of way.
"I loved my career so much -- everything about it. It was the most incredibly joyous way to make a living that I could ever imagine. I was able to say: 'Well, it's been fun and I learned a lot and my whole adult life was spent being the guy in Phish.' ... At a certain point it makes sense to branch out. Each of us is going to have greater creative challenges because we won't have the other ones to lean on."
He's having a lot of fun these days, but Gordon feels he hasn't "scratched the surface" of what his solo career can be.
Still, on the nights when the acoustics are right and the music sails, he feels the possibilities and glories.
"If I'm accepting every note that I'm playing and that everyone else is playing, it's like being in a utopia," Gordon said. "If I'm not, it's like the most horrible thing. I'd rather be collecting garbage in a garbage truck."
"I really like it when there's a stage where the people aren't covered," he said. "The sound is going to be much more even.
"Fairgrounds, in general, end up being a fun situation. You can crank it up if you want. Whatever you do, it's got a clarity to it. I'm looking forward to it."
About today's show
WHAT: Phil Lesh and Friends and Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon with the Benevento/Russo Duo; Anastasio and Gordon will close the show
WHERE: Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction
WHEN: 4 p.m. today; lot opens at 8 a.m.; doors open at 3 p.m.
TICKETS: $56.50
AVAILABLE: Flynn Regional Box Office; 863-5966; www.flynntix.org Contact Sally Pollak at spollak@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com or 660-1859.
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Piano Lesson
Church organists can devote full or part time to their calling
My dad is a school superintendent and has been a singer. My mom was a teacher but had organ training, so pretty much from the very beginning we had an organ and a piano in the house.
Should a student who wants to play the organ begin on piano? I tell my students to do that. I started that way at 4, but my friend who is a professional organist in California has never taken a piano lesson.
When you're beginning, the practicing should be every day. Today, I have no set practice schedule. I feel good if I have three, four times on the (organ) bench each week. Sometimes, it's a way to get away from paying bills and doing laundry.
The reason I like the organ is all the different sounds it makes. That attracts me more than getting a lot of notes right, which I do try to do.
My background has been that I've done so many things within my area. I chose to do that, although I've always been a Sunday morning church organist from age 10 until now.
I spent nine years at Second Presbyterian Church (in Indianapolis), playing a four-manual Aeolian-Skinner with 81 ranks (sets of pipes). That was full time. I spent a year in Oregon at a Lutheran church.
I have also paid the bills with a ton of accompaniment work on piano. I played the Wurlitzer at the Paramount Music Palace (an Eastside restaurant that closed in the 1990s). I drove back and forth to play at a pizza restaurant in Milwaukee.
Now, 20 percent of my work is concerts -- regional and local, classical and theater organ. I've been lucky enough to play solos with orchestras, like the Saint-Saens ("Organ" Symphony) with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
Another 40 percent of my work is with the Indianapolis Children's Choir, where there are 10 or 11 accompanists for 17 choirs. There's no official title, but I serve as kind of the staff arranger. I work with directors including Henry Leck and Ruth Dwyer. Another 10 percent is choral arranging.
The other 30 percent is at North United Methodist Church, where I'm organist, assistant director of music and director of handbells. This position is a 20-hour job. It's ideal. They're flexible when I have concerts.
In Indianapolis, there are a few big full-time positions at churches. . . . There are interesting instruments to play.
There's another handful of part-time organist jobs where they are like ours, with a separate music director. I'm one of the few I know of who has an exclusively musical career. Everything I do relates together. But a lot of people have office jobs and play Thursday (rehearsal) and Sunday (services), so it becomes kind of a professional hobby. . . .
There's a shortage of good people. Some of the kids from the ICC come up to me, and they've never seen a pipe organ. It's weird, because every church in my town had one.
So many things compete for a kid's time today that to take piano lessons might not be as easy as it was. We're living in an immediate-gratification society. I see the kids playing Game Boy and Xbox. It's immediate gratification, which piano practice is not. School music programs have been chopped all to hell.
Piano Lesson
'I can't quit because I'm going to play until I learn,' Greko said with a chuckle. 'I'll be composing until I'm decomposing. I'm still vertical.'
Watching Greko play piano is almost as enjoyable as listening. He flashes a broad smile and his eyes light up whenever he sits in front of the keys to play classical, jazz or rock tunes. From Beethoven to the Beatles, name it and Greko is comfortable with it.
An observer can tell that, other than his wife of nearly 59 years, playing piano is Greko's greatest love.
'He plays every day,' Charlotte Greko said. 'It keeps him going and makes him happy.'
Despite arthritis that has ravaged his hands, Greko ' who turned 84 Wednesday ' keeps playing.
He's glad he didn't listen to his father and stay in the family plumbing business in Moline, Ill. His mother liked music and thought he should try it. She turned him over to her Aunt Jessie, a piano teacher.
Greko said he'd visit his great aunt every other Saturday. He remembers her as a taskmaster who didn't tolerate nonsense, even from a relative.
'I'd do things like put in or leave out a note when playing a song,' Greko said. 'She'd get angry and say 'That wasn't right, Keithy,' and whack me across the fingers with a yardstick.'
After studying piano for two years at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., it was off to World War II for Greko. He wanted to fly bombers, but bad eyesight grounded him.
The Grekos relocated to California in 1947. Two years later, Greko was strolling down the celebrated Walk of Fame in Hollywood when he ran into an old friend who told him that Frank Sinatra was playing in the area and his cousin, a pianist, was ill.
'I walked into the Hollywood Palladium and (Sinatra) said 'What are you doing here?' ' Greko said. 'I'm shaking and explain what I'd heard. He said 'I don't need a piano player, but let me hear what you can do.' I got through the introduction of 'I've Got You Under My Skin' and he said 'What are you doing tonight, kid?' I had that gig for five nights.'
The next gig for Greko, who recently recorded his 10th album, will be at 7:30 p.m. July 12 at Kerr Cultural Center, 6110 N. Scottsdale Road. Admission to see the Keith Greko Trio and Keli Fleck Quintet is $12.50, $7 for senior citizens.
Greko, who moved to Scottsdale in 1958, has toured Europe. He was music director of the Phoenix Playboy Club for nine years and taught piano at some local high schools and later at Arizona State University.
'I'm trying to prove to myself that I can still perform,' Greko said. 'I'll do it until I go into the dirt.'
Piano Lesson
Tradition requires that graduates wear caps and gowns. But concealed beneath the uniform are more than 2,000 extraordinary young men & women. Here are portraits of a random few.
Like college itself, Commencement weekend balances the formality of tradition with the spontaneity of the young. When each entering class arrives in September through the Van Wickle Gates, it is told that it is the most selective, most academically gifted group of matriculates Brown has yet assembled. Four years later, Commencement, with its paraphernalia and traditions, is in some ways a reminder of how much that same class is like all the ones that came before. On the Brown Web site you can find a history of Commencement that details 'traditions that are centuries old,' and that begins with the seven members of the class of 1769. You can learn all you ever wanted about the procession ('the men traditionally dress in top hats and tails, while women wear academic robes'), the mace ('which weighs more than twenty pounds'), the cane ('carried by the president of the Brown Alumni Association . . . it is made of oak taken from University Hall'), and the Manning Chair ('this office chair belonged to Stephen Hopkins, Brown's first chancellor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence').
No doubt the pageantry is moving to graduates and spectators alike as they experience their connection to something noble and long-lived. What is less obvious at Commencement, though, are the individual histories of the graduates themselves. Who are they, really? Where have they come from? What have they done at Brown, and where are they going now? Who are their families, these thousands of camera- and cell-phone-toting people waiting patiently as their pride and joy processes down College Hill? Commencement may be one big story reaching back to 1769, but it's also 2,194 individual stories that, on Sunday of Commencement weekend, reach a conclusion, or at least the end of a chapter.
This year the BAM staff sought out some of the members of the class of '06, and on Commencement weekend asked them to pause and have their portraits taken with their families. What follows are some of those portraits and a few details meant to suggest the individuality of graduating seniors. The portraits are not meant to accurately reflect the makeup of the graduating class, but only to suggest the variety of human stories it includes. Because, in the end, it must do so in the lives of each of them.
HOMETOWNNew York City CONCENTRATIONTheatre Arts FAVORITE COURSE Theater of Feminism EXTRACURRICULARS Actor, Production Workshop, the New Plays Festival, and Perishable Theatre; member of Attitude, a hip-pop and pop dance group; Spanish language translator at an after-school program teaching recently arrived refugees about HIV and AIDS; summer at a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan; summer Fresh Air Fund counselor IMMEDIATE PLANS Acting in New York City, then studying mime and acrobatics at the Dell'Arte International School in Blue Lake, California
Greenwald expected to concentrate in East Asian studies, but the theater bug bit her at Brown. This summer she'll have a part in Millicent Scowlworthy, a new work in New York City's Summer Play Festival. 'I play this smarmy business-type man named Iggy Smick,' she says.
HOMETOWN San Jose, Calif. CONCENTRATIONs History and Anthropology EXTRACURRICULARS Fencing team; trumpet; piano; singing; Admission Office tour guide; founded HUG, the history departmental undergraduate group HONORS Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Royce Fellow, Starr Fellow, UTRA grant, Rhodes finalist FAVORITE CLASS Violence in the Media, which she cotaught AMBITION To become a history professor IMMEDIATE PLANS Summer in New York City; begins Oxford in the fall ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'This is not a place where you sit in a classroom and take tests. It's a place where professors learn from students, a place that teaches you how to think.'REGRET 'I wish I hadn't fallen down so much'owning your own crutches is not a good sign.'
Li fell in love with history the summer after her freshman year, during an internship in the Smithsonian Institution's American music collections. A self-professed 'jazz nut,' she re-inventoried the Smithsonian's Duke Ellington files. Back in Providence that fall, she began working at the Rhode Island State Archives three days a week. While studying the Civil War, she happened on a folder of letters sent to deserters. 'You know the Dead Letter Office'those kinds of letters,' she says. 'I got hooked.' She applied for a Royce Fellowship to fund her research, which resulted in an exhibition this spring on Civil War deserters. 'I had a sneaking suspicion,' she says, 'that desertion was more complicated than had been understood.'
HOMETOWN Tiverton, R.I. CONCENTRATION Economics FAVORITE COURSE Biotechnology Management EXTRACURRICULARSSenior editor at Watershed, the Brown/RISD journal of environment and culture; riding dirt bikes AMBITION Unsure IMMEDIATE PLANS Assisting a professional photographer REGRET Taking premed classes
If anyone should have felt at home at Brown, it was Goddard. The William Goddard Memorial Gate off the College Green, Goddard House on the Wriston Quad, and the Maddock Alumni Center/Goddard-Iselin House are all named for his ancestors. He arrived at Brown intending to follow in the professional footsteps of his parents, Joan '76, '79 MD and Moses '79 MD. Then one night, 'listening to my parents talk endlessly about medicine,' he says, 'I realized I didn't love the profession. And it's one of those professions you really need to be in love with.' He switched to economics, but after taking RISD photography classes he began to really feel at home. 'I'm still not totally sure I want to do photography,' he says. 'But I'm going to give it a try.'
HOMETOWN Washington, D.C. CONCENTRATION Modern Culture and Media FAVORITE COURSE Introduction to Digital Media Production EXTRACURRICULARS Editor in chief of the African Sun, 'a voice for and about the Black community'; active in the Brotherhood, an organization of African American men IMMEDIATE PLANS Continue as CEO and cofounder of Amie Street, an online music retailer AMBITION To be a successful entrepreneur ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'It's easy to be pigeonholed, to fall into a role: the protester, the hipster, the low-level college bureaucrat, the rich New Yorker. Instead, come to Brown and do you.'
Breece was born and raised in northwest Washington, D.C. While still in middle school he founded a Web development company. In high school he was an honor-roll student at the all-black Benjamin Banneker High School, a top public school in the city. Breece's current Web company, Amie Street, is set to launch this summer. On it, musicians will release independent music, and listeners will decide the price. 'It's like iTunes meets American Idol meets eBay,' Breece says.
HOMETOWN 'I don't know.' CONCENTRATION Environmental Studies FAVORITE COURSE Environmental Justice FAVORITE (UNOFFICIAL) COURSE Fem Sex, a workshop on female sexuality EXTRACURRICULARS Production Workshop, international student mentor IMMEDIATE PLANS Traveling to Ecuador to be a health educator and clown REGRET 'I thought I'd get more time to develop my spiritual side, both in a community and individually. I self-identify as Wiccan.'ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'Take time to see the magic in other people.'
You might call Blair Nelsen a free spirit; she's certainly a citizen of the earth. Originally from Texas, she attended an international school in Buenos Aires. Her parents now live in Belgium. Freshman year she lived in Hope College, the green special-interest dorm. She researched coal-gasification contamination in Tiverton, R.I., and stage-managed plays with Production Workshop. This summer Blair is heading to the Amazon to promote health education through clowning. 'I also wanted to do something unsafe and really hard,' she says by way of explanation. 'If I don't do it now, when will I?'
HOMETOWN Eugene, Ore. CONCENTRATION Literary Arts FAVORITE COURSE American Culture in the City HONORS Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa EXTRACURRICULARS Teaching assistant for City Politics, president of Brown Lecture Board, Meiklejohn adviser, jobs at the John Hay Library and at a nonprofit for kids of incarcerated mothers, started the Literary Arts undergraduate group IMMEDIATE PLANS Volunteering at the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., on a Liman Fellowship AMBITIONs 'To have kids, to be socially active.' Also, to learn Spanish and write REGRET Not concentrating in public policy or political science. ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'Don't count on a romantic relationship at Brown!'
Felicity Rose's honors project was a novella about a father dying of cancer. Writing it, she saw no connection to her own life. But she lost her own father, an addict and drug dealer, to prison when she was small; he has since died. At Brown she studied literature because she loves reading, she says. 'But I'm not really into literary theory or deconstruction.'
Matthew Edward Goracy, Ashley Marie Noreuil, and Evan Michael Pettyjohn
HOMETOWNS Pottersville, N.J. (Goracy); Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Noreuil); Carthage, N.Y. (Pettyjohn) CONCENTRATIONS Applied Mathematics (Goracy), Economics (Noreuil), and Applied Mathematics/Economics (Pettyjohn) IMMEDIATE PLANS Marine officer training at the Basic School in Quantico, Va.
In six months to a year, Matt Goracy, Ashley Noreuil, and Evan Pettyjohn expect to be marine officers on duty in Iraq. 'It was made clear to us,' Goracy says, 'that there are two kinds of marines: ones who are in Iraq and ones who are going to Iraq.' Pettyjohn speaks for all three ROTC members when he says, 'I don't look at it as a sacrifice. I look at it as a privilege.' Of course, it's not easy supporting the war in Iraq on a campus where someone who thinks the United States is responsible for 95 percent of the world's ills, not all of them, can be described as a political centrist. But all three students say their classmates have been tolerant, and even supportive. 'The majority of people respect my decision,' says Pettyjohn, former president of the Brown College Republicans. Noreuil looks forward to showing that women can be effective in combat. 'I don't want them to be like, 'Okay, she's a woman, fairly intelligent'give her a desk job at the Pentagon and have her push around papers,' ' she says. 'I want to go to Iraq. I want to see it for myself.'
HOMETOWN Miami CONCENTRATION Biology FAVORITE COURSEImmunology Extracurricular Karate club AMBITION To become a doctor IMMEDIATE PLANS Attending the University of Miami medical school UNUSUAL HOBBY Taught himself to play piano in seventh grade by reading the entry on the instrument in the World Book Encyclopedia REGRET 'I didn't get out to Boston enough.'
In August 1994, Alejandro Vazquez and twenty-five of his relatives boarded a beat-up fishing boat and set sail for Florida. Vazquez was ten, and the Florida Straits were littered with the bodies of drowned Cuban refugees. The trip lasted four days. There was enough food and water for a day and a half. Their compass malfunctioned, the radio failed, and the bilge pump broke. It was only when Vazquez's uncle, in a moment of utter hopelessness, struck the broken pump with a wrench that it started up again and kept the ship from sinking. Vazquez's father, a doctor in Cuba, worked as a day laborer in Florida. His son worked hard at school and got into Brown. 'At first my parents didn't understand why I needed to leave Florida,' Vazquez recalls, 'but my guidance counselor told them, 'This is Brown. What an opportunity!' '
HOMETOWN Bristol, R.I. CONCENTRATIONHistory FAVORITE COURSEs All of Gordon Wood's history classes EXTRACURRICULARSBrown College Democrats, Brown Daily HeraldAMBITION 'I just know that I want to be in some kind of public service.' IMMEDIATE PLANS Teach for America in Louisiana
Politics is in Seth Magaziner's blood. In the early 1990s his father, Ira '69, worked with Hillary Clinton on a famously unsuccessful attempt to reform the nation's health care system. Ira then became President Bill Clinton's Internet czar and now chairs the ex-president's foundation. At Brown, Seth eagerly followed his dad's example, becoming president of the Brown College Democrats in his junior year. But he's not so sure that politics is his calling. 'All the backroom stuff can be a little disillusioning,' he says. 'It was eye opening.' He plans on spending the next two years instructing Louisiana children that Hurricane Katrina made homeless. 'I know I want to devote my life to helping people in some way,' he says. 'I guess I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it.'
HOMETOWN Potomac, Md. CONCENTRATIONSociology FAVORITE COURSE Perceptions of Mental Illness EXTRACURRICULAR Drummer in 'a jazz-influenced, groove-situated soul band' AMBITIONS To be a rock star. 'To give food and a place to live to everyone.' IMMEDIATE PLAN To play 'fusion indie rock' with his group in Brooklyn
Everyone in Ghadry's high school called him Sam. It wasn't his real name, but it was easier than trying to teach his American friends to pronounce Samer, an Arabic name given to him by his Druze Lebanese-born mother and Syrian-born father. But by mid-freshman year at Brown, Ghadry says, 'I had questions about who I was, where I came from, what I wanted to be, just about everything.' But the one thing he did know was that from now on he wanted to be called Samer.
HOMETOWN West Palm Beach, Fla. CONCENTRATION Cognitive Neuroscience Favorite course Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion EXTRACURRICULARS Undergraduate Council of Students; founder of the Brown Disability Awareness Council IMMEDIATE PLANS Was married in June and is studying for the Medical College Admission Test AMBITION To be a physician ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'It's not you. You are exactly as smart as you were three months ago. It's Brown. Brown is hard. Don't let it affect your opinion of yourself.' BIGGEST REGRET 'I spent too much time thinking about my grades.'
Wasif lost her eyesight as a toddler after an allergic reaction to penicillin. Growing up with many friends and in a large Indian American family, she never had to cross the street by herself or navigate unfamiliar territory. Then she came to Brown. 'It was daunting,' she says. She didn't know the way to the Ratty. It was hard to make friends. She overcame her fears when she forced herself to get lost. 'I didn't ask for directions,' she says, 'and I figured it out eventually.' Wasif and her new husband'whom she met the summer before she arrived at Brown'are living with her family in West Palm Beach. In addition to her parents and younger brother, she and her husband are sharing the house with her grandmother and aunt, as well as her sister and brother-in-law and their baby. 'So it's crowded,' Wasif says. 'But it's so much fun. No one really has to live there, but everyone wants to.'
Katherine WolfordHOMETOWN Providence CONCENTRATION American Civilization EXTRACURRICULARS 'My extracurriculars start this summer, when I get a social life back.' BEST COURSE The Making of America ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'Get to know the faculty'administrators, too.' AMBITION 'I have too many. It's a big world out there.'
Eight years ago, Wolford moved to Providence as special assistant to President Gordon Gee, for whom she'd worked at Ohio State. 'It was a better match for me than it was for him,' she jokes. Encouraged by other administrators to stay, Kate took a job in campus life and enrolled in a history class. 'This was like the heavens opened up,' she says, 'and I understood what a liberal education was about.' Concerned that she'd be rejected, she quietly applied to Brown as a Resumed Undergraduate Education student. Acting President Sheila Blumstein wrote a letter of recommendation. Having served as head usher for the past five Commencements, Kate knew the drill on Commencement day this year'and how to work the system. At 6 a.m., Sunday, she was on the College Green, reserving seats for her relatives right up front in the shade.
CONCENTRATIONScience in Society, which she helped found Favorite course Advanced Journalism Awards Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, the Daniel Oppenheim Lifetime Award for radio ('which made me feel like I'm about to die') EXTRACURRICULARS Writing Fellow; College Hill Independent; Brown Student Radio; Seed Magazine, a journal of science and culture IMMEDIATE PLANS Bike and Build, a group that builds houses for the poor as members bicycle across the country AMBITIONS 'To never get bored.' A career in radio REGRET 'I think I'm not a regretting person.' ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'Get out into Providence.'
Goss started out as a neuroscience concentrator, but a lab supervisor told her she sighed too much while performing brain surgery on rats. An aspiring science journalist, she spent spring break this year in New Orleans, but at 4 p.m., when her Habitat for Humanity colleagues took off for the showers, Goss grabbed her tape recorder and headed for the battered Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish to collect stories. When she returned to campus, she edited the interviews down to an hour-long program that she aired on Brown Student Radio. This summer she's doing much the same thing, this time with Bike and Build, which left Providence for the West Coast right after graduation. 'I'm a journalist without a home,' she says. Next fall she hopes to intern at National Public Radio.
HOMETOWN Tampa, Fla. CONCENTRATIONs Theatre Arts and History of Art and Architecture EXTRACURRICULARS Resident counselor; the comedy troupe Improvidence; doing set and lighting design for most campus theater groups AMBITION 'To get my work seen by as many people as possible'whether on Broadway or through regional theater.' IMMEDIATE PLANS Catching up on sleep; working for Brown scenic designer Michael McGartyLESSON LEARNED AT BROWN'Let it ride.' ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'Jump in. Do what thrills you.'
The son of alumni Sue Bowker Clarendon '77 and Rich Clarendon '78, Ben Clarendon played violin and acted at a magnet performing-arts high school. But 'the acting wasn't happening,' he says. Backstage, his tech director introduced him to the work of Providence scenic designer Eugene Lee, who teaches in the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. Ben loves working closely with directors on scenery and lighting. 'You're in at the start,' he says. 'You get to determine the look of the play.'
HOMETOWN Dayton, Ohio CONCENTRATIONAnthropology and Sanskrit AWARDS Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa FAVORITE COURSE AIDS in International Perspective EXTRACURRICULARS Meiklejohn adviser; Brown Hindu Group; Spanish interpreter at the Rhode Island Free Clinic; Brown Classics Journal; Admission Office tour guide; intramural soccer IMMEDIATE PLANS Collecting HIV/AIDS data in India; entering the MD/PhD program at Brown Medical School in the fall AMBITION To be a physician and scientist, possibly specializing in infectious disease ADVICE TO FRESHMEN'Get to know a faculty member before you graduate.'
Growing up in Ohio, Venkatesh's family, who are Indian American, taught him to perform traditional Hindu rituals in Sanskrit. At Brown he coauthored a book with classics professor Peter Scharf detailing five such rituals and collaborated with anthropology professor Lina Fruzzetti on a cultural study of rituals and festivals in the Indian American community. During his four years at Brown, Venkatesh was the only Sanskrit concentrator, which meant that in many of his classes, he was the only student. In addition to completing two concentrations and writing two honors theses'one in classics and the other in anthropology'Venkatesh was enrolled in the Program in Liberal Medical Education.
HOMETOWN St. Louis, Mo. CONCENTRATION Applied Mathematics, with a focus on biology FAVORITE COURSE English 13: Critical Reading and Writing II: The Research EssayEXTRACURRICULARS Brown Ballroom Dance Team; Brown Fencing Team; volunteer, Rhode Island Hospital; student caller, Brown Annual Fund IMMEDIATE PLANS Cornell Medical School AMBITION To be a doctor. TALENTS Bilingual in Russian and English; speaks proficient Spanish; plays the flute, piano, and viola. BIGGEST REGRET 'At times becoming so overwhelmed that I couldn't enjoy my time here.'
Elena Bukanova lived in Moscow until she was eight, when her parents, both scientists, accepted jobs at Washington University in St. Louis. She remembers little about life in Russia'just that she played a lot and spent summers in the country. Her family is small: she is an only child and both her parents are only children. Her grandparents remain in Russia. She describes her pre-med life as stress-filled. Although she concentrated in applied math, she took lots of biology and other science courses. 'You need the lab experience,' she explains. 'The application process is gruesome.' To relax, she played the flute. Sometimes she exercised. Mostly she hung out with friends. She spent the past semester studying in Barcelona.
HOMETOWN Fresno, Calif. CONCENTRATION Computer Science FAVORITE COURSE Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming and Computer Science EXTRACURRICULARS MEZCLA, a Latino performing arts organization; Attitude, a hip-hop and pop dance group; Women in Computer Science IMMEDIATE PLANS a job as program manager at Microsoft AMBITION To develop educational software for use in Mexico ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 'Get involved in the Providence community' BIGGEST REGRET 'That I didn't study abroad. I wish I'd gone to Spain.'
Janete Perez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the first in her family to attend college. She has two younger brothers, ages eight and fourteen. Much of her family remains in Zacatecas, Mexico. Janete attended a heavily Mexican-American public high school in Fresno, where, on a guidance counselor's recommendation, she took part in a program that sends promising students east to tour the Ivies. 'I'd never heard of Brown,' she says. When she arrived on College Hill, it was love at first sight: not as big as Columbia, not as isolated as Dartmouth, and the students struck her as sincere. At Brown, Janete was an undergraduate teaching assistant for five semesters, mostly for her favorite course, Andries van Dam's introduction to computer programming. Janete took a year off between her junior and senior years to conduct research and to complete two internships, including one at Microsoft. Commencement weekend, she welcomed to campus her parents, brothers, and grandmother. It was their first visit to the East Coast. Janete relished the opportunity to show her family around campus and to introduce them to her friends. She also took them on a trip to New York City.
Piano Lesson
Ever considered donating an organ to scientific research or a loved one? Well, that's exactly what Leonard and Louise Johnson, both 84, of 14 Garrison Road did this June.
The Johnsons, who have lived in Hingham since the 1950s, donated their 1924 Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ to the North Country Cultural Center for the Arts in Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Leonard learned to play the piano as a child and took up the parlor organ as a teenager when the organ was at the pinnacle of its popularity. The organ became popular in the 1920s as it replaced pit orchestras in movie theaters before the introduction of speaking pictures. But the speaking picture meant the demise of the organ, which acted as a narrative device in the films. As the need for organs decreased, many churches began to purchase them for use in their congregations.
The instrument the Johnsons bought in 1960 had been used at a church in Gardner, Mass. The organ was headed for the scrapheap when Johnson, a former electrical engineer and avid organist, heard about it.
"An engineering friend alerted me to the fact that a Wurlitzer theater pipe organ was for sale in Worcester, so that my wife and I could go inspect it," Leonard recalled. "We bought it almost immediately."
Fortunately for the Johnsons, the organ had not been broken down yet, and was being stored in a location close enough to Hingham.
Then the couple was faced with the enormous task of transporting their purchase to their home and reassembling it. Originally, the many pipes were stored in the garage, forcing the family's cars outside for 10 years. However, Leonard's passion prevailed and, "We had a one-story addition put on just to accommodate the console," Louise recalled. The console, similar to the keyboard on the piano, once occupied the living room almost entirely. Its hulking wood frame and several rows of keys filled a space comparable to a parked car.
As the years passed, Leonard continued to add to the organ. When the Johnsons first acquired it, the organ had just four sets of pipes, and by the time of donation, he had tripled the pipes to a set of 12. A special vent was installed in the wall of the living room to bring the sound from the basement, where the pipes were stored, into the room. The technical aspects of the organ are dense, but can be simplified into several main components. The console is the part of the organ that the organist operates, the blower is the valve, which controls the sound emitted by the pipes, and the pipes blow the sound. The Johnsons' Wurlitzer had a five-horsepower engine specifically to operate the blower. The pipes occupied the entire basement, filling a massive area with tubes of metal in assorted heights.
Many Hingham residents may wonder why the Johnsons chose Plattsburgh, and the answer is quite simple. There is very little demand for theatre pipe organs anywhere at this time. The Johnsons' children have grown up, and, according to Leonard, "They were relieved, they realized they wouldn't have to cope with it." Leonard truly loved his organ, and had several requirements for a suitable new home for his organ. He felt that the organ would have to remain intact, it would have to be serviced, maintained, played, and enjoyed, and "All of these were satisfied by the North Country Cultural Center for the Arts." [continue]
Piano Lesson
It has become fashionable to mock Mozart, and pianist Andr's Schiff is tired of it. He salutes a composer whose music is full of surprises
This year will be remembered as Mozart year, in which the whole world pays homage to one of the greatest artists of all time, on the anniversary of his 250th birthday. Mozart's popularity has reached new heights, performances of his works are ubiquitous, and books and articles about him are so numerous that they could fill a whole library. This is indeed a cause to rejoice, so why does he need to be defended? After all, everybody loves Mozart.
Really? Let me quote from a recent article by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, published on the paper's arts blog, Culture Vulture: "Armando Iannucci recently had the sheer bottle to stand up in front of many of Britain's most distinguished classical musicians and confess that he didn't much care for Mozart."
Now, this is very important indeed. (Forgive my ignorance, but who is Armando Iannucci?) Elsewhere Norman Lebrecht has attacked Wolfgang Amadeus in a most unfair manner. I refuse to quote from his writings because they represent - to me - musical journalism at its most disagreeable. Glenn Gould - one of the most brilliant musical minds of the 20th century - wrote an essay in which he tries to explain why the C minor Piano Concerto (K491) is not a good work. He also didn't care for the piano sonatas, which he nevertheless recorded - to prove their mediocrity.
Why is it that certain people get such immense pleasure from this kind of iconoclasm? Does attacking the greatest artists in history make them feel better? It's good to enjoy the benefits of democracy, such as freedom of speech - let's remember the recent affair with the Danish cartoons and not ever take it for granted. But Mozart's greatest admirers included Haydn, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Nietzsche, Debussy, and Britten. Putting this list against that of a few detractors, whose side would you like to be on?
How can we understand Mozart? His wonderful letters are an invaluable source of information, but is it acceptable to read other people's most private thoughts - would he have given us permission to eavesdrop? Hardly so. Today, everyone feels an urge to contribute to our image of Mozart. Scientists try to explain the neurological phenomenon of genius, psychologists see him as a victim of his tyrannical father, stage directors - many of whom can neither speak Italian nor read music - use his operas as vehicles to express present-day social and political ideas that are totally alien to the works in question.
The mysteries are not in the biography, they are in the music itself. Many feel that the Peter Shaffer/Milos Forman film Amadeus has helped us to a deeper appreciation of the composer's art. I beg to differ. Great artists eat, drink, sleep, laugh and cry - just like us. But they also do something else that others cannot begin to comprehend. In our quest to understand Mozart we should be concerned with the differences, not the similarities. I'm afraid that Amadeus has told us more about the latter.
"Too easy for children, too difficult for adults," said Artur Schnabel of Mozart's solo piano music. A musical child can certainly play a Mozart sonata well, even beautifully. There are not too many notes - contrary to what the Emperor Joseph II stupidly says in Amadeus - only as many as necessary. For a child it all seems natural: melody, harmony and rhythm coexist in perfect equilibrium. Later, at the ripe age of 18 he begins to think about the music and begins discovering its complexities. It is not as simple as it first seemed, and he realises with horror that he can no longer play it with natural innocence. Paradise lost. If he or she is lucky then there is a good chance that it may return with old age. The pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski amazed us all at the age of 102 with interpretations of Mozart that combined the purity of childhood with the wisdom of experience.
One of the misconceptions about Mozart is that he composed effortlessly. This was not always true, although he did possess the greatest possible facility. When he wanted to write something extraordinary - like his six string quartets dedicated to Haydn - he took great care of all the details and needed a long time to accomplish his goals. Studying his autograph manuscripts, we can find numerous corrections in them, contrary to the common belief that the music flowed effortlessly from his pen.
In about 1780, in the library of Baron van Swieten, Mozart discovered the works of JS Bach. In those days nobody was interested in the music of the past: the public only wanted to hear the newest creations. (Today it's almost the other way around.) This encounter with Bach was a very significant event for the young composer. In his subsequent compositions, melodic genius and youthful exuberance are coupled with a mastery of counterpoint and polyphony that he had learned from the older master. The tiny piano piece, Eine Kleine Gigue (K574) was written in Leipzig and is a homage to Bach. Try playing this to someone who is unfamiliar with it and ask them who the composer is. There will be some strange guesses, even Sch?nberg and Webern, because the music is so daringly modern. Another piano piece, the A minor Rondo (K 511) sounds like a forerunner of Chopin - no wonder Mozart was Chopin's idol. Both of these works will be heard at the recital I'll be giving at the Proms next month.
The Royal Albert Hall as a venue for such delicately intimate music? It's true that they were written for the fortepiano with a small audience in mind. I have had the rare privilege of playing them on Mozart's own fortepiano in the very room where he was born. It was an unforgettable and moving experience - yet I feel that the music is of such sublime quality, its message so universal, that it can also be transferred to a large space and played on present-day instruments. Mozart is a gift to mankind, but do we deserve this gift? In the vast space of the Albert Hall a piano will first sound lost, like a soft voice in the desert. But gradually people will realise that it's worth listening to Mozart's voice - it transcends time.
' Andr's Schiff performs an all-Mozart programme at the Proms on August 17. Box office : 020-7589 8212
Piano Lesson
At the helm is one of the strongest, most versatile voices to emerge in bass playing in 20 years. With this group, his compositions and personality have blossomed -- the fulfillment of all the promise one hears in McBride's past work with Bobby Watson, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Sting, Abbie Lincoln, and many dozens more. He's also a noted music educator, Lincoln Center composer, and Creative Chair for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position passed on to him by Dianne Reeves. When Christian McBride is holding down the low end there's a kind of ease of spirit that takes hold. Everyone around him knows the music will have energy and substance if he's involved.
Taken from a two-night run at the intimate, often experimental NYC club, Live at Tonic brings in some well-chosen guests to jam. The second disc gets pretty free range with guitarist Charlie Hunter, keyboardist Jason Moran, and an especially frisky Jenny Scheinman on violin. The third disc is soulful grooving with the Roots' former member Scratch, turntable wizard DJ Logic, Rashawn Ross on trumpet, and Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno. All make appealing contributions that will likely expose McBride's music to new listeners familiar only with the guests but it is the quartet itself that will drop your jaw on the first disc of highlights from the run. Unhampered by rules and skilled enough to wander where they will, the Christian McBride Band have the potential to be one of those classic combinations like Gary Bartz Ntu Troop or Miles Davis' In a Silent Way-era quintet. When he speaks about music, it's always with an ear towards wider boundaries and more intrinsic freedom for those who play it. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Christian McBride.
Your studio work has been moving away from what anyone would call traditional jazz for a while. This new live album just totally embraces the idea of the jam, the idea of funk.
I don't think it's any more overt than Vertical Vision [2003] was, but I certainly think as my recording career has progressed I've tried to attain a more all-inclusive view of what jazz can be. Or at least what jazz is to me personally.
There seem to be a lot of forces that try to keep you in that bebop straightjacket.
Totally. The problem isn't the music. I love playing swing music and traditional jazz. It's certainly one of my passions in life. The thing you fight against is the people, mostly the non-musicians like writers and even some fans who think, 'Oh well surely this is really what you're going to keep on doing. You're going to keep playing straight ahead, right?' I don't know. I don't what I could be doing a couple of years from now. The problem is not the music it's the people who are into the music or write about the music. They have these reserved spots for people in their heads, and they need people to fill these spots.
On public radio I worked with freeform stations for 12 years where we put jazz right next to rock, country, experimental or whatever. Musicians I find are generally much more like that. There's far more lines of connection than there are fences.
Absolutely!
Tell us a bit about your band. Not to be too blunt but this is a serious group of badasses.
[Laughs] Thank you! We've been working together for six years. Ron Blake, my saxophonist, has worked with me for seven years. It's funny because this band came together in a period where I was really bitter and angry and frustrated about being a bandleader. I found it very difficult to find musicians who were not so much able but willing to try to combine a lot of different music together, just finding musicians that didn't have a problem playing something funky and something swinging within the same set. So the music was frustrated but there was also the professional side, which I won't go into too much. Let's just say when I hired Geoff Keezer and Terreon Gully I was at a point where I just needed some musicians to get me through the next string of gigs. If they quit, they quit. If I fired them, so be it. But I think maybe it was because of that attitude that I didn't have too many expectations so I could actually start this journey with this band on a fresh slate.
The one person who I think has been what I like to call the 'X-Factor' is Geoff Keezer because he's had his own career as a leader for many, many years and he's worked with so many great people. When I first asked him to join the band I was quite hesitant. After playing piano with Ray Brown's trio, then playing with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and playing with Barbara Hendricks, well, I thought he might think playing with my band was a step down (laughs). Fortunately, Geoff was more than wide open about joining the band and it's been nothing but great. He's a guy who's absorbed a lot of different styles of music and he's more than willing to bring it all to the table.
There's so much going on sonically with him. He's not afraid of effects or electronics if they're right for the moment.
I love that he's not afraid of those effects even on straight-ahead songs. I've always been into weird and wacky challenges. I'm thinking like let's play a medium swinging blues and play like distorted Rhodes on there. And Geoff is like, 'Yeah! That sounds like a great idea!' Where some other guy would say, 'That won't work.' How do you know if you don't try? Of course, that kind of attitude prevails with all the guys in the band. So, it's been a really great time working with these guys.
Your band has echoes of some great jazz -- Atlantic Records in the early '70s, Phil Woods European Jazz Machine, Von Freeman, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. You guys always seem ready to jump in and make it interesting for yourselves first, and hopefully the listener is there to meet you halfway.
Exactly. Plus, I think as a performer I always try not to play at the audience. I never want to play music that's offensive, like saying, 'This is who we are. Take it or leave it.' I've always loved Cannonball Adderly for that reason. If you listen to a lot his live albums you hear he was a great newscaster in the way he spoke to the audience. He would play this very serious music but he had a very jovial attitude. It's almost like he was playing angry music with a smile. It was that smile that made people meet him halfway. Therefore, he got a lot more listeners to his music than the average jazz music from that period that was playing challenging music.
He was also playing on bills with blues and rock bands, reaching very different audiences because of the approach that he took. Cannonball also brought a little church into it, which I think never hurts when trying to convey heavy things. There's something to be said for embracing the audience. Even if you're playing something challenging do it in a way that invites them to be part of it. I think you do that on the new live album. How did you end up choosing a small club like NYC's Tonic over say a big concert hall for the recording?
I've never been one to be too judgmental towards any particular venue. It all depends on the clientele. I've played in some concert halls -- not only with my band but with Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock -- and those audiences can be just as great or bad as playing a great intimate club with a dead clientele. What made Tonic different is it's not a jazz club per se. People don't go there to hear jazz. They go there to hear experimental music or whatever. It could be a Dixieland group, it could be electronica or a dance troupe. They got all kinds of things going on at Tonic. That's what made this CD different than recording at Birdland or the Village Vanguard where you get a clientele that knows what it's looking for. If that's not what we're gonna give 'em. then it's probably not going to be the type of reception you want on a document.
There was a small risk in that we'd never played Tonic before. We weren't sure if people would come in thinking, 'Christian McBride? Who's that?' or 'Christian McBride? Isn't he the jazz guy? What's he doing playing here?' I was little nervous making a debut at a new club and making a live album. Fortunately, any fears I had were erased pretty quickly.
You hear a strong sense of freedom, especially on the second and thirrd discs, where all rules have been set aside. Whatever happens, happens.
That was kind of how it had to be. When you're working with musicians you've never worked with before, it's not like you have a whole lot of time to get any game plan together. It's was basically my band plus a few special guests in a jam session. That's about as free as you can possibly be [laughs].
Did you give the guests directions or special pointers before they played with you?
No, you don't need to do that with high level musicians like that.
You played with some of my personal favorites. I'm in love with violinist Jenny Scheinman's work, and I think DJ Logic is the most musical turtablist out there.
I'd worked with everybody on separate occasions except Jenny Scheinman. Regina Carter was originally supposed to be on the album but she had a family emergency a few days before the concert. I knew who Jenny was but had never met her. You like to at least talk to a person before you make an album with them! Fortunately, Jenny and I met a half hour before we had to play and warmed up to each other rather quickly. Right away we hit it off.
The second CD was certainly the most experimental. The third CD is an outright party, which was certainly a whole lot of fun. If I had to do it all over again I'd probably trade one of the guests from Night Two to Night One. I think having Scratch and DJ Logic at the same time there was so much scratching going on I couldn't tell who was who [laughs]. But it worked!
There's a lot of sound coming at you on that third disc. What's it like playing with a turntablist like Logic? I think a lot of people don't see the turntable as an instrument.
That question might be better answered by my drummer, Terreon. What Logic is doing mostly is being a second percussionist. He's playing beats and things that would normally get in the way of the drummer. It was Terreon I was worried about when we started working with Logic. But Logic is such a great listener. That's the key to any great musician -- they listen well. I didn't know what to tell Logic when we first started. I said, 'Just listen to what we're doing and find something to do.' He did some gigs with us and picked his spots to jump in there. There were gigs Terreon would lay out and Logic would play the beats on the turntables, and Terreon would be the auxiliary percussionist.
That's the kind of humility you get with really good musicians -- knowing when not to play, when their contribution isn't needed. I think that's almost as important as being up there soloing your ass off. One of the guests, guitarist Eric Krasno of Soulive, is a master of this. His playing is like hearing someone fly.
He's ridiculously funky.
That is the right phrase!
He's a hell of a player. I've known Eric for years. I actually knew Eric when he was going to Berklee [School of Music] in the '90s. Then, during the end of my tenure at Verve Records I remember Soulive was looking for a deal. Verve was courting them for a quick second but they ended up at Blue Note. I used to see those guys at the Verve offices, and then as fate would have it, they ended up scoring big. I love those guys.
A number of the guests you have on this record -- Charlie Hunter, DJ Logic, part of Soulive, Jenny to a certain degree -- are connected to the jam music scene, and in a way this record could be a calling card, especially being released by Ropeadope, to that scene. Do you see your music fitting in with that world?
I think probably calling a lot of those guys was not an accident on either side of the fence, musically or commercially. It was decided a while ago that the kind of thing my band has been doing the past couple years would not be 100% conducive to hardcore jazz audiences. We want to try to bring in some new listeners, as well as keeping people who were listening to us before we were more funky and electric. It's been working so far. We just finished the "What Is Jazz" tour with my band, Charlie Hunter's band, Logic, and Bobby Previte. It was a pretty successful tour, and hopefully it'll keep happening.
With really high-powered musicians I find the metaphor of gunslingers works well. Gunslingers can walk into any town and everyone knows right away they're a powerful force. It's in their walk. It's there before a single shot is fired.
Once you put in the time to develop your skills as a musician and get the tools you need to create on your instrument, at that point you should be more than willing to get into any kind of situation and really create and make it feel good. That's why someone like Chick Corea can play with the Foo Fighters. I remember Freddie Hubbard playing with Billy Joel. That's a testament to true greatness.
In that vein, I always think of Wayne Shorter's work with Steely Dan.
It's almost unfair to talk about how great Wayne is. He'd make any band sound great. And that's what I'm talking about. That greatness can be pretty rare.
You've played on a lot of other people's records. What's the difference for you between that and working on your own compositions?
That's easy -- I'm not taking orders, I'm giving orders [laughs].
Do you like composing? A lot of players actually prefer getting up and blowing on someone else's material to working up their own catalog.
You know it actually is draining for me to be able to compose. Once it's finished it's probably one of the greatest feelings you can have but I've never been able to discipline myself into being a consistent writer. I know guys like Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter, or Chick Corea who write everyday. Even if it's just a four-bar phrase, they have their brains geared up to write a little bit everyday. At some point in my life, hopefully sooner than later, I'll get that kind of discipline.
What do you think are the defining characteristics of your style as a bassist?
I like to think one of the characteristics of my playing is clarity. The acoustic bass is a very difficult instrument to play with clarity of tone. The execution is very hard. I like to think I'm a bassist that has a very clear, precise tone and articulation. And a big tone. I like to think I'm a good balance between Eddie Gomez and Ray Brown. I can play what they call the "Noise Bleed Style" of bass playing -- you know, really fast and high up on the fingerboard -- but with the sound of a Ray Brown.
What are the challenges of making a bass a solo instrument that's right out front? It's usually associated with being in the background most of the time.
Because of the nature of the instrument it's hard for people to hear it, to understand what's going on. It's an instrument you feel more than you hear. I'm trying to figure out how it can be both.
Piano Lesson
I got no right not to sing," says Mahalia Jackson in Swift Creek Mill's "Mahalia." "It's a gift from God for His glory."
As much can be said of Cora Harvey Armstrong, the vocal powerhouse who plays iconic gospel singer Jackson in Tom Stolz's musical biography. Armstrong has a great big voice, packed with musicality and spirit, and she's the reason to see this reprise of Swift Creek's 1998 production.
Joining Armstrong this time are her sister, Virginia Harvey Young, and Tim Harris, both of whom play a variety of roles. They're excellent singer/actors, and they're accompanists, too, on piano and organ. Among the chief delights of this production, though, are the few occasions when these three combine voices in magical unaccompanied harmony. It's simply beautiful.
Stolz's book is a slight thing, a sketchy telling of Jackson's life that manages to leave out her two marriages and divorces. He concentrates on her young womanhood in 1920s New Orleans under the care of an aunt; her move to Chicago to escape Jim Crow and to study nursing; and her installation in the choir of a Windy City church that frowns on her undignified clapping and swaying while singing. There's a bit about her collaboration with songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey, her landmark concert at Carnegie Hall and her long association with the civil rights movement.
Slightly more interesting is Stolz's emphasis on Jackson's strong and deep commitment to her religion and her God, which she credits for her talent and her success. There are gentle chuckles, too, about the rolls of cash she stashes about her person, and the fearfulness of her longtime accompanist, Mildred, played by Young.
Swift Creek artistic director Tom Width strikes the perfect modest note with his set and lighting, and he elicits charming performances from each of his actors. Costume designer Maura Lynch Cravey merits special mention for the well-chosen attire, glittery but not glitzy.
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