Before The Music Dies...

One of Black Cinema's true veterans is vital and very active on Broadway

this interview was done before Roger Robinson recently garnered the Best Actor Tony award in 2009. He was always one of my favorite actors in the Blacksploitation era of Hollywood films in the 70's. I am happy that he is still vital and doing great work on the Great White Way...

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Roger Robinson: Taking Another Tony Award-Nominated Turn
in August Wilson's 'Joe Turner'

By Bridget Bland on Jun 3rd 2009 4:04PM
Filed under: Interviews, Theater

Since the revival of August Wilson's 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' racked up six 2009 Tony Award nominations, the critically acclaimed Broadway production is a must-see production.

Ask President Obama, who took his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, on a date last weekend to see the dramatic play, which also stars Chad L. Coleman, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Ernie Hudson, Andre Holland and Aunjaunue Ellis.

With just a few days before the annual Tony Awards on June 7, BV Newswire chatted with best featured actor nominee Roger Robinson, who plays griot and conjurer Bynum Walker in 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone.' The theater veteran explained why this story has touched the hearts of theater-goers and how Wilson's legacy will continue to live on for years to come.

No novice to Wilson's work, Robinson has appeared in six of the late playwright's 10 plays, which chronicle the black experience across a century. This marks the second time he has been nominated for a Tony, the first time was for the acclaimeAugust Wilsond 'Seven Guitars' in 1996.

"I had never done this particular show or role. I met with the director [Barlett Sher], and he used a word that drew me to it: collaboration," he explained. "And, it showed me he would be open to exploring this experience with me, and that he would be open to black culture even though he was a white man."

And explore the depths of the role Robinson does in the near three hour-long tour de force.

The Seattle native's portrayal of Bynum has left such an impression that he's also being honored by his colleagues.

On June 9, the 'Brother to Brother' star will become the first African American to receive the 2009 Richard Seff Award, presented by the Actors' Equity Foundation to an actor 50 or older in a supporting role in a Broadway or off-Broadway production.

Robinson's only lament is that the entire cast could not have been honored for their stellar performances.

"I wish the Tony Awards had an ensemble award like the Olivier's and Screen Actors Guild but [New York] theater needs to do that because this one would have been honored."

Robinson believes Wilson is a great American poet and his "use of language is second to none, except Eugene O'Neil and perhaps Tennessee Williams." In the age of Tyler Perry's popularity, the 69-year-old actor believes that there is still a place for these type of theatrical productions.

"August is literature. [Sure] Tyler is a marketing expert and a genius to make his empire, [but] August Wilson is probably one of the most produced American playwrights."

Currently, 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' is playing at the Belasco Theatre. It's set to close its limited run June 14.

Given its buzz, an extension is a possibility, especially if the play scores a few of the Tony Awards it's nominated for.

local guitarist Kent Henry passes away

I was sorry to hear that this wonderful musician finally passed. I had some contact/playing with Kent, through another guitar player in the early 2000's and finally heard what everyone was talking about with this guy. I did post the original email from Tony Conroy which came a day ago, and then my email response to Tony.

After the emails will be the official notice by Michael Russell at The Oregonian.


From: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Local blues musician dies - OregonLive.com
Date: April 30, 2009 2:19:35 AM PDT
To: cjackson@teleport.com


Carlton,

Did you see this? I totally missed it.

I dealt with Kent many time when he worked as a repair tech at the Beaverton Guitar Center.

He was indeed a humble and unassuming guy. One time I brought him a story I found on the net from a guy who saw a concert Kent played with Steppenwolf at a college in Wisconsin. Kent's performance was so inspiring that it caused the guy to learn to play the guitar. Incredibly, Kent said he remembered the concert and was extremely touched to hear the story. Another time I was with him at Guitar Center waiting for him to complete my repair work, when the usual "Stairway to Heaven" came screaming from the amp section. I asked Kent if he ever got tired of hearing that tune here at the store. He said "No, I really don't mind hearing it..I just wish they'd learn to play it right".

What sad news.

Tony
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/local_blues_musician_dies.html


From: cjackson@teleport.com
Subject: kent henry story...
Date: April 30, 2009 7:54:49 AM PDT
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

yeah, I heard about it a few weeks ago when Kent was going down slow and I think that a benefit was mentioned, but didn't happen.

I never played with him actively, but knew of him and did one set of rehearsals and a one-off with Robert (Brown) Rude. That was the first time that I really heard Kent live, and he had some great instincts and cool tricks, within a strong framework of sound and grooves.

We played a great set at the giant gay bar (forget the name, but an infamous lesbian pick up place) up the street from Kung Fu Bakery on Division. Rude was trying to scare up some gigs, and that was the first time I had been in that place. There might have been a recording, and I will look.

A real loss in PDX music annals.

thanks for the heads-up and see you tonight (?) at the jam
cj


Local blues musician dies
by Michael Russell, The Oregonian
Thursday March 19, 2009, 6:17 AM

Kent Henry Plischke, a blues guitarist and singer who recorded with the bands Steppenwolf and Blues Image under the name Kent Henry, died Wednesday in Portland, his caregiver said. He was 60.

He was easy going, and he was a humble man, said Patty J. Hill, 56, who cared for Plischke at her Southeast Portland home. He once gave a gold record away because he didn't want to look like he was bragging.

Plischke was born on April 5, 1948 in Hollywood, Calif., Hill said. He joined his first band, The Lost Souls, when he was 14 years old.

In 1969 he played on the album Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends which featured guitarists Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, bass player Noel Redding and drummer John Bonham.

Plischke provided guitar solos on the Blues Image song Ride Captain Ride, a hit that peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Music Chart in June of 1970.

Plischke joined Steppenwolf in 1971, and toured with the band through 1972, playing lead guitar on hits such as Born to be Wild and Magic Carpet Ride. He also played on their 1971 studio album For Ladies Only.

Plischke moved to Southwest Portland in the early 1980s, Hill said. He replaced local blues musician Jim Mesi in the Paul deLay Blues Band and worked for 15 years as a technician at Apple Music at 225 S.W. First Ave., where he met and briefly dated Hill.

Hill took Plischke in for emergency surgery about 2 a.m. this morning. He was given a sedative but died before surgery could begin.

A public service is planned from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m on Thursday, March 26 at the Omega Funeral Home at 223 S.E. 122nd Avenue in Portland.

-- Michael Russell; michaelrussell@news.oregonian.com

The Shocking KMHD Story You've Never Heard Pt. 2

Friends...here is a second post by Tom D'Antoni and his reasoning for not posting this unbelievable story sooner and blowing this all out of the water for KMHD...

Very informational.

cj
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Sunday, April 12, 2009

A Few Thoughts on My Last Post on KMHD

First of all, thanks for all the emails and calls and comments about the last KMHD post.

I wanted to add that there are reasons why the KMHD DJs kept this in the family. Believe me, many times I've wanted to write the last post but I didn't for these reasons:

ONE:

I didn't want to jepardize the station fund raising. Around 75% of the operating funds for KMHD come from listeners. If I had blown the whistle on the scandal of how the music was not getting to us, I was afraid that listeners would stop pledging.

Since the DJs were taking care of business on our own (many of us deal directly with labels and distributors), any reduction in funds from our listeners could have seriously harmed the existence of the station.

Once OPB takes over operations, not only won't that be a concern, but I believe the good things that OPB brings to the station will actually help fund raising.

TWO:

At the Mt Hood Community College board meeting last Wednesday, several DJs spoke out about how badly the station was run, how the paid staff (with the exception of Calvin Walker) was incompetent, disrespectful to and and at odds with the DJs.

This seemed to shock those in the room who were unaware of the situation at the station. The college president and JoAnn Zahn knew and, although I can't confirm it, I'm pretty sure it's why they took the station in the direction of OPB.

So now that the DJs publicly opened the door to the issue, I proceeded with the story.

Even though one KMHD DJ, commenting on my last post, said that this wasn't news and that everybody already knew it, he is dead wrong. When I told several music industry insiders in Portland about it, people who know what's what, they were shocked.

Should we have raised these issues before. Maybe, maybe not. Since at least two of the staff jobs are union protected, and two former general managers were unable to oust Gomez, most likely nothing would have been done to fix the problem.

It was risky on my part to write that last post, but I think you expect that from me.
Posted by Words to Drive-By: at 8:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The Shocking KMHD Story You've Never Heard

Below is a wonderful post from Tom D'Antoni's music blog (thanks Tom!!) concerning the ongoing story of OPB's takeover of KMHD in a few months.



This is a truly unbelievable account of what was up with Greg Gomez, music director at the station and his behaviour concerning....

well, I'll just let Tom get us up to date.

It really makes it hard to be an artist if no one gets to hear your output...

cj


---------------------------------

from Tom D'Antoni's Portland Music News Blog

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Shocking KMHD Story You've Never Heard

In the past few weeks I've hinted around about KMHD's "toxic assests." Now I will let you know why the vast majority of KMHD DJs are in favor of the move to OPB.

The number one toxic asset is Greg Gomez, KMHD's music director, often called "music preventor." His job is to have a good relationship with labels worldwide and musicians here in Oregon; to make sure he gets everything that's released in the jazz and blues world, listen to it and then make available to the DJ's the new albums he deems the station should play. After a suitable period in the "New Releases" shelves in the studio, his job is to add albums to the station studio library and the computer database so DJ’s can find them on the shelves.

These things he has not done.

Two of his biggest failures are keeping the station library stocked with music and not just having poor relationships with jazz labels, but having hostile ones.

The fact is that over two years went by without Gomez adding even ONE album to the station library.

I know that sounds unbelievable. Believe it. Below you will read his own admission of that fact.

When I started at KMHD in April of 2007 I assumed that when he removed albums from the "New Releases" shelves a percentage of them would be added to the library, at least the ones deserving. For instance, Portland trombonist Stan Bock had a wonderful new album in the new release shelf when I arrived at KMHD. After a month or so, it disappeared and never showed up in the main library. I kept wondering why.

Not long after I got there I was unable to find a lot of albums I knew had come out in the past year or so. I never understood why. I searched for the Grammy-nominated album by Portland's Nancy King and pianist Fred Hersch. It wasn't in the library…a year after its release. After talking with several DJs, I found out that there had been no new additions since 2006.

Yeah, it blew my mind.

A DJ told me, "Oh, I think he just keeps them in his office."

Just before last year's Mt. Hood Jazz Festival, I found Gomez had put some festival-related albums for airplay in a box in the studio. When I went through it , I found the Nancy King album, with the new release sticker still on the cover.

I began to inquire why it was in that box and not in the library and available for us to play

There is a KMHD email listerv, pretty much the only way KMHD DJs can communicate since, with the exception of Calvin Walker, Gomez and Mary Burlingame kept their distance, never communicating on any meaningful level. On August 6, 2008, I sent this:

Is there a good reason why the Nancy King/Fred Hersch album was not available to us for nearly two years and then suddenly showed up in the MHJF box? It was released in 2006, and according to your email, after three months was locked away in your office and unavailable for us to play.

I think we're interested in how your department works.

I don't have to go into detail about what a treasure Nancy King is, or how wonderful the album is. Is the fact that it has never been added an indication that you do not agree that it is worthy?

Many times, I've perused the library on a Saturday night wanting to play Nancy's album only to find it not there. I wondered if it had been stolen. I assumed it had been stolen because it's inconceivable to me that it wouldn't have been added to the library. When the original NR copy, with the playdate sticker on the front, turned up in the MHJF box I was astonished. I remain astonished.

Is Stan Bock's fine album also locked in your office? What will become of Thara Memory's? What others are also unavailable?

You have not addressed why this and many other albums are locked in your office, and why so few have been added to the library.

Is there a list of those albums released in the past couple of years which you placed in NR but which have or have not been added to the library?



On August 9, Gomez wrote this astounding reply:

We’ve all heard the term multi-tasking and I think it’s great that people can do this. At times I find myself even doing two or three things at once, but rarely, because I am more of a prioritizing kind of person. Please understand that in the entire seventeen plus years that I have been working here at KMHD there has never been a shortage of things to do in the area of music. To be a Music Director at a radio station and to be an employee of a radio station the size of KMHD (and please realize that some stations of similar size enjoy a much larger paid staff, thus the work gets spread out so that one person is not singly responsible for the flow of work) means that one will never be truly caught up with all the work. Also, to work in radio is to realize that priorities will change on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. There’s nothing like starting the day thinking you’re going to dive into this project or that project and then you receive an email or phone call asking for your immediate attention on something entirely new.

What this means is, about two years have passed since a new release has been added to the library. Clearly, adding CD’s to the permanent library has not been high on my priority list. (emphasis mine) Please understand this is not a slight to you or anyone else. I will be adding CD’s to the library. Please look for them in the coming weeks and months.



So Gomez admitted that his main job as music director, placing music in the hands of KMHD DJs to play, was not high priority.

And then he told us where all those albums were.

He wrote:

My usual time frame for keeping a CD in the new releases library is roughly 3 months. When a CD is removed from the new releases library it is stored in my office until I am able to process it for inclusion in the permanent MCR library.



Which was never.

He added this nearly-as-astounding coda to his email of 8/9/08. I can only assume he was being ironic, although it comes out of nowhere:

Will Nancy King be in this batch, I’m not sure…never heard of her. There are a million young sirens out there trying to break into this business. Before she gets too far into the music business, if you know her, tell her to ask the advice of a veteran artist who has been around the block. Someone that got her start singing with her late husband’s band or someone that’s been down heartbreak’s road a time or two and is only now getting her due public recognition for her artistry after years and years of being a “musicians musician.” Someone that is recognized for her scatting ability, her ability to wrap her voice around a lyric to the point that you feel as if she wrote and/or lived every single word she is singing….and probably has. Yeah, help this Nancy King kid out a little bit and tell her to keep her day job. However, if you say she’s good, then I guess so......



That paragraph looks more suspicious in light of something he posted on the listserv this week in one of his infrequent postings about new releases…something he never did before we started raising hell about his lack of competence.

Ben Darwish: Ode To Consumersim (sic)
Ben is a Portland based musician….I believe. Recorded live at Jimmy Mak’s, check out tracks 6, 7 & 8.



I believe? Is he being cute or does he not know?

Something else he wrote in his post of 8/9/09 brings up another problem. First what he said:

There have also been instances where a CD is available at retail but it hasn’t yet been serviced to a radio station. I don’t control when a label/promoter/artist decides to send a CD to KMHD. Another thing to keep in mind when you’re finding out about new releases, even though a label/artist/promoter has shipped the CD to radio and it’s in our grubby little hand’s, there are times when they will ask you to hold off on playing the CD on-air until a certain date has passed for their promotional campaign purposes.



Albums are never available for retail before they're serviced to stations. It just doesn't work that way.

In reality, many label reps have stopped servicing the station because of Gomez' incompetence. Recently, according to one KMHD insider, "Several reps from record companies have written Dr. Ski (President of MHCC) about Greg. Very powerful criticism too." Previously, they’d written and called Doug Sweet, while he was station GM, about the situation. The same source told me that other public radio stations who play jazz told have asked, "What's wrong with KMHD?"

The music director, among other things.

For instance, the 2009 Portland Jazz Festival was built around the 70th Anniversary of Blue Note Records. Here's another shocking example of Gomez incompetence from another KMHD DJ:

Back in February, I was the first on air host to interview Bill Royston, the creative director, for the PDX Jazz Festival, regarding the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records and the tie in to the festival. The station had arranged for several interviews with Mr. Royston to promote the event and for KMHD to derive some underwriting revenue made possible by the fabulous development director Calvin Walker.

I brought all the new and relevant Blue Note CD's from my personal library into the studio as a back for air play, in case Bill did not any or part of the collection with him. Bill was impressed, but I told him they were mine and the station did not have them available for the DJ's to play.

At that point Calvin Walker, the Development Director entered the studio and noticed what a good collection I had assembled for the interview. I said they were mine and KMHD did not have any in the studio. Calvin said that KMHD should be doing that and providing the Blue for all the DJ's, since the Blue Note 70th was so important to KMHD and for the station to out reach to the community. Blue Note chose Portland over ALL others to kickoff this national celebration!

We both shrugged our shoulders knowing the music director was not doing his job. It was reminiscent of communist Russia years ago when on vacation and hearing the same type of futile sighing remarks from the people about their dysfunctional government "not being able to food on the table."

Another example of what the volunteers face on a daily basis at KMHD.

A loyal KMHD On Air Volunteer



At one point, while Gomez was away during the festival and he had still not put out any extra Blue Note albums, two staff members took those much needed albums from Gomez' office and put them in the studio.

Upon his return, he took the box back into his office and locked the door.

One of the interesting things about the MHCC Board meeting on Wednesday was that when some of those concerns were aired, that news seemed to surprise many in attendance.

You might ask why the last two KMHD GMs have not been able to make Gomez do his job. The answer is that the paid KMHD staff does not answer to the GM, but rather have union protected jobs. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong a union supporter as you'll find, but in this case, the inability of the GMs to either control or fire Gomez (and I know at least one dearly wanted dearly) has materially harmed the station.

JoAnn Zahn, Director, Fiscal Operations, Budget & Auxiliary Servies, who has been caretaker GM of the station since last summer, has done her best, but she is not a broadcast professional. At least she made an effort to interact with the DJs. She listened.

Gomez has been a cancer on the station for many years. After all the hell we raised about the music library, he has put a pitiful couple hundred albums in there over a seven month period. He has never added the Linda Hornbuckle/Janice Scroggins album which came out in July and which I had been playing since June. Terry Robb, the label owner and producer of the album had dropped off at least five copies to Gomez. I emailed Gomez about this repeatedly. Linda and Janice have helped the station many times over the years, number one. And number two it's a great album. Yet Gomez never added it. Who knows why?

When Mary Flower, who has played at KMHD sponsored events, released her latest album, I had to raise holy hell to get Gomez to add it. Eventually it found its way to the blues library shelves, but not without a fight.

Leaving Gomez at MHCC, where he is guaranteed employment, is perhaps at the top of the list in improving the station when it moves over to OPB.

Posted by Words to Drive-By: at 3:03 PM


3 comments:





Ben Darwish said...

wow. this is insane. thanks for the insight. just to clear up the confusion, i am based in portland and have been for the last 24 years.
- ben
April 10, 2009 7:26 PM
Les Hutchinson said...

Unbelievable! How do incompetents like Gomez stay around for so long? He's got to go!
April 10, 2009 7:39 PM
Skip Elliott Bowman said...

I am so shocked. Not at the behavior of Greg Gomez, which is legendary, but at his ignorance of the local jazz scene and contempt for local artists. His description of Nancy King is so laughable I had to wonder if he was pulling your leg.

I was a programmer at KMHD during the early 1990s, and would have enjoyed my job a lot more had it not been for the repeated intervention of Greg Gomez. I did all I could to support local artists, interviewing and promoting them on air and adding their new CDs to the library. Not only did Gomez tell me to knock that off (repeatedly; I refused to listen to him) but the CDs never made it to the stacks. I never saw them anyway, and during my 10pm-2am shift I had plenty of time to look.

I was wondering how he was able to keep his job all these years. Thanks for telling this story, Tom. I have a feeling there are a lot more. Keep fighting that good fight.
April 10, 2009 7:40 PM

R.I.P. Eddie Bo

I am really sorry to hear this....I was just listening to "From This Day On", the source of many moments of hearing the opening horn fanfare sampled by today's rap artists. A real loss to the music world and the New Orleans grand tradition of music.

This post originally came from Tom DiAntoni's music blog/web site. Thanks Tom!!!

------------------


New Orleans piano legend Eddie Bo dies at 79
Posted by Keith Spera, Staff writer, The Times-Picayune
March 20, 2009 6:40PM
Categories: Breaking News, Obituary, Top News


RUSTY COSTANZA / T-P ARCHIVE
Singer-pianist Edwin Joseph Bocage, known simply as Eddie Bo, works the crowd at last year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans. He died Wednesday, March 18, at 79.
Eddie Bo, a potent, eclectic New Orleans pianist, singer, songwriter and producer who inspired a dance craze with his 1962 hit "Check Mr. Popeye" and later directed fans to "Check Your Bucket, " died Wednesday, March 18, of a heart attack. He was 79.

A prolific artist, Mr. Bo adroitly distilled an excitable synthesis of rock 'n roll, rhythm & blues, jazz and funk.

"He was one of the last great New Orleans piano professors, kind of a bridge between Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint, " said New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival producer Quint Davis. "Everyone now has to remember to check their bucket on their own, without Eddie to tell us."

Born Edwin Joseph Bocage, Mr. Bo grew up in Algiers and the 9th Ward. He was heavily influenced by the piano style of Professor Longhair; he also gravitated to the jazz phrasing of George Shearing, Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum.

After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School, he served in the Army. Upon his return to New Orleans, he studied arranging and composing at the Grunewald School of Music, a training ground for scores of professional musicians.

He fronted various bands and wrote and released singles for the Ace, Ric, Apollo and Chess labels. In addition to "Check Mr. Popeye, " which was inspired by the cartoon character, his hits included 1969's "Hook and Sling, " which reached No. 13 on Billboard's R&B chart.

Other artists fared well with his songs. Little Richard adapted Mr. Bo's "I'm Wise" as "Slippin' and Slidin." Etta James scored a 1959 hit with his "Dearest Darling." He is credited with writing Oliver Morgan's signature "Who Shot the La La."

In 1975, Mr. Bo semi-retired from music and left New Orleans after the failure of both his marriage and a North Rampart Street club, El Grande, in which he had invested heavily. He said he "couldn't make ends meet spiritually" as a carpenter.


Neither his retirement nor exile were permanent. By 1989 he was back in New Orleans following seven years in Miami, where he studied at the Yahweh Institute. The institute, he said, "teaches men that we should seek love and distribute love, and seek to be moral." It was around that time that Mr. Bo started wearing a turban-like diadem on his head.

By the early 1990s, he was touring Japan and Europe, appearing on albums with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and George Porter Jr., and holding down an evening solo piano gig at Margaritaville. A German label issued his funk album "Shoot From the Root" in 1996. In 1998, he released "Nine Yards of Funk" on his own label.

He also busied himself with non-musical pursuits. He briefly operated a club, the Check Your Bucket Cafe, and ran a health food store with his sisters.

In 1999, an electrical fire destroyed the Tulane Avenue building that housed the health food store. Mr. Bo also lived in the building. The fire claimed his two keyboards, along with master tapes of unreleased and previously released recordings, musical charts he had painstakingly written over the years, and a collection of his own classic 45s.

Scores of musicians -- contemporaries as well as younger musicians influenced by him -- volunteered to perform at a benefit concert in the wake of the fire. "It gives me a deep, deep feeling of not really knowing how people care, until you have to experience something like this, " he said. "Then you really know who your friends are."

His most pressing need, he said at the time, was to replace his keyboards. "I'll try everything I can to get another keyboard, " he said, "because I'm lost without something to play."

Funeral arrangements are pending.

A Contemplation on Music

Friends,
There are many reasons and ideas why I play and continue to make music my living, and my life. I ask myself daily and continue the search for what makes it continue and satisfy me...

The thoughts contained within the posted speech below contains many of those reasons.

Ultimately, the artists in us all will eventually articulate the "inarticulate speech of the heart" for the rest of the world-at-large, through the eternal portal of musical understanding. That is where we will save the world, and grow.

please enjoy,
cj

thanks to Janice Scroggins for sharing, as she always does : )

---------------------------

A Contemplation on Music


This was the welcome address to parents of the incoming freshman class at Boston
Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the
music division at Boston Conservatory.




One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would
not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated.
I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and
math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an
engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician.
I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to
apply to music school-she said, "you're WASTING your SAT scores." On
some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the
value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they
listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really
clear about its function.

So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society
that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the
newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage
in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in
fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit
about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the
ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said
that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy
was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent,
external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships
between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of
finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls
and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me
give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the
Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier
Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the
war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of
1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a
concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him
paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the
camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote
his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in
January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison
camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the
repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration
camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy
writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good
day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to
escape torture; why would anyone bother with music? And yet, from the
camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art. It wasn't
just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art.

Why?

Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the
bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be,
somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without
hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect,
but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part
of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is
one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has
meaning."

On September 12, 2001, I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I
reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the
world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as
was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking
about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music,
and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I
sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely
irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this
city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I
here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a
piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey
of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and
in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the
piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least
in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't
play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we
most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organize activity
that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang.
People sang around fire houses, people sang We Shall Overcome. Lots
of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public
event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at
Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized
public expression of grief, our first communal response to that
historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that
life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery
was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.*

From these experiences, I have come to understand that music is not
part of "arts and entertainment," as the newspaper section would have
us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from
leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass-
time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the
ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express
feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things
with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart-wrenchingly beautiful
piece, Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then
some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the
Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know
that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack
your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you
didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to
get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was
absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there
might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some
music. And something very predictable happens at weddings - people
get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some
musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone
sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame,
even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the
people who are going to cry at a wedding, cry a couple of moments
after the music starts.

Why?

The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces
of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we
feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching
Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no
music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right
moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at
exactly the same moment? I guarantee you, if you showed the movie
with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks:
Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible
internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important
concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than
a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I
thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed
playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St.
Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music
critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most
important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in
Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We
began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written
during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a
young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to
our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than
providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because
we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the
piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music
without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near
the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later
met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from hi
buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a
good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd
that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of
that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying
in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished thepiece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to
talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the
circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its
dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience
became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly
figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage
afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I
was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was
hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open,
but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine
gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute
from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean,
realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many
years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory
returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I
didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you
came out to explain that this piece of music was written to
commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle.

How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those
memories in me?"

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationship>
between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most
important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier
and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect
their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn
his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman
class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I
will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student
practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously
because you would imagine that some night at 2:00 AM someone is going
to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save
their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8:00 PM someone is going to
walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is
confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether
they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your
craft.

"You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell
yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a
musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies.
I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a
firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of
therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor,
physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they
get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with
ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

"Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master
music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of
wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of
mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it
will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no
longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which
together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If
there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an
understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit
together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what
we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the
artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal,
invisible lives."