cognitive dissident

Marsalis, Wynton. Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life (New York: Random House, 2008)

I've read each of Wynton Marsalis' previous books, and have been looking forward to Moving to Higher Ground since it was announced several years ago; it was not a disappointment. Marsalis begins with this declaration of purpose, as bold a statement as any:

In this book I hope to deliver the positive message of America's greatest music: how great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand that can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life--from individual creativity and personal relationships to the way you conduct business and understand what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense. [...] I'd like to demystify listening to jazz and show you how the underlying ideas of this music can change your life. (p. xv, Introduction)

Chapter six, Lessons from the Masters, was the highlight of the book for me. Marsalis discusses thirteen of jazz's most accomplished musicians, and relates some tales of their attitudes and artistry that are liberally leavened with humor and humility. This one, about Marsalis' first encounter with fellow trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, is revealing:

I first met Dizzy when I was about fifteen years old at a club called Rosie's on Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans. My dad said, "This is my son. He plays trumpet." Dizzy was standing near the dressing room doorway. He handed me his horn and said, "Play me something, man." He had a real small mouthpiece. I wasn't used to playing that--poooot. He didn't know what to say with my daddy standing there, so he said, "Yeaaah"--really drawn out, as I the length of it could help ease the awkwardness of the moment. And then he leaned down close to me and said, "Practice, motherfucker." (p. 136)

Far from being discouraged by such admonishment, Marsalis emphasizes the deep compassion in jazz musicians' interactions with each other:

For all of that hard, profane talk, there was an unusual type of gentleness in the way they treated one another. Always a hug upon greeting and--from even the most venerated musicians--sometimes a kiss on the cheek. A natural ease with those teetering on the edge of sanity. A way of admonishing but not alienating those who might have drug problems. Always the feeling that things in our country, in our culture, in our souls, in the world, would get better. And beyond that, the feeling that this mysterious music would someday help people see how things fit together: segregation and integration, men and women, the political process, even the stock market. (p. 5)

Whatever one's opinion of Marsalis' neoclassicism or his seemingly reactionary tendencies--he loathes much modern urban music--his vantage point gives him much to say about jazz. In Moving to Higher Ground he says it powerfully, and well. If I had but a single passage to summarize this book, I would choose this one:

It [jazz] is an endless road of discovery leading to more maturity and acceptance of personal responsibility, a greater respect for cultures around the world, an invigorating playfulness, an excitement about change, and an appetite for the unpredictable. It gives you a historical perspective, a spiritual acceptance of necessary opposites, an undying optimism born of the blues--and a pile of good listening. (pp. 10-11)

links:
Amazon's interview with Marsalis is here

Chapter one is online here

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Bernstein, Leonard. The Joy of Music (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959)

I had expected, based on the title, that Leonard Bernstein's 1959 classic The Joy of Music would discuss some confluence of, well, joy and music. There's plenty of music in this book, but surprisingly little joy. Bernstein, well-known for his ecstatic exuberance on the podium, should have had many insights to share on the subject of joyous music-making, but the book delivers something else entirely.

Ever the teacher, Bernstein begins this book with a selection of Socratic-style dialogues to open the reader's mind about music. The second (much larger) section consists of seven television scripts, which will be rough going for non-musicians due to the number of musical examples provided. (Readers with either strong sight-reading skills or access to the works being discussed will fare much better, of course.)

The second of these scripts, discussing jazz, suffers less than the others by virtue of having an audio recording available. Although Bernstein's narration on this disc is often dated and somewhat stilted, listening to his words is still preferable to reading them--at least in the examples printed here.

The Joy of Music is a book worth reading--especially for Bernstein fans--but go into it with the right expectations to avoid disappointment.

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Alex (The Rest Is Noise) Ross has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, commonly known as a "genius" grant (h/t: Jason Gross of PopMatters). Fishbowl NY has a brief Q&A with Ross, where he says:

When I get around to writing my next big book, this award will allow me to take some time off here and there, travel to do research, and otherwise explore the subject in depth. I wrote my last book in coffeeshops between assignments, in the middle of the night when other work was done, and whenever else I could squeeze in the time. The MacArthur will give my a lot more breathing room. I would also like to use the award to build up my website and pursue related multimedia projects. And I'm hoping to launch some home improvements, so I no longer have hundreds of books and CDs piled on the floor or in closets. Basically, I am hoping for less chaos and more time to think.

Ross is planning to begin that new book in the Spring...I can't wait!

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Ross, Alex. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise seemed to be a good choice to fill in the gaps from the Aaron Copland and Julius Jacobson books I've read recently; Ross delivered a stellar book that exceeds the praise it has received so far. Geoff Dyer's NYT review called The Rest Is Noise "a work of immense scope and ambition" and "a great achievement." David Schiff's Nation review called the book "engaging" and asked "Who would have thought that a 600-page history of music that few people love could be such a page turner?" Joseph Kerman's TNR review praises Ross' New Yorker pieces, says that he "writes very well about classical music," and notes:

That he never shies away from technical language gives him cred (as he might say) with his musician readers and bothers not at all the non-musicians, who seem happy to skim over the C-sharps and the minor triads rooted a tritone apart, knowing these will always lead to something interesting and even breathtaking.

For Ross is one of very few music critics who somehow create the illusion that you grasp the music they write about even if you have not heard it. This a rare gift.

Ross' narrative effortlessly places composers, works, and performances placed into their historical and cultural settings to aid the reader's understanding, and never fails to maintain interest. He explains the tonality-to-atonality transition, twelve-tone serialism, the avant-garde movement, experiments with chance and collage, minimalism, and then sketches the way forward:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the impulse to put classical music against pop culture no longer makes intellectual or emotional sense. Young composers have grown up with pop music ringing in their ears, and they make use of it or ignore it as the occasion demands. They are seeking the middle ground between the life of the mind and the noise of the street. (p. 541)

Part I kicks off with the 1906 premiere of Richard Strauss' Salome; and Part II with Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth in 1936, which leads into the well-known story of his immortal Fifth Symphony; Part III continues the tale from the end of World War II to the present. The middle section is the book's highlight, and Ross does a spectacular job of explaining and dramatizing Shostakovich's relationship with Stalin's totalitarian terror. I was unaware of the harrowing story of his Seventh Symphony, titled "Leningrad," which Ross brings to life here:

Against his own wishes, he [Shostakovich] was evacuated from the city on October 1 [1941], and spent the winter in Kuybyshev, formerly Samara, in the Volga region. [...] Besieged Leningrad heard the [Seventh] symphony on August 9, 1942, under the most dramatic circumstances imaginable. The score was flown in by military aircraft in June, and a severely depleted Leningrad Radio Orchestra began learning it. After a mere fifteen musicians showed up for the initial rehearsal, the commanding general ordered all competent musicians to report from the front lines. The players would break from the rehearsals to return to their duties, which sometimes included the digging of mass graves for victims of the siege. Three members of the orchestra died of starvation before the premiere took place. [...] An array of loudspeakers then broadcast the Leningrad into the silence of no-man's-land. Never in history had a musical composition entered the thick of battle in quite this way: the symphony become a tactical strike against German morale. (p. 246)

That is the sort of dramatic story that would be nearly unbelievable if it came from the pen of a Hollywood scriptwriter; the fact that it actually happened gives me shivers, and showcases Ross' ability to tell his story exceedingly well.

When Ross notes that Lenin "regarded [music] as a bourgeois placebo that covered up the sufferings of mankind" (p. 218), this struck me as a deliberate echo of Marx's "opiate of the masses" remark regarding religion; it is to Ross' credit that he assumes such historical familiarity on the part of his audience. His assumptions about musical knowledge may be less warranted, however. Readers who have never studied music theory may want to do some reading on intervals and modes to help understand Ross' detailed musical descriptions.

Don't be put off by the musical minutiae, because Ross has penned the best book I've yet read on music. His enticing explanations of the music have inspired me to take note of pieces I've not yet heard, in order to broaden my listening habits. (As encyclopedic as Ross was in The Rest Is Noise, his mentions of microtonality didn't include jazz trumpeter Don Ellis, who performed on a quarter-tone trumpet. A reference to the Modern Jazz Quartet in Ross' discussion of Gunther Schuller and Third Stream music wouldn't have been out of place, either.) Those minor details aren't much of a fault, as including every minor tidbit of information would surely have ballooned the book to over a thousand pages.

Ross constructs his narrative wisely, and has written the sort of book that I can't recommend highly enough. Avid music listeners should put The Rest Is Noise at the top of their reading lists.

links:
Alex Ross' New Yorker columns
his book's website and bibliography
Wikipedia's article on "20th-Century Classical Music"

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Allan Kozinn writes in "The French Horn, That Wild Card of the Orchestra" from the NYT (h/t: New York Magazine), that:

"Orchestral instruments don't come more treacherous than the French horn, either for the musicians who play it, or, when the going gets rough, for the listeners who find themselves within earshot."

Kozinn takes aim specifically at the New York Philharmonic, writing that it "has long been action central for horn troubles:"

"...its principal player, Philip Myers, is wildly inconsistent, and the rest of the section is also accident-prone. [...] ...he cracks, misses or slides into pitches often enough that when the Philharmonic plays a work with a prominent horn line, you brace yourself and wonder if he'll make it."

I'd like to say "Ouch!" on behalf of Myers and his section-mates. When the horn is played correctly, I side with Aaron Copland:

"If there exists a more noble sound than eight horns singing a melody fortissimo in unison, I have never heard it." (What to Listen for in Music, p. 75)

but even when played poorly, I don't think that a note-cracking horn player is any more aurally offensive than a barking trumpet, a squawking clarinet, a blatting trombone, or a screeching violin. Anyone who has thrilled to a majestic Mahlerian horn sound--or even a decent John Williams score--can appreciate Copland's sentiment. (To give an idea of my fondness for the French horn, I once interrupted a fellow movie-goer during a showing of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to exclaim, "My god, listen to those horns!")

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Jacobson, Julius. The Classical Music Experience, Second Edition (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008)

I was premature in writing of Copland's What to Listen for in Music that "I can't think of another volume so accessible for an orchestral neophyte," as The Classical Music Experience is indeed more appropriate for that audience. Unfortunately, I found it to be a little too light-and-fluffy for the rest of us; Jacobson sometimes tries too hard to be endearing, as when he writes such biographical asides as, "I think you will agree with me that Bach was quite a fellow, twenty children and all." (p. 25) Additionally, the author (an MD by trade) inserts far too many surgery-related digressions into the text, which adds little if anything to understanding and appreciating the music. I would have appreciated fewer biographical details on the composers and a correspondingly larger emphasis on their music.

One highlight of this book is access to more than forty hours of streaming audio from the Naxos website. (It's annoying to have to login again after each piece finishes playing; one wonders if this is a deliberate inconvenience designed to sell more CDs.) The book's previous edition (2005) included a pair of CDs, but they could barely scratch the topic's surface. Forty hours of music is a vast improvement, but it's still a long way from comprehensive; I suppose that one can only expect so much for $40.

Several passages that were apparently carried over unedited from previous editions really should have been updated, such as Jacobson's occasional references to the Schwann Opus catalog. The Schwann website disappeared at the end of 2003 after being acquired by Alliance Entertainment, and the Opus catalog appears to have gone missing in the process. (The Gramophone or Penguin guides would appear to be adequate replacements.)

Jacobson's omission of some composers is occasionally bothersome--there are no chapters on Ginastera, Holst, Khachaturian, or Respighi, for example--but it is in the last fifty years where the gaps become especially glaring. After a nice chapter on Schoenberg, there are no modernist composers. Adams, Cage, Glass, Ligeti, Reich, Riley, and Stockhausen--at least--deserved chapters of their own (or, failing that, a single chapter on modern music as a whole). For listeners whose idea of classical music doesn't end with Bernstein, these absences are a serious drawback.

There are several (non-musical) comments that grated on me, such as Jacobson's parallel to AIDS when discussing Smetana's death (at age 60) from syphilis:

"It is sobering to think about biographies of future artistic greats where AIDS may well replace syphilis and cut off productivity at even younger ages." (p. 129)

AIDS has, of course, already affected far too many lives, and the issue of AIDS in the artistic community has been well-discussed (e.g., Newsweek's "AIDS and the Arts: A Lost Generation" cover story from 18 January 1993, pp. 16-20; Andrea Vaucher's 1993 book Muses from Chaos and Ash: AIDS, Artists, and Art.). As Wikipedia notes, medical advances are enabling HIV-positive individuals to live longer and more productive lives than they were able to in decades past:

In areas where it is widely available, the development of HAART as effective therapy for HIV infection and AIDS reduced the death rate from this disease by 80%, and raised the life expectancy for a newly-diagnosed HIV-infected person to about 20 years.

In light of safer-sex education, more comprehensive healthcare responses to AIDS, and improved longevity for HIV-positive artists, Jacobson's comment seems rather outdated in addition to being a digression.

"Commercial sex worker is a term I learned recently at an AIDS conference held at the Harvard School of Public Health. At first I chuckled, thinking that a prissy professor was trying to avoid the use of offensive words in public. But as I thought about it further, I realized it as a better term than the usual synonyms because, particularly in the context of AIDS, it can refer to either sex." (p. 162)

Without doing extensive research, I found that the phrase "sex worker" has been in use for three decades; I agree with Jacobson that it is superior to the common vulgarities, but his entire anecdote was a waste of space.

"There is a new computer language named Apache, amusingly so because as it matured, so many program patches were added to it." (p. 265)

First, Apache is a web server, not a language. Second, it is hardly new--at least not in Internet years: Apache has been the most popular web server almost constantly since its first release in 1995. (See Wikipedia for more information.)

Jacobson's second edition of The Classical Music Experience is a useful primer on the subject, but hardly an essential acquisition for the home library. I would suggest that classical tyros borrow this book from a local library instead--along with a stack of the recordings that Jacobson mentions in the text but were not included in the online selections.

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Copland, Aaron: What to Listen for in Music (New York: Signet Classic/Penguin, 2002)

What to Listen for in Music, a 1957 revision of the 1939 original, is Copland's attempt at making serious music more accessible to the lay person. While sometimes idiosyncratic, Copland does an impressive job at remaining impartial about what music is being listened to while being quite sympathetic to contemporary classical music:

Most people seem to resent the controversial in music; they don't want their listening habits disturbed. They use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be used as a soporific. Contemporary music, especially, is created to wake you up, not put you to sleep. It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you--it may even exhaust you. But isn't that the kind of stimulation you go to the theater for or read a book for? Why make an exception for music? (p. 199)

I have often observed that the mark of a real music lover was an imperious desire to become familiar with every manifestation of the art, ancient and modern. Real lovers of music are unwilling to have their musical enjoyment confined to the overworked period of the three B's. (p. xxxi, Preface)

Copland wrote this long enough ago that "the three Bs" referred to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms; today, one might as well be referring to Berlioz, Bruckner, and Bizet. Or Bartok, Britten, and Bernstein. (Or even Berg, Berio, and Boulez.) Alan Rich has added a foreword and an epilogue to help bring the book up to date, but it is the mark of a classic that it is still relevant after the passage of half a century.

Copland discusses the "four essential elements of music" (rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone color) in a suitable manner, and follows up by describing the sonorities of the orchestra's instruments and the compositional forms common to the orchestral repertoire. This book is excellent throughout, and I can't think of another volume so accessible for an orchestral neophyte. Copland closes with these words for the listener:

Music can only be really alive when there are listeners who are really alive. To listen intently, to listen consciously, to listen with one's whole intelligence is the least we can do in the furtherance of an art that is one of the glories of mankind. (p. 219)

It's unusual to read a book that so strongly pushes the reader to put it down and listen to music, but that's what Copland has done with What to Listen for in Music. Read it, and then open your ears.

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Hart, Mickey & Fredric Lieberman. Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music (Petaluma, CA: Grateful Dead Books, 1999)

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has assembled (along with Fredric Lieberman) a wide-ranging book of quotes about music, interspersed with reflections from Hart on his long and continuing career. Hart quotes philosophers and poets, composers and conductors, and more than a few fellow musicians on various aspects of music and its magic. Hart barely scratches the surface of the subject in his two hundred pages, but he shares some brilliant insights along the way. Here are my favorites:

"It took me twenty years of study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?" (p. 38, Miles Davis, when an audience member complained that she didn't understand what he was playing; from Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, p. 244)

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." (p.46, Berthold Auerbach)

"Music sobs for you. It laments, it rejoices, it explodes with vigor and life." (p. 159, Anaïs Nin)

Whether you are a musician or an inquisitive listener, you will probably find some thought-provoking words in Hart's compendium.

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Wynton Marsalis & Willie Nelson. Two Men with the Blues (Blue Note, 2008)

Cross-genre musical projects (e.g., symphonic rock music, Sting's Blue Turtles albums, various jazz "remixed" CDs) are often hit-or-miss affairs, whether from ego issues or just because some combinations--whether for idiomatic or idiosyncratic reasons--just don't mesh well. Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson have none of those problems, and their collaboration is a solid hit.

Wynton & Willie jammed on some classic songs during two evenings last January at Lincoln Center, and Blue Note was there to record it all. The result is this disc of jazz and blues standards, ranging from "Basin Street Blues" and "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" to "Stardust" and "Georgia on My Mind." (I recommend purchasing this CD at Borders, as their version contains two bonus tracks, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and "Sweet Georgia Brown.")

Two Men with the Blues is a delightfully laid-back session, with enough fire in the up-tempo portions to keep it engaging. Until the DVD arrives (sometime this fall?) I can't say for certain that Wynton & Willie were enjoying themselves on stage, but it sure sounds as if they were. Their performance on Leno last week (The Tonight Show, Thursday July 10th) was well worth watching...what I saw of it, anyway. (My POS DVR stopped recording halfway through "Bright Lights, Big City." Thanks, Comcast, for not knowing the stop times of the programs you broadcast!) [Thankfully, YouTube has the video here.]

The most fascinating aspect of Wynton & Willie's collaboration--aside from the sheer pleasure of listening to two masters making magic together--is how the band is "tight but loose" simultaneously. Their musical rapport is neither forced nor lackadaisical, but consistently finds that sweet spot where their give-and-take is a joy to hear.

This CD is contagiously fun, and one that deserves to reach a broad audience. Give it a listen!

links:

The Willie and Wynton website is here

A teaser clip for the upcoming DVD is here

Nate Chinen wrote about the first concert's "somewhat tentative start" in "Just a Couple of Guys Dressed in the Blues" at the NYT

Will Layman's review at PopMatters observes that "the concert pits Marsalis's extraordinary jazz group against Nelson's gorgeously laconic sense of time. The result is close to sublime. [...] Marsalis and company sound natural, loose, gritty, and certainly inspired."

Willie Nelson sang with Wynton and the LCJO last week at the Hollywood Bowl; the LA Times review is here

According to the JALC website, Wynton and Willie are getting together for a one-night reprise in the Rose Theatre on 9 February 2009

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Will Layman of PopMatters enthuses over disappearing "smooth jazz" radio stations, writings that "I come to bury smooth jazz, not to praise it... [...] ...its ongoing demise is a hopeful sign for our civilization." He defines the genre better than any other writer I've seen:

Smooth Jazz, then, can be understood as an embrace of clean edges, a rejection of the analog sensibility that sits at the root of all the great American music, whether Delta blues, improvised jazz, or rebellious rock 'n' roll. Smooth Jazz sought to be pleasant and shining and sweet and easy. Like soul music without the sex, like jazz without a pulse of urgency, like rock without the essential roll, Smooth Jazz was an answer without a question.

I would have called smooth jazz "crap without a toilet," but I'm glad to see this soulless pseudo-music finally getting flushed.

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Irvin Mayfield & Ellis Marsalis. Love Songs, Ballads and Standards (Basin Street Records, 2008)

One of New Orleans' young lions of the trumpet, Irvin Mayfield, has recorded a CD with pianist and jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis titled Love Songs, Ballads and Standards. (Long-time readers may recall that Mayfield played an astounding version of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" on the Higher Ground benefit CD, which I reviewed here.)

I had hoped this CD would be more like Wynton's first disc with his father Ellis, Standard Time Volume 3: The Resolution of Romance (2000), but Mayfield's effort is a more inconsistent one. Ten of the tracks on this disc are from a pair of dates in 2004, with the remaining four tracks from 2007. The song choices were largely good ones, although I question the need for two versions of Lennon/McCartney's "Yesterday." Mayfield's playing is respectable despite an occasional slight airiness, and his mute work is often gorgeous; the rollicking exuberance of "Mo' Betta Blues" vies with his use of a Harmon mute on "Don't Know Why" for the disc's best moment.

Mayfield's Love Songs, while not a masterpiece, is nonetheless a solid piece of work. As his playing matures, I'd like to hear more efforts from him in the same musical vein.

(Note: Mayfield is pictured playing the spectacularly decorated Elysian Trumpet, crafted by specialty trumpet maker Dave Monette. (Here is a video clip from The Oregonian of Monette discussing the horn, and Mayfield playing it. For more information on Monette trumpets, read Carl Vigeland's article "A New Horn" from The Atlantic here and here.)

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Grimes, Henry. More Call (private issue, 2003)

After reading the cover article on the remarkable comeback of Henry Grimes in the final issue of Double Bassist magazine, I visited Grimes' website and looked over his discography. The CD More Call was described as "an hour-long bass solo," and--loving the sonority of the double-bass as much as I do--I couldn't resist buying it from him. (I have much less resistance to a $15 CD when I know that the money goes to the artist rather than being siphoned off into the executive suites of some rapacious media conglomerate.)

Recorded at the end of a five-day stint at Columbia University's WKCR, More Call doesn't disappoint by any means; Grimes' solo session is a great listen. Although I prefer his pizzicato to his arco technique, I'm not sure whether it's an issue of idiomatic appropriateness or just personal taste. That aside, I heartily recommend More Call to all lovers of jazz acoustic bass playing. Grimes expresses the joy of music-making from scroll to endpin, and shares it with all of us.

Enjoy!

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Various Artists. Higher Ground: Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert (Blue Note, 2005)

I picked up the "Higher Ground" NOLA benefit CD last week, and was struck in particular by the trumpet-and-piano rendition of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." While thumbing through the liner notes today, I was astounded to learn that trumpeter Irvin Mayfield dedicated that song to his father, who at the time of the concert (17 September 2005) was missing in New Orleans. Sadly, the elder Mayfield has since been declared a victim of drowning as a result of hurricane Katrina.

I certainly don't wish the belittle the skills of trumpeters Wynton Marsalis or Terence Blanchard, both of whom I admire and appreciate, but Mayfield stole the show. Two reviews of the "Higher Ground" CD at www.AllAboutJazz.com praise Mayfield's heart-wrenching performance: Sandy Ingham

The most riveting performance was by trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, who dedicated "Just a Closer Walk With Thee'' to his father, Irvin Sr., who was missing at that time and whose death by drowning has since been confirmed. Mayfield, leader of the brilliant New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and the city's official cultural ambassador, played the somber hymn with grace, but imbued it with pain, and even rage, over what he and so many others had suffered.

and R. Emmet Sweeney:

Even more remarkable is trumpeter Irvin Mayfield's take on the traditional hymn "Just a Closer Walk With Thee." With Ronald Markham on piano, it is light-footed and joyous, a celebration not only of Mayfield's enormous technical ability, but also of turning the self-abnegating tone of the original into a tune of idiosyncratic bliss. The performance was dedicated to his father, Irvin Mayfield, Sr., who was missing due to the hurricane at the time of the concert. Since then he has been declared another victim of the disaster, his son's performance now standing as a shimmering, rafter-shaking memorial.

Mayfield was quoted in the Times-Picayune on 17 November, at which time his father was still missing, as saying:

"Everybody's been asking me, 'How do you deal with this thing with your dad?' Moreso than ever, we've got to do what it is that we do. What I do is play the trumpet and write music. So that's how I'm dealing with this."

The CD is selling well (it's currently #54 at www.amazon.com) and raising money for an important cause. As described on the Blue Note website:

All net profits from the sale of the CD will be donated to the Higher Ground Relief Fund established by Jazz at Lincoln Center and administered through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to benefit the musicians, music industry related enterprises and other individuals and entities from the areas in Greater New Orleans who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina and to provide other general hurricane relief.

I have no doubt that a DVD of the concert would also be successful.

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