Author: Devra Hall Levy

Gifts That Keep On Giving

I was happy to learn that ArtistShare has a method that allows one to purchase a participation offer as a gift for someone else. This applies not just to my own project offers at SnapSizzleBop, but to any ArtistShare-powered project. My favorite “artists” include, in alphabetical order, Bob Brookmeyer, Billy Childs, Scott Colley, Jim Hall, Ingrid Jensen, Donny McCaslin, and Maria Schneider.

The ArtistShare site has pages with featured artists and featured projects. So check them all out, and be sure to visit SnapSizzleBop too.

Here are the instructions for giving the gift of participation:

The person giving the gift should purchase the Participant Offer as normal. After the purchase is complete, the purchaser should send an email addressed to programming at artistshare.com to let them know that they giving the Participant Offer as a gift and would like to transfer the account to the appropriate person. The gift-giver will need to provide the recipient’s name and email address. ArtistShare will transfer the account to the individual and let the purchaser know that the change is complete. They will also send an email to the person receiving the gift to let them know that an account/participant offer has been set up for them.

Site-Reading

“…many, perhaps most of the great things that get done in this world, especially in the realm of art, are done by people with no common sense whatsoever.”

so writes Terry Teachout in the mailbox section of today’s blog post. He was responding to an email he received wherein the correspondent mentioned some young dancers “who had so little common sense and so much passion for dance….”

Family and friends may wonder why we toil at projects that hold so little hope of substantial financial gain, and I guess passion is as good an answer as any. The image of a starving-artist-in-the garret loses its allure with age and the fires of idealism may be reduced to smoldering embers, but creative passions never die.

***

Rifftides offers a short list of recommended holiday music so I thought I’d tell you what’s coming through the speakers at our house during the holidays:

  • Leon Redbone – Christmas Island
  • The Three Tenors Christmas (Carreras, Domingo and Pavorotti)
  • A Jazz Piano Christmas (Benny Green, Junior Mance, John Lewis, Tommy Flanagan…)
  • A Nancy Wilson Christmas
  • Christmas with Etta Jones
  • Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song
  • Jimmy Smith – Christmas Cookin’ (smokin’ big band arrangements by Billy Byers)
  • Stevan Pasero – Christmas Classics for Guitar (tracks range from Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” to “Deck the Halls”
  • Guitars for Christmas — Joe Negri (MCG Jazz)

If rock music is your thing, best check in with Carl over at Cahl’s Juke Joint

***

Meanwhile Anne, over at Just Muttering, has discovered Classical Trumpet?! I was glad to see a comment mentioning The Canadian Brass. I love that group. Luther Henderson wrote some really wonderful arrangements for the quintet (2 trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba). I’m posting here the first two-and-a-half minutes or so of their rendition of Brass Toccata as performed at a memorial celebration for Luther. (Sorry, the recording quality is not great.) They’ve done lots and lots of recordings — from Pachelbel and Vivaldi to Fats Waller and Gershwin — so I’d be surprised if you don’t find one that includes some of your favorite selections.

Dad Gets Another Award

On Monday, November 27th, at the New Morning jazz club in Paris, Jim Hall was was named a “Choc Jazzman de l’année 2006.” According to Editor Alex Dutilh:

Jazzman is the best seller of French (and European, actually) jazz magazines. Every month we give quotations (like Down Beat stars) in our CD and DVD reviews. The higher one (equivalent of 5 stars) is called “Choc Jazzman”. At the end of the year, the editorial staff look at all the “Chocs” given between January and December and decides which will be “Chocs de l’année” (best of the year). They are 15 : 1 is elected by the readers sending post cards (Patricia Barber’s “Mythology” is their choice for 2006), 1 DVD, 1 reissue or never released historic session… and 12 “new recordings”.

Dad was not able to attend the Parisian ceremony, but he sent this message:

Un Petit Discours de Remerciement

Mes chers amis qui aiment le jazz:

J’ai été très content l’annee passe quand j’ai gagné un Choc Jazzman 2005 — l’idée que j’ai gagné une autre cette annee me comble.

C’est un privilège de jouer la musique et quand l’audience dit “bravo” – dans les clubs ou sur les pages des publications périodiques – c’est une gratification extraordinaire.

Jouer du jazz, c’est une exploration, et quand je reçois un honneur comme un Choc Jazzman ca me dit que vous etes avec moi dans le voyage — alors je vous remercie beaucoup!

J’écrivais ces mots avec l’assistance de ma fille qui parle français une peu mieux que moi; nous esperons que vous comprenez bien la gratitude énorme que je me sentais.

Je suis désolé que je ne peux pas etre la, en personne, pour accepter ce prix.

Encore une fois, je vous remercie beaucoup.

Jim Hall

Alex will be in New York for IAJE in January and plans to attend the January 11th ceremony at the French Embassy when Dad will receive his Chevalier medal. I’m betting he’ll bring with him the Choc Jazzman trophy.

Green Kryptonite

I seem to have been stripped of my super powers. No longer can I accomplish everything plus by yesterday.

Working on two books while planning a third, plus blogging, plus other cash-paying tasks has created an overwhelming overload, with overwhelming being the operative word — brain freeze, a near total shut down.

The symptoms include an inability to think clearly and a pain in my own neck; literally, it’s on the left side. I finally figured out that the pain is caused by Freecell (yes, that solitaire-like game that comes with the Windows operating system). It seems that the amount of time I spend playing Freecell on the computer is an excellent inverse indicator of how “in-control” I’m feeling about my current projects. I’m not shirking my tasks in lieu of playtime — the obsessive/compulsive drive that keeps me clicking feels like an addiction and as such it’s really not fun. Nor is it relaxing. So why “play”? Probably because I can win and feel like I’ve accomplished something. When I lose, I just click again until I win…hence the addictive nature of it. It runs neck-in-neck with re-arranging the furniture, books, and/or files in my office, although the re-arranging activities do allow me to claim some trickle-down benefit to the waiting work that is not the case with Freecell.

So what’s the antidote? To identify small easy-to-complete tasks. Sounds simple but it’s more than a notion when my projects are all intertwined. It’s the tangle that must be unraveled and sometimes it cannot be done by force. It’s not a matter of will-power or dedication, my butt is firmly planted in the chair, but it does remind me of trying to meditate — I am unable to make my mind go blank, and I find it equally hard to imagine a single image, whether it’s white light or a flower or a shoe. My mind wanders, faster and farther the harder I try to rein it in. I’ve heard that constant jumping around from one figurative treetop to the next described as ”monkey brain.” So if trying hard makes it worse, perhaps not trying at all will allow some thoughts to crystallize and emerge on their own.

Let’s hope so, ’cause I’ve got a lot of work to do.

“Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth… But amusing? Never.”
–Edna Ferber (1887–1968), U.S. writer. A Peculiar Treasure, ch. 1 (1939).

I Heard It Through The Grapevine…Online

Tonight, Friday, Dec. 1, 8pm Eastern, WGBH radio host Steve Schwartz will feature dad’s music. I’m guessing it’s something of a birthday feature as dad’s birthday is December 4.  Listen to Jim Hall Jazz from Studio Four on the radio (89.7) or online (the Listen Live link is under the Radio menu on the left).

Comments, anyone?

At the urging of several readers, I am going to experiment with allowing Comments. If I’ve got the settings right, comments will not show up until I see and approve them, not for censorship but to protect us all from the gazillions of spam messages. So let’s give it a try.
To comment on a particular blog post, click on the Comments link shown on the right side just below the headline, date and category lines for that post.

Party Excuses and Sleep Deprivation

I don’t have time to spend trolling the Internet for sillies like this one, but my daily dose of news story ideas and resources (Al’s Morning Meeting: Story ideas that you can localize and enterprise) sometimes includes an amusement such as this online Holiday Party Excuse Generator created by a company called Enlighten.

Answer a few simple questions and in the time it takes to warble “fa la la la la”, you’ll have an excuse that will either endear or enrage a prospective host….

Al said: Always trying to be helpful, I want to get you out of attending the crummy parties that you want to avoid. Thanks, Al.

Of course, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to go to a party. Maybe you don’t like the host, or maybe you’re a Scrooge, or maybe, just maybe, you have so much work to do that you can’t take time out to play. It seems that time is the issue for lots of folks who want, or need, to pack more into a day, and they are using drugs to keep them going and to help them sleep. This is nothing new, but the drug choices are new…some still in the research phase. My friend, Phil, who remembers “the programmers anti-sleep potion of choice, Mountain Dew,” pointed me to “Get ready for 24-hour living,” an article at NewScientist.com.

Mind you, I am a self-confessed workaholic, and as it is my natural sleep cycle these days averages 6 hours a night. Would I be interested in a pill that would let me get 4 hours of good, refreshing sleep, and do me no bodily harm? Let’s forget for a moment that bodily harm part, because there are always three-dozen side effects, the worst of which won’t be discovered for 10-20 years. I might be tempted. But at this stage in my life I am pondering how I should be spending my time and questioning the endless hours spent at the computer. Having more time in the day is useless if it is not time well spent. And therein, as they say, lies the rub — how to define well spent. What’s your definition?

Words To The Wise

I’m beginning to receive a lot of press releases promoting events and products. Whether or not these announcements might be of interest to you, I do not make a habit of posting the majority of them because my blog is not a public broadcast station and I do not consider myself to be a news service with a capital N as in The News, even when that news is entertainment-related. At those times when I am writing for “the press,” I do consider myself to be a journalist, and no matter what the outlet, I do hold myself to journalistic standards when writing nonfiction, but DevraDoWrite is a blog, and as such it is no more and no less than a platform for my thoughts and ideas, which hopefully hold some modicum of interest or entertainment value for you, my readers. Why else would you be here?

You might then wonder why I post the occassional press release and review the random CD, performance or movie. Usually it is because the annoucement has triggered some related thoughts that I wish to explore and share. Sometimes my discourse is right on point, but often times, like today, it is merely tangential. Today’s case is vocabulary-driven, truly an act of simple curiosity aroused by a press release from the USAF Band regarding “Acapella Music of the Empyrean.” I love coming across words that are new to me, and empyrean was an unfamiliar word.

“Acapella Music of the Empyrean featuring Members of The Singing Sergeants” is the title a December 9th concert that is part of The United States Air Force Band Chamber Players Series held at Anderson House Museum (2118 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.). This free concert starts at 1:30 p.m. but because I live on the left coast and have no plans to be in D.C. next month, rendering me unable to attend, listen, and learn, I turned to an alternative source of enlightenment: the Internet.

Looking it up in the Word of the Day Archive, I found the following definitions and examples:

empyrean \em-py-REE-uhn; -PEER-ee-\, noun:
1. The highest heaven, in ancient belief usually thought to be a realm of pure fire or light.
2. Heaven; paradise.
3. The heavens; the sky.

adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to the empyrean of ancient belief.

She might have been an angel arguing a point in the empyrean if she hadn’t been, so completely, a woman.
— Edith Wharton, “The Long Run”, The Atlantic, Feburary 1912

In the poem — one he had the good sense finally to abandon — he pictured himself as a blind moth raised among butterflies, which for a brief moment had found itself rising upward into the empyrean to behold “Great horizons and systems and shores all along,” only to find its wings crumpling and itself falling — like Icarus — back to earth.
— Paul Mariani, The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane

In my experience, the excitement generated by a truly fresh and original piece of writing is the rocket fuel that lifts Grub Street’s rackety skylab — with its grizzled crew of editors, publishers, agents, booksellers, publicists — into orbit in the empyrean.
— Robert McCrum, “Young blood”, The Observer, August 26, 2001

Empyrean comes from Medieval Latin empyreum, ultimately from Greek empurios, from en-, “in” + pyr, “fire.”

Wikipedia says empyrean can mean several things, and definitions range from the biblical to the brewery:

* In Christian theology, the Empyrean (also called the heavenly rose, or the mind of God) is the name of the highest heaven.
* In Paradiso, the final book of The Divine Comedy, the Empyrean, based on the above, is the abode of God.
* In Asheron’s Call, Empyrean refers to a race of highly intelligent humanoid beings inhabiting the planet Auberean.
* In Digital Devil Saga, Empyrean Halo is a powerful attack spell, the name referring to the heavenly rose in The Divine Comedy.
* Empyrean Brewing Company is a brewery located in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Although I do ponder the merits of using words that require readers to have a dictionary at hand, I am nonetheless on the perpetual quest to expand my vocabulary. To that end, I subscribe to a weekdaily email from wordsmith.org that serves up a word with definitions and sample uses, each week’s offerings being thematically related. Sometimes the words are new to me and on occassion I make a note to add one to my vocabulary list. A few weeks back the theme was words about books, and here are three of those words:

auctorial (ok-TOR-ee-uhl) adjective

Pertaining to an author

[From Latin auctor (author, creator), from augere (to create). Ultimately from the Indo-European root aug- (increase) which is also the source of auction, authorize, inaugurate, augment, august, auxiliary, and nickname (“a nickname” is a splitting of the earlier “an ekename”, literally, an additional name).]

fascicle (FAS-i-kuhl) noun

1. Part of a book published in installments. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary was published in fascicles.

2. A bundle. For example, a bundle of nerve or muscle fibers, or a bundle of leaves.

[From Latin fasciculus, diminutive of fascis (bundle).]

The word fascism is related. It refers to the Latin fascis (a bundle or a group) and also to the emblem adopted by Mussolini: a bundle of twigs that was carried as a sign of the power of a magistrate in ancient Rome.

hornbook (HORN-book) noun

A primer.

[From horn + book. In earlier times, a hornbook was a book containing the alphabet or other material for children. Though it would be stretching the definition of book by the present standard — it had a wooden paddle with a handle that held a paper with learning material protected by the transparent layer of a cow’s horn.]

See pictures of hornbooks here

By the way, WordSmith.org is also the home of the Internet Anagram Server that I had so much fun with early in my blogging days — Raison D’Etre (Monday May 02nd 2005), Word Trips (Friday July 08th 2005), and Caveat Lector Dictionaria/Encyclopedia (Tuesday September 27th 2005).

And in case you are wondering, the purpose of today’s tour-de-words is not to warn you off of sending me press releases. Au contraire. I love to read them, never knowing what serendipity-dowrite might stike. When my little gray cells are sufficiently stimulated, you’ll read about it right here. So stay tuned and keep in touch.

Son of Jazz Man To Be Governor

Laurie Goldstein writes in with this tidbit that is making the rounds of jazz afficiandos; she cites the original source of the info as coming from Ira Gitler via a mutual friend.

Laurdine “Pat” Patrick (1929 – 1991) was a baritone saxophone player best-known for his over forty years’ association with Sun Ra. As well as his long-term membership of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Patrick also played with John Coltrane (appearing on Africa/Brass in 1961), Mongo Santamaría (appearing on the hits Watermelon Man and Yeh Yeh), and in Thelonious Monk’s quartet in the early 1970s. His son is Massachusetts governor-elect Deval Patrick.

Laurie is a music publishing administrator handling the catalogs of Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Letta Mbulu & Caiphus Semenya, Freddie Hubbard, Turbintons, Buddy Williams, Joe Williams, Joe Zawinul, Carl Allen, Skip Anderson, Donald Brown, Adela Dalto, Vincent Herring, Javon Jackson, and others. Her company, L’oro Music, is devoted to protecting musical copyrights while encouraging the licensing of its music in film, tv, recordings, print, commercials and other uses, and the website includes a very informative guide to obtaining licenses for mechanical, synchronization, print, performing rights, grand rights, samples and permissions, plus a FAQ with brief outlines of copyright, licenses, permissions and music publishing terms, and links to additional sources for more detailed information.

More Radio

While I’m on the subject of promoting good radio broadcasts, you should tune in to WBGO tomorrow night (Sunday, Nov 12, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Standard Time) and listen to the music of Bob Brookmeyer. Producer Bill Kirchner writes:

Valve trombonist/pianist/composer/arranger Bob Brookmeyer (b. 1929) has been a major jazz musician for more than a half-century. Only in the past 25 years, though, has he been widely recognized as one of jazz’s finest living composers.

We’ll hear recent recordings of Brookmeyer’s writing for his Europe-based New Art Orchestra. Plus a surprise.

If you are a WBGO regular you’ll recognize that this is part of the “Jazz From the Archives” series that runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3) presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies.

NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts online.