THE SOCRATIC METHOD?
As Socrates famously wrote, "The unexamined life is not worth living." One would well posit that the unchallenged life is not worth living. Or, if it is, not as satisfying.
Most of my music-related activity since leaving the Air Force Band in late 1969 has been as an author and critic, my playing restricted solely to playing along with records at home.
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Soloist Jim Szantor as lead alto David Bixler gives the cutoff on the final chord.
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But that changed on Aug. 11 when I performed as a guest soloist on clarinet with the fabled Birch Creek Jazz Orchestra, a big band made up of some of the best jazz players in the country, comprising as they do the faculty that teaches the students who come to Egg Harbor in Door County for two-week sessions of intensive training and performance opportunities. It's sort of a musical boot camp but with kindly but highly decorated instructors.
My feature spot was "Ballad for Benny" a tune written by the late, great jazz composer and saxophonist Oliver Nelson, who was commissioned by Benny Goodman to write new material for the band's historic 1962 tour of the Soviet Union. It was such a significant cultural/political event back then that Walter Cronkite often led the CBS Nightly News with the band's latest exploits.
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The 17-piece Birch Creek Jazz Orchestra prior to my introduction.
This tune was recorded by the Oliver Nelson Orchestra (with the great Phil Woods in a rare outing on clarinet instead of his usual lustrous alto sax) but never performed publicly in this country--till now. If you do an internet search on some of the illustrious players in the band behind me --Dennis Mackrel, Clay Jenkins, Doug Stone, David Bixler, Tanya Darby, to name a few--you'll see why I'm so proud to have been selected to perform with them.
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Part of the evening's program.
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It was an oppressively muggy night (close to 100 percent humidity) in the un-air-conditioned hall, making intonation more of a challenge than usual. It took some months of chipping away at the rust that had accumulated over the years on my woodwind chops, but I was determined to have one last dance, so to speak, with the idiom that I have loved for a lifetime. To paraphrase the late Karl Wallenda of the famed aerial troupe The Flying Wallendas, "Life is the bandstand. The rest is just waiting."
Luckily for me, the wait is over.
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