Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories

by Carlo Rotella

  They sounded good, not like dabblers trying to get through it but like musicians making music. When it was done, Bertoncini said, “Yeah, let’s take it on the road,” and the campers smiled and nodded, trying to be cool about how pleased they were.

  Then Bertoncini got down to business. “We played that pretty good,” he said, “but all—most—of us had trouble with one chord change. Let’s work on that.” He had the soloists, except Michael (who had gotten it right), go at it again, patiently moving from one to the next until each of the offenders had worked out a solo line that engaged the detail rather than glossing over it. Bertoncini urged them to remember their solutions. “It’s no sin as a jazz player to look at the changes and work out a lick,” he said. The music teacher, who had fudged the change the first time under cover of a frilly run, said contritely, “If you have chops, you can fool people on the changes, but I want to play the changes, not fool people.”

  The evening open-mike jams took place in a cool, green, glass-enclosed atrium across the street from Eastman. The sun set in the windows behind the bandstand; campers trickled in, dispersed themselves among the chairs and tables scattered about the space, and unpacked their instruments. A trio struck up “Take the A Train.” A retired engineer played dense, forceful piano, turning out thick ropes of notes as he rolled from side to side on the bench like a ship in heavy seas. A college-age drummer and a retired corporate executive on bass formed the rhythm section. After a couple of choruses, a rock-jawed FBI agent straight from central casting joined in on tenor sax and took a solo. He timed it perfectly, strolling from the margin to the center of the room and leaping into the little pause between choruses.

  A new crew came on to play “Blue Monk.” A sales assistant from Tokyo took an appropriately Monkian piano solo. A black-bearded psychiatrist from Ottawa, who, in white shorts and black socks, resembled a sorcerer on his day off, played a sinister clarinet solo, fearless and original, if not always in tune. An 87-year-old tenor saxophonist named Carle Porter, bent at mid-back so near to double that the nether curve of his instrument almost scraped the ground when he played, took an enthusiastic turn in the center of the room.

  Seth Arenstein, watching from a seat at the back of the room, muttered, “I gotta get in there,” but his trumpet stayed in its case. He told himself that he wasn’t ready, that it was still only the first day of camp. In his mind’s ear, along with the musical phrases he could have been playing at that moment, sounded a saying he had heard somewhere: Remain silent and you may be thought a fool; open your mouth and remove all doubt.

  All kinds of people walk around all day with music in their heads: snatches of recordings, idealized versions of their own playing, half-formed harmonic and melodic ideas. Most such people hold jobs that have little or nothing to do with music, which obliges them to reach an accommodation with their internal jukeboxes in order to function in the workaday world.

  The stakes in this bargain—the amateur musician’s version of the professional musician’s struggle to balance aesthetic satisfaction with earning a living—can be high. Music can make life worth living, but it can make you crazy, too. Just ask the two campers, a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist, who treat the anguished psyches of musicians as part of their practices. “I went to see the ‘Messiah’ one year,” the psychiatrist said, “and there were fifteen people onstage I’d treated,” a chorus of the musically afflicted.

  Several campers said they have had to resist the musical urge at work, deferring it until later in the day, later in life. John Barrett, a trombone-playing lawyer known to all at Tritone as The Judge, used to be a town justice in Webster, near Rochester. “I wore robes, sat in court,” he said. “I tried to keep a sense of humor, but sometimes you have to be serious, because people make serious mistakes and they have to pay for them. I had to push aside music to do the job.” Charlie Rath, who went to the University of Notre Dame with Gene Bertoncini before embarking on a corporate career, also shoved aside the music in his head when he was at the office. “I tried to suppress it,” he said. “I had to get some work done.” Rath rose to the position of executive vice president for marketing at Wendy’s International before retiring to a comfortable bass-playing existence that has allowed him to let music take over his life, rather than distract him from it.

  The Arenstein brothers are still in their early forties, far from the age when they can think of retiring to make music all day long. Michael forbids himself to listen to jazz when he performs surgery. “Good music in the operating room is no good,” he says. “I get too into it, I pay too much attention to it.” Seth, who hears trumpets in his head, says that music always threatens to take over, even when he is far from both the office and his instrument. “It can even interfere with your golf game. When I get ready to swing I have to clear my head. The last thing in there is usually a piece of music.”

  If all those who hear music in their head could devote themselves to it as they devote themselves to their job, the world would be a more perfect place for them. But, the world being considerably less than perfect, most members of the music-in-the-head tribe have to work hard to find time for music in lives ordered by other priorities. And, since they cannot develop their musical gift as fully as they might like to, they have to learn to be content with making music at all.

  That, in a way, is what Fred Sturm was talking about when he said to his big band, “Kids don’t know how much fun it is to play in time. One of the simple pleasures of playing jazz as you get older is playing in time, just loving time.” He raised his hands to conducting position to cue another try at a rollicking passage that was not yet tight enough. “Okay, at number 36,” he said, “and think time, love time.”

  On Tuesday morning, Mike Kaupa, shepherding his combo through a practice run on “Autumn Leaves,” called on Seth Arenstein to take a solo. The FBI man and a bearded fellow known as Smoky had just taken their solos. Seth paused to collect himself, then delivered one. Nothing exceptional, but it would do. A few choruses later, taking his turn at trading solos with the drummer, Seth came up with a simple, melancholy phrase. When trading again with the drummer on the next tune, he tried a laughing effect at the end of a run. Kaupa said, “Hey, great. Never played jazz before, and you’re doing it.”

  “Inner voices,” John Harmon told his master class of advanced pianists on Wednesday morning, “that’s where all the fun is. It’s always the things in between that create interest beyond what’s already there. You want to pick up every rock and see what’s underneath it.” Harmon sat at a piano; Michael Arenstein and three others sat at desks, taking notes now and then.

  Harmon was talking about the subtle textures and tone colors found in the middle notes of chords, where, he said, the essence of a song often resides. “The trickiest part,” he said, “is getting from one chord to the next in a musical way.” Beginners and midlevel noodlers, trying to play the right scale over each successive chord, tend to produce choppy, dutiful music that sounds like a series of exercises arranged side by side. Listening to a song’s inner voices, and improvising melodic and harmonic lines around them, would help Harmon’s charges resist that tendency.

  “Take chances,” Harmon said. “Get out on limbs and find your way back.”

  After dinner on Wednesday, the Arenstein brothers took stock of the week so far. Seth said he was learning a great deal about instrumental technique, about how to practice, about jazz. He was excited and daunted by the prospect of improvising in public on Thursday and Friday evenings, but he did not want to let that excitement make him lose sight of what mattered most: learning to do things properly. “The actual moment of the solo is not the point,” he insisted. “The next six months is.” He planned, when he got home, to “look for people who want to be serious about playing jazz—not just get together, but people who’ll say, ‘We’ll play these ten tunes in these keys.’” Being equipped to get serious like that, rather than the spirited attaboys he might receive from fellow campers after fumblin
g through a solo in concert, would be the best thing about having spent a week at Tritone.

  Michael, too, was holding back from plunging into the summer-camp melodrama of the climactic talent shows. “This camp is really good for people who don’t get to play with other people much,” he said. “I’m using it differently. I have people to jam with at home. I’m using it to learn.” Gene Bertoncini and John Harmon, especially, were showing him “how to construct more interesting music, form-wise: how to build an introduction, a middle section, not just blow through.” They had inspired Michael to set his sights higher as a musician. “Maybe I’ll do a little arranging, maybe even composing.”

  Both brothers were having a good time at Tritone, perhaps even a life-changing good time, but they wanted to concentrate on doing things well, rather than on sentiment. They wanted camp to be about being a jazz musician rather than about acting like one for a week.

  The beginners in Fred Sturm’s combo—including a kindly but formidable retired teacher on trumpet, a pair of gentle flutists, and the ancient Carle Porter on tenor sax—did not feel ready to perform in public, but Sturm assured them they would be fine. On Thursday morning they picked gingerly through John Coltrane’s “Mr. P. C.,” with Sturm helping out on trombone to keep them together. “Just a couple of things when we get out there onstage,” he told them afterward, projecting optimism. “If you’re going to take two choruses on your solo, you want to keep interest. Think about the architecture a little. Ramp up. Start with slow rhythmic values, quieter, and then you’re getting higher, busier.” Most of his charges looked as if taking two choruses was the last thing on their minds. They would be happy to get through one chorus without having a stroke, or to forgo soloing altogether. Only the eternally game Porter, bent over his horn, did not seem scared. He looked as if two choruses might not be enough for him.

  Sturm hurried off to grab a sandwich for lunch, then returned to meet with his other ensemble, the big band. He was still recruiting soloists for their Friday evening concert. “Anybody else who hasn’t gotten around to volunteering?” he pressed. “Anybody? I won’t name names, like Seth. How about it, Seth? Do you want to take a solo?” Seth Arenstein said, “No,” smiling but emphatic.

  Kilbourn Hall, august and plush, holds some 450 people. Campers, their friends and families, and curious locals half-filled the hall on Thursday evening for the combo show.

  The audience’s preconcert hubbub fell away, and the pregnant hush that followed seemed to stretch and stretch—until Carle Porter’s voice carried into the hall from offstage, calling out, in mock anguish, “I can’t go on!” Smiling devilishly, he led Fred Sturm’s combo onto the stage a moment later. He took the first solo, too, mistakes and all, honking and growling.

  Sturm’s teaching and optimism had paid off. The beginners played their very best, better than they had in practice sessions. Having made it through the first tune, as the crowd applauded them, Porter and the trumpeter spontaneously turned to each other and shook hands; so did the flutists, flushed with joyful relief. Not exactly poker-faced jazz cool, but on this evening who needed it?

  The combos came on one after another, progressing from beginners to advanced players. Each played a couple of tunes and offered some nugget of pleasure. Especially at the beginning, most of the concert’s charge derived from the drama of people who do something else for a living putting on a show. The crowd applauded them for their pluck as much as anything else, for daring to bare their secret musical lives in public.

  Seth Arenstein took his solos, on “Autumn Leaves” and an odd tune called “Farm Fresh Reggae,” with eyes and trumpet raised skyward. He kept calm and did not rush, creating a simple figure to explore in one solo and employing a mute in the other. He had a full, round tone and a measured air that made simplicity seem musically direct rather than rudimentary. Thirty years before, when he was a kid, his teachers had made him memorize his chords and scales. He had never really put that knowledge to use until called upon to improvise at Tritone.

  The four singers came on, one by one, to do their numbers. They had all worked hard with Janet Planet to temper their Broadway and operatic training with jazz technique, and the lessons had taken, at least in part. One camper’s “I’m Beginning to See the Light” had more jazz in it than it did on Monday, for instance, but when she arrived at the last “light” she gave it the big opera treatment from which Planet had been trying to dissuade her all week.

  Bertoncini’s combo came out to close the show. Michael Arenstein took a masterful solo on their brisk, coolly rephrased “No Greater Love,” telling a story in chord colors and long, twisting lines. The pleasure of the concert had changed. The more advanced groups were good enough that one could stop worrying about catastrophes and enjoy the free music.

  After the concert, in the lobby of Kilbourn Hall, Seth took back what he had said about the relative unimportance of his first public performance as a jazz player. “No, it’s a big deal,” he said, smiling broadly, relieved and proud, storing the evening to take out and reconsider later.

  At the big band’s dress rehearsal on Friday, when Fred Sturm asked one last time for volunteers, Seth sheepishly raised his hand, and every body gave him a cheer. When it came time to take that solo in the evening concert, on a tune called “Follow the Leader,” Seth rose from the back row and opened with a surprise quotation from Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues,” which went over big. He kind of got through the rest of it, but, still, he had pulled off a musical witticism onstage, which for a novice improviser took presence of mind and some nerve.

  As human drama, the two concerts were satisfying, and sometimes as jazz, too. When the music was good, it was good enough; when it was bad, it was honest and heartfelt. The expression of stunned joy that typically spread over the face of a camper after taking a solo seemed well earned. And when Sturm’s big band got going, mostly on the tracks but just a little out of control, the sheer volume of blowing and aspiration carried everyone away with it.

  The teachers at Tritone urged the campers to strip down their playing to its essence, rather than anxiously cluttering the soundscape with rote licks and scales. They preached a gospel of improvisational simplicity: the music you wish you could play is inside the music you can already play, not out there somewhere in an undiscovered realm of genius. And, at least during the week they spent at fantasy camp, the campers could believe in the larger application of this message: when you strip away the clutter of living and devote yourself to music, you find that the life you wish you could lead is already there, inside the life you lead now.

  * * *

  Original publication: Washington Post Magazine, June 30, 2002.

  Acknowledgments

  I OWE A DEBT of gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, and the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, all of which supported work that went into this book. And I owe special thanks to the editors with whom I worked on these pieces. There’s almost nothing better in a writer’s life than a good editor, and there’s a particular deep satisfaction in working with an excellent editor you’ve worked with before. My partnerships with David Rowell, Dean Robinson, James Burnett, and Kathrin Day Lassila are all represented by more than one piece in this book. There’s just one piece in the book that I wrote for Anne Fadiman, and she no longer runs a magazine, but she’s on my list of keepers as well. I have much to thank her for, not least the pleasure I take in being responsible for the first (and, I would think, last) appearance in the pages of The American Scholar of the phrase, “I got your Bozo no-no right here, clown.” My thanks as well to Robert Devens, another trusted editor I’ve worked with before; Kailee Kremer, a copy editor with a sharp eye and a sure touch; and their colleagues at the University of Chicago Press. I have been a little surprised by how much it matters to me that this book, like its author, comes from the South Side of Chicago.

  laying in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories