Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Old Friends, New Music

From the "Road Not Taken Category" (or more accurately, "A Detour" :-))...

I just attended a beautiful show at the Village Vanguard entitled "The 3 Cohens Sextet". It featured siblings Anat Cohen on tenor sax and clarinet, Yuval Cohen on soprano sax, and Avishai Cohen on trumpet. The stellar rhythm section consisted of Aaron Goldberg on piano, Matt Penman on bass, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums.

Yuval Cohen is a special story for me. When I was at Berklee College of Music in Boston in the mid-90's, Yuval and I became great friends as we were both students of saxophone legend Joe Viola. Yuval, while a far more advanced player than I, was always gracious and a wonderful friend. I spent a lot of time picking his brain about saxophone technique and playing sessions, liberally interspersed with games of chess and basketball...through Yuval I met his younger siblings, Anat and Avishai, both prodigious talents who also came to study at Berklee from Israel. My family even had the pleasure of hosting them for a wonderful day at the ocean in Gloucester, Massachusetts. One of the things I remember Yuval telling me was his dream of one day writing original music for, and starting a band with, his family.

Unfortunately, what was a very promising start to a music career was halted when Yuval developed a medical condition during an international tour that left him unable to use his hands. When I last visited him in Israel, he had stopped playing completely and had begun a career in, coincidentally enough, law...

Well, Yuval is back and then some. With a lot of hard work he regained the ability to play and has subsequently put his legal work on hold to resume a thriving musical life. He has formed his dream band with Anat and Avishai (both of whom are now at the top of the New York and international jazz scene), and "The 3 Cohens" are in the midst of a week-long date at the most storied venue in jazz. He is truly an inspiration to me.

So, onto the music! I attended the 11pm show on Wednesday, and was thrilled by a generous six song set. The evening featured music by all of the Cohens, including an uptempo arrangement of "Ornithology" by Avishai, Yuval's innovative re-harmonization of "Love and the Weather," and Anat's original composition, "Yuvali." All three Cohens displayed a remarkable virtuosity on their respective instruments, but that's par for the course in the upper echelons of the jazz world. What sets them apart-- as individual players and as a unit-- is their warmth and communication, which seems to feed their creativity as well. I can't remember the last time that I witnessed a group of musicians so attuned to each other. In a music scene renowned for it's detachment, the Cohens were rooting each other on, dancing, and letting out low whistles after particularly cool solos. And it translated into greater creative energy for each of them, for the rest of the rhythm section, and engaged the audience. Truly a pleasure.

As for the rest of the band, the superlatives get a little old, so I'll leave it that they are each "monsters" (that's a high compliment in jazz parlance). Matt Penman and Greg Hutchinson are some of the most skilled, creative and in-demand musicians on the jazz scene today. And Aaron Goldberg is simply amazing. Aaron and I actually go back further than Yuval and I do: we played in a school jazz band together in 1989-1990. He was good when he started, really good in short order, and soon became amazing (simultaneously attending Harvard while the rest of us were slogging through music school). He is now one of the world's leading voices on jazz piano, and he thrilled the audience and his band-mates with spell-binding solos and sensitive interpretations of the originals...

The 3 Cohens have released several recordings, and I highly recommend them all, particularly their latest, "Braid" (which also features Aaron Goldberg). They bring joy to their music and you will love it.

I'll close by saying that even though my evening was about the music and warm reunions (they are still the same good-natured and humble people they were as students), I couldn't help but think about what an inspiring story Yuval, Anat and Avishai are. They have worked their way from being complete unknowns from another country to trailblazers on the New York jazz scene, they have had overcome all sorts of adversity and odds, and their love and support for each other is apparent and heart-warming. I thought about meeting them as kids almost 15 years ago, and it makes me wonder what other special talent is hiding in unusual places...

Congratulations again, guys. You sound wonderful. Joe Viola would be very proud...

Thursday, June 18, 2009

You can't Park here...

Take a moment the next time you're walking through any of the parks in Manhattan-- not just Central Park but smaller ones like Washington Square Park, Roosevelt Park or even some of the wider concrete spaces like Union Square-- and you might just have the chance to hear some truly beautiful and original music performed by the legions of talented musicians who take to the streets to support themselves in the summer (hmm, apparently they are so good that they inspire run-on sentences...)

The technical term for it is "Busking," and it is a tradition stretching back to at least Roman times (and applies to numerous forms of art and performance). Obviously the quality can vary, but I have personally been amazed at the level of musicianship that I see around town. There's a jazz urban legend about New York that there are dozens of sax players better than Coltrane driving cabs around the city. I had personally put this in the alligators-in-the-sewers category, but the first time I caught the "E" train from the West 4th Street subway stop I heard a solo sax player who sounded like a late period John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy hybrid. So I now approach sewer drains a little more carefully...

From the jazz musician's perspective, it's a no brainer. Which would you rather do: pay $30/hour to practice in a dingy, roach-infested, air-condition-free practice warehouse, or sit outside in a beautiful urban park and share your music with people from all walks of life, many of whom will throw you some money? Right, next question. The only potential problem is city regulation/enforcement. For the subways, NYC licenses a limited number of performers, but the parks are theoretically fair game as long as you're not holding an amplified concert or something.

Unless you're me. When it comes to outdoor performance, I must have obtained my degree from Murphy's Law School, because in 17 years of attempts, I have never once failed to encounter some sort of problem (and including such diverse locations as Harvard Square, Tel Aviv and Paris). It's gotten so bad that I feel guilty accepting invitations to "busk" with other players. A few days ago a good friend of mine (and excellent tenor player), Connell Thompson, asked me to sit in with his group in Central Park. Perfect weather, perfect spot-- on a pathway right above the Bethesda Angel Fountain with a few park benches for people to sit and listen. It was a nice acoustic quartet with bass, vocals, guitar and tenor sax and they were playing mostly standards, and people were really getting into it. I showed up, played one song ("It Could Happen To You," ironically enough) and an unmarked silver car immediately drove up. A Kojak-looking man rolled down the window which prompted the following exchange:


Kojak Man: You guys are going to have to stop, you are in a pathway.


Guitarist (after looking at the wide open stretch of concrete that Kojak just drove up on): Ok.


Kojak Man: And just in case you were wondering, I'm the police.


Guitarist: We weren't wondering, but ok.


And thus ended my Central Park debut. Though not before I was tempted to start playing "Don't Stand So Close To Me" or "Gee, Officer Krupke." Sorry guys!


So, the next time that you see some musicians busking in a park, take the opportunity to stop and listen to what just might be concert-quality music. You might be hearing the next John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley or Eric Dolphy. And you may not have long before they get chased away. So throw money and watch out for the gators...


Monday, June 15, 2009

Greetings and Salutations

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my blog! I just wanted to let you know a little more about me and the purpose of this blog-- if you're going to take the time to read it, the very least I can do is to give you a compelling reason why you should keep reading it...

My name is Peter Cobb, and I am a jazz saxophonist living in New York City. I moved up here in the Fall of 2008 to begin a Master's Degree Program at NYU, but simply being a musician on the New York scene is an education in itself. Think of it like this: in every town across the country (and around the world at this point), there is one young musician who can play circles around everybody else. He/she has earned scholarships and accolades, surpassed his/her teachers, and played all of the best gigs in that town. And at some point, each of these remarkable musicians comes to New York to learn from the masters and wade through the deepest talent pool in the world.

Of course, in New York you're going to find a few oddballs here and there, including some former attorneys. Like me. While I grew up in Boston and attended Berklee College of Music in the mid 1990's, I spent much of the past decade in Philadelphia, first attending UPenn Law School and then working as a judicial law clerk (with some occasional freelance work on federal disability-rights cases). I never gave up playing jazz, however, and I was very fortunate to join a band run by master guitarist Steve Giordano. Eventually the opportunity cost of practicing law versus practicing saxophone became too great-- I realized that I couldn't do either profession justice (no pun intended) with divided attention. And I chose jazz...

After a year or so spent gigging and teaching in Philadelphia, New York's gravitational pull became too strong, and I moved here to continue an education I had left off over ten years ago. In some ways I felt a little like Robert Redford's character in "The Natural" (without the stratospheric talent level) when he walks onto the field for the first time as a 30-something year old ballplayer and-- already considered ancient for beginning a baseball career--is greeted by stares of skeptical amusement...ok, maybe not quite that bad but you get the idea. Everywhere I turned I met/heard kids who were yet to begin shaving consistently but who could play every John Coltrane solo from memory. Backwards.

But therein lies the fun. If you can manage to put aside your own ego and self-doubts, you'll find an incredible array of talent and wisdom among your peers. By attending concerts, underground jam sessions, master classes, experimental performances or by simply grabbing a cup of coffee while practicing, my friends and fellow musicians have given me insights into the origins and future directions of this music. I've learned equally from young prodigies to older masters, and discovered that jazz is truly a language to which anyone can contribute. Many of them will devote their lives to this art in relative anonymity, and I hope to make this blog their story as much as mine. To quote jazz trumpet great (and NYU professor) Ralph Alessi, there's gold there...

Thanks again for reading, and I'd love to get your feedback, musical or otherwise!