Coming Up with the concept for the Tales of Time album
Initially, when Clarence Penn suggested I do a record in 2015, I was hesitant. I thought to myself, I’m not someone who has an overwhelming amount of chops. Also, I’ve been playing Broadway tours for the past ten years. Who will listen to this record? Will my musical theater friends care? Will I be able to make a statement musically? After all, I hadn’t even played jazz regularly since 2003!
In May of 2019, the Charlie And the Chocolate Factory tour got its closing notice for the fall. We only had four and a half months of tour left. What’s the next adventure?
I was scoring a short film at the time and started to play around on the keyboard with ideas for a theme for a movie. It was just something to do to be productive and put me In a creative headspace! Then I thought as I was scoring this movie to myself, maybe I do have something to offer to the music community! (After all, I did win a Telly Award for the Invaders Web series! ). I was chatting with a good friend of mine about this potential record project that was briefly an idea years ago. His words inspired me ( speaking of Clarence) as he said “ He’s not going to put his name on it, if he did t believe you could do
this! “
I contacted Clarence soon after about his interest in doing this record project! He was interested and we set up a meeting! The meeting was exactly what I needed to hear! He had a game plan for what to do! It was almost like having an assignment or homework! He knew that I had done film scores so his assignment was for me to write original music in different time signatures. He had given me a potential budget, lists of musicians to try to be on the album and a list of how he could help me make this project come to fruition!
I went home after this meeting incredibly excited! I was inspired to check out as much odd time music as I could. Much of the music were artists I were familiar with but many I had discovered because of my eagerness to discover! I found myself checking out artists like Sting, Radiohead, Aaron Parks, Bartok, Avishai Cohen, Dave Holland, Dave Douglas and Maria Schneider amongst many others. My goal was to write music that was in 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9. The trick was to make it sound like music and not like a math experiment.
I came up with a few ideas for grooves first. Then the chords, then the melody. Wasn’t on purpose, it just was my process. I had never written anything in 9 or even played in the time signature! Now was as good a time as any to learn! I set out to write singable melodies that can address as the glue for keeping these tunes together.
One writing style that I’ve always wanted to try writing was a Fugue! I realized that soon into the process, I had a difficult time bebop type melodies. So I set out to do something different! Sir Roland Hanna used to say “ If so and so ( insert artist or composer) could do it, then why can’t I?” So I decided if the Modern Jazz Quartet can play fugues and such, why can’t I?
At my first pre production meeting with Clarence, I asked him straight out. “ is this too classical? Is this ok to do this on a jazz record?” His reply was “ Its honest and you’re not trying to do something or write something you can’t do!” As an artist, is there anything better than hearing that? I always want my playing to be honest and I always approach music with a certain amount of integrity. I hope that when you listen to my music, you as a listener, not for the fugues I wrote but for the record as a whole, you feel that way too!
How to get out of your head about investing
I’m not a financial advisor. I’m not a CPA nor do I work in the financial world. However, the pandemic for us artists, small business owners, and workers in the gig economy was sort of economic darwinism. This is not a how to invest or what to invest in, but rather a plea for my fellow workers to start saving because our careers are fragile. I just wanted to share a few concepts and quotes that I hope inspires you to start investing! I definitely think of these when I sometimes struggle myself.
One of my favorite Warren Buffett quotes is “If you don’t make money while you sleep, you’ll work until you die”. I believe he’s inferring two things. First the power of compounding and second inflation. For compounding, if you invest in something with a dividend and you reinvest it, it starts to compound. For example, let’s say you have a stock where the price is $100 and has a dividend of 1%. You have only 1 share. You get a dollar dividend. You reinvest the dollar, then next time you get the dividend, it’ll be based off the 1.01 share so the payout will be slightly larger.
The second example of inflation is when I played jazz gigs in the late 90s. The gigs would pay $50. Back then, that would get me a full tank of gas, and a few lunches. Now it barely would cover the gas. Everything keeps getting more expensive, so with our money we get less and less.
The best time to invest is yesterday! Because of the power of compounding, the longer you have money invested, the more it will grow. On average, the market goes up 10% a year but more realistically 6% or 7%. Jim Cramer said that if you invest 10,000 in an index fund in your teenage years, and don’t touch it, that 10k could possibly turn into 450k. And that’s without adding anything else! Pretty powerful stuff. One thing in my own experience is when you are just starting out, if the market goes up or down 1%, it doesn’t feel like you e gained or lost anything. But when you keep at it, it does, let’s say you have 100,000 in the market, if the market goes up or down 1% that’s 1,000 dollars!! That’s a lot of $50 gigs! Lol.
I highly recommend reading books like
I can Teach you to be rich , check out some financial podcasts like Investtalk. Hire a financial coach. I could recommend a few if you’re looking…
I wish you all the luck with you financial future!!! Also, feel free to comment or reach out to me if you have questions or want to discuss any of these concepts!
Getting the COVID Vaccine
April 11 2021
Woke up today knowing that today was the day I would receive the vaccine! Not going to lie, I felt anxious about it.
As I left my apartment, I felt all the feels. Just a bit of excitement and nervousness. Wasn’t so much about the needle, but more anxious about the possibility of being sick the next few days because I ran into someone yesterday who told me he felt terribly after the vaccine. I’ve also been extremely fortunate to not have contracted corona virus, so was extra curious how the vaccine might affect me.
As I took the subway downtown, I felt more excitement than the anxiety. Maybe it was listening to Hank Mobley playing and Philly Joe laying it down, I found myself smiling!
As I approached the Javits center, the anxiety came back. It actually was my first time really walking towards Hudson Yards. Seeing the new skyscrapers reminded me that I was able to live in this amazing city.
Full disclosure, by the time I entered the Javits, my mind was all over place. However, the people who helped me at various checkpoints, made me feel welcome and in good hands! The first soldier that greeted me, saw my plastic umbrella bag broke and went out of his way to give me a new one. It was a good omen, because even though I felt so uncertain, I could tell they had my back! And every station was like that! I even had a goof on my part where I accidentally sat at the wrong table because I was confused what table number was what. Crisis averted though!
Now it was showtime! I didn’t even realize it the station where I was supposed to get my shot! I was extremely fortunate that the person who was filling out my card was a stage manager and a fellow theater worker! He could sense my nervousness and started asking me questions about the various tours I worked on. Before I knew it, it was done and I was like “that’s it?”
I sat at the waiting area for 15 minutes feeling a little sore but reflecting on this morning and this last year. Trying to hydrate and sent out a few texts to friends and family telling them I got the shot. I got lots of texts of support! As I left the Javits, I couldn’t help but feel tremendous excitement. Even though it was a rainy and dreary day in NYC, it felt like the future is very bright indeed….
A Funny Thing Happened on the Fosse Tour
Back in 2003, I was playing drums for the National tour of “Fosse”. The show is a collection of numbers that Bob Fosse choreographed through this career. It included pieces from “Damn Yankees”, “Sweet Charity,” “Chicago” “Pippin” and “ Cabaret” to name a few.
One of the numbers was called “ Rich Mans Frug” and it was to sort of poke fun of how the super wealthy behaved at parties. All the dancers have to dance with cigarettes as a prop that are lit. They extinguish them in their pocket during the second part of the song.
One night dancer C was dancing his heart out ( Full out as they say in the Broadway lingo)
He extinguished cigarette ( or so he thought) but little did he know the lining in his pocket that was designed to do the Job started to disintegrate…. Dancer P looks over at C and realizes that smoke is starting to emerge from C’s jacket!!! He realized he must do something! He yells at him “C! C! You’re on fire!!!”
C responds “ thank you!” Thinking he was given a compliment.
P says “No No. you’re actually on fire!”
We had great stage management that was standing by with fire extinguishers and no one was hurt. ( except for the jacket pocket).
I think of this because everyone says this is fire that is fire. But this literally was Fire!!!
Aftermath of the vaccine
I was optimistic when I got home that I was just having soreness in my arm. Maybe I’ll get through this without any side affects. ( after all, I never had COVID). Even when I went to bed I felt warm but around 1 am, the chills started setting in…. I got up to put my sweatpants, sweatshirt, and a jacket to try to warm up. I put on some audio podcasts to keep my mind occupied and it kind of created a little bit of white noise. I woke up a few hours later to go to the bathroom, and then I noticed the chill was gone, but every step felt my back ache and I felt sort of weak. Back to bed, slept until 730. In and out of bed until I woke up at noon. Still felt feverish, but had some texts from family and friends to check up on me. #grateful
It’s about 7 pm now. I’ve been drinking Gatorade, coconut water and water all day. Feeling hopeful that maybe the worst is over now that’s it’s been over 24 hours since the vaccine. Overwhelmed by all the love on Instagram and Facebook from my vaccination post. Still optimists v even though today was a little rough!
A story about making Tales of Time
The night before the recording session for Tales of Time, I tried going to bed early so I could be super focused. Instead I woke up at 1:30. I tried my best to fall asleep but I just couldn’t stop thinking about the music. It was just the perfect amount of anxiousness and excitement. But also keep in mind because if the pandemic, I hadn’t really played with other live humans for awhile.. I was worried that my mind would be slow and rusty.
Will I overplay? Will my playing he stagnant? Will the other musicians enjoy playing with me?
But the beautiful thing about playing music with musicians at that level The band made it so easy and we all explored the music together!! My instincts took over and the interplay between us as a band was wonderful! It was conversational and we also really listened to each other and shaped the music. It might go down as one of my best days of my life! I wasn’t sure how it would go but the end results ending up making me so happy that I couldn’t sleep the next evening either even though I was exhausted!! Lol.