Public Education

I was 60 years old before I finally relented and called myself a musician. Someone who could play well enough that listeners would be drawn into the new experience of time that music gifts to us, to be lifted into that world where everything makes sense and brings some sense of remembered beauty and comfort to our perpetually troubled souls. I’m no virtuoso roaming the keyboard like Steph Curry on a fast break, but somehow I’m able to dig into the center of a note or a chord or a melody and follow it to the next needed note, whether improvising or reading a score. And when playing with others, good enough to notice the calls and responses and participate in the conversation. 

 

Another point in my favor is the range of the music I like to play— a wide variety of jazz standards spanning some five decades, jazz tunes ranging from Ragtime to New Orleans style to swing to bebop to cool to bossa nova and a touch of Latin jazz, notable classical pieces from Bach to Debussy and even some old chestnut folk songs from spirituals to Appalachian old-time music to cowboy songs and beyond. And most of it memorized so I don’t have to thumb through books or i-Pads and much of it including improvisation to keep it fresh and in the moment.

 

On top of that, my teacher self is omnipresent and allows me to be both relaxed in my comfort zone and to connect with the audience with my Music Jeopardy questions or charming stories about the music or composer, education side-by-side with letting the music speak for itself. The 45 years of doing this daily with the kids I taught, the 18 years with the elders at The Jewish Home have far surpassed the 10,000 hours needed to master any craft and teaching/ performing (or performing/ teaching) is indeed a craft that benefits from such practice. When I play like I have the last few days and feel the audience respond, it brings me satisfaction that indeed I have made some progress and all those hours not only paid off from the pleasure I felt in the practicing, but in allowing me to connect with others and bring a few drops of happiness to a thirsty world. 

 

And so yesterday, there was a sizeable audience at each of the two pianos I played and in contrast to the Jewish Home, I noticed that many of the people under 45 or so didn’t recognize old jazz classics like Tea for Two, Bye Bye Blackbird, Embraceable You, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and certainly didn’t know the words to sing along. I tried to help them, feeding them the lines while I was playing and a few gave it a try. I also noticed they hadn’t seemed to hear of Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller or Jerome Kern. Most recognized Scott Joplin and many George Gershwin, but that was about it. The one thing I thought I could count on was them recognizing and singing along to Over the Rainbow—and they did. 

 

Today is the last day of Flower Piano and let’s see who knows Sunnnyside of the Street, I Got Rhythm, Autumn Leaves, Blue Moon, On the Street Where You Live, The Girl from Ipanema and such. Given the weather, perhaps my first tune should be Gershwin’s A Foggy Day. And I wonder how many know I Left My Heart in San Francisco? We shall see. And I’ll do my part to educate the public while having some fun. 

Merry Christmas?

I had the most surprising (aren’t they all?) dream last night. I was playing piano in an airport with a long line of over a hundred people and started playing Christmas Carols with all the people joining in singing—with magnificent 4-part harmony! Where did that come from?!!

 

The feeling tone was one of glorious uplift. I do love many of those songs and even though I am a Jewish by blood/ Unitarian by upbringing/ Buddhist by practice, I did celebrate Christmas both as a kid and an adult and grew to love that certain magic in the air that the songs and the season can evoke. Don’t love all the lyrics and truth be told, kind of wish that Jesus never would have been born, in the face of all the havoc done in his name. Of course, we miserably flawed humans probably would have found someone else and ended up blindly obeying the Gospel of Fred. But in spite of all the male-created power obsessions about Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords who shall reign forever and ever (no term limits!), the music is great and balanced by some peace-loving images of little towns in Bethlehem and an innocent babe in a manger and angels with harps of gold. Not to mention the partridges in the pear tree. 

 

With those carols singing so tunefully in my dreams, I awoke happy and refreshed. When my wife came into the kitchen, I told her about the dream and then began to walk to another room to begin my day when I suddenly heard the seasonal song Sleigh Bells playing! What was that? Walked back to find the source and it was my damn phone! Apparently, Big Sister Siri eavesdropped on our conversation and thought she should play that song for me. WTF?!!!! Nothing to kill the Christmas Spirit faster than to realize how we are being listened to and manipulated by our machines. It is beyond creepy!

Can we just get back to landlines, letters and post offices, asking people for directions, asking each other for information or going to the library to look things up, writing checks or paying cash, calling taxis, listening to vinyl records and the radio, getting the news, weather report, movie listings from the morning paper? This is not naïve nostalgia. It’s remembering when we weren’t vulnerable to constant surveillance and algorhythms and addiction to devices that we all agreed to just so everything could be faster and more “convenient” at a price we never imagined having to pay. 

 

Bah humbug!!!

Feast of Friends and Family

 

In these hi-tech days where we even look up recipes online, I still use cookbooks when needed (mostly not needed as I remember how to cook some 20 different dishes). Even more old-fashioned and more personal, I sometimes look in our little file-card box of recipes. 

I looked for something there today and was struck by how many recipes are connected to people my wife and I have known. There’s a lot from family: Grandmother’s (Karen’s) Chow Chow, Grandma’s (mine) Honey Cake, Mom’s (Karen’s) Napa Cabbage Salad, Dad’s (mine) Chow Mein, Aunt Lil’s Spinach Salad, Aunt Norma’s Meringue, Cousin Roy’s pizza crust, sister-in-law Lori’s Southwest Baked Beans, daughters Kerala’s Mexican Skillet and Talia’s Granola. 

 

Then friends: Patty’s Enchilada Casserole, Alma’s Cheese Straws, Ariel’s Fruit Salad, Beth’s Black-eyed Pea Salad, Sofia’s Gazpacho, Heidi’s Pudding, Stephanie’s Split-Pea Soup, Laura’s Carolina Apple Quiche, Mia’s Date-Nut Bars. There are a few recipes from people I don’t know or can’t remember— who is Mrs. Riddell and when did she share her Lemon Bars recipe with us? And yet another from John, an old roommate of a friend I probably met once or twice back in the early 80’s.

 

There they all are, friends and family both still with us and departed, all snuggled together in a little box promising a memorable and tasty meal. If it is true—and I hope it is—that those in the other world keep on living from our remembrance, can feel something when we think of them or tell stories about them or read their words or listen to their music or view their artwork, then I imagine they also somehow join us at the table when we cook their favorite recipe. And are happy that we are savoring the tastes and textures that they can’t anymore. 

 

It makes me think of orchestrating a potluck gathering—maybe around the Day of the Dead Celebration— when all bring something they learned how to cook from a friend or family member and as we taste each dish, each tells a few stories about that person. And maybe gather all the recipes together so all can continue to enjoy and pass down. 

 

It also makes me think of what my cooking legacy would be. I suspect it might be miso soup, immortalized in a scene in my Secret Song movie where I’m in the kitchen cooking it while talking about the pandemic. (Just in case you want to check it out!). 

 

Do you have such a collection of recipes? And what would yours be to add to the box? 

Down the Up Staircase

I’ve been playing every day informally at the fabulous Flower Piano in the Golden Gate Park Arboretum. Now in its 10^th year, this event has 12 or so high-quality pianos spread out around the Botanical Gardens with set shows each day at some of them. The rest of the time, the pianos are available for anyone to play, which I’ve been doing in a variety of settings— in a redwood grove, on the moon-viewing platform in the middle of a pond and in the intimate meadow by the Garden of Fragrance, where I officially performed today. 

 

Three music teachers who had taken my Jazz Course in New Orleans brought their 1^st graders, the SF School 8^th graders came, many alum parents and some alum students attended as well, including two with their own babies who I hadn’t seen in some 20 years! Alongside the crowds who are strolling about and peeking into one performance or another. It was a great crowd and great to play with three great fellow musicians— singer Rhonda Benin, trombonist Marty Wehner and bassist Sam Heminger. 

After two welcoming songs, we went through a short thumbnail history of jazz, starting with a Field Holler and Juba body percussion into Ragtime, the Blues, a 20’s New Orleans-style piece, a 30’s piece from the Great American Songbook, a 40’s Duke Ellington blues where we invited an 8^th grader to play with us on a xylophone, a Thelonious Monk composition from the 50’s and a Broadway tune from the 60’s with audience motions and singing. Along the way, I asked Jeopardy-style jazz history questions and rewarded kids who knew the answers with our band’s CD or my Jazz, Joy and Justice book. We started exactly on time and ended one minute early. Perfect!!

 

I noticed two things that are sign-posts of my new 4^th-Act psyche and am happy to welcome them both. 

 

1)   Usually at formal events like this, I’m obsessing with all the people who I think should have come but didn’t! Part of it is practical—wanting a large enough audience to pay for the rental space, part artistic—artists want the energy of a large-enough audience, and part of it my idea of a social contract—I’ve shown up at your things and you should show up at mine. 

But this time, I didn’t find myself thinking that way and just genuinely appreciated all who did come. Of course, it helped that there was no money at stake and that the two classes of kids filled the space and that there was a ready-made audience of folks who just come to Flower Piano. But more than that there was a feeling that I’m not looking to attract people’s attention so I can get more gigs in the future and feed an aspiring career as a jazz performer. (Actually, have never felt the latter, but still was open to it!) It felt great to just be present for whoever was present. 

 

2)   Parallel to that is the pressure to earn back money put out to publish books and record CD’s and thus, amidst the pleasure of gathering to hear and participate in the musical event is always the plug—“And don’t forget to buy…!!!!” And then the subsequent disappoint in low sales. So it felt great to just give some of the CD’s and books away as part of the Jazz Jeopardy prizes. 

 

In short, there’s the sense of going down the up staircase that I thought I needed to ascend to “make it” to the top, wherever and whatever that was. Much more relaxing just sauntering down to the ground level. 

 

(That said and done, I hope the Flower Piano organizers took note as to the quality of the performance and invite us back again!)

 

Into the Fog

The weather has reneged on its San Francisco September promise of sunny, windless, 70-degree days and blanketed my neighborhood with cold, grey, windy fog. My now chronic dizziness is back after a teasing promise of a one-day relief. The damn rainbow ball keeps spinning when I try to type on my laptop. The promised code sent to my phone to open my e-mail has not arrived and looks like it never will. The video I needed to download on Google Drive had 15 minutes left to download after an hour and then disappeared and I have to start again. To top it off, the omnipresent evil afoot usually in the distance suddenly feels uncomfortably close. Looks like Alexander and I are doomed to share a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Not the best time to praise the beauty of this world or the blessings of my own life. 

 

But perhaps it is the best time to dig deeper into resilience and hope and conviction that the roses are as real as the thorns. That we can bear a few scratches for the gifts of the fragrant scents, deep colors and exquisitely-shaped petals. And that alongside the roses, the dahlias in front of the SF Conservatory are in full bloom. That alongside the grief we feel for the stellar human beings who have left us recently is the comforting echoes of their words, their music, their (mostly) exemplary lives. 

 

So in spite of this two-minute video someone requested I sent to a group meeting to discuss one of my books somehow filling up 166 megabytes and refusing to upload to my Google Drive, teasing me with the blue line around the circle getting close and then dropping back to begin again, in spite of the relentless grey and the branches of the mayten tree out my window waving in the too-fierce wind, in spite of the 40 spam e-mails amidst one genuine one, all constantly promising STUNNER! DROPPED THE HAMMER! THIS IS HUGE! or DEVASTATING DEVELOPMENT! DISAPPOINTED! CHOKING BACK TEARS! or sign this! /get that!/— in the face of it all, I’ll step out the door straight into the fog, find some pianos to play at Flower Piano before my official performance there tomorrow, walk to the still-open Green Apple Bookstore and look for used copies of masterpieces I’ve somehow neglected—George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Virginia Wolf’s To the Lighthouse, for starters— and do my best to keep my heart open, my mind receptive, my body well-exercised. If the sun comes out, so be it. If not, that’s fine too.

 

Evolution of a Ceremony

 

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few.”                  Shunryu Suzuki: From Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

 

It is my school’s 60^th Anniversary this year and at the Opening Ceremony, they began to honor it by inviting one alum from each decade to join the kids in the Water Ceremony. This is a simple ritual of 8 kids from each grade holding a glass, an 8^th grade teacher pouring water into the 8^th graders glass, who then pours it into the 7^th graders and so on down the line. When pouring, each leaves a little bit of water in their glass. This symbolizes the passing down of knowledge from the older kids to the younger. It acknowledges that the older knows many things the younger doesn’t yet— from math facts to music theory  and practice to basketball skills and beyond that the youngers kids are on their way to learning. When the water arrives at the 1^st grader, she or he pours it into a pitcher held by the 1^st grade teacher (leaving a little in the glass), who then speaks of what the young kids have to offer the older ones—their unblemished sense of wonder and curiosity, their “beginner’s mind” that holds endless possibilities that the “expert’s mind” begins to shut out. (see quote above). 

 

The 1st grader then empties the little water left into the 2^nd graders glass and so on up the line, when the 8^th grader pours his or hers into a pitcher. Now all eight have that empty glass of possibility fter having filled their cup with knowledge. This the ceremony that alums from the 1960’s all the way to the 2020’s took part in. They were then briefly interviewed as to what they felt “filled their cup” from The San Francisco School that proved useful in their lives that followed. This document will be shared with the greater school community and to accompany it, I was asked to talk a bit about the origina of the Water Ceremony.

 

And that’s when I went into the archives in my closet and pulled out a box with every planning book of my 45 years of teaching to see if I could find the first mention of the Opening Ceremony that included the Water Ceremony. And here’s what I discovered and the little article I wrote:

 

I believe my interest in connected the Orff approach to teaching to a wider world of all-school ceremonies, rituals and celebrations was there from my very first year of teaching in 1975. But like all things that grow organically according to nature, from seed to blossom to bush to tree is a slow process. It took some 13 years for that vision to find form in the Opening Ceremony.  I have had the good sense to keep every planning book from each year of my 45 at The San Francisco School and so when the question of when and how the water ceremony began was posed to me, I dug deep in my closet and pulled them out. In Fall of 1988, there was the first mention of it! 

Note that instead of water, the older kids passed down an encyclopedia and the youngest kids passed up a flower! In other parts of the eventual ceremony, note that there was no singing tunnel of teachers, only Terry rang the gong as the head of school, there was no Earth Day Rap and the kids lifted an atlas instead of a globe or Earth Ball.

 

It was in the next year, 1989, that we changed to water.  There was still the Atlas and some weird rubbing of eucalyptus leaves when the kids left to go to their classes. 

 

In 1990, we added the Balinese banners that Karen had sewn, with teachers forming the banner tunnel as kids walked in. Now for the first time, the youngest and oldest rang the gong and apparently, blew the didgeridoo! Now the Earth Day Rap was incorporated and a globe replaced the Atlas. Then the kids exited under another tunnel of palm leaves—who knows where those came from?

In 1991, we changed to the parents holding the banners while the staff was playing some kind of music with cymbals. We added a new welcome song and again, had two kids ring the gongs— without the didgeridoo involved! Now we sang Simple Gifts during the water pouring, sang the song Side by Side at the end and had parents and kids clap for each grade as they exited. No leaf rubbing involved!

And on it went. I believe by 1993, we began the tunnel of singing teachers, some years later, with Sofia now joining in, we added the Bulgarian drum and bagpipe leading the kids to the banner and ended singing Siyahamba. In the last years before we left, I added another song Gonna Build Me a Mountain.

 

Throughout all those minor changes, the kids poured water for the next 37 years, all the way to the 2026 Opening Ceremony where alumni from each decade of the last 60 years joined in. Every day at the school for all that time, knowledge and wisdom of the elder students and teachers has been passed down and the unblemished wonder and curiosity of the younger students passed up to remind us all to keep our beginner’s mind alive, ripe with possibility and questions. May the waters keep flowing!

  

Into the Archives

Archives: Collections of primary source documents, records, and historically valuable materials kept for long-term preservation and research. 

 

Now that I’m not traveling for a couple of months, I’m living the glorious retired life of lunch with friends and acquaintances. Some 10 people in the past few weeks, ranging from friends, family, colleagues. It’s a much more expensive way to keep connected, what with lunch prices being what they are, but delightful to just catch up and talk and enjoy eating outdoors in September’s lovely weather. 

 

This weekend I met up with Keith Terry, the world-famous (in some circles) master of Body Music. We go all the way back to 1984 when a mutual friend brought him to my Orff workshop and he invited me to be part of a 30-person performance that year with modern dancers, circus folks and musicians. Because Orff Schulwerk is the only music education approach that takes body percussion seriously, it proved to be a great connection. I learned his innovative ideas, techniques and practices that I brought to the children and introduced to Orff teachers worldwide, he got connected with the Orff network and expanded his audience and work opportunities. 

 

Over the years, we got to teach together in places like Salzburg, San Francisco and Istanbul and often find ourselves following each other’s footsteps. In the past year alone, we both have been in China, Turkey, Greece, Brazil at different times, often working some of the same people. We both were born in 1951, both have followed a thread our whole lives that is difficult to explain to others, both are still holding that thread as we continue to work well beyond most people’s retirement age, both have documentary films made about us—me, The Secret Song, Keith, Through the Body. In short, we have a lot in common.

 

So meeting at lunch, I asked how it feels to keep working and whether he imagines any “retirement” in sight. He admitted that the long flights that travel demands feel increasingly taxing and told me he built a cabin in the Southwest that is increasingly enticing as a place to ease gracefully into the last act of a long and active life. This year, he is touring as much as ever— four continents in what he’s calling his Gratitude Tour, a chance to see people he’s met and loved over the years who probably will not come back to the U.S. until we oust the fascists. 

 

I then asked if he had begun his “Swedish Death Cleaning,” digging into all the documentation of papers, flyers, letters, cassette tapes, books, instrument collections, etc. and he admitted that he’s somewhat attached to it all and can’t see randomly throwing it all. I concurred 1000% and when he framed it all as valuable “archives,” that really hit home. 

 

In the recent Mary Oliver documentary I just saw, it tells of how she began her career as the archivist for the poet Edna St Vincent-Millay after she had passed away. This has long been standing practice with artists in all fields and certainly writers. I suspect in a world overrun with the sheer quantity of stuff and the sense that everything is replaceable and now is the only moment that counts that such practice is fading. I wonder if someone is hard at work at Wendell Berry’s estate or someone did the same for Mary Oliver when she passed in 2019.

 

Of course, it takes a certain kind of hubris to think that one’s life’s works merits such attention. In Keith’s case, it is certainly deserving as he set in motion a unique approach to music-making that is thriving beyond his role of curating it all. Having created the International Body Music Festival and retired from running it, he went to the recent one in Montreal as a participant/ observer and was thrilled with the clear evidence that is living on as strong as ever in the hands of his successors. 

 

In my case, it would be false humility to not claim my role in moving the practice of Orff Schulwerk forward. So I think it would be valuable and important for someone to take on the archives of 26 recordings of the San Francisco School Orff Ensembles, the 45 planning books that outline every lesson I ever taught in all those years, the 100 plus articles published and unpublished, the 5000+ posts from my Confessions of a Traveling Music Teacher blog, the file cabinets with notes from every workshop I ever taught between 1976 and yesterday, spanning six continents, 50 countries and over 200 cities. Not only the sheer length of time and number of workshops, but expanding the reach of the Schulwerk into advanced (thanks to Keith!) body percussion, into jazz and world music, into deep pedagogy, into ritual and ceremony and celebration, into humanistic principles applicable to all of education, etc., etc. and again, etc. 

 

And so I put out this call. Who wants to be my archivist? And where would this all go? I’m not holding my breath, but hey, never asked, never answered.

 

More to come.