More, Please

“Called world to quarrel. No answer.”

 

One of my six-word bios I wrote a while back. But suddenly, World picked up the phone. In just the last few days, I literally got calls or e-mails to:

 

• Resume my mentoring/ teaching at Children’s Day School on Monday.

• Sub at my old San Francisco School on Tuesday.

• Observe a teacher I trained at Clarendon School on Wednesday.

• Begin at 7-day subbing at Brandeis School on Thursday.

• Resume  performing at The Jewish Home for the Aged on Friday.

• Find a date  to perform at The Redwoods Assisted Living Place.

• Set a date to do some guest kindergarten classes at New Traditions School. 

• Help lead two guest children’s class through UCSF Medical Center mid-February.

• Write an article for the Orff Echo Magazine  on Improvisation.

• Fly to Austin, Texas for a screening of my film at an education conference in March.

• Teach two courses in Bangkok at the end of March.

• Teach and perform at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Boise in April. 

• Give two workshops at the AOSA Orff Conference in New Mexico in November.

• Teach a Jazz Course in Sydney, Australia in January of next year.

• Be a guest artist/ teacher at the Taipei International School next February.

• Respond to an invitation a time to teach in China.

 

This is not boasting or arrogance. This is astonishment that so much came in at once. This is gratitude for the opportunity to keep working. This is happiness that my work still feels needed, valued and useful, especially in a culture that throws its elders out on the garbage heap. This is the pleasure of always having something to look forward to. None of it is my film being nominated for an Oscar or an invitation to be interviewed by Terry Gross or a call from Wynton Marsalis to head the Children’s Jazz Education Program at Lincoln Center. All of it small and modest and in the realm of changing the world 20 people at a time. And that’s enough. 

 

More, please.