The Mathematics of Love

 

… is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away.

Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more." 

 

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day— it’s time for Malvina Reynold’s song above. And a few million more with love as its theme. I’ve only had time to sing about five of them with the preschoolers and then the 1^st/2^nd grade at the SF School where I subbed yesterday, and then again with the 1^st graders at New Traditions: Love Somebody, You Are My Sunshine, Roses Are Red, Skinnamarink and the above. Such a grand pleasure! Made grander yet by my Orff-trained habit of always adding something a little extra. 

 

For example, “Love somebody yes I do (3x), love somebody and it might be you” is a pretty short song, helped a little bit by pointing at someone on the last word and then someone else the next time you sing. But I decided to create some new verses and teach a bit about traditional pronouns while awakening the kids’ rhyming synapses in the brain.

 

• “Love somebody, don’t you see… it might be me!”

• “Love some people, on a bus… it might be us!”

• Love a flower, leaf and stem… love some people and it might be them!”

 

You Are My Sunshine became an exercise in gesturing the words without singing—and then the same with singing. With a short commentary about the disturbing non-rhyme in the 1^st verse. “ I dreamt I held you in my arms… So I hung my head and I cried.” Huh?!

 

Roses Are Red was a lesson in beat, rhythm, contrasting rhythm and a color part. Patting the beat while reciting, clapping the rhythm of the words for the first three phrases, then a deep clap with cupped hands for the contrasting last phrase. Two snaps in the spaces between the phrases —or if you can’t snap, two kisses in the air. Then dividing the group into four, one of the above for each group, then switching off so by the end, all have played each part. For the coup de grace, pulling out rubber chickens and pigs to express each of the above. Have I mentioned before that I love my job?

 

Skinnamarink comes with its own motions and my only addition is a little tap dance interlude for the first two A sections and a Broadway finish ending.

 

Finally, Ms. Reynolds’ delightful lesson on the mathematics of love. I pull a penny out of my pocket, invite a child to step forth, give her the penny and ask the group how many pennies I have now. 

“0.” 

“How many does my friend have?” 

“1.” 

“So after I give the penny away, do I have more or less?” 

“Less.” 

“Excellent! You understand how math works! But there is another kind of math where if I give a magic penny away, I end up having more. Do you know what kind of penny that is?”

“LOVE!” they shout. 

First graders are so smart.

 

So off we go singing, including the next part:

“It’s just like a magic penny, hold it tight and you won’t have any.

Lend it, spend it, you’ll have so many,

They’ll roll right over the floor…”

 

Then I ask what other kind of magic pennies like that there are. And out pour other answers: “A smile. A hug. Happiness. Goodness.” Could we have these lovely intelligent and feeling children teach this math lesson to our politicians? To the people supporting politicians talking trash and filling the air with their hate speech? To the media folks and pundits making commentary without giving failing grades to these sorry math tests?

 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Wee Small Hours

Well, hello dear reader. It is 3:30 am and here I am again, in the wee small hours of the morning. Yesterday I went on a bike ride with my wife and friends and how lovely to cycle through my beloved green park and then to the vast open spaces of the Pacific Ocean as we wheeled down the Great Highway. After the intense urban spaces of Taipei and Macau, it was a welcome contrast. 

 

A short afternoon nap and off to Grace Cathedral, where I had a most unusual performing opportunity as the mid-concert palette cleanser in a concert of two compositions for twelve pianos. I had hoped to play solo piano, but the organizers thought the audience needing a contrasting sonic environment, so I came up with the idea of performing a tune I’ve often done with my band’s sax player, Joshi Marshall— Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. Joshi begins this tune with a mesmerizing excursion of uninterrupted cycles of sound achieved through circular breathing and I thought this might sound extraordinary in the hallowed echoed space of the cathedral. I was right.

I also felt the human voice would be a good contrast to the piano sound and was so lucky that singer Rhonda Benin agreed to bring the song to life, as she did so soulfully in our SF Jazz Concert last October. Again, my intuition proved trustworthy. 

And I had my debut performance on acoustic guitar accompanying them both. During the sound check, the engineer said my playing sounded so beautiful and it was testimony to the power of three or four simple minor chords. (All I can take credit for is tuning the guitar well!) Again, a welcome contrast to the complex textures and structures of the 12-piano composition. 

 

I was worried that jet lag was going to kick in in the midst of our 7-minute performance, but whether it was my biorhythms, the energy of the crowd or the uplift of the music, I left the concert feeling wholly awake and wholly myself. Went to bed at 10:30pm and slept soundly until I awoke with the feeling that I was ready to get up. Usually when that happens, I walk into the kitchen to look at the clock and predict the time and often come within ten minutes of getting it right, some strange intuitive power that we all probably have. This time I predicted it was between 5 and 5:30 and I might as well start the day.

It was 2 am. Dang! Read my book for an hour by the light of my phone so as not to wake my wife, but still nothing in my body announced it was ready to return to sleep. So here I am at 3:30 am. Another affirmation that the human body was not made for long plane travel across multiple time zones. I do have a manuscript of a new book my Pentatonic Press is publishing to read through, so what better time to do it than in a quiet dark house at 3:30 am.. Just thought I’d have a few moments in your company before I start.

 

If you live in California, I hope you are sleeping soundly at the moment with sweet dreams. Perhaps when you wake to read this, I’ll be back in bed! Good morning!

Other Things I Haven't Done

Yesterday’s title made me think of things I’ve never done in my life, many of which were expected of my often-confused gender. They include: 

 

• Fired a gun.

• Visited a house of ill repute. 

• Fixed a car engine.

• Gotten drunk. (Really!)

• Initiated a break-up with a girlfriend.

• Killed an animal larger than a mosquito. 

• Watched any of The Godfather movies.

• Sucked up to my boss.

 

Then there are things I might have liked to do which I still can.

 

• Plant a garden. 

• Read Moby Dick.

• Visit the Pyramids.

• Learn how to play snare drum.

• Master Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu. 

• Teach an Orff workshop in Antarctica (completing my teaching on every continent!)

 

And your list? 

Things I Haven't Done

…in the last four weeks, that is. I mostly didn’t miss them, but now that I’m home, I’m noticing them. They include: 

• Drive a car.

• Cook a meal.

• Wash a dish.

• Make and eat popcorn. 

• Play my piano.

• Get money at the bank or deposit a check. 

• Hear my phone ding (ringer has been off).

• Delete political texts on my phone (133 in 4 weeks).

• Go to sleep without setting an alarm.

• Wake up in my own bed.

• Spend a day without getting in an elevator.

• Ride a bike. 

 

After the gift of an 11-hour flight that left on time in which I had a whole row to myself and could lie down and sleep, and the added bonus of getting to watch the excellent movie The Holdover, I arrived to a sunny San Francisco with air more chilled than Sydney, Taipei or Macau and walked through the door of my familiar home at 7:30 am PST. A nap, visit with my sister, glorious piano play at the Jewish Home, meeting with my forever Orff colleagues James and Sofia, salad with dinner and one TV show on the couch again with my wife before I had to sleep, I’ve now done most of the above, with bike ride on the list for today. (Hopefully after more sleep— it’s 2:30 am SF time!). Oh, and play guitar as part of a concert at Grace Cathedral. 

 

Good morning/ day/ night. 

Happy New Year!

When planning this trip, I thought it was too bad that I would leave Taiwan one day before Lunar New Year. Wouldn’t it have been cool to be here on such an important holiday? Apparently, United Airlines agreed, so they decided to cancel my flight yesterday and send me to a hotel. I indeed woke up to the New Year in Taiwan.

 

Chinese New Year (more inclusively called Lunar New Year) has its share of public spectacle, most notably the Lion and Dragon Dances and firecrackers, but mostly is a family holiday celebrated in the home. So riding on the shuttle bus to the airport yet again, there was no outward sign of anything special. 

 

Meanwhile, I’ve been in and out of Taiwan customs four times in two days and have had my fill of airport time. But without any tension of having to arrive to teach a class of people waiting for me, I could relax about the snafu and indeed, should be grateful that they chose not to try to fly with a faulty engine. And I am. 

 

But now we are boarding and it looks like I’ll be coming home after all. 

 

Gung Hey Fat Choi!!

Lighting the Torch

It’s a good feeling when you read something and think—“Damn! That’s good! I wish I had written it!” And then realize that you did! 

 

I stumbled onto the Preface to my All Blues book, first published 13 years ago and had that exact feeling. So why not share it here? Enjoy!

Just about everything we eat comes out of the dirt. Whether potato-buried or cornstalk-reaching, whether apple-hanging or grainwaving, the food that grows our bones and packs our muscles come from dirt. And what doesn’t come from soil lives in flowing rivers, placid lakes and salty seas. 

Just about everything we eat comes out of the dirt. Whether potato-buried or cornstalk-reaching, whether apple-hanging or grainwaving, the food that grows our bones and packs our muscles come from dirt. And what doesn’t come from soil lives in flowing rivers, placid lakes and salty seas. 

And so it is with American music. Teenagers rockin’ ‘round the clock, gyrating in joyful abandon to electric guitars and pounding drums, owe it all to the low-down, dirty blues. Grown in the Mississippi mud or Delta red clay, the blues came from the fields, from cotton-scratched hands plucking strings and sorrowful voices singing their story. Watered by blood, sweat and salty tears, it traveled upriver from the juke joint to the jazz club. There the jazz musicians wisely left the dirt on the roots, kept the notes salted and flowing,

The clean white pages that follow, written for children in classrooms with Smartboards, are far from those damp and dirty roots. But once you get the music off the page and into the young hands and hearts of your students, you can hear the distant echo of those dusty roads and front porches where the blues grew up.

 

It may seem strange to bring blues into grade school, where innocent kids know nothing of the heartaches and hardships that makes the blues blue. But if you believe, as I do, that schools are a place where kids learn about their cultural heritage, then shouldn’t every American school child rub shoulders with jazz and blues? 

 

And yet so many don’t. This book hopes to change that. It provides a step-by-step progression that guides you from the world of children’s games through the poetry of the vocal blues to the sophistication of jazz blues. All the material presented here has come through the mill of countless classes with kids and been ground to a fine flour with all the essential nutrients intact. In my 36 years (and still going strong) of teaching children from three years old to 8^th grade, I’ve learned one truth— no matter how clever you are at arranging or composing a piece, no matter how many hours you sit at home planning the perfect lesson, the music doesn’t become real until it has been dragged around, squeezed, hugged and generally worked over by the kids. Every piece in this book comes to these pages honestly from that work with kids and that will make a difference in how your own students receive it.

 

The other testing ground has been in the adult jazz training courses I give. The first such course took place in1988 with six curious teachers in St. Paul, Minnesota. Since then, I have taught it in San Francisco every year since 1991, and all over the world—from Sao Paolo to Sydney, from Barcelona to Bangkok and beyond. Now, over two thousand teachers have been trained in this dynamic approach to jazz education. We’ve raised the roof and gotten down in the dancing ring showing off our motion, stole Cookies from the Cookie Jar, Jumped at the Woodside in our Little Suede Shoes and ate some Chitlins con Carne with some hot Soul Sauce. 

 

And then we brought it all back to the kids. My drawer is filled with joyous testimonies from children whose teachers took the time to make this worthy music come alive for them. It is to all those teachers that I dedicate this book. The jazz/Orff connection is still a tiny match awaiting your efforts to light the torch.  I hope this book keeps it glowing and growing.

 

The clean white pages that follow, written for children in classrooms with Smartboards, are far from those damp and dirty roots. But once you get the music off the page and into the young hands and hearts of your students, you can hear the distant echo of those dusty roads and front porches where the blues grew up.

 

It may seem strange to bring blues into grade school, where innocent kids know nothing of the heartaches and hardships that makes the blues blue. But if you believe, as I do, that schools are a place where kids learn about their cultural heritage, then shouldn’t every American school child rub shoulders with jazz and blues? 

 

And yet so many don’t. This book hopes to change that. It provides a step-by-step progression that guides you from the world of children’s games through the poetry of the vocal blues to the sophistication of jazz blues. All the material presented here has come through the mill of countless classes with kids and been ground to a fine flour with all the essential nutrients intact. In my 36 years (and still going strong) of teaching children from three years old to 8^th grade, I’ve learned one truth— no matter how clever you are at arranging or composing a piece, no matter how many hours you sit at home planning the perfect lesson, the music doesn’t become real until it has been dragged around, squeezed, hugged and generally worked over by the kids. Every piece in this book comes to these pages honestly from that work with kids and that will make a difference in how your own students receive it.

 

The other testing ground has been in the adult jazz training courses I give. The first such course took place in1988 with six curious teachers in St. Paul, Minnesota. Since then, I have taught it in San Francisco every year since 1991, and all over the world—from Sao Paolo to Sydney, from Barcelona to Bangkok and beyond. Now, over two thousand teachers have been trained in this dynamic approach to jazz education. We’ve raised the roof and gotten down in the dancing ring showing off our motion, stole Cookies from the Cookie Jar, Jumped at the Woodside in our Little Suede Shoes and ate some Chitlins con Carne with some hot Soul Sauce. 

 

And then we brought it all back to the kids. My drawer is filled with joyous testimonies from children whose teachers took the time to make this worthy music come alive for them. It is to all those teachers that I dedicate this book. The jazz/Orff connection is still a tiny match awaiting your efforts to light the torch.  I hope this book keeps it glowing and growing.

 

Farewell to the Orff Tour

I’m in the Eva Air Lounge, exactly four weeks to the day since I set off on my Australia/ Asia Orff tour. My work is done, my bags are checked, my Taiwanese money exchanged and my devices all charged. Feeling a disturbing slight dizziness that has been an unwelcome constant companion for parts of the trip and hoping it won’t escalate in the 15 hours to come. 

 

Despite that glitch, it certainly has been a most glorious four weeks. So many friends from previous Orff work that I had the privilege to see again and talk and play and sing and dance and laugh together! All of it savored, but especially the laughter. As I believe I mentioned before, there is a humor connection with friends from Australia, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau that mysteriously is deeper than with their American counterparts. (Other countries to add here, these just the most recent.) Don’t know why that is, but in most every gathering, humor is the lubrication that keeps the conversation flowing so effortlessly and joyfully. I love it. Nothing I can fix, it just is or isn’t. When it is, I feel it and relish it and relish is a good Thesaurus choice I just looked up, because it adds flavor and texture to the meat of the meal. 

 

Yesterday’s workshop, my last with 40 plus music teachers from Shenzhen, China, Macau and Hong Kong, was a satisfying ending to a most enticing meal. I dug into material I hadn’t shared in a while and came up with a new workshop theme of some ten pieces in the G pentatonic scale that use the exact same five notes and yet sound worlds apart from each other. The constant of the scale set up on the Orff instruments provides the familiar ground and accents the universality of human experience, while the actual sounds and textures and structures of the music remind us how diverse both imagination and culture are and to our great benefit. (For those curious, though we only had time to play five of them, the pieces came from Finland, the Basque country in Spain, Hungary, Mexico, Iran, China, the Philippines, Bali, American blues, American jazz standard.)

 

The intensive rhythm of the teaching— literally, almost every day in the past 28 days— had the quality of a Zen meditation retreat. That sense of total immersion that builds on itself, so that the teaching just felt each day an inch more inspired and connected. As noted in my “Teach Like It’s Music” book, I value teaching each class as if it’s a piece of music with an enticing beginning, connected middle and satisfying end, a non-stop flow with a clear shape and design. As with each class, so with each workshop and so with each two-day to five-day to two-week course. Choosing pieces that sing back to the one just done and forward to the one about to come so that students feel yet more successful without being aware exactly why. It’s a very different animal from the workshops where teachers throw out one fun piece and then another and then a different one with no emerging design or connection, just a bunch of stuff plucked off of the “cool materials” shelf. Though I will welcome a little rest and getting back to other matters in my life, I believe I could easily teach yet another workshop tomorrow and go on like this for a few more weeks.

 

The other notable feature of this trip was the variety of situations offered to me that I accepted without question, some quite different from what I usually do. A short list:

• Giving an evening solo piano concert at the Sydney Jazz Course. 

• Working with a high school jazz band in Taipei (TAS)

• Putting together a collaboration/performance between the band and 5^th grade Orff classes.

• Leading an hour Folk Dance session with 3^rd graders and their parents.

• Watching my movie with the TAS parents and signing my new book.

• Giving a workshop to International School Teachers in Southeast Asia.

• Teaching kids in a Macau Catholic school from 3 years old to 7^th grade.

• Teaching Kindergarten teachers in above school. 

• Macau workshop with mostly Chinese music teachers from Macau, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai and other places. 

 

That’s a lot of variety! Kept things fresh, kept me on my toes, kept things perpetually interesting. 

And now it’s done. Back to a wet San Francisco, my “retired” life there, a reunion with my wife and daughter and sister and soon, a visit to the grandkids. Back to my piano, to the Jewish Home piano playing, a little subbing, walks in the park, emerging plum blossoms, cooking my own meals (yes!), shopping and so on. Suitcases tucked away, writing projects brought back out (though did quite a lot on this trip), different shirts to wear. Happy to return to it all, but less happy about the homeless people and garbaged streets that have been 100% absent in each place I’ve been this last month. Yet I still love San Francisco and am glad to return to it.

 

But first, those 15 hours ahead. May the dizziness be gone and the movies be good!