Vote for Reyes

Oy, what I week … get­ting cyber­stalked (there is a law against that, right?) … deal­ing with this lousy Smarch weather … try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell is going on with “Lost” (why are the sur­vivors “can­di­dates,” and for what? Mayor of the island? In that case, I vote for Hur­ley) … it’s been a strange and not alto­gether pleas­ant few days.

Ver­ily, though ye be plas­tered by Yang, Yin will soon appear to pick you up. My pick-up came this morn­ing in the form of  a very nice write-up of Not Cool by Greg Edwards over at Gap­ple­gate Music Review. “Chris Kelsey shows that he is at the fore­front of the fiery reedists today. The music is exhil­a­rat­ing, over­flow­ing, bril­liant,” says Greg, a line  sure to inspire exces­sive blush­ing and/or preen­ing. Even if you don’t read the review of Not Cool, head over to Gap­ple­gate and check out Greg’s reviews of Con­nie Crothers/Michael Bisio, Albert Ayler, Toby Dri­ver, Roy Har­ris (yes, the clas­si­cal com­poser), Evan Parker, and many and sundry other intrigu­ing musi­cians. To be con­sid­ered in such com­pany is an honor, indeed.

[Par­don the self-promotion, but if I don’t tell you, who will?]

I never watched hockey when I was grow­ing up. In Okla­homa, foot­ball (like Elvis) was King, base­ball was Duke, and bas­ket­ball Count. Hockey was some­thing you watched only every four years, when the Win­ter Olympics came around. I missed the “Do You Believe in Mir­a­cles?” USA-USSR game in ’80 (had to work, wouldn’t you know), but I watched every other game the Amer­i­cans played in that tour­na­ment, includ­ing the game against Fin­land that clinched the gold medal. I remem­ber think­ing, “Wow, hockey’s great. I think I could really be a fan,” a thought that dis­ap­peared the instant the Olympics were over.

Well, the Win­ter Olympics are here once again. Up ’til now I’d not watched a sin­gle sec­ond, but this after­noon I noticed that the US was play­ing Switzer­land in the medal round, so I turned it on while I prac­ticed my horn. What a game! The US won 2 – 0, but it was much closer – the sec­ond goal was an open-netter in the clos­ing sec­onds. Once again, I find myself think­ing, “Wow, hockey’s great. I think I could really be a fan,” and I’m really look­ing for­ward the rest of the tournament.

Of course, March Mad­ness is next month, and base­ball is right around the cor­ner. And after base­ball is foot­ball, and I think the Jets have a really great shot next year, so I’m look­ing for­ward to that. Oh, and the Knicks might sign LeBron James in the off-season, which would be killer, and my Okla­homa State b-ball team should be bet­ter next year. Then there’s base­ball again …

Who am I kid­ding? My hockey fan­dom is doomed to hiber­nate at four-year inter­vals. Still, I gotta admit, it’s a great game.

There’s another side to yesterday’s con­ver­sa­tion about the value of an elite jazz edu­ca­tion beyond issues of cost to the stu­dent or qual­ity of instruc­tion. Com­ments to my post by Bill Kirch­ner and Sav­age­mu­sic remind us that many top-drawer musi­cians are able to make a liv­ing thanks to jazz pro­grams like Oberlin’s (where Sav­age­mu­sic matric­u­lates) and the New School’s (where Bill teaches). The rise of university-level jazz pro­grams has been a god­send to many vet­eran jazz musi­cians, as eco­nomic oppor­tu­ni­ties become fewer with each pass­ing year. The per­sis­tence of poverty among elderly jazz musi­cians is a prob­lem. Teach­ing jazz in uni­ver­sity has cer­tainly pro­vided a life­line for more than one great artist who might oth­er­wise be destitute.

How­ever, any good done by putting these guys to work doesn’t ame­lio­rate the fact that by charg­ing kids so much, big-time jazz schools are com­mit­ting legal lar­ceny. A bach­e­lors degree in jazz is hardly worth the paper it’s printed on. Pay-for-play oppor­tu­ni­ties are exceed­ingly rare, and in any case don’t require a diploma. You can talk all you want about the many ben­e­fits afforded a stu­dent at The New School or NEC or Man­hat­tan or Jul­liard — and they are no doubt real — but when the stu­dent loan bill comes due, how will these kids pay? With the money they make dri­ving cabs? Those $30K high school band direct­ing gigs?

Maybe one per­cent of jazz grads will make a liv­ing play­ing jazz (and of those, only the Brad Mehldaus can hope to make the kind of bread needed to pay off a siz­able debt … the Brad Mehldaus tend not to stay in school very long … and in any case — as Sav­age­mu­sic points out — their way is usu­ally paid). What of the rest?

(Advis­ing them to take up bass — while per­haps wise — would only par­tially solve the problem.)

In a world where great jazz musi­cians reg­u­larly play for the door in abject dumps, surely we can agree that sad­dling a 23 year-old kid with $70,000 in debt is a hideous idea, even if it allows a rel­a­tively few teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors to make a decent living.

That’s not to say the edu­ca­tors are get­ting rich, because they’re not. Bureau­cracy is a sponge that soaks both teacher and pupil. It would be nice if some­one could fig­ure out a way to get the old cats and young cats together in a way that bypasses that extra layer.

Ideas, any­one?

Just as I was begin­ning to panic over find­ing some­thing to write about in this space (I’m sel­dom blocked, but I am occa­sion­ally stumped for sub­ject mat­ter), Chris Rich over at Bril­liant Cor­ners rides to the res­cue, via his very pre­ma­ture but much appre­ci­ated piece on my unpub­lished man­u­script, Mur­der the Dead and Other Sub­lime Incon­sis­ten­cies: Rants, Raves, and Rev­e­la­tions on Jazz (and Life). I sent Chris a copy a cou­ple of weeks ago, want­ing some feed­back, and he felt inspired to write about it on BC.

[Note: Chris took this arti­cle down, prob­a­bly because of a very neg­a­tive exchange that ensued in the com­ment sec­tion. Since its removal alters the con­text of this piece, I’ve made a few changes, one of which is delet­ing the name of the chief dis­putant, whose toxic rants  I deleted from the com­ment sec­tion ear­lier. I will not abide his mean-spiritedness in this forum, but fair is fair; I shouldn’t call him out by name if I won’t allow him to defend himself.]

It seems that Chris’s brief descrip­tion of my chap­ter on jazz edu­ca­tion stuck in the craw of a cer­tain, ahem, how shall I put this … very high-strung jazz edu­ca­tor, who was some­how able to mag­i­cally extrap­o­late from Chris’s inter­pre­ta­tion of my piece a large num­ber of non-existent crit­i­cisms, which he took very per­son­ally, appar­ently because he’s on the fac­ulty of one of the big jazz schools which are the objects of my dis­dain. Said high-strung jazz edu­ca­tor was so aggrieved by things I didn’t write that he saw fit to devote a con­sid­er­able amount of time address­ing them. In so doing, he insight­fully called my writ­ings “igno­rant,” stat­ing that, “It’s the kind that you atti­tude that you offer Jazz the hell­hole that it is (sic).” Hey, calm down, buddy! [Jazz is a hell­hole? Not from where I sit, but then again I’m the sunny sort.]

Given all the mud Mr. Edu­ca­tor slung, some­thing was bound to stick, and sure enough, he got one of my crit­i­cisms right.

I freely admit to being skep­ti­cal as to the effi­cacy of for­mal (aaargh! I hate that word!) jazz edu­ca­tion. While some of those con­cerns involve process, my pri­mary con­cern is with jazz’s place in the bloated eco­nomic mon­stros­ity that is higher edu­ca­tion in this country.

In order to address my pri­mary point, then — and even though I might be per­suaded to pick nits with at least one of these state­ments — let us stip­u­late the fol­low­ing: Aspir­ing jazz musi­cians for­tu­nate enough to attend a school like New School Jazz or the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­tory get the best pos­si­ble jazz edu­ca­tion; their teach­ers are moti­vated by a desire to serve the stu­dents above all else; and our beloved if overly-agitated Mr. Edu­ca­tor, in par­tic­u­lar, is as gifted a teacher as he is a racon­teur (I don’t doubt this last to be espe­cially true). In the space of this post, and for the amount of time it takes to write and read it, we will treat this as our reality.

It is unde­ni­ably true that, in a real way, one can­not put a price on an edu­ca­tion gained at an elite music school like NEC or New School Jazz. It is equally true that, in another, real–er way, you can.

That price is $33K — the cost of tuition and fees at NEC and New School Jazz for the 2009 – 2010 aca­d­e­mic year.

Mul­ti­ply those num­bers by four, and the total comes to more than $130K as the over­all cost of an under­grad­u­ate degree (of course, given the inevitabil­ity of yearly tuition increases, that num­ber is likely low … and we’re not count­ing room and board, which The New School offers for $16K, and NEC for $11K; remem­ber, that’s per school year). Schol­ar­ships and grants are widely avail­able, yet ulti­mately a huge chunk of that money comes out of the pock­ets of the ‘rents or — more likely — the stu­dents them­selves, in the form of deferred loans.

To place this in con­text, con­sider that tuition at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Med­ical School—cur­rently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the best school of its kind in the nation — was $39K for the 2009 – 2010 school year. Indeed, sev­eral med­ical schools in the U.S. News Top 20 cost less to attend than NEC or New School Jazz. I admit that this is, in some ways, an apples/oranges com­par­i­son, but it helps illus­trate just how out-of-whack the cost/benefit ratio of an elite jazz edu­ca­tion is.

You can­not quan­tify the spir­i­tual and cre­ative ben­e­fits of an edu­ca­tion received at a school like NEC or New School Jazz. You can, how­ever, quan­tify the real-world con­se­quences. Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion, the aver­age grad­u­ate of a pro­fes­sional degree pro­gram — which encom­passes not only med­i­cine and law, but also such fields as nurs­ing, engi­neer­ing, den­tistry, and edu­ca­tion—leaves school with a stu­dent loan debt of around $63K (if from a pub­lic uni­ver­sity) or $71K (if from a pri­vate university).

[One would sus­pect that these num­bers skew low, since a degree in nurs­ing or teach­ing should cost less on the aver­age than one as a doc­tor or lawyer. On the other hand, a jazz musician/teacher who pays as much for his train­ing as a doc­tor pays for his can expect to carry a sim­i­lar amount of debt. But let’s be con­ser­v­a­tive in our esti­mate. It’s enough to sup­pose that a grad­u­ate of these elite jazz schools will leave after four years owing some­thing in the neigh­bor­hood of $70K.]

A doc­tor mak­ing an aver­age of $204,000 per year can hope to even­tu­ally pay off such a debt. A trained (accred­ited, cer­ti­fied, snook­ered, what have you) jazz musi­cian … not so much. The major­ity will need to do some­thing else for a liv­ing: teach­ing, for instance, or some­thing that requires lit­tle train­ing and there­fore pays poorly — in other words, an amount insuf­fi­cient to put gro­ceries on the table for a fam­ily of four, a roof over their head, and Christ­mas gifts for the kids, never mind make pay­ments on a gar­gan­tuan bank loan. Many will default on their debt, thus sab­o­tag­ing their credit rat­ings and mak­ing it difficult-to-impossible for them to buy some­thing so tire­somely bour­geois — yet emi­nently prac­ti­cal — as a house. [That reminds me: What do you call a jazz musi­cian with­out a wife or girl­friend? Home­less. I know; there’s noth­ing remotely funny about that.]

I grad­u­ated from col­lege in 1984 with a Bach­e­lors of Music Edu­ca­tion degree owing not more than five or six grand in stu­dent loan debt (this from a state uni­ver­sity, where I don’t believe I paid more than $30 per credit hour; cred­its at NEC and The New School are more than $1000 per). It took years to pay off. In fact, I ini­tially defaulted before even­tu­ally pay­ing it in full. At the time I would’ve pre­ferred to attend a school like Berklee or NEC (I was 18 and stu­pid, as all 18 year-olds are; how else do schools like these get stu­dents so will­ing to mort­gage their futures?). I didn’t, and I’m glad. Who knows how much in the red I might’ve ended up?

Under­stand, this is not a bash on the con­cept of teach­ing jazz in a class­room. I don’t feel that it’s the opti­mal way to learn, based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ence, but then again, I’m a hard­core auto­di­dact. Not every­body is like me. If these schools could pro­vide instruc­tion at a price com­men­su­rate with the expected future income of their stu­dents, I’d say more power to ‘em. God knows there are enough sto­ries about great jazz teach­ers — Tris­tano, Crothers, Bana­cos, etc. — to give lie to the idea that jazz can’t be taught.

But it’s clear that the sys­tem of jazz edu­ca­tion on the eco­nomic scale of schools like NEC and The New School is unsus­tain­able. These schools are, by virtue of their very exis­tence, promis­ing (implic­itly or oth­er­wise) some­thing they can­not deliver. I’m sure a teacher at one of these schools can come to me with tes­ti­mo­ni­als from stu­dents swear­ing to the great­ness of their edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence. I’m just as cer­tain that many of those stu­dents will, in ten or twenty years, look at the mate­r­ial qual­ity of their lives and say, “What in hell have I done?” It’s one thing when a four-year edu­ca­tion sets you back $6K, as it did me. It’s quite another when it puts you in debt for the rest of your life. I’m not here to present a model alter­na­tive; that’s above my pay grade as unpaid-intern/Editor-in-Chief of this site. But when you see a piano falling from a great height toward someone’s head, it’s sim­ple good man­ners to tell that per­son to look up.

It took me  lit­er­ally decades before I was able to lis­ten record­ings of myself play­ing music with­out cring­ing. I still can’t lis­ten to record­ings of my speak­ing  voice with­out want­ing to reach through the speaker or head­phones and retroac­tively place a gag over my gib­ber­ing pie hole. I even try to avoid inter­view­ing peo­ple for print, know­ing that I’ll have to record and then tran­scribe our con­ver­sa­tion – that’s how much I dis­like the sound of my own voice. Don’t even get me started talk­ing about my singing …

That said, the mas­ter­ful inter­viewer Jason Crane recorded a con­ver­sa­tion we had some weeks ago and has now posted it as a pod­cast on his The Jazz Ses­sion site (it can also be accessed through All About Jazz and iTunes). I’ve yet to lis­ten, though I trust Jason to put me in a pre­sentable light. I wish you guys would lis­ten for me, and warn me away if I sound like a total nimrod.

Some­times I think the only things stand­ing between jazz and rock & roll are the key sig­na­tures. If Adolph Sax had designed his horns in E or A instead of Eb or Bb, maybe the major­ity of  revival-ish alto sax and tenor sax­o­phon­ists would be play­ing Zep­pelin instead of Gersh­win — “A Whole Lotta Love” instead of “I Got Rhythm.”

Just a thought.

This is a form.

The brouhaha about com­po­si­tional form has reared its head once again, as Nate Chi­nen and Gra­ham Col­lier have in the last two days invoked my post com­par­ing – almost in pass­ing – Collier’s work with John Hollenbeck’s. Both ref­er­ences are benign, so there’s no need to respond in the same way I pre­vi­ously did to another writer’s gra­tu­itous bash. I am, how­ever, still non­plussed at the con­tro­versy sparked by my orig­i­nal com­ment, which to me was a state­ment of some­thing supremely self-evident (sorry, but I don’t have the energy to repro­duce it again; by now it’s prob­a­bly scrawled on a bath­room wall at Irid­ium or per­haps sewn into a voodoo doll made in my likeness).

It might be expected that I have noth­ing more to say on the mat­ter, and that is mostly true. I cer­tainly don’t wish to expound on the rel­a­tive impor­tance of form at the expense of other aspects of music-making, except to say that I most dig groups of impro­vis­ers who share an organic sense of form, spon­ta­neously and col­lec­tively con­ceived, and that’s some­thing you gen­er­ally find in small ensembles.

I would, how­ever, like to make the point that my con­cep­tion of form is rel­a­tively ancient, hav­ing its roots not only in early free jazz but in much exper­i­men­tal clas­si­cal music of the last cen­tury — two areas in which composers/musicians/conductors freed them­selves of the tyranny of the printed note. Along those lines, a work of inde­ter­mi­nacy like John Cage’s TV Köln from 1958 is in every facet a less con­ven­tional work than Bernstein’s music for West Side Story writ­ten a year ear­lier. A sim­i­lar com­par­i­son can be made of albums like Ornette’s Free Jazz and Charles Min­gus’ Presents Charles Min­gus, both from 1960; both are great, but one is more con­ven­tional than the other. That is not to make a qual­i­ta­tive judg­ment as to the mer­its of any of these (a case for them being equally inven­tive can eas­ily be made). It is, rather, an expres­sion of the obvi­ous. I hap­pen to admire both Cage and Bern­stein, and Ornette and Min­gus (believe it or not, such a thing is actu­ally pos­si­ble!). That I’m more inspired by one is hardly a con­dem­na­tion of another.

I enjoy a wide vari­ety of music, span­ning many dif­fer­ent styles, but I’m most inspired by peo­ple who make a point of explor­ing new ways of doing things. I think for­ward think­ing is an impor­tant trait — maybe not the most impor­tant, but wor­thy of more con­sid­er­a­tion that it often gets. Per­haps because I’m a cer­tain kind of musi­cian, I value inno­va­tion more than most, and I’m per­pet­u­ally sur­prised when I dis­cover that many if not most seri­ous jazz lis­ten­ers seem to feel dif­fer­ently. Hence, my puz­zle­ment and dis­ap­point­ment when one par­tic­u­lar work (or type of work) receives exten­sive atten­tion and acclaim, while another — more unusu­ally con­ceived but of equal value — does not. My intent is not to set one artist against the other, as even a mod­er­ately care­ful read­ing of the orig­i­nal post will reveal.

Inci­den­tally, I find it kinda funny in the con­text of this whole thing that I received a review copy of Graham’s CD, while I down­loaded John Hollenbeck’s from eMu­sic. In other words, I sought-out John’s because it inter­ested me, and paid for the priv­i­lege. And it was a privilege.

Yes­ter­day I received an e-mail from The Ottawa Cit­i­zen’s Peter Hum, pos­ses­sor of my all-time favorite nom de blog—PHUM — and one of the best jazz blog­gers any­where (the fact that his blog is pub­lished by a main­stream media out­let makes the qual­ity and intre­pid­ness of his work even more mind-blowing). Peter told me that he didn’t receive the review copy of Not Cool I sent him awhile back — the sec­ond time a CD I sent in his direc­tion some­how got lost between Pawl­ing and the Great White North.

Know­ing the USPS (and hav­ing recently read and loved Charles Bukowski’s first novel, Post Office) , I don’t doubt that the screw-up was the fault of some­one on this side of the bor­der. Besides being annoyed by the postal service’s inep­ti­tude, the inci­dent reminds me of some­thing that’s always bugged me about being my own press agent, and the most frus­trat­ing aspect of pro­mot­ing my own work. It’s a prob­lem shared by every self-produced artist: You com­pile lists of review­ers or club own­ers or lit­er­ary agents or pub­lish­ers or fes­ti­val book­ers. You sound them out about whether they’re inter­ested in hear­ing your work, or you send it unbid­den. After that, you wait. Once the discs or book pro­pos­als or man­u­scripts or press kits are in the mail, there’s basi­cally noth­ing else you can do.

Bad­gers

Oh, you can bad­ger folks with e-mails, or, if you’re really ballsy, you can try to raise them on the phone. As some­one who’s often been on the other end of those bad­ger­ing e-mails and phone calls, how­ever, I know that such tac­tics are of lim­ited effi­cacy, at least when it comes to deal­ing with crit­ics. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hold it against any­one for fol­low­ing up on a sub­mis­sion; indeed, I admire their chutz­pah. But hon­estly, such con­tacts sel­dom have their desired effect. In the vast major­ity of cases, I will have already made the deci­sion whether to write about it (or not), and there’s not much they can say to change my mind. I try to lis­ten to every­thing I get. Most of it is quite good in one man­ner or another, but writ­ing CD reviews is kinda low on my list of lit­er­ary pri­or­i­ties these days. To get me to write about it, some­thing really has to knock me out.

Which brings me back around to my musi­cal self and being my own press agent. I know how these review­ers and club own­ers and book­ers feel, so I’m ret­i­cent when it comes to hus­tling them. As a con­se­quence, I prob­a­bly get fewer reviews and gigs than I would if I were more aggres­sive. Prob­a­bly if I were inca­pable of empathiz­ing with the folks on the media and busi­ness end, I’d be in bet­ter shape, career-wise.

(I also have to deal with my admit­ted skep­ti­cism about the jazz media and busi­ness in gen­eral. I can’t bring myself to hus­tle good­will from some­one I don’t trust or respect. The lists of my pos­si­ble con­tacts are there­fore limited.)

I sent out 50-plus review copies of Not Cool. Did each reach its des­ti­na­tion?  If the small num­ber of reviews the album has so far received were the only indi­ca­tion, I’d have to say that not many did, but I know there’s more to it than that.

Do I care that it hasn’t been more widely reviewed? Well, yes and no.

Get­ting crit­i­cal feed­back isn’t much of an issue for me at this point in my career. There’s prob­a­bly no prob­lem with the music any critic could men­tion that I haven’t noticed myself. More­over, those prob­lems are scarce, so it’s unlikely any­one could say any­thing that would con­vince me that it is any­thing but utterly suc­cess­ful on the musi­cal terms I set out for myself.

Freud

On the other hand, the main rea­son that I or any other jazz artist wants his music reviewed is to get the word out about its exis­tence. The ego mas­sage is part of it, sure, but a very small part. More impor­tant is the prospect of a uni­ver­sal heads-up to our poten­tial audi­ence. It’s for that rea­son I’d pre­fer it was more widely reviewed. Which is not to say that I don’t under­stand why it hasn’t been.

If you’re like me (rel­a­tively obscure and doing your own pro­mo­tion), you can expect only a small frac­tion of your review copies – let’s say, ten per­cent – to actu­ally gar­ner a write-up. [Of course, get­ting your album reviewed at all depends upon who you send copies to. Send your self-produced debut to ten big-name crit­ics, for exam­ple, and that’s ten reviews you’re guar­an­teed not to get. I’ve been gig­ging around NYC for 20 years; I’ve got a dozen or so CDs under my belt, and if mem­ory serves, none have been reviewed in a New York-based pub­li­ca­tion. But I digress …] If I send out ten free­bies, I can expect to get one review, more or less. If I send out 100, I can expect ten. As it hap­pens, I sent out about 50. As expected, I’ve received approx­i­mately five reviews so far.

Five is bet­ter than one. Of course, ten is bet­ter than five, but I couldn’t afford to send out 100 review copies. In fact, I couldn’t really afford to send out 50, but I did, even know­ing that the vast major­ity were being released into the ether – their indi­vid­ual fates unknown.

Peter’s Blog

It’s exceed­ingly rare for a critic/booker/agent to get back to me and say they never received my promised sub­mis­sion, so when one does, I’m more than happy to send them another. I’ve sent Peter two, and I’ll send him a dozen more if I have to. If that doesn’t work, I’ll drive to Ottawa and hand a copy to him per­son­ally. That also goes for any­one else who thought they were going to get a review copy of Not Cool but for some rea­son did not. Let me know. I want to get the word out. If that means send­ing out another ten or so, well, that’s fine. My audi­ence can always use one more heads-up.

Last night was bad. I dreamed I was an Army medic. My unit was trapped in a big, deep, muddy pit. The enemy sur­rounded us on all sides, shoot­ing down into the pit, pick­ing off my com­rades like fish in a bar­rel. I went from wounded sol­dier to wounded sol­dier try­ing to help, lack­ing any sup­plies what­so­ever — not so much as an aspirin or a band aid. My friends were get­ting limbs and faces blown off. I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t shoot back, either. I was unarmed.

I woke up sev­eral times. Each time, I lay in bed for a few min­utes and tried to think about some­thing more pleas­ant. But as soon as I closed my eyes, the bat­tle in the pit would resume, more hor­ri­ble than ever. At a cer­tain point, I saw that the sol­diers on both sides were wear­ing the same uni­form. The fight wasn’t between two oppos­ing forces, but rather dif­fer­ent fac­tions of the same army. The con­fu­sion was ter­ri­ble. Some­how I moved around freely with­out get­ting hit. I guess it was my fate to witness.

When the alarm went off, I told my wife about it. “You have the most lit­eral dreams,” she said, mean­ing they’re sel­dom hard to ana­lyze. It’s true. Nor are they espe­cially fan­ci­ful; my night­time dreams almost always have a plau­si­ble qual­ity (unlike my day­dreams, I might add). “Did any­thing hap­pen yes­ter­day that you felt help­less to change?” she asked. “Only every­thing,” I answered, “but that’s noth­ing new.”

I think I’m going to prac­tice my horn all day.

I must’ve been the only per­son out­side of Indi­anapo­lis who was root­ing for the Colts in the Super Bowl. I was prob­a­bly the only jazz musi­cian any­where root­ing against the Saints, seein’ that they’re jazz’s offi­cial home­town team. Cer­tainly I don’t begrudge New Orlean­sians their hap­pi­ness. God knows they deserve it.

But as a guy for whom impro­vi­sa­tion is a way of life, I espe­cially admire Colts’ QB Pey­ton Man­ning, whose game I believe resem­bles jazz more than that of any other NFL quar­ter­back. Whereas most quar­ter­backs have their plays called by a coach in the side­line or a pressbox-perched eye in the sky, Man­ning calls most of his own — plays are “sug­gested” by his offen­sive coor­di­na­tor, but Man­ning has the final word. Of course, that’s not such a big deal, when you con­sider that back in the old days, all quar­ter­backs called their own plays. What makes Man­ning spe­cial is that he calls many of his own plays at the line of scrim­mage after sur­vey­ing the defen­sive align­ment. In other words, he impro­vises a call on the spot, using an inter­nal­ized lan­guage and vocab­u­lary. Like a mas­ter jazz sax­o­phon­ist who knows just what note or rhythm will fit a given set of cir­cum­stances, Man­ning has the extra­or­di­nary abil­ity — a gift honed by intense prac­tice — to make the best of all pos­si­ble choices more often than not. It’s been esti­mated that Man­ning will change his orig­i­nal call at the line of scrim­mage some­thing like 96% of the time, mak­ing him a mas­ter of con­tin­gency on the level of a John Coltrane or Miles Davis.

Of course, it doesn’t always work, and like a Coltrane or Davis, his seat-of-the-pants ethos is liable to fail him on occa­sion. That hap­pened yes­ter­day, yet even on the heels of the inter­cep­tion that effec­tively ended his sea­son, he kept after it, blow­ing with guts and guile right up to the last note. Hats off to the Saints, and all the best to New Orleans, but to me the guy on that field yes­ter­day who best exem­pli­fies the jazz aes­thetic was the quar­ter­back with the horse­shoe logo on his helmet.