Modal Jazz Quotes

It was clear just how much Tommy loved the city. New York City. The CKY Grocery on Amsterdam had giant, bright red Spartan apples every day of the year, even if it wasn’t the right season. He loved that grocery, and the old, shaky Persian man who owned it. Tommy emphatically, yet erroneously believed that the CKY Grocery was the genuine heart of the great city. All five boroughs embodied distinct feelings for him, but there was only one that he’d ever truly romanticized. To him, Manhattan was the entire world. He loved everything between the East River and the Hudson; from the Financial District up to Harlem; from Avenue A to Zabar’s. He loved the four seasons, although autumn was easily the most anticipated. To Tommy, Central Park’s bright, almost copper hues in the fall were the epitome of orange. He loved the unique perfume of deli meats and subway steam. He loved the rain with such verve that every time it so much as drizzled, he would turn to the sky so he could feel the drops sprinkle onto his teeth. Because every raindrop that hit him had already experienced that much envied journey from the tips of the skyscrapers all the way down to the cracked and foot-stamped sidewalks. He believed every inch of the city had its own predetermined genre of music that suited it to a tee. The modal jazz of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter was absolutely meant for the Upper East Side, north of 61st Street. Precisely between Gershwin and gospel. He loved the view from his apartment, even if it was just the leaves of the tree outside in July or the thin shadows of its bare branches crawling along the plain brick wall in January. Tommy loved his career. He loved his friends. And he loved that first big bite of apple I watched him take each and every morning. Everything was perfect in the city, and as long as things remained the way he wanted them to, Tommy would continue to love the city forever. Which is exactly why his jaw dropped when he opened the letter he found in his mailbox that morning. The first bite of still un-chewed apple fell out of his mouth and firmly planted itself within the crack of that 113th Street sidewalk.

Over the next few rehearsals, the producer kept walking up to me and [saying], “It sounds like smooth jazz, what you’re doing there.” And I’m thinking, smooth jazz? I’m not even playing with that sort of articulation [or] phrasing at all. I’m going straight for some cool jazz, a modal thing. And he says, “Ah, it sounds nam-by-pamby.” And I’m like, “Okay.” Then the director said, “Stuart, you’ve got to do something else for this. I need you to ‘squeeze the lemon.’ I need you to really seduce this woman with your saxophone.” And—not that I make a habit of this sort of behavior—but I think there is only one person in this room who has had a romantic encounter through playing the saxophone, and it’s me! I think I’m the expert! Not that the saxophone has been the aphrodisiac that the world may imagine, but what it does have, I feel like I have at least been exposed to. So I was like, “Fine, fine, fine.” And I did an impersonation of what I thought was old burlesque saxophone, you know like “va do va vu va ve va vu vuh.” I’m like, this is ridiculous. And after, everyone was saying, “Yeah!” And I’m like, “What? You like that?” And they say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s perfect.” Afterward I was getting a drink of water and one of the dancers came up to me and [said], “Stuart, I don’t know what you were doing with your saxophone in that last run-through, but that was fantastic.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? This is what impressed you?” Okay, all right, I get it. I’ve just got to get out of my own silly head and remember that I’m painting in primary colors; I have things to communicate, and too subtle of a tonal area isn’t going to work. I was dead wrong, and they were right. It’s a different thing, what translates on Broadway. If you go to a Broadway show, I think the actors probably experience a similar thing—if you go up there like a film actor, you are not going to communicate anything. It’s not going to reach the edge of the stage. You need more concrete gestures.