Good Things Happen Slowly
Page 20
I was taken over by the pressure to produce a masterpiece. I had been given the gift of free time in this dreamlike environment, and I felt a tremendous responsibility to use the time well. It was paralyzing, and that first week I was overwhelmed. I procrastinated, reading novels and napping during the day. At the group dinner for the residents one night, I was seated next to Jane Brox, a respected nonfiction writer, essayist, and poet, and I told her I wasn’t getting much work done, and I was feeling guilty for being so unproductive. She told me to stop punishing myself and enjoy the experience of being at MacDowell. This time was for me, and I was free to use it in any way that suited me. Lots of people leave MacDowell refreshed and then start working, Jane said. That made me feel a lot better and loosened me up, and I quickly became super-motivated and productive.
For more than six months, beginning in MacDowell and then back in New York, I focused entirely on the text selection for my Leaves of Grass piece, knowing instinctively that if I got the text right, the music would come. I went through my copy of the Deathbed Edition, typing and then cutting out every piece of text that I had marked up for consideration. I laid the pieces out on the floor of my studio and shuffled them around, setting possible sequences and weeding some out. I worked by gut, with no concern—yet—for how the pieces could fit together. For no reason other than that they just didn’t speak so loudly to me, I passed over some of the best-known poems in Leaves of Grass, such as “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain! My Captain!” and I used none of the many poems about the Civil War or New York in the nineteenth century. I was more drawn to the poems with grand sentiments than the ones firmly grounded in time and place. I wanted to use his magical words to convey big thoughts and feelings in a way that I never could. And I was not afraid of using only a part of a longer poem (or even, in some cases, just the title) if that was what spoke to me.
Having never written a long-form work with words and music before, I asked for some advice from the composer Bob Aldridge, a fellow graduate of the New England Conservatory who was about my age. He had composed multiple concert-length pieces and had at this point been working for several years on an opera based on Elmer Gantry, the Sinclair Lewis novel. Bob suggested I contact his collaborator, Herschel Garfein, who had written the libretto for Elmer Gantry and was a respected composer in his own right. Herschel had grown up with the performing arts; his mother was the actor Carroll Baker, his father the film and stage director Jack Garfein. He was highly knowledgeable and skilled but wore his competence lightly.
I knew that there was a better order to be made of the texts that I loved, but I had been staring at them for so long, I was beginning to lose perspective. Herschel helped me by organizing them in way that moved obliquely from the universal to the particular in a dramatic arc. While Whitman had begun Leaves of Grass with the sixty-page poem “Song of Myself,” I knew I wanted to start, after an overture, with what I was envisioning as an invocation, “Song of the Universal,” then go right into my idiosyncratic selections from “Song of Myself.” We divided the piece into two parts, with the finale a setting of a four-line poem written late in his career, “After the Dazzle of Day.” There’s a structure, but it’s not rigid or schematic—and it is a work of art, not an academic work, and as such I felt free to use the words in any way I wished. I wanted to retain a sense of the freedom, the element of the unexpected, that’s an essential part of Whitman’s poetry. I didn’t care if the finished piece fit neatly into any established category. I didn’t set out to write an opera or an operetta or an oratorio or a work of musical theater. I wanted the piece to be what it would be. I figured the best way to be true to Walt Whitman was to be true to myself.
And yet back at MacDowell in January 2003, with the premiere looming that March, I still needed to make huge strides on the music, but I was once again feeling overwhelmed and a little paralyzed. I had to snap out of it, to shake myself up. So I tried something I’d never done before: I sang each poem over and over, using the poem’s internal rhythm to tease out natural-sounding melodic shapes or find a groove that fit. Once I found that rhythm, the music appeared almost instantly. I wrote the piece in about four weeks, leaving myself February to do the orchestrations, hand-copying the parts in pencil just in time for the March premiere.
In the end, the project had become a fully scored, evening-long continuous program of songs and instrumental works for two voices, one male and one female, and a chamber ensemble of eight pieces: piano, trumpet, trombone, two woodwinds (tenor sax, and alto sax doubling on clarinet and bass clarinet), ’cello, bass, and drums. It’s largely formal, in that every note (except for solos) was written out—with a pencil on staff paper, the way I have always written; and it relates to jazz, in that the instrumentation is associated with jazz and all the musicians I used were badass jazz players. There’s not that much improvisation in the piece, only modest-length solos that feature each player, with the notable exception of a piece called “The Mystic Trumpeter,” which has space for free improvisation for trumpet and voice. Whitman’s words were all-important, and the ensemble took a backseat to the vocalists.
That meant the singers would have to be just the right people. I knew I wanted to use lyrically astute jazz singers and not classical singers, for whom vowel sounds are often more important than the words and their meaning. I wanted to be sure the words would be heard and experienced by the listener, which meant finding vocalists attuned to the value of great diction and who were capable of singing with emotional sincerity.
For the male singer, there was no question that it would be Kurt Elling—I wrote the male part with Kurt in mind. I had known him since the mid-1990s, when he was still living in Chicago. Kurt had studied most of the great poets, and he could quote many of them from memory. His readiness to do so in casual conversation spoke of his bravura as well as his intellect. Both were of value in taking on Whitman. Not every singer could stand at a microphone and sing, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” the opening words of Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The singer had to mean that in his bones, and Kurt Elling did. I don’t intend that as a backhanded compliment. Kurt’s self-confidence was well earned. I knew he would appreciate Whitman’s language—and he is a superb musician. Kurt had written a good deal of poetry himself, much of it in the form of vocalese lyrics crafted to the music of improvised jazz solos.
Not long after I started working on Leaves of Grass, I realized there was an awful lot of male energy in it. I wanted a female counterbalance. For a female singer, I engaged Norma Winstone and, again, wrote the music with her in mind. Norma, who lives near London and is not as well known in the United States as she should be, is a uniquely wonderful jazz singer with a pure voice, great instincts, and impeccable diction. Like Kurt, she is also a superb lyricist attuned to the art of poetry. (She has since written lyrics to many of my tunes, including delicately plaintive words for my ballad “Valentine,” which, in its lyric version, we retitled “A Wish.”) As a singer, Norma exuded womanly warmth that was just right for the project.
Norma came to the States for the March 2003 tour of performances of Leaves of Grass that Robert Rund had set up. We premiered it at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and ultimately performed it at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina and at performing arts centers and universities in Washington, DC, and New Jersey. Inevitably, Norma had to go back home, so for both the recording of Leaves and Grass and its 2005 CD release tour, including a sold-out premiere in New York, at the new Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall, Kate McGarry took over from Norma. Kate, though just emerging in the jazz scene, had already released two wonderful albums, and I was a big fan. Steeped in Irish and folk music as well as jazz, she sang with an earthy sensibility, like Norma, but with a rootsy American feeling that was ideally suited to Walt Whitman. On the album of Leaves of Grass that we recorded for Palmetto, the first voice you hear is Kate’s, singing with ringing clarity:
Come, said the Muse,
Sing me the Universal.
The universal grows out of the particulars in Whitman’s poetry and ultimately transcends them.
At Carnegie, when I heard Kate’s pure, tender voice singing music I had composed, I was moved almost to tears, overcome with joy and affirmed in my decision to follow my instincts with this project from the beginning. As to the broader response, I need not have worried, as it was almost completely positive. Among the many heartening reviews of the work, the Washington Post said that Leaves of Grass was “an eloquently orchestrated celebration of Walt Whitman’s poetry, vision and, above all else, humanity.” My intention was to serve Whitman’s language with music so that the listener hears his words in a new way. At least that was my hope, my big-ass wish.
CHAPTER 14
SCOTT
I go to jazz clubs on most weekend nights, but usually to work. Though I try, my schedule doesn’t allow me to go out as a listener as much as I would like. It was a rare experience for me to be at New York’s Birdland on the evening of Saturday, April 13, 2002, to hear Janis Siegel singing with the pianist Eric Reed and his trio. I went with a friend—someone I had met in the recovery program I had joined to deal with my sexual compulsion. This iteration of the renowned bebop haunt of the postwar Fifty-Second Street scene had opened just a few years earlier, on West Forty-Fourth Street in the theater district. Unlike the original Birdland, this one was roomy and designed in the style of a ritzy nightspot in a vintage Hollywood musical. There were tables on an elevated level to one side of the stage, and that’s where my friend and I were seated.
At one point in the show, Janis was about to sing the standard “I Remember You” in a medley with Kenny Wheeler’s “Who Are You?” She introduced the arrangement as mine and pointed me out in the audience, saying some nice things about our friendship and collaboration. I smiled and waved.
When the show was over, a man came over to my table and knelt down alongside me, so we were eye to eye. He was a well-put-together guy with blond hair, boy-next-door looks, and a radiant smile. He said, “Excuse me, Mr. Hersch. I have your records with Janis and a couple of your own albums, and I just want to say that I really dig your music.”
I said, “Thanks for saying that,” and we locked eyes for a moment. When we shook hands, there was a bit more warmth than the situation called for. He went back to his table, and I thought, Something a little unusual just happened.
On my way out of the club I spotted him, made it a point to walk by his table, where he was sitting with another guy, said good night, and put my hand on his shoulder.
A couple of days later I got an e-mail through my website, and the sender introduced himself as Scott Morgan, the guy from Birdland. He said he was interested in buying a copy of the book of sheet music of my original tunes that I was offering through the site. He could have purchased it directly without e-mailing me, of course. And I could have sold him the book without engaging him, as I did, with questions about his musical background and experience. He sent back a longish note saying that he was a jazz lover and had studied music seriously before making a career in technology. I was definitely more interested. After a few exchanges like this, I asked him out to dinner via e-mail. I wrote, with characteristic forthrightness, “Yes, I do mean a date.”
We went to a place called Anita’s on Broadway and Broome Street, which had opened just a few months earlier. He had come straight from his job at Microsoft, where he was working in senior management, and was dressed smartly in “business casual.” I wore shorts and one of my many vintage shirts from the 1950s. We both looked pretty sharp. I brought up my HIV status almost immediately, in fairness to him, and he said he had read about it in both the gay and jazz press and understood the situation before he’d agreed to the date. He told me he was not HIV positive but understood AIDS and its risks.
Jazz doesn’t have a large audience, so proportionately there are not that many gay jazz fans. Most of them are into singers and not instrumental jazz, but Scott’s knowledge struck me as pretty deep. He impressed me with his knowledge of an obscure singer named Nancy King, who is one of my all-time favorites but has had a barely visible career. And he knew a good bit about my music, too. He told me he had my album Forward Motion and said, “It was cool how you used the chord progression of Charlie Parker’s ‘Confirmation’ in your tune ‘Janeology.’ ” He had great taste and good ears, and I was seriously digging him. When the check came, I offered to pay and said he could cover the next one.
After a couple more nice dinner dates in the following weeks, Scott said he’d like to make a meal for me and invited me to his house in Verona, New Jersey, a short bus ride from midtown Manhattan. I asked, “Should I bring a toothbrush?” and he said, “Yes.” Scott cooked up an impressive dinner of Mediterranean red mackerel, with perfectly prepared homemade crème brûlée for dessert. This would be the first of hundreds of meals that Scott would cook for the two of us over the ensuing years, but he never made crème brûlée again until I dogged him about it many years later. He knew how to impress me in all the right ways.
I had been in some longish relationships since Eric, but for one reason or another they had not worked out; my sexual issues were responsible for ending some of them. But after two years in recovery, supported by a committed meditation practice, I felt wide open to this sweet, gentle man who seemed different from any of the others for reasons that would become apparent (and more and more attractive) as I got to know him.
Scott and I had a great many things in common: our love of music; our interest in culture more broadly; our progressive political orientation. Though he worked in digital coding and then in senior management for Electronic Data Systems, and later at Microsoft, he had studied music in college, earning a BFA in musical theater from Florida State University. He could play piano well enough to accompany himself with some hip chords and was a genuinely gifted singer. He had a warm, appealing vocal quality and sang with feeling and sensitivity to the words. Over the years since we’ve met, I’ve encouraged him and coached him from time to time in jazz singing, to help channel his considerable talent. In 2016 he released a well-received jazz vocal CD, Songs of Life—naturally I was the pianist, arranger, and producer, and we had a ball doing it.
Almost seven years younger than me, he grew up as part of a close-knit, athletic, and outdoorsy family in Sarasota, Florida. When he was a child, Sarasota was not as overdeveloped with condos as it is now. There were wetlands and sandy beaches and lots of open spaces. Venice, just down the road from Sarasota, has for decades been the winter home base for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. All the animals, including the elephants, lived off-season on a ranch there, and the performers trained and practiced in Venice. Scott had joined the Sailor Circus in first grade—it was a youth circus staffed by many of the Ringling performers. He learned how to fly on the trapeze, how to tumble and walk tightrope, and how to ride a unicycle. As an adult, he kept up his circus skills for the exercise and the fun.
His childhood experience and mine, in Cincinnati, could hardly have been more different. On our first date, I asked him to be my guest for a show I was playing at the Vanguard in two weeks, but he said he couldn’t—he was going hiking in the Pyrenees with his parents. Thinking of my own disastrous family vacations, I thought, This guy is either really well adjusted or he has not cut the cord with his family. Thankfully, it turned out to be the former. Scott felt closely connected to both his mother, who worked as a special education teacher, and his father, a corporate executive who retired in early middle age so he could travel, enjoy outdoor sports, and hike. Both of his parents, now in their eighties, run competitively. Not long after Scott and I met, when Scott was forty-one and his father was sixty-eight, the two of them scaled Mount Kilimanjaro together.
Scott was raised in the southern way, with good manners and a deferential attitude toward his elders—you called people “sir” and “ma’am.” He kne
w when to speak and when not to speak, and he could handle himself with grace and charm in any situation. I learned a lot just by watching him with people. My parents were somewhat southerners, and I grew up on the cusp of the South, but I’m a little more intense than Scott. And after four decades of living in Manhattan, I tend to say what’s on my mind. It’s not that I have no self-control—I can function socially as a responsible human being. I’m just inclined to be up-front about my feelings and my thoughts. That’s how I’m wired, and that wiring works for me as a jazz musician. I need to trust my gut instincts and feel comfortable putting them out there. When I have the notion to play something, I play it, and I don’t apologize for it. I work the same way offstage, too, generally speaking.
If Scott and I were at a party and I was having a bad time, I might say to him, “This sucks—let’s get out of here.” He’d say, “Oh, I don’t think it’s so bad. But I understand how you feel. Let’s just hang out for a little while longer, so we don’t offend anyone, and then we can leave quietly.” We worked well as a team and complemented each other. He was certainly good for me—and I was pretty sure I was just as good for him.
When I met Scott, he had a female Rottweiler—a sweet, older rescue dog named Barkley whom he was deeply attached to and whom I loved the moment I met her. One of the main reasons he lived in Verona was so Barkley could have a backyard to run around in. Scott and I had been together for about a year, going back and forth to each other’s places, when Barkley was diagnosed with bone cancer and she had to be put down. With no more need for the yard, Scott sold the house and moved into my loft.