Developing as an Artist

Early in my college education, I had a friend named Bob Mondello, a theater critic in Washington D.C. He had free tickets to what seemed to me at the time, every play, musical theater show, movie festival, and art exhibit in town.  We must have attended hundreds of events that often included “talk to the audience” segments where the author or composer discussed their work. Bob also gave me books about the arts, almost as assigned texts, which we discussed at length. In hindsight, these events were at least as important to my development in the arts as any other part of my formal college education.

On one of these forays many years ago, Bob and I had the opportunity to spend the evening with some actors and what I came away with were several thoughts that were quite profound to me. These actors were at the time performing in the musical Rocky Horror Picture Show while several of them were simultaneously in rehearsal for a production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and one had just completed taping of a dog food commercial. They considered themselves artists and took their work very seriously. Do musicians share this attitude? What happens as we develop the level of our craft? It seems that at some point we begin to specialize, perhaps out of necessity because we are in an intensely competitive field. Does that mean our attitudes should become more exclusive as our craft focuses? My only explanation for this is that we need to explain and justify our own artistic and career choices and with that justification comes the belittling of those area we have not chosen to pursue.

Each year I have several students who only want to study jazz, specifically music of the bebop era. They speak disparagingly of David Sanborn, Kenny Gorelick, and a host of other players. Their ultimate insult is that a particular recording “sounds like GRP record.” They hate classical music and think that a classical saxophone sound is a strangled, muffled, and otherwise lobotomized version of the true saxophone tone they hear from their bebop idols. They practice their transcribed solos religiously, not stopping to notice that their concept of pitch is of a decidedly Hindustani nature. They buy whatever mouthpiece their idols endorse, not really caring that they can’t play a low B flat at any dynamic below quadruple forte. They take they cues for embouchure development from pictures of their heroes or from apocryphal descriptions they hear on the jazz saxophone grapevine. “You seen what Coltrane did, man, was he rolled his lower lip out .0037 inches and kept his tongue down in the bottom of his mouth and Dexter always kept his neck strap as low as possible.” What a waste of time.

Why do we hear all this talk about jazz players needing to develop a personal sound, one that is only theirs, and one that is distinctive and unique? People are distinctive and unique and they become that way as a result of their background and experiences. Writers read the great works of those that went before them and of their contemporaries. They analyze the specific techniques used and copy those that seem to fit them at the time. They study literature from the Greeks to that of the present day. Actors study drama and theater throughout history and most working actors perform in vastly different environments. Read books, read the paper, watch the news, involve yourself in your community, and grow as a multi-faceted lover and proponent of the arts.