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Zachary Lipton Quartet plays the Underground Lounge
February 20th, 10:00 PM

Come out for a night of original music.

Zachary Lipton - Saxophones
Tobin Chodos - Piano
Rick Rosato - Bass
Colin Stranahan - Drums

Self-promotion is the part of professional music I'm least comfortable with. It's always been an awkward process for me. The most offensive component has always been the bio. Musicians, artists, and everyone else trying to compete for the limited leisure-time attention of America's distractible public all find themselves, willingly or reluctantly, having to write self-congratulatory bios lauding their own prodigious talent, notable associations and historic achievements. To make it palatable, the standard form is for bios to be written in the third person. Here, I will try to account for who I am in a way for which I'm not ashamed to take credit.

Zachary Lipton trio performs Lester Leaps In live at the Underground Lounge. Rick Rosato plays bass and Craig Weinrib plays drums.

Recently, a friend pointed me towards an edition of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in which the preface contained a number of critical reviews contemporary to the book’s writing. Not surprisingly the critical response was overwhelmingly negative. Naturally, my first inclination was to pooh-pooh the critics and lament their failure to recognize something great in its time. But another, more important idea struck me.

Duo gig on Thursday, November 5th at Cafe Mozart on Mamaroneck Avenue.

Zachary Lipton - Saxophones
Tobin Chodos - Piano

Originals, Standards, Swing, and some Sidney Bechet.

For hundreds of years, the increased specialization of labor drove greater productive capacity and increased efficiency across all sectors of the world economy. Philosophers like Karl Marx noted the potential damage of such a division of duties to man’s soul. But few could have predicted then that the over-specialization of labor could spell financial catastrophe on a massive scale for those married to very specific skill sets.

Twenty-one months ago, my brain stopped working. Something might have been amiss for some time before then, but in January, 2008, I first knew beyond any doubt that I was broken. Before the month was out, I had seen a neurologist to rule out the possibility of multiple sclerosis or a brain tumor. Nearly two years later, I am not yet sure what I am fighting, and, at times, why I am fighting.

After two years of cycling between ten percent and fifty percent of my former cognitive and physical capacity, I have progressed little but learned much. I have acquired more knowledge than I can currently process about my own health, the myriad families of medical conditions that can cause neurological complications, and the problems that plague the healthcare industry itself. In this article, I will elaborate on some of the horrifying discoveries that I have made on my medical odyssey.