Jazz

The Socks perform an original composition, "Deep Like a Starfish" live at the Luca Lounge in New York City on July 27th, 2010.

Zachary Lipton - Tenor Saxophone
Tobin Chodos - Keyboard
Christopher Mees - Bass
Kassa Overall - Drums

©2005 All Rights Reserved

The Socks perform Zachary's original composition "I Love the 90s" at the first annual New Rochelle Jazz Festival, July 10th, 2010.

Zachary Lipton - Tenor Saxophone
Tobin Chodos - Piano/Keyboard
Dylan Shamat - Bass
Kassa Overall - Drums

The Socks perform Zachary's original composition "Sweet Pea" at the first annual New Rochelle Jazz Festival, July 10th, 2010.

Zachary Lipton - Tenor Saxophone
Tobin Chodos - Piano/Keyboard
Dylan Shamat - Bass
Kassa Overall - Drums

I love music. I have loved music for as long as I have played it, and even before then. As a child learning to fundamentals of the saxophone and encountering jazz, this love manifested as a single-minded devotion. Music was not simply a passion, a fascination, and an avenue to self-expression. My love for music was religious; music was sacred. If someone quoted John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” over a corny funk tune, it was not simply heavy-handed and distasteful; it was sacrilegious. Music was not just an art; it was a spiritual experience, and it demanded not only serious study, but reverence.

As a high schooler, I subscribed earnestly to this notion of jazz musician as hero. John Coltrane was this master samurai who honed his talent to honorably push forward the musical zeitgeist into a new realm of consciousness. He was a messiah who would bring about change on earth through the comprehension of his improvisations, the study of his harmonic theories, the inspiration of his dedication. Jazz music was serious business, and had to be treated as such. The Bad Plus, at the time a newly formed jazz trio with a penchant for interpreting pop anthems, was heretical. They dishonored jazz - I thought then.

However hard some try to force a contrivance of a 'correct' way to play jazz, invariably we all arrive at different ways of approaching the music. To some, jazz's uniqueness lies in abstraction in rhythm and harmony. By this, I mean the creation of a duality between what we hear and the structure of the song. The structure exists independently of what we play. This allows for syncopation and cross rhythms, as well as harmonic detours to create tension between what we hear and the underlying form that we maintain in our heads, as musicians and as listeners.

It's midnight. I sit in the beautiful lobby of Hotel St. Nicolas in the heart of La Rochelle. Next to me is a new friend, D'Arcy, a warmhearted and sharp-witted Canadian expatriate, who I met between sets at a May 6th concert. This trip has been a story of chance encounters, new friends. It has been characterized by adventures both exhilarating and exhausting but also by the warmth and tranquility of home-cooked meals.

I normally find it easy to write about recent experiences, but I find myself struggling to process the last two weeks, and to contextualize it in the wild adventure that has consumed the last three years of my life.

Zachary Lipton - Tenor Saxophone, Didier Court - Guitar, Philippe Guignier - Guitar, Aurélien Guyot - Violin, Jérôme Nicolas - Clarinet, Robert Mendoche - Bass

My friends at the La Rochelle Sister City Initiative have wisely suggested that I use this website to blog the voyage to our jumelage.

While this site normally serves less as a diary and more as a platform for broadcasting original music and airing opinions on art, medicine and technology, this seems the right opportunity to embrace a less formal rapport with my legions of adoring cyberfans (ahem, Grandma Jean and my parents...).

If Ashton Kutcher can do it, so can I! I'll try to refrain from abbreviating words that are only three characters long to begin with, and will welcome a pie in the face if I stumble so far as to communicate emotions through emoticons.

Until Mid-May, farewell dear New Yorkers. Take care of my rainy, grimy and irritable, but always beautiful ancestral home.

Again, thanks to Peter Korn, Domenic Guastaferro, Sheila Sarkar, David Patterson and Brian Carter of he La Rochelle Sister City Initiative for organizing this trip and selecting me.

Time to watch Shrek V and whatever Ben Affleck bomb American Airlines scooped up in the bargain bin.

Dear friends, googlers and robots,

I am happy to announce that I've been selected to perform in the French coastal city of La Rochelle as a cultural ambassador from New Rochelle, NY from late April through the first week of May. Special thanks to Domenic Guastaferro, Sheila Sarkar, Dave Patterson, Brian Carter, Peter Korn, and everyone else involved in the La Rochelle Sister City Initiative. More information to come!

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.

A couple months ago, before my last relapse and subsequent progress towards recovery, I wrote an essay published here entitled Art in the Cloud. While it contained the germs of several important ideas in whose merit I strongly believe, it also suffered several major shortcomings. Some people complained of the essay's vagueness, unsure of what tangible things I was advocating. Others outright dismissed the entire essay, suggesting that it was merely a collection of pompous declarations. A few people criticized the essay, suggesting that people do not want a more 'robust' connection to artists, they just want the music. Additionally, many asked of me, why should artists be sharing more information? Simply because they can?

Recently, able to think and play again in a way that has eluded me for years, I have been devoting a lot of thought to the bigger picture concerning my art. What constitutes a justification of art? Is it emotional expression? Can a justification of art be generated by an extrapolation from some simple axioms? If there is a justification of art, does it demand that art be original? I should preface this discussion with the disclaimer that this discussion concerns only an investigation of my personal notion of what constitutes a justification for art and not a judgment on whether or not any work that doesn't meet the criteria that I will set forth has redeeming value.

Bart:

"You make some interesting observations and points, some I agree with, some I don't. I don't want to know what Trane studied 10 hours a day. I don't think the creative process must be laid bare for all to see. I think he who wants to know should work for the information, like students centuries ago going to monasteries to seek wisdom. Another thing is that I don't want to know everything about how things are made. It's a bit like the extras on a dvd. Knowing to much about how a movie is made can distract you (me) from what that movie is about. The problem is you don't know what information is helpful, and what info isn't."

The internet is the new media. This may seem obvious, but for most it has yet to sink in. Surely, for encyclopedic content, the internet's primacy is unchallenged by even the most philistine. But for art, particularly music, the internet and its culture of information sharing have been met with stiff resistance. Among more serious artists, at best the internet has been used to moderate effect as a marketing tool. Only among kitschier musicians is the internet seriously contemplated, engaged.

Keeping this public record of my thoughts and experiences has forced me to consider the issue of anonymity. Originally, instinctively, I posted anonymously. The more prudent route. Eventually, two things inclined me to reconsider this choice. First of all, several discussions with friends lead me to wonder whether anonymity or exposure presents a greater obstacle to honesty. Also, as my ability to play the saxophone and compose music resurfaces, I have thought about the role that these writings, thoughts, experiences have in my art.