Ran Blake
pianist, composer, educator (interview conducted via Zoom)
Ray Cassarino
Wonderful piano teacher from my teenage years. Great! From East Hartford, CT.
Suffield, Connecticut
A terrible place, I missed Springfield. It wasn’t a very tolerant town. Gossip was the pastime, behind its polite veneer there was anti-Semitism and racism.
Spiral Staircase
The definitive noir movie. It has 8 minutes of bad soap opera but the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca and the acting of Ethel Barrymore is top notch.
Alfred Hitchcock
A manipulator, a fine director but with Vertigo he left his TV persona and achieved a masterpiece.
George Avakian
A wonderful man selling Armenian rugs and producing golden records. Sonny Rollins cherished him - Charles Lloyd cherished him - Keith Jarrett abused him.
Gunther Schuller
Brilliant composer, conductor but above all a great educator.
Dr. Mabuse
Evil. He spawns Stalin, Hitler. David Corvo, who had moved to Los Angeles to hypnotize Jean Tierney. He was behind the serial killings in Spiral Staircase. He keeps pervading film noir and film mysteries but he stays in the real life of all human beings. Donald Trump is his least educated nephew.
George Russell
A phenomenal composer/arranger and what a tremendous human being he was and is. His Lydian Concept is fine and has helped many students but above all he’s the composer who unlocks rural America and takes us to the stratosphere.
Lenox, MA
A little town in the Berkshires which had the most incredible four-year school for improvisation and before that put on so many literate meetings between the people from early musical history educating the young people.
Oscar Peterson
A man of many notes; maybe I prefer the Monk selection, but of his type there is no better. I one time heard him play What is this thing called love, I believe at the Vanguard, although he could have been too big of a name for that place. In 28 choruses I never heard him repeat himself. Maybe less innovative than Art Tatum harmonically, but he has a great sense of swing and of course my favorite playing of his was when he imitated me at Lenox and played only eighth notes and eight note triplets without any velocity. What a genius!
Billie Holiday
She and Mahalia Jackson are Mother Soul. She knew what notes to leave out as Thelonious does. Her displacement of rhythms knocked people out in the 30s and 40s and then when she performed Strange Fruit there was a different magnitude.
Third Stream
This is a beautiful river that Gunther coined the term for. He describes it as the Connecticut River and the Mississippi, where they would become cellmates for a while. Of course, he says these two rivers and their meetings took place for centuries before he coined the word. And now the river can be the Nile River from Egypt and the Ganges from India and they might totally avoid the Mississippi and form other streams all over the world.
Hankus Netsky
He along with Peter Row has saved the Third Stream department. Wonderful administrator and he knows how to pick people to help him when he can’t fulfill all the duties. He’s made a name for himself in Klezmer music. He’s extremely loyal, he can criticize you to your face but there is no more loyal a friend.
Boston
Not a good representative of New York… surrounded by Roxbury, Dorchester, Cambridge, Brookline. I’ve now gotten more tolerant to this as an older person. Put away its optimism of the Friday afternoon Boston Symphony Hall concerts and what used to be its polite manners and you get below to the bluntness that still has some majestic qualities.
France
One of the most wonderful countries in the world - fabulous people, cuisine, architecture and loyalty. Don’t let its good manners get in your way, people are true and honest but there is also sort of an insincere politeness that pervades the country.
Thelonious Monk
Our greatest genius in music, perhaps matched only by Olivier Messiaen but Monk does it at the spur of the moment. Of course, Messiaen did that too at the Trinity Church. He is a man that combines ragtime, stride, cosmos dissonance, tone clusters; attaches this to standards in his own playing, leaves space, it’s honest, it’s rugged, it’s sincere, it’s innovative!
Dorothy Wallace
A majestic human being who came from an extremely Conservative Republican family. Of course as she grew, she still had the fiery hot red pepper temper but what an incredibly loyal friend. Her pocketbook was open to many causes and people, but her emotional pocketbook was even greater. She believed in streaming at the highest level and this reminds me to ask you, Frank Carlberg, for a tape of this. Send me a copy of this!
Greece
So famous for its philosophy. A place with good food although may be Turkey takes the edge. It has retsina, Melina Mercouri, Xenakis, Mikis Theodorakis, Manos Hadjidakis, the cradle of democracy, but we saw it at its worst. The generals would still have made a coup d’état but the colonels did it with torture. April 20th 1967, what an education …of course this has happened around the world in France, England, United States, Russia but it really hit me at the time and behind its sudden light and gregarious people lies this violence.
Jaki Byard
Was there any style he could not imitate? Speed! Extremely bitter man, but when he wanted to, he could hide behind his good humor. Maybe he could have consolidated some of his styles together. He and Louise made an enchanting couple. In Via Reggio, Italy people would chant his name. A great historical figure inspiring many people through his work at New England Conservatory. So sad that he had an unexpected death in Queens, but the New England Conservatory and the citizens of Worcester won’t forget him.
Cinema/Film
Ah, my favorite art. Can also make some trash, whether it is simplified Walt Disney or Zombies walking around eating horseradish popcorn. However, it can still produce some of the greatest art from Mabuse right up to recent explorations. Here we blend the visual, the aural, the nightmare in black and white and sometimes in color and this can pervade our dreams.
Chris Connor
I think one of the greatest singers that does not come from Afro-American blues. A very uneven singer who has made several mediocre records. A skillful performer in a recording studio and a very vulnerable lady in person, but she was capable of great moments. Her phrasing, hearing her sing Get out of town! We know that Ella is pitch perfect but Chris took chances. I hope her name will not die. I fear it might because she has competition that may be the most innovative in history. I think other people like Abbey Lincoln, Christine Correa, Billie Holiday will have a longer life. But I hope Chris Connor will have a place in history and will gather appreciation.
The Primacy of the Ear
The name of a book that maybe needed further editing. But the ear, it determines the thought. Yes, you need to train the hand, you can have it from scales, although speed, flavor, context must come before gymnasium. But, it’s the ear that can determine things. The ear, both hearing things correctly and then letting your imagination disturb its correctness is one of the greatest attributes in the world of art.
Jeanne Lee
Jeanne Lee. How can you forget that name? A treasure, perhaps one of the four most important people in Ran Blake’s life. She was so unappreciated in her lifetime. I think her reputation will grow but she will still need all the help from those of us now to help perpetuate her name. She was a lady with incredible amount of humor, loyalty, compassion, maybe not the most punctual in the cycle of the Earth judgment, but her sense of time will make the greatest history of all.
Jazz
Jazz is a certain stream of music, some people have refused to use that as a name. Charles Mingus, George Russell are of course great! Gerry Mulligan plays jazz, he’s as light weight as a coca cola lime in the sun for four hours with stale cheese in it, but it can be one of the greatest musics. It has a very violent history which concerns racism and bigotry and intolerance. It has produced geniuses. It is a blend, with kind of a third stream element.
What would you consider your greatest musical triumph?
Performing with Jeanne Lee and joining the Conservatory faculty.
“If I could do it all over again, one thing I would do differently …”
Have the ability, the magic, the knowhow to inspire musicians to take the road that lets their ears be their primary sense of communication. To have more people given a better chance, and to relish their record collection. In this hard time of the virus, we’re experiencing a lot of pain, loss of concerts, depression, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we made one week a year our own distancing and really took a week from our own music, our own painting, our own writing and go back to the past and really return to some roots and give older artists our appreciation and our attention.
One question that should have been asked but wasn’t.
What is your favorite instrument? I’m going to mention two questions - one about me and one that’s a little more global. I should say that piano is my third favorite instrument and most people can guess what my favorite instrument is. I think speaking on a more global scale of course we have to worry about Mother Nature and the intolerance of people combined, but can we make a study of tolerance the number one type of activity in both the curriculum of schools and the curriculum of lifelong learning?
Thank you very much for these distinguished questions which I know were written for me as we don’t think Anthony Coleman would be asked questions about Chris Connor. DekTor (Ran’s feline companion) feels left out but you can say he was right here on the floor, make sure you spell his name correctly if you mention him, he’s very sensitive.