I’m a jazz pianist and composer on the Chicago scene, and I write about the music I’m living inside. I bring an unusual perspective: after a career as an English professor (I published a book with Oxford University Press), I returned to my first love—performing jazz—and professionalized by playing with musicians like Rob Clearfield, Greg Ward, Matt Ulery, and Quin Kirchner. My album Pyrography came out in April 2025. This newsletter offers insider perspectives, technical analysis made accessible, and stories from Chicago’s vital jazz ecosystem.
What’s up with “ZLR”?
German for “ziemlich langsame Romanze” or “rather slow romance,” a combination of the words Robert Schumann used to describe the tempo and overall feel of the second movement of his fourth symphony. I use an excerpt from this piece as a solo piano introduction to one of the compositions on my forthcoming recording, and it also seemed fitting to describe a salient fact about me as a musician and writer about music as well as words: that I made the transition to full-time musician in my late forties: a rather slow romance indeed.
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To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
