I plan to write about new music, particularly music emerging from the “Chicago scene.” While my writing background is academic, I plan to make what I publish here as broadly appealing and non-technical, while also including technical details for those who are interested. I don’t have an overarching argument to pursue here, yet—indeed part of the point of a blog or substack seems to be opposed to such a thing. But I’m looking for the next argument, the next story that could power my next book, or my next recording, or both.
I play jazz and improvisational music regularly in Chicago, and I professionalized as a jazz musician by working with players on this scene, especially Rob Clearfield (my principal teacher), and jam sessions hosted by Greg Ward, Matt Ulery, and Quin Kirchner. Some years prior, I also followed closely the emergence of new classical or art music, especially through the performances of the International Contemporary Ensemble under Claire Chase. At Amherst College I studied jazz and improvisational music with Andy Jaffe and with Yusef Lateef. At Cornell University I studied violin with Meyer Stolov.
My non-musical professional background is in literature, and the music of language, also known as prosody or poetics. In that area I have published articles, co-edited a book on the poet Edmund Spenser, and published a monograph on the development of poetry in the last two decades of the sixteenth century in England, focused on the character named “Rosalind.” I remain Associate Professor of English Emeritus at Purdue University Northwest, where I was a member of the faculty for 15 years. I hold a PhD, MA, and MFA (poetry writing) from Cornell University and a BA from Amherst College—all degrees in English.
What’s up with “ZLR”?
German for “zeimlich langsam 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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