Reviews and Grants

How does it make you feel to get a good review of a CD? (You don’t know what a music CD is? Well, that’s going to become a thing pretty soon. But enough of that.) I’m not sure if reviewers count in the new world of internet influencers. No matter: It feels pretty okay to get a good review. Now getting a review in the first place is tough. A surprising number of musicians pay a publicist to get their new CD into the hands of reviewers and then there is also the understandable path towards achieving that goal by paying a noted reviewer to write some praise on your CD jacket. I’ve never paid a publicist to get my CD into the right spots so it’s been difficult but the results (see my website www.brokenreedsax.com to see them) have been gratifying.

Much much much better than a good review is being awarded a grant. That’s happened to me several times. Before I hit my seventh decade I received only one-off grants—paying for just one concert and not much cash. When I was 69 I won my first major grant, New Jazz Works from Chamber Music America funded by the Doris Duke Foundation, for years the only game in town for jazz. There was enough money to pay for several concerts plus a nice 9K commission. They’ve changed their regulations, but back in 2019 the grant winners were required to do a lot of confusing accounting work. I didn’t do very well with it and I hardly got better at it over time. It got my wonderful supervisor Gargi Shinde a bit annoyed. She told me that with my academic pedigree she didn’t expect so much incompetence.

But enough complaining. This was the first time in my life that I could pay musicians above-average fees. In fact, the grant required me to do so. Did it open the world to me? Scarcely. I thought it would be easy to get gigs with a self-funded group. A lot of venues just weren’t interested. As usual, the music wasn’t exactly the right stuff, and with my lack of fame they didn’t think they could get an audience. With Ms. Shinde’s connections I was given a concert at the Jazz Museum in Harlem with the proviso that I understand that it was not part of their programmed events—in other words, they didn’t really want me there!

Winning the grant was a tremendous confidence-builder. Here is was in the winners circle. Other grant winners that year (12 in all) included some world-famous artists like David Murray (The World Saxophone Quartet), Oscar Hernandez (Ruben Blades, Paul Simon) and Andrew Cyrille (Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp). It was the first time that I appreciated the randomness of artistic success. Unless there’s some hanky-panky I don’t know about, a panel of judges selected our music without knowing our identity. New Jazz Works is one of the few blind grants in the art world. We won this on merit as judged by one panel of judges. Another panel might have passed on any of us—especially me. In the world of jazz my music is a bit like vanilla pudding in a jar of pickles.

Recently I won another coveted grant—the Jazz Road tour grant. At age 73 I’ve got to be one of the oldest grantees they’ve had. The Jazz road staff didn’t care how old I am; they never asked. In contrast to most other grant winners I designed a tour without any jazz spots—and in an area with almost none: Midcoast Maine. It was one of the most wonderful events in my life. Three of the six performances were in small libraries; one was in a large performance space and two were outside in incredible unseasonal weather. (88 degrees in Maine???) Now, I’ve done plenty of library gigs over several decades. All of them were in large-ish rooms set aside for events involving at least 25 people. But these libraries didn’t have rooms like these so we played with book stacks behind us, and the audiences were incredibly appreciative.

Who knows what will happen a year away when I’m 75!