Cherches' TRACKS: Memoirs from a Life w/Music (Bamboo Dart Press) and Linda Balliro's BEING A SINGER: The Art, Craft, and Science (Chicago Review Press)

Peter Cherches, TRACKS: Memoirs From a Life With Music, published by Bamboo Dart Press. I enjoy Peter’s prose, from his early Condensed Book to the more recent Whistler’s Mother’s Son and Other Curiosities (Pelekinesis). Publishers Weekly called him “one of the innovators of the short short story” before the term flash fiction. I also enjoyed his amusing and suprising performances at Cornelia Street Cafe with Lee Feldman, crooning standards of his own. Below is an excerpt from TRACKS.

Miles Davis, “Straight, No Chaser,” from Milestones (1958) 

One of the first jazz albums I bought as an adolescent, I think when I was 12, was Milestones, by the Miles Davis Sextet. I figured I’d kill two jazz birds with one stone: Miles Davis and John Coltrane, neither of whom I’d ever heard, to my knowledge. I was unaware at the time of the more legendary status of the group’s next album, Kind of Blue. I did know that Miles Davis was possibly the most famous living jazz musician, and that Coltrane had a reputation for playing really “weird.” Weird interested me. I understood weird. I was a weird kid. 

When I looked through the bin for Miles Davis albums, most likely at Sam Goody’s, Milestones caught my eye. On the cover was Miles in a green shirt, sleeves rolled up, holding his trumpet, staring straight out at me. He looked like he meant business. On the back cover I read that the album featured Coltrane on tenor sax, as well as Cannonball Adderley, whom I knew from his radio hit “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” on alto. I was unaware that it also featured one of the greatest rhythm sections in jazz history. In fact, I was most certainly unaware of the term “rhythm section.” It looked like a good bet. I bit. I really liked the album, but something confused me: Coltrane didn’t sound weird at all. He sounded like a pretty normal jazz saxophonist.

At the time I knew nothing of the phases of Coltrane’s career. I would listen to the album over and over and try to figure out what the uproar about Coltrane was all about.  All right, maybe there was a little something I could latch on to, maybe something in his tone, maybe something in the runs he played (he was in the midst of what jazz critic Ira Gitler called his “sheets of sound” period). But I wasn’t convinced there was anything so revolutionary about Coltrane. Over the next few years I got to know a lot more about Coltrane, and how his playing kept changing over the decade from 1957 until his death in 1967. 

In 1970 I was visiting my brother Bart at his bachelor pad and I started twisting the dial on the FM tuner of his stereo system. I came across some really intense jazz, a saxophonist seemingly blowing his brains out in the best of ways (I’d soon learn that there were other saxophonists who blew more brains further out). It turns out I had stumbled upon the multi-day Coltrane festival on WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University. That was my crash course in Coltrane, and, as I became a devoted listener of WKCR, in all sorts of jazz, but especially free jazz. 

In 1971 I bought Coltrane’s Live in Seattle double album, which was recorded in 1965 but had just been posthumously released. That one was too much for me. I ultimately made peace with Live in Seattle, but after all these years I still can’t get into certain of Coltrane’s late albums, Om, for instance, which may have been recorded under the influence of LSD or may just sound like it was. When I first heard it, I figured the guy had totally lost it. All these years later I’ve come to understand that I just haven’t found it yet. And that I might never. And that’s all right.

As a pre-teen girl, I was infatuated with movie musicals and spent afternoons with friends singing “I feel pretty” with the soundtrack. We imagined being Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Ann Margaret in Bye Bye Birdy in our basements. High school, I sang Joni Mitchell’s “Places” in an audition for Bye Bye Birdy. By default I got “Rosie,” because I was ethnic looking, especially in hoop earrings. The role, played in movie by Janet Leigh, included “Spanish Rose” , a song to Shriners in fez hats, sung while dancing on table tops. Luckily that was cut but I had to sing “One Boy” in a duet with Kim, the Ann-Margaret role. I had never sung alone in public and my only instruction was to sing alto to sound more adult.  I tried to be worldly but at the height of the duet my voice cracked. Auditorium  of people roared with laughter. Figured I could never be a singer, hadn’t the equipment. 

Apparently, I had it wrong. I read BEING A SINGER: The Art, Craft, and Science by Linda Balliro, with much interest. There are ways to connect the lower and higher registers and to easily move from one to the other. Even a developing voice might have managed it with training and an approach that made sense. Bailliro, a Berklee College of Music voice professor, was nominated for a Grammy as Music Educator of the Year. I can see why her training program, based on ten years of study with the legendary vocal coach Seth Riggs (coach to Michael Jackson, Barbra Steisand, Stevie Wonder) has benefited both professionals and amateurs. She has coached nationally touring musicians, young opera singers, local artists, children and teens. 

In this singular book, Balliro draws on vocal science, neuroscience and motor learning to show how singing actually works. From cognition to anatomy–our amazing hearing system–and even instincts and emotions are synched to produce a human song. Here’s a couple excerpts from the first chapter:

“Becoming a great singer isn’t about your “gift.” It isn’t about being “good enough.” Becoming a great singer means discovering how to align your thoughts, emotions, and behavior to tell the story of the musics and lyrics, no matter what you sing.” 

“Before you begin training, you need to prepare–just as you would prepare to run a marathon. Singing is more complex than most sports, so you’ll need to prepare your voice, mind, and body”

“Singing creates a whirlwind of physical and emotional experiences for singers and listeners. While we luxuriate in a flurry of vibrationbs, airflow, memory, imagination, and sound, we tend to forget that singing is a motor skill, like riding a bicycle or using chopsticks. Learning a physical action, a motor skill, is called motor learning. Understanding the principles of motor learning can help you train your voice quickly and efficiently.” 

 So the training begins in this clear specific program of exercise, self evaluation, science and inspiration.  I could not imagine using a book to learn to sing. This book, yes. I am doing landscapes this summer. Art depends on training. With enough practice, it’s instinctive, like riding a bike.

S.W.