The Mind Moves with Music

          I've revered the piano as a mysterious creation that could instantly draw me into a world of classy sophistication and mystical wonder ever since I was a little boy at Lake Champlain and my grandmother would sit down at the piano and play.

             The whole purpose of this post is to get you to listen to more piano music, or at least orchestral music, just so you know.

             The absolute BEST moments while traveling around the world were when I was listening to classy music in gorgeous surroundings.  I think that's why I took all of the risks I did: so I could stand atop a mountain peak or in front of the great wonders of the world, and listen to something supremely spectacular that had been dreamed up, composed and played by another mind for the enjoyment of everyone else, whatever place they may be.

When I was in the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid at Egypt, smiling ecstatically, the first song I chose to listen to was Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, and I followed that with Bach’s “Joy of Man’s Desiring”.  I’d already celebrated my arrival to the pyramids at Giza outside with Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony “Pastoral” and the 4^th movement of his 5^th symphony, which I highly recommend listening to any time you accomplish one of your major goals.  John Coltrane’s “Acknowledgment” also danced in my eardrums, as did Hiromi’s “Wind Song,” “Green Tea Farm,” and “Time Travel”.

                I have been listening to classical music as long as I can remember.  My mother had diverse musical tastes, but more often than not, if she was playing music, it was Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Handel, choral music or sonata collections from various classical composers.

                I always associate classical music with Christmas and winter holidays, since that seemed to be the time when it was playing in our house most often.  Besides hearing it at home, I took a music class in seventh grade that focused on all of the greats from the Baroque and Classical period, which at least gave me enough background in the basics to know where to start when I seriously got interested in it as an adult.  I do remember hearing Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude” in that class and being in love instantly.  Most other students thought it was stupid, but I really loved most of what we learned.

It wasn’t until I graduated from high school that I decided to start listening to classical music on my own time.  I’d grown up being schooled by modern rock music with all of my friends, and just become fascinated with all of the classic rock greats when I turned 16.  But right before I left for college I made copies of Beethoven’s 5^th and 6^th symphonies, two collections of “piano classics” from a wide assortment of musical masters, and a Dies Irae choral collection of various classical treasures.  I remember walking through snowstorms to class or back home during vacation in the vast snowy fields and relishing in "Arabian Dance" by Tchaikovsky.  After all, Disney's Fantasia had been a staple of my childhood.

          That summer I figured out how to do one of my favorite things in the world.  When everyone else was at the religious baccalaureate ceremony to be announced as a graduate, two days before the real show, I was walking through the woods in the dark, alone, for the first time in my life, about to find my own true religion.  Once I made my way through the trees and bushes to the opening of the pond, I found the rowboat, hopped in, and pushed off under the moon and stars.  The pond is about an acre wide, and it was June so everything had just begun to bloom.  It wasn’t very cold, but it wasn’t very warm either, since summer was just beginning.  I recall it was very breezy, and I had to become skilled at steering the boat while lying on my back stretched out over the seats, and trying not to get freaked out when a bat flew within a few inches of my nose or when I bumped into the shore every so often.  There was no reason that there should be another person out there in the middle of nowhere, but I’d never done anything like this before, so it was pretty spooky the first few times I found myself lost in the sky and then realized that I was resting on the shore where anyone or anything could have hopped into the boat with me.  

Of course, I had my disc man and headphones with me, and had created my first ever immaculate stargazing playlist.  It was mostly classic rock songs, like The Beatles (“Across the Universe,” “Hey Jude,”  “Let it Be,”), Led Zeppelin (“Bron-Yr-Aur,” “Stairway to Heaven”), Jimi Hendrix (“Little Wing”), and Pink Floyd (“Great Gig in the Sky,” “Shine On Your Crazy Diamond,” “Time,” “Learning to Fly”).  There was also some mellower contemporary rock music from Smashing Pumpkins (“Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “1979,” “By Starlight,” “Beautiful,” “Farewell and Goodnight”), Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers.  But what really blew me away was the classical music.  “Moonlight Sonata”, “Raindrop Prelude”, and “Joy of Man’s Desiring” really stole the show.  Over the coming decade I would add many more greats to my stargazing shows, but those first few nights when I tried it out will never be topped.  I was a completely pure and sober guy back then too.  I didn’t need any mind expansion to feel the utmost beauty of the universe.  Surely my perception’s changed and increased over the years, but back then, it was purely about the stars and the music.

I didn’t really get into jazz until my third year of college, when they offered a course for non-music majors called “A Survey of Jazz”.  We couldn’t believe that it was actually a course where we got credit to learn about fantastic music.  We covered the entire history of the art form, dating back to songs in the cotton fields, up through rag time and be-bop and fusion and world music.  It was really cool to find yourself listening to the smoothest sophisticated music you’d ever heard, but for homework.  Some of my favorite albums of all time I learned about in that class.  Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Giants Steps by John Coltrane, The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Coleman, Time Out by Dave Brubeck, Moanin’ by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Monk’s Dream by Thelonious Monk, Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, A Love Supreme by John Coltrane and various collections of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.  I continued listening to and loving them after the course concluded, and when I lived in New Zealand we found this one bar that had jazz music every Thursday.  Four old men in their 60s would play old jazz classics quietly at one end of the bar while all of the international students met up and commented on how strange it was to be celebrating America’s truest art form on the other side of the world when we’d barely appreciated it back home.

When I moved to New York I felt the jazz rhythms as I walked the streets and it all made a lot more sense to me.  I still love winding through the crowds at Grand Central Station, Times Square or Herald Square while listening to Coltrane’s Blue Train.

I finally inherited a vinyl player when I moved to Brooklyn.  I’ll always remember the romance of listening to that slightly buzzing thirty year old record player creating the most soothing sounds from the one music that could truly claim to call New York one of its major homes.  Obviously New Orleans gets the main shout out for jazz (it's no mistake that the word "Bonnaroo" originates from the birthplace of jazz), but it’s part of the history and feel of New York, no matter what.  Whenever I was feeling “blah” about the world, I could put on some jazz and generally feel like I was in tune with something worthwhile, whatever else was going on in my world.  It was also a great way to start a night out.  Nights on the town in New York usually didn’t start until 11 or midnight anyway, so you had plenty of time to get in the mood with some vinyl jazz grooves before stepping out into the bright city lights.

I also started listening to a lot of classical music again when I moved to New York.  Sometimes, when I was a banking paralegal in Rockefeller Center, I’d be trapped in a room full of documents and my job would be to organize them perfectly into binders for our clients, with absolutely no mistakes.  So I would put on my headphones and listen to the ten Mozart albums I’d just given my mom for Christmas and copied for my own enjoyment, or the Edvard Grieg CD my sister gave to me, and I would be in paradise as I collated and counted and hole-punched and stapled and triple-checked everything.

Even better, there was this vinyl recording of Beethoven’s piano sonatas from the 60s that completely blew me away and still does to this day.  It didn’t matter that I lived in a grungy tenement with cockroaches, mice and drug dealing landlords.  I had Beethoven’s brilliance whenever I wanted it.  That is, if I was home.  I still haven’t found the same recording online, which only makes it better whenever I visit home.  It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been gone, where I’ve been to or what I’ve been through.  Every time I return home from an intense journey, I can always look forward to that first night when everyone else goes to sleep and I can relax in the library after hours with Beethoven’s Sonatas in all of their epic glory.  Once my friend, a rock music fan, said that “nobody makes music like this anymore,” and I agreed.  But we didn’t know about Hiromi yet.

                I think the first time I saw Hiromi sums up the basic privilege of being a resident of New York.  My friend showed me a video of her playing the piano and keyboards on Youtube, and it became immediately clear that she just might be the best musician we’d ever seen.  Of course, it seemed like a required convenience that she should be playing at the Blue Note a week later.  If she’s the best, of course she’d be playing New York soon.  That’s how it was with most bands: we figured they would come to town sooner or later, it being the capital of the world’s culture and finance and so forth.  We were incredibly lucky to sit right behind her, and were completely blown away.  Sometimes you see a virtuoso and you clap because they’re clearly good at what they do, and then you go about the rest of your day.  But this time it felt like something important had happened.  I can’t explain it.  All of her albums had crazy titles like Another Mind, Brain, Spiral and Time Control.  It really synched with my journey at a time when I was doing everything I could to understand the world and my mind.

                It was so strange to be discovering such an epic talent in such an almost secretive way.  That is, most great artists you find out about in your life or in New York involve you being ignorant of greatness until some point when someone else reveals it to you, but it seems to me that the best piano player in the world should be a household name.  Everyone loves music, and the piano is definitely the best instrument.  One of my favorite virtuoso guitarists and creators of original beautiful music is a woman named Kaki King.  She has this song called “Second Brain” where she asks, “Are we to have another century of guitar when the best instrument in the world is still the piano?”  I wonder if that was in response to hearing Hiromi’s song “Brain”…

                I lived in the city that never sleeps for another year after that Hiromi show, making my residence as a citizen of New York City come to a total of 33 months (not on purpose, it just worked out that way).  Shortly after New Year 2009 I decided that I wanted to have adventures around the world and put into practice all of the wisdom I’d been gaining from books and energy I’d been gaining from music.  Of course, once I decided to leave, I started experiencing the best culture and social life I had up to that point.  Somehow it became easier to get dates when I already had plans to go on adventures and seek my own destiny, and somehow I found myself discovering the more highly refined and less advertised treasures of this world in large music halls and small clubs.

                The best three shows I saw as a resident of New York City happened to be the last three shows I saw as a resident of New York City, and I saw many shows during my three years there.  I don’t see shows so much anymore, and that’s one reason I think I’m getting nostalgic over concerts in New York, having just seen the two best performers (Hiromi and Sigur Ros) I could have possibly asked for here in California.

                In February of 2009 I saw Hiromi play for the second time, at the theater at NYU, near Washington Square Park.  I went with two friends, and the three of us were rocked out of our seats by her Sonic Bloom, the quartet she was traveling with at the time.  She combines her influences and lifelong training in jazz, classical and progressive rock music to give the world soulful sounds that energize, mesmerize and bring tears to your eyes.  One of my friends declined to go because he wasn’t “really into virtuoso performers”, and I think he really missed out.  It wasn’t just her showing off on piano or the drummer showing off on drums (although there was plenty of that, and it was truly on another level).  It was fun, energetic, harmonious, and beautiful.  I can only take so much virtuoso showing off myself.  The reason I’ve seen Hiromi so many times is I love her songs and the improvisational fun she clearly has so much of while she plays this magic like nothing you've ever felt or seen before.  Most of her songs back then were from the album Time Control, but there were several from her previous albums, or covers of classical favorites done with a jazzy spin.  There were a lot of Japanese students there, it being a great university in the heart of the city.  I saw Barack Obama give a speech there when he was trailing Hillary in the primaries the previous autumn, and used to eat my lunch there all the time when I worked in publishing at this really cool art publishing company a few blocks away.  I began my first Tom Robbins book there, and got freaked out by all of the crazy and/or lazy people that I hoped I wouldn't become some day.  Tom Robbins made me feel less crazy.

                In March of 2009 I attended Christopher O’Riley at the Miller Theater in Columbia, well aware that I was moving away from the city in a week.  O’Riley adapted Radiohead songs for the piano, and also played Shostakovitch.  Radiohead at Bonnaroo 2006 will always be one of the top three live performances I’ve ever seen, and that happened just days before my journey in New York City began.  I was supremely lucky to also take a history of rock and roll course my last semester of college at a very cool place to be, with a bunch of my friends, and our homework was to chill out and listen to The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Janis Joplin, The Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills Nash and Neil Young, Simon & Garfunkel, Sly & the Family Stone, George Clinton, Frank Zappa, Bob Marley, Yes, King Crimson, all that 80s stuff, hip-hop, and modern rock.  The only modern rock bands we studied were Radiohead and The White Stripes.  When asked what rock band I liked, I said The Black Keys.  Admittedly I had already learned about them from my Radiohead and White Stripes loving friend Brian because he had one of their shirts that he relished because nobody knew about them.  Then my mom heard about them on NPR and told me to listen to them, and they were both right, and nobody in my class, including my teacher, had heard of them.  And now every time I get back from somewhere and check back in with popular culture, they're apparently one of the biggest acts out there now.  Good for them.  They used to open for Radiohead, who is still respected by much of my generation as just about the equivalent of The Beatles.  My life was infinitely better after seeing that show, if not more intense.  They really brought us something powerful, to say the least.  It was an amazing way to begin pursuing your dream in the big city.

 It made sense enough to me at that time to be in the cosmopolitan capital of sophistication, and that after three years of just being there and getting around, I would evolve from seeing Radiohead on a farm with dirty smiling hippies everywhere to sitting in an elegant theater watching an old Irish pianist adapting their sublime melodies to the most beautiful, powerful, intense and sophisticated instrument in existence.  Black keys and white keys connected to invisible strings vibrating through your world's ears to your heart's mind and finding whatever there is to find inside that reverberates and resonates.  His versions of “Everything In Its Right Place”, “You”, "Sail to the Moon," "I Can't," "Fake Plastic Trees," "No Surprises," “Gagging Order” and “True Love Waits” are still regulars on my playlists.  “Everything In Its Right Place” should always be played very loudly.  I really loved listening to that one at the pyramids.  It seemed fitting.

                A week later I’d moved out of my apartment in Queens to my cousin’s couch in Hoboken, New Jersey, all part of the plan of moving upstate to my parents’ farm to prepare for a big journey around the world later that year.  I worked temp jobs for a week and hung out with my cousin Dan, one of my oldest and dearest friends after work.  He was just finishing his first year in the city, and I was on my way to other frontiers.  

                  My last night in the city, April 9, 2009, I saw one of my favorite artists ever perform at the Miller Theatre at Columbia: The Books.  As part of their “Wordless Music” series, they were playing a show with classical pianist Timothy Andres.  He was absolutely spectacular and made me wish I’d seen more live performances of classical pianists while I lived in the city.  I had seen several symphony orchestras perform, a ballet or two and some musicals, but not a solo classical pianist.  He blew me away, in any case.  If you haven’t seen someone do that, find a musical venue near you sometime soon and treat yourself.

The Books are hard to describe because I have never heard anyone else do anything similar to what they do.  They call it “aleotoric” music.  One guy plays the cello and the other plays acoustic guitar, and they use a lot of vocal samples to accompany their very creatively insightful lyrics.  The Lemon of Pink and Lost and Safe are my two favorite albums by them.  One of my friends gave me the latter right before I moved to the city, and I found the former along the way.  I bought Lost and Safe on vinyl as soon as I got a job.  Certain types of music sound better on vinyl.  My favorite songs are “Take Time,” “There is No There,” “The Lemon of Pink,” “Tokyo,” “An Owl With Knees,” “An Animated Description of Mr. Maps,” “Be Good to Them Always” and “Smells Like Content”:

Most of all, the world is a place
where parts of wholes are described
within an overarching paradigm of clarity and accuracy.
The context in which makes possible an underlying
sense of the way it all fits together
despite our collective tendency not to conceive of it as such.

But then again, the world without end is a place
where souls are combined
but with an overbearing feeling
of disparity and disorderliness.
To ignore it is impossible without getting oneself
into all of kinds of trouble
despite one’s best intentions to not get entangled with it so much.

And the street corners are gnashing together like the gears
inside the head of some omniscient engineer.

The day after the show I drove to Long Island with my cousin for my grandfather’s birthday, and after that I drove upstate to my parents’ farm, my residency in New York City officially completed.  When I showed up I was an idealistic dreamer who wanted to live and artistically express a magical poetic journey.  When I left I was the same way, even though I’d experienced much of the inevitable trials, tribulations and bitterness that goes with any journey, and especially one that commences in New York City.  I often have this feeling that I haven’t made the most of things, no matter what I do, but looking back I think I did a good job of experiencing what the city had to offer.  I got behind the scenes in numerous powerful industries to see how the wheels of the world turned, met people of all different ages and backgrounds, took in plenty of culture and cuisine, lived in crazy living situations, had a solo bachelor pad, and lived with fun trusted roommates.  By the time I left I felt like I could be anywhere, anytime and feel on top of the world.  I already knew that I had a lot inside of me.  Everyone does, but I felt like the journey I thought I’d begun when I moved there had really just been preparation for a much greater journey that would require me to practice all of the lessons I’d learned and powers I’d gained.  Funny, as I write this now, I feel the words are still true in the present.  I never know how much time I have left, but one way I love to look at it is I am only 28 years old.  Even though I stepped out onto my own path outside the norm four years ago, I've survived it all, traveled much of the world, am not financially-fantastic but am self-supporting, I have a way to make money that I somewhat enjoy, and plenty of time to move forward with my dreams.  There is still so much to say and do and play and explore.  That's how I felt four years ago.  It's a comforting thought to wonder what challenges and hopefully triumphs are waiting in the four years to come.

I worked really hard for my parents those next few months, and that was a very hard adjustment to make.  I had just learned to be completely independent, self-supporting, ambitious, driven and socially connected in a city where almost anyone will agree it is very difficult to do from scratch.  Yet, by my choice, I was living with the two people who I both loved and didn’t want to be judged by or controlled in any way.  Not only was there a lot less going on socially and culturally up in the country, but all of a sudden my parents were starting to worry and nag about the little things I’d never even thought mattered any more, like when I went to bed and what I was doing in my free time and things like that.  They didn’t bother me much, and they had their own adjusting to do to get used to living with me after being empty-nesters for a while, but sometimes the little things are enough to drive you crazy.  Overall, it was a great experience that I am grateful for within the arc of my life's journey so far, because I got to spend amazing quality time with people I not only love beyond words, but also knew so much more than I did and had so much in common with me, and reminded me of things about me that made me who I am.  Strengths I had forgotten, weaknesses I'd overlooked.

That's not to say I didn’t have releases or adventures.  Even though I lived at home and had to be under my father's masterful but frustrating work authority once again, I was able to choose how I spent my time, and I think I spent it well.  I hadn't escaped from New York.  I had moved upstate to a beautiful resourceful (and free :)) place to be.  I had many great days walking through the fields and forests.  Simply mowing the lawn was a perfect zen activity that's I've enjoyed since I was 13.  I had many great nights floating out on the pond or hanging out around the campfire, catching up with my friends who knew me before college and New York City.  I continued reading and writing to keep my mind awake and in full effect.  Then I did a crazy adventure to Chicago to try to win back this girl I’d been seeing long distance, and I got stranded at Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee and had to find my way back home.  Plus there was the cabin on Lake Champlain north of the Adirondack Mountains, and we spent entire weeks renovating it to bring it back up to habitability after my uncle had ruined it.  I remember painting to all sorts of great music, a mix between classic rock, blues, modern rock and whatever else I thought I could get away with playing while my parents were working too.  This meant admittedly less jazz than I would have liked because my parents dig classic rock and blues more from their country souls, but I did sneak some in occasionally, and had an absolutely perfect groove going to Stan Getz & Luis Bonfa while I put several new coats of paint on the outside with the waves rolling by.  And no matter what anybody says, I'm always going to force "Giant Steps" at some point during a work project.  I need the energy.  

Later I went camping on a nearby familiar island up there, and got to stay there after my parents left so I could enjoy my grandparents’ legacy in peaceful solitude.  It was May, when the water is calm and none of the summer residents are there.  I remember listening to “Ode to Joy” on the porch one sunny afternoon in late May and thinking, “What does it matter what I accomplish on this Earth?  This music already exists.” Of course, I still painted the place, because it was even better to be with after a little creative work.

Speaking of such sentiments, I finally got back to New York for 4^th of July weekend to visit my friends and see some city fireworks.  It turned out that Hiromi was playing a show at the Blue Note for Independence Day, so after the fireworks we got our seats pretty early and got to see the band set up. 
They appeared to be humans as they did so, but they were instantly transformed into musical gods at the commencement of the show.  There was so much rhythm and positive energy, coupled with so many smiles and deep intense moments of pure emotion.  Back then I was absorbing all sorts of information and wisdom and trying to improve in as many ways as humanly possible.  Being at that show both energized me and calmed me down.  On the one hand it was inspirational to see people doing something I loved so unfathomably awesomely, and it made me want to be that excellent at everything I did, even if it was something that couldn’t really be performed, such as traveling with poetic intuition and a keen eye for magical events that joyously bend the rules of rationality.  On the other it was a relief, because it felt like there was less work for me to do.  I had this intense pressure I’d put on myself during my time in New York to be the greatest I could be.  When I saw someone like Hiromi doing what she loved with such unparalleled enthusiasm, master craftsmanship and unbridled creativity to make me feel the glory I felt at the time, and without even using words or telling a story, I felt like I could breathe a little easier and take solace in the fact that no matter what the world expected of me, I couldn’t do that and didn’t have to, because other people already had it taken care of, and better than anyone could have imagined.  Sometimes I go to concerts and I think to myself, "This is the highest achievement, right?  Being with this, whatever it is."

After the Hiromi show I became a private painting contractor and painted three houses in town, usually while listening to jazz music.  It started with some family friends.  Their youngest son, Pete (who is also my honorary "younger brother" along with his brother Sam), has always been into jazz and played trumpet a large part of his life, and broadened my world by giving me a lot more Miles, Monk and Mingus to round out my collection.  He also got me into Django Reinhardt.

Before I left for India my sister was listening to a lot of Ludovico Einaudi, a minimalist Italian composer who wrote just about the saddest and most beautiful music I'd ever heard at the time. When I got back from my journey I got the rest of his works from her friend, Andy.  Some of it's more upbeat and happy.  Andy also gave me a lot of Japanese artists I'd never heard of before, such as relaxing Takahiro Kido, eerily haunting Susumu Yokota, and just flat out freaky Yoshimi and Yuka.  Yoshimi is the drummer of the band The Boredom's, and the original inspiration for my beloved Flaming Lips anthem "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots".  It's pretty out there experimental, I have to warn you.  

I think I’m writing about all of this today because I’ve been deciding for a long time the best way to find an agreeable balance in my life.  I am so thankful for music because it not only carries me up to the highest heights, but it helps me stick with it when I'm having trouble feeling good about it all.  One way it does this is by triggering memories for me.  It's like, Beethoven's "Pastoral" will always make me remember this one sunrise on the lake right before I went on my first journey,

 

 Hiromi's "Green Tea Farm" always reminds me of my family's farm,

 
and Coltrane's "Mr. PC" always reminds me of walking through ever intensely shifting and changing crowds of just about anyone on Earth you could ever expect to see all in one place, and loving every twist and turn. 

 
I’ve been pretty good at going to extremes lately, and although I still have that ability in me, I can tell that my body and mind long for balance.  I spent half a year living outside with nature or working manual labor, and now I feel like I’ve been hibernating for the winter.  Sometimes people in cities are weary of me because of all of my outdoors adventures, and might wonder why I don’t just live in the country.  But I’ve also spent my youth living in New York City, Tokyo, and traveling around amazing cities all around the world.  For now San Francisco seems like a perfect mixture of cultural sophistication and access to natural beauty beyond the borders of the city, and I have much more to explore.  But sometimes I wonder when I’ll roll back into the Big Apple to give it another shot.  I think I’ve been saying for years that if I went back, I would have to have made my mark somehow as a writer.  I’ve definitely made more of a mark than I had back then, but I still need to be published in media with large audiences.  When that time comes, I think I would be very fortunate to live amongst such a mixture of humanity, with so many great friends and beloved spaces in the surrounding area.  Who knows…

I can probably visit soon, although I'm still planning on sticking with my "one year away from New York State" plan.  I'm visiting my cousins in Mexico for Dan's wedding (he's the same one who hosted me when I saw The Books play my last night in NYC) May 29th, one year to the day that I drove away from my hometown to a new life out here on the west coast.  Although the more I think about this whole experience, comparing my experiences since I've settled and the experiences I had to get here, this one was definitely more about the journey than the destination.  I've learned by now that wherever I am, that's where I am and it's up to me to either explore outside to find best life or rely on what's inside or immediately around me that I know how to use to make me happy without really hurting anybody.  And as long as the activity adds to my future quality, then I'm in the right place, wherever I may be.

For now, I find myself enjoying the urban atmosphere and expanding my tastes with some very old newcomers.  I'm always reaching back to the roots to understand how the present came to be, so I love hearing who my favorite artists' influences are.  Hiromi says she was influenced by Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson growing up, and I was heavily recommended the latter by several other Japanese musicians while I was living in Tokyo, so I've been listening to them a lot lately, and they've definitely grown on me.  Peterson looks so happy when he plays, and it's definitely positive energy to have on when you are walking around or inside and want to get something done.

Hiromi's mentor was jazz great Ahmad Jamal, who I admittedly recognized from my two favorite hip-hop songs that I grew into in New York City.  His amazing music was sampled in Nas' "The World is Yours" and Jay-Z's "Feelin It", which also happen to be from the two most critically acclaimed hip-hop albums in history.  They were born and bred in Brooklyn and Queens, in neighborhoods I did not learn how to survive in but did live near and walk through often while I lived in New York.  I mention that to explain why their musical beats resonated with my step, not to mention their fantastic verbal play and poetic imagery, however nasty at times.  If you've ever heard of the stereotype of hipsters who only like old school hip-hop, I think it's because they don't sample such amazing jazz greats as much anymore.  Because of my interest in hip-hop, I've learned that Ahmad Jamal was already making me tremendously happy on a daily basis, so it would only make sense to explore his music more.  I'm very happy I have.  You will be too.  He is so relaxing and chill.  Check out "Pastures".  Reminds me of home.

Finally, classical pianist Martha Argerich has found her way onto my iPod, which is truly a blessing because her collected works cover just about every classical composer I've ever enjoyed listening to.  She's one of the most acclaimed classical pianists of the modern era.

All of this glorious music is waiting there to be enjoyed and appreciated by you too.

Wherever I am or whatever I'm doing, there is always beautiful music with me, making life a symphony, and that’s enough to keep me “genki”.