Joe Lovano: Cleveland's Ultimate Jazz Titan

AAJ: Did he visit you often in the city?

JL: You know, not that often. That was one of the few times that he made the trip, you know. He had some heart issues and ended up passing in January of '87, but I took him in the studio, and we recorded a recording that came out, it's called Hometown Sessions (JSL, 1986) with a great organist, Eddie Baccus, who just passed recently, he was blind.

AAJ: He's another Cleveland guy, right?

JL: Yeah, well, he was originally from Columbus and came up with Rahsaan Roland Kirk and moved to Cleveland in the early '50s. Great, amazing musician. One of the first really great players I ever sat in and played with when I was 15, Eddie Baccus. Lawrence "Jacktown" Jackson on drums, he's on this recording, also. My brother Anthony Lovano's on this recording on drums, too. My brother today is one of the leading drummers around Cleveland. Plays in a lot of blues bands and has created jam sessions, and all kinds of great stuff from his inspiration about music through my family and my dad's influence. Anthony came up playing with my dad and learning everything about all these different beats. How to play a rumba, how to swing, how to play a funky beat, and how to support; come from a supportive place in a rhythm section, you know. I'm really proud of him. Today he's doing all kinds of really nice things around Cleveland these days.

I don't know, it's an ongoing development, and those moments when my dad came to New York and hung out with him with Archie Shepp, which was amazing because Archie's one of my mentors and one of my influences from the early times. He's with us today and still telling his story. What's going to happen now, my band Sound Prints that's playing Friday, here. We're going to Europe. July 7th, we leave. We're playing the North Sea Jazz Festival and then the Gent Jazz Festival in Belgium and I just found out that we're going to be on the same bill with Archie Shepp and Charles Lloyd. I'm going to be sandwiched in between two of my heroes. So, if anyone's in Belgium July 9th...

AAJ: This probably won't be out [laughter], but if it is.

JL: Anyway, that's funny, like talking about Archie and they just told me the lineup from the night of our concert. Archie's going to be there.

AAJ: Yeah, that's really cool.

JL: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

AAJ: Paul Motian, obviously you've collaborated for a long time, so how did you meet him?

JL: Well, you know, Paul of course with the Bill Evans trio was some records that I grew up with. Scott LaFaro on bass, Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961), How My Heart Sings! (Riverside, 1964), Trio 64 (Verve, 1964). Paul was one of very few influential drummers that contributed a way of playing the drums, how to approach playing the drums. Not just to play the drums, but how to integrate and use the drums to create new atmospheres and things. Coming from Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, Paul's roots. Drummers like that, that did that. Paul did in his own way. Elvin Jones, also. Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, Mel Lewis.

So, I was real hip to Paul from all of the recordings, especially Bill Evans and then the Keith Jarrett band with Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden. Early '70s, I heard them play at The Jazz Workshop in 1972 in Boston and thought, those are the cats I want to play with and play in that fashion of really developing inside the music you're playing, like the music is one thing ,but now how to create music within that music for the moment. Having it have its own life, not to just play the tune. Keith's quartet really captured that, you know. I felt that was the next really great quartet after the Coltrane quartet for me was the Keith Jarrett quartet and also Ornette Coleman's quartet, which was different, you know, but also like it was a really a great band of individuals that spoke to each other and created some new music every time they played. So, I started to play with Paul in 1981, 10 years after I first heard him live in a room.

It was something I was trying to develop in my approach, because your sound is your approach and the more you can develop within the different approaches of improvising, the more you're going to be able to say something in the music. Not to just stay in one style or another, you know. To be a stylist without style, inside the feeling, the spirit of the music. The rhythm spirit, the harmonic, melodic spirit in the music, you know.

Paul was always in situations like that. He also played with Albert Ayler who was one of the pioneers of more of the freer jazz forms, who was another Cleveland player. The two main architects for me were Tadd Dameron, who was from Cleveland, he was one of the main architects in bebop. Everybody played his tunes, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell. They all played Tadd Dameron's music and John Coltrane, you know. Albert Ayler was another pioneer from Cleveland that had his own approach and way of telling his story. He didn't play songs, he played ideas. Like, he played "hunger: for an hour, he played "love" for an hour, he played "compassion." His tunes and titles really were influential for John Coltrane. Coltrane really embraced Albert's music and he got him his record date on Impulse! Records and gigs at the Village Vanguard at the beginning for Albert, which was in 1964-5, in those years. At Coltrane's funeral, Ornette Coleman played, and Albert Ayler played. Anyway, his music and energy were very influential for me and still today is, I'd have to say one of the strongest forces, healing force, Albert Ayler.

Cleveland has a lot of deep roots in all kinds of music, man. In that early period, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, St. Louis of course, Kansas City, those towns created all of the players in the modern jazz era. The swing from the swing era, and then the modern jazz era, and the freer forms. Cats from Chicago, Johnny Griffin and Gene Ammons, you know, Clifford Jordan to name a few saxophone players. Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. The players from Detroit, Frank Foster, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris who we just lost recently. Charles McPherson who moved to Detroit in the '40s. Billy Mitchell, saxophone. Sonny Stitt was from East Lansing, Michigan but the players from Detroit and the players from Cleveland, Joe Alexander, one of the leading tenor players on the scene, Tadd Dameron, Freddie Webster was a trumpet player who was very influential for Dizzy Gillespie. Miles talks about Freddie Webster, his majestic tone. The cats that came up, let's say the generation before me, Ernie Krivda and Skip Hadden, drummer. Jamey Haddad, who's in my generation, one of the leading percussionists on the scene today in all kinds of music. He's played with Paul Simon, and he played with us with Lonnie Smith, also.

AAJ: Oh, right on.

JL: He plays on some tunes on Afro-desia as well. Yeah, Jamey. We really came up together, man and experienced knowing and playing with a lot of folks that inspired us to do what we do. Jamey's dad used to have a club called The King's Pub on Cedar, and we used to play there a lot. Great bassist Abraham Laboriel moved to Cleveland for a little while in the early '70s when the Smiling Dog was happening. We played every weekend at The King's Pub for a long time in in the early '70s, Jamey's dad's club.

But it was a famous guitarist from Cleveland that influenced everybody, man. His name was Bill DeArango, who was born in 1920 and Charlie Parker was 1920. So, Bill went to New York in the '40s and was on the scene in New York City on 52nd Street playing with Ben Webster when Charlie Parker came to New York and sat in with them. He's in some famous pictures playing with Ben Webster. You could see Bill sitting and Charlie Parker's to Ben's left. I grew up knowing Bill, man and learning all kinds of things about improvising from Bill DeArango. When 52nd Street ended up folding, he came back to Cleveland, opened a music store, and then he was the house band with Ernie Krivda and Skip Hadden. They were one of the house bands at the Smiling Dog Saloon in the early '70s. That club lasted from 1970 or so until '75-76.

Weather Report played one of their first major gigs after emerging at the Smiling Dog. Put the place on the map. Then through the years, Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, Stan Getz, Chick Corea, Return to Forever, Keith Jarrett Quartet, Bill Evans. I played opposite a lot of groups there and got many gigs there. I got the gig with Lonnie Smith from him hearing about me through playing at the Smiling Dog. When he came with Lou Donaldson and then Brother Jack McDuff also played the Dog. He was traveling with two tenors, guitar, drums, and organ, but he wanted to have a saxophone section, so he was picking up an alto and baritone in each town. So, I ended up playing baritone that week he came and Willie "Face" Smith, great alto saxophonist who grew up on my dad and Benny Bailey and others, played alto. Now Willie was one of Tadd Dameron's disciples as far as orchestrations and he used to be one of Tadd's copyists. He'd be copying parts for Tadd Dameron for some of those early sessions.

Anyway, Face and I played that week and a couple weeks later McDuff called us to join the band and do the organ summit tour that George Wein was booking. Cool jazz festivals. So, we played at Carnegie Hall, we played in Philadelphia, and in Reno, Nevada, a bunch of gigs around the States. On tour with the organ summit, which was Jimmy Smith Trio, Shirley Scott Trio, Larry Young, in one of the first real fusion kind of bands after he left Tony Williams' Lifetime, one of Larry Young's first bands, and us. It was a thrill to be on a road like that at 20, 21 years old. Touring, hearing, and listening to some of my heroes in the music, you know. That was right before I moved to New York, but came to New York playing with that band.

But the Smiling Dog is what I'm focusing on right now, was a major club. Miles Davis played one of his last gigs there before he took a little retirement in 1975 or '76. I took my dad down to hear Miles! My dad was hip to Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) and some of those records, right, because I had those records. So, he knew he wasn't going to hear the Miles Davis that he did hear with Coltrane and heard with Bird because they came to Cleveland. Bird came to Cleveland with Miles, which was 1948 or whatever, you know. Anyway, that was fun to take my dad to hear Miles Davis at the Smiling Dog!

AAJ: What did he think?

JL: Well, he kind of knew what he to expect because he had heard Bitches Brew and some of those things, you know. He was just happy to be in the room digging Miles, didn't matter what he played! He could play anything.

AAJ: He still sounds like Miles, even during that period.

JL: Miles Davis set the pace, and today in 2022 is still setting the pace about telling a story and being yourself. Technique is about expression. It's not about flying around your horn and trying to go for house, which a lot of folks do, that's easy. To say something and play a ballad and to really be expressive in the music, Miles Davis changed the world, man. You listen to him today on any of his recordings and you feel what you're listening to.

I just did a great couple nights at the Blue Note with Marcus Miller's band. Marcus had two weeks, and he did a bunch of different things in those two weeks. The We Want Miles (Columbia, 1982) band, because Marcus wrote a lot of music for Miles Davis, he was in the last bands and produced. We played "Tutu," "Mr. Pastorius," "Amandla." We were playing a lot of the music that Marcus wrote for Miles. Some great, beautiful songs and pieces of music that you could get into and explore. This was just, I guess it was in April. It was beautiful, two beautiful nights with Marcus Miller, playing some of the things he wrote for Miles, that are as fresh today as they were when they were first laying them down, because Miles, his interpretations of them made it so. So, you can't approach it unless you are sincere and really get deep into the feeling of the music. Not just the notes. It's how you play those notes.

AAJ: You speak so eloquently and beautifully about the music itself and the expression of it. To me, the way you look at it is almost spiritual. For you is music a spiritual experience?

JL: It is a spiritual experience, yes. It's about your soul and your feeling in your expression. You listen to John Coltrane, the way he played a ballad with so much love in his sound and his approach about singing that melody, and that melody becomes every melody that he played, you know. You could be impressed by John Coltrane's technique and the way he gets around the horn, for sure, and you are! That teaches you.

AAJ: A lot, yeah.

JL: A lot to reach for! Like Diz. You studied Dizzy Gillespie, man? Trumpet players that aren't hip to Diz or are running away from Diz, are missing a lot, because Diz is giving everybody lots of stuff to reach for, coming from Art Tatum and coming from other people that inspired him to reach. Same with Bird, same with Coltrane. When you listen to John Coltrane play a ballad, that always was the most impressive thing for me. When I joined the Elvin Jones band, I first sat in with Elvin at the Smiling Dog in 1975. Dave Liebman had just left the band. Steve Grossman was playing with Roland Prince on guitar. Elvin got Roland Prince on guitar after Lieb split. Instead of having two saxophones, he had a quartet with guitar. They came to the Dog. I was in some bands opposite them with Ernie Krivda and some others and my own group. I met Elvin and asked him if I could sit in. He had heard me, and he let me play one night and then I ended up sitting in four nights, with an open invitation to come in and say hello and sit in anytime.

That led to me joining his band and getting called for gigs starting around 1982. I subbed for Pat LaBarbera on some gigs and then toured Europe for nine weeks in '87. The heart of the gig with Elvin, we played a 90-minute set, three tunes. Middle tune was a ballad and that was the heart of the set. All the other tunes were some real explosive, amazing music, with a lot of energy and focus, because as a quartet with Elvin, or sometimes there were two saxophones, but most of the gigs I did was a quartet. You had to sustain. The solo could be for 10 minutes or more on a tune. Those are the kind of players that he attracted and needed for his music, you know. So, you have to be at a certain level of expression and fluidity on your horn and in communication with Elvin because he's playing what you're playing, and you're playing what he's playing. That exchange we learned from the way Coltrane and him played together, because that's how they played together.

Coltrane was playing what Elvin was playing and Elvin was playing what Coltrane was playing. They just developed this whole approach about that. Sonny Rollins and Max Roach played like that, too, though. Sonny was playing what Max was playing and Max was playing what Sonny was playing, in the way of the articulation, the tempos, and the rhythm. To play with Elvin and tour with him, play night after night, that ballad became everything, because everything else around that was cool, but that ballad had to be on something, man. Elvin's brush work and the way he loved certain songs, there was a repertoire in Elvin's book that he liked to touch on. So, you had to kind of know a lot of different tunes. If he felt like playing something, he'd just call it. Now you're out there in the thick of things, so you had to have yourself together.

AAJ: No, right. So, he didn't necessarily call the same tunes every night?

JL: No, especially the ballad. He had freedom on the ballads. I would play "Sophisticated Lady" sometimes, "Weaver of Dreams." He loved to play "In a Sentimental Mood," that was one of his go to tunes. He'd give you freedom as the saxophonist to call a tune, not even call it, just all of a sudden, be in it. I learned a lot playing with Elvin.

AAJ: I can imagine.

JL: It's a lot about trust and then developing ideas that you can sustain the mood. At the time in '87, I had been playing with Paul since '81, and I had been playing with Mel Lewis in 1980. Actually, the night my dad sat in with Mel's band in 1982, Elvin was there and showed up!

AAJ: Oh, really?

JL: Yeah, and he's at the bar and they're hanging out. My brother Patrick always talks about Elvin and my dad at the bar at the Vanguard and he's always saying how awesome it was.

AAJ: That's a great family story.

JL: Oh yeah, my brother Patrick was so happy to be there, you know. That just happened to happen. My dad heard Elvin and Coltrane, man, at the Jazz Temple. That was another club in Cleveland that went away during the riots. It was right on Euclid and Mayfield, just as you're going up Murray Hill. The Jazz Temple. When I played with McCoy, he talked about playing there. That was 1965, I think. My dad heard the quartet there, but also, they played a lot at Leo's Casino. Coltrane band with Eric Dolphy in '61. I started playing with McCoy Tyner in 1999, until his passing which was just recently. 2020 I think, maybe.

AAJ: Yeah, it was 2020, I think.

JL: Yeah, you know one of his last gigs we played at the Library of Congress in 2017 or '18, they honored him. I played that that gig with Gerald Cannon on bass and Francisco Mela on drums. It was a thrill to play at the Library of Congress and honor him. That was something else, man, but he was going through some kind of heart issues, also, so he wasn't up to his usual. We played about 30 minutes as a trio and then he came and played the next 30 minutes.

Being around McCoy throughout those years was deep, man. He talked about Philadelphia every day! This crowd of cats that he came up, born in '38, I mean Lee Morgan, Archie Shepp, Reggie Workman, Jimmy Garrison, Rashied Ali, all the players from Philly, his generation. Like the cats Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath was Coltrane's generation, right, like 12-15 years older. So, Philly's legacy is real heavy with the players from Philly, but McCoy talked about Philadelphia every day and the people. Cleveland was a part of it. Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago. McCoy talked about all those places because he played them all so many times, especially with the Coltrane quartet.

Elvin also talked a lot about Cleveland. His first time here he played with Bud Powell and Tommy Potter, so we're talking '56 or '57, maybe. Either right at the same time of Sonny Rollins' A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1958) or just prior to that. Elvin talked about playing Cleveland with Bud Powell and then also Joe Alexander, tenor player that we mentioned before. One of the legends from Cleveland who played on some Tadd Dameron recordings. He was in Elvin's first band when he left Coltrane was joe alexander on tenor, who also played with Woody Herman in the '50s and into the '60s. Joe passed in '71 or something. He had some heart issues and different things, but my dad was real close with him and he was he was like the legendary cat from Cleveland that stood toe to toe with Johnny Griffin and Sonny Stitt and folks. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, but came to Cleveland I don't know in the '40s or whenever. He had a certain way of playing that was really dynamic in his tone. He kind of was coming from the I the way I feel it. Johnny Griffin, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. He had a combination of things in his playing that was really personal. The way he put it together, he was a dynamic force on the saxophone, man, that Ernie Krivda studied with and was around. Joe was a big influence on a lot of cats from Cleveland. Not so much on record, but here in the room with, you know.

There were other tenor players here, too, that I grew up with. Weasel Parker was another name who was a great saxophonist, played with Count Basie's band.

AAJ: Oh, cool.

JL: Studied with my dad. My dad's generation with Benny Bailey, Weasel Parker, and Joe Alexander. There was another cat that Ernie always talked about who I never heard live. It was Dave O'Rourke. He was an amazing saxophonist; I've heard him on some recordings. Played with a technique that was really blistering. He'd play like triple time, got around horn like incredible. Coming from Joe, but more the younger generation that Ernie talked a lot about and heard a lot. Ernie's style and way of playing is very personal and beautiful, also is really influenced by a lot of cats that he heard here, that he came up under. So, you know, we each learn from each other and are inspired by each other to go into some other places with the music. The more versatile you can be, the more people you're going to play with and the more situations you're going to create for yourself. That's something that has been a focus for me my whole life. It's still happening today with the different folks I play with and record for. Different opportunities to record. I first started to record for Blue Note Records in 1991 and I had three consecutive seven record deals that brought me into 2015.

AAJ: What was it like working with Blue Note?

JL: Well, first of all, having Bruce Lundvall's embrace was everything, because he was one of the leading, inspired record executives in jazz before Blue Note with Columbia Records, with Miles and all kinds of people; with the Brecker Brothers and Stan Getz. He started to lead Blue Note Records in 1985, I think, and I signed in '91. It was amazing to be a part of that legacy and to release 25 sessions under my name. Each one was a very personal expression of music with people that I play with. I presented every one of my records. I had a band that presented that music. I established my nonet that won a Grammy in 2000. I have three records with the nonet. My band Us Five, with the double drummers with Esperanza Spalding; I have three records with that group, that quintet. My quartet with Hank Jones, Paul Motian, and George Mraz; I have three or four recordings with that lineup. Our group Sound Prints, that we're going to play with this week at Tri-C JazzFest. The first recording was Sound Prints: Live at Monterey Jazz Festival (Blue Note, 2015) that Blue Note put out.

Yeah, it was incredible to have that embrace from Bruce and Don Was, also, at the end there, the last three or four records that Don was a part of. He's leading Blue Note now these days. I'm currently recording as a leader for ECM Records with Manfred Eicher and having his embrace is very similar to the Blue Note experience of someone that really is a part of the music and embraces who you are, knows your history, and sees where it could go as far as documenting some new music all the time. It's not about recreating someone else's record that was a hit, which a lot of labels do, and a lot of players fall into that trap. Sometimes it's not a trap, that's the only way they can go because that's what's happening. They're not original, so they draw on someone else that was original, that had a hit, and they try to recreate that, which can only really go so far. It might sell a lot of records, though. Marketing-wise that's a big thing in marketing, but to try to reach forth and create some new ideas from your history, not someone else's, your personal history; that's been something I've been trying to tap into all these years. I've had a great opportunity with Bruce and Blue Note to do that, and now with ECM I'm feeling that, too.

AAJ: You've accomplished a ton over a number of decades. What do you still want to do?

JL: Well, I want to play more beautiful, I want to create new atmospheres of music with different combinations of people. I want to really focus on my composition. These days I'm trying to write some music that gives everyone ideas to develop on within. To create music within the music that has its own life, somehow. I think as a composer; as an improviser you're a composer, spontaneous composer in the moment; but to compose some music that is about ideas that are open-ended, it's something that I'm working on and trying to really establish that as my foundation. My newest recording, I just recorded in May with Trio Tapestry, taps into those ideas. This is my third Trio Tapestry record on ECM and each one has led to the next moment. The first was 2018, then we recorded at the end of 2019 before the pandemic, and that came out last year. Now we recorded a third, Trio Tapestry Three. That's in the can, it might come out next spring. I have three records in the can right now for ECM. One coming out in November with Jakob Bro on guitar; him and I co-lead a septet with Larry Grenadier, Thomas Morgan, Anders Christensen on basses, three basses. Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy on drums, and Jakob and I, guitar and saxophone. So, we have like an orchestra!

AAJ: Yeah, like a mini orchestra.

JL: That's going to be released this November. Then I did another trio with Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Bill Frisell on guitar. We recorded and it's in post-production now and that might come out in the fall of 2023. So, we'll see about that, but the timing can always change. It depends on what's going on.

AAJ: Do you get heavily involved in the mixing and production?

JL: Well, with Manfred you're there with the mix. He's a master at post-production, so you don't really have to say anything. Once the music's recorded, the playback on the rough mix is almost there, you know? Then he just fine tunes. His real masterful genius is about post-production; the sequencing of things and how the whole mood of one recording has a oneness about it. That's been his genius all these years, you know. Which, he's in his 50th year as a label. 2019 was 50 years. The label started in '69, I think. Anyway, with him you don't have to be too involved. You can just kind of lay back and let it happen, because he's got such great ears.

AAJ: It's a good feeling.

JL: Yeah. With all my Blue Note records, I produced them all, except one Scofield was co-producer on, and Michael Cuscuna also co-produced the duets with Hank Jones that I did, Kids: Live at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (Blue Note, 2007), but I was involved in all of the mixes and the mastering. James Farber was my engineer and Greg Calbi was our engineer for the mastering. Those cats, man! James did all of Mike Brecker's records, for example. James is one of the first call engineers who I've worked with; he's engineered almost all my dates. So, we had great communication. The mixing sessions would be a pleasure. Incredible to learn the inner music and how to put it together, you know. That's an art in hearing the inner parts.

Doing things with Gunther Schuller was a big education for me. My recording Rush Hour (Blue Note, 1995) with him and then also Streams of Expression (Blue Note, 2006) with my nonet, where he wrote "The Birth of the Cool Suite." When you mixed with Gunther, he could hear how close someone was to the mic. As an example, he's conducting live, he's hearing it, okay? He's hearing how it is. Then you go in the studio to mix and one of the trumpet players was too close to the mic. He's hearing a forte on a mezzo forte. The guy's playing mezzo forte, but he's too close to the mic! Gunther had his ears that in tune! He could tell how close someone was to the mic. The clarinet, or whatever, you know. So, I spent hours mixing eight bars with him one time, with James. I ended up calling somebody on the phone who was too close to the mic, I said, "Hey man, you're messing up my whole thing! I don't have this, you know, because that clock is ticking man! Gunther's like, he's not going to leave until he figures it out." [Laughs] So, there's a real art and a real focus you have to have in the studio, in the post-production of things.

That's why it's really great to be able to play live and document it. If everyone's in booths and then you have to put it together later, that's a whole other process. Which I've been a part of dates like that, also, so that's why I could speak on it. Mike Brecker, talk about Mike again, he was such a master of the studio, man. When he was on the mic he didn't budge! Our first record date with the Saxophone Summit, Gathering of Spirits (Telarc, 2004), Dave Liebman, Mike, and I.

AAJ: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

JL: We're trying to listen back to the playback and we're trying to mix it, Mike's sound is like [gestures forward indicating Michael Brecker's volume is loud in the mix]. Liebman, he's moving around with the soprano, so his sound's going in and out like that. I wasn't as close as Mike, but I stayed solid on the mic, but I was a little more distant. Now we have to try to match Brecker's sound, because his is the most forceful dominant sound! So, to try to do that later is...

AAJ: Difficult.

JL: Very difficult and Mike, most of his dates as a as an improviser and a player he was the only horn. Him and Randy on some stuff, but Randy also is on that mic like incredible. Playing with those cats on the bandstand was really trippy because their sounds, monitors and everything was so consistent and powerful.

AAJ: You guys didn't use clip on mics?

JL: No. We did with Liebs and Mike live, but not in the studio.

AAJ: I had heard comments from John Coltrane referring to that, about how he didn't like the placement of the mic sometimes against the saxophone; didn't capture the sound right.

JL: Sonny talks about that, too. Reading some stuff about Sonny, didn't seem like he enjoyed the studio experience, but he's made some of the most amazing records of all time and documented his ideas! In talking about it seemed like he never felt comfortable in the studio, but maybe that's what made him play so great all the time! Sonny is like a treasure man, he's so amazing to speak with. Having his embrace through the years has been really incredible for me, man. God bless Sonny Rollins and all the folks that go with that man, because we've lost a lot of people over this period here, especially in the pandemic time, but just in general. So, I feel like it's really important to represent and to try to express myself in the most natural, organic, and honest way.

AAJ: How has the pandemic altered the projects that you've worked on over the last couple of years?

JL: You know, for me I've been lucky to be able to sustain myself in my teaching. I have the Gary Burton Chair in Jazz Performance at Berklee College of Music. 9/11 was my first day with that position. Through the years, it's been incredible sharing the blessings like that and speaking about the reality of life and humanity and trying to embrace things and be all accepting. Through the pandemic it was difficult to try to do Zoom lessons and forum classes on Zoom. That was an education, and I learned a lot. It was really rewarding, too, to get next to people. I had students that were in South Korea, in Australia, in the U.K., in Italy, and in Cyprus that I was doing Zoom classes with. Not even classes, just one-on-one exchanges of ideas and talking about the realities about the music. How to try to stay focused and practice. We have a time now to really take your time and develop some ideas. It's all about ideas and how to develop your ideas. Then when we all get back together and play as one, to feel each other's feelings. That's what I focused on a lot.

AAJ: Through all the years you played, '80s and even early '90s, did you ever imagine the digital world like it is today, where you can have a Zoom lesson with a student in another country?

JL: Well, that whole technology has kind of been on the horizon in recording settings. Laying tracks in different towns and all that. You could kind of see something churning but leading to this, it came on kind of quick.

AAJ: It did.

JL: I played some with Herbie Hancock through the years and Herbie's always on the forefront of all kinds of new things and technology with iPhones and all kinds of stuff. He was always talking about things and working on ideas. I guess being a keyboard player and being at the beginning of the whole synthesizer movements and things, him and Chick, they were always reaching forth into some new places in technology. So, I mean I've kind of been in that world with them a little bit. As a saxophonist I didn't go in those directions so much, but I've been on sessions that had those elements happening. It's an ongoing lesson about how to communicate. Well, that's what the bottom line is, how to communicate and how to share the blessings in the most positive way.

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