Tony Miceli: Vibes Matter

AAJ: You have to give yourself to the art form, not adjust to what society expects you to be.

TM: Music and life have got to consume you, you need to be passionate. You can't make passionate music unless you live your whole life passionately.

AAJ: So that leads us to spirituality, living life with passion and a higher sense of purpose. Let me just put the question bluntly, in a way that I don't usually do, do you believe in God?

TM: I greatly respect people who believe in God. The problem for me in believing in God, is that you have to pick one God to believe in. And I believe that leads to conflicts between people and religions who think of God differently from each other. Think about who God is in Korea, Argentina, Israel, Iran. Buddhism, Catholicism, Judaism, the Muslim Faith. Is any one belief better than the other? When people begin to think, "I've got the correct belief, and the others are wrong," trouble develops.

AAJ: Do you believe in the human spirit?

TM: Yes, I believe in spirituality and the human spirit.

AAJ: When you're playing, do you ever feel someone or something else is playing through you, like you're just a channel for something other than yourself?

TM: Yes. One time I was going through a lot of agony with my dysfunctional family, and I feared spending time with them. Marilyn Luber said, "Can't you just rise above it all, look at everybody from above the table? Can't you just detach and observe everything?" So I did that one Thanksgiving. And then I thought: "I could do the same thing with music!" So now I sometimes play like I'm outside of it all. But I object when musicians say, "The music just passes through me." No it doesn't! My sister can't play like Gary Burton no matter how much "passes through" her. Gary spent countless hours getting to play the way that he does. It's just that you get to such a place that the music can really flow. It's automatic and you can use your intuition and imagination as you play.

Photo Credit: Paul Dempsey