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Jazz Is the Perfect Study Music

Listening to music is a great way to zone out from your distractions while doing homework. But not all styles of music are great accompaniments to studying; it needs to be calming but not induce lethargy. Plenty of people, myself included, will listen to lo-fi study beats. Those work, but they can get a bit repetitive and boring. A great alternative is jazz.

What happened to jazz? The groovy genre once defined the 20th century, but it has been replaced by pop, hip-hop and rock as the most popular music genres. In fact, jazz is now the least popular music genre , especially among young adults. As a jazz musician, this kind of saddens me, but I also understand why there has been a decrease in its popularity. I myself will admit that I have not always been a fan of the genre, and it took me some time to get into it. Most jazz pieces are fully instrumental, which makes it more difficult for listeners to make explicit connections to the recordings. However, I believe that people are missing out on the beautiful ambiance that jazz can create. Tired of lo-fi study beats? Jazz is a great alternative for relaxing music to wind down or study to.

Jazz was conceived on the streets of New Orleans at the start of the 1900s. Music had always been huge in the city. New Orleans was home to a lot of slaves, and there was a small park in the city known as “Congo Square” where they were permitted to gather and play music. New Orleans had an extraordinarily diverse population of people from Africa and the Caribbean.

These diverse cultures led to the formation of different music genres, like ragtime. “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin is the most recognizable example of ragtime. This fast-paced genre fused with other music styles to become “jazz.” This new genre would rise in popularity at the start of the 1920s. It was synonymous with the fashion and mood of the decade and was extremely popular in clubs for dancing. Its popularity continued throughout most of the century.

Prior to jazz, the most popular music genre was classical, which placed great emphasis on learning complex music theory, staying within the rules of music and an overall emphasis on perfection. However, jazz placed greater significance on improvisation, rhythm and rule-bending. Jazz artists wanted to sound unique and test the constructed rules of music theory. It has more influence on modern music than a lot of people realize.

These principles have trickled down through the progression of popular music, and there is an undeniable jazz influence on popular genres like rock, hip-hop, R&B and pop music. Despite the loss in popularity, jazz is still common on movie soundtracks, such as Disney Pixar’s “The Incredibles.” Nowadays, jazz has taken a backseat to other styles of music, and people don’t even recognize jazz when they hear it sometimes.

One reason why people often struggle to get into jazz is because they don’t listen to it the right way. I know that may sound strange, but bear with me. As I mentioned earlier, the beauty of the genre comes from the ambiance it creates.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Imagine you’re at Grand Central Station, ready to take the train home from New York City. It’s a rainy night, you’re tired, and to make matters worse, your train has just been delayed by two hours. You leave Grand Central and find a bar down the block to pass the time. You walk in and notice the dim lights and — if it is a good bar — cool jazz simmers in the background saturating the room. If you’re lucky, it will be live jazz, but even stereo jazz is a great complement to a relaxing drink. You sit there, tapping your foot, getting lost in the relaxing ambiance. Before you know it, your train is ready to board.

People need to consider ambiance when they listen to jazz. You should play jazz from a speaker rather than listen through your headphones. You want the music to brighten up the room rather than be confined to the sides of your head. This worked wonders for me in college. After a long day of classes, socializing and homework, I would play Miles Davis and John Coltrane from my speaker, with just a lamp on, as I stared out the window tapping my hand on the wall. It gave me a great chance to slow down and just think.

Soon after, I started listening to jazz when I did homework, and it made doing my assignments much more bearable. I had tried listening to other music while doing my assignments in the past, but I always found myself getting distracted by trying to follow the lyrics and intense rhythms. The nice thing about instrumental jazz is that you can divert your attention away from it and still enjoy it.

Now there are many sub-genres of jazz so it can be a little tricky to find the style that suits the study ambiance you want. If you want a relaxing tone in the room, “cool jazz” is the way to go. I would recommend anything by early Miles Davis or John Coltrane. A specific album recommendation would be Miles Davis’ legendary “Kind of Blue.” Davis finds the perfect balance between a calm and chaotic melody that keeps you relaxed, but far from falling asleep. It doesn’t stop there though.

There is a time and place for every jazz song. If you’re looking for an artist that is more upbeat, I would suggest anything by Duke Ellington. If you want to listen to jazz with a singer, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald have two of the smoothest voices in music history. If you want something more modern, there are a lot of options, but Herbie Hancock often includes more interesting, nontraditional jazz sounds in his music. Whatever you choose, just make sure it is something you enjoy. We will never be able to listen to every record out there, but it never hurts to try something new.

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Benefits Of Jazz Music For Concentration During Work And Study

The American jazz saxophonist and composer, John William Coltrane once said “The main thing a musician would like to do…

The American jazz saxophonist and composer, John William Coltrane once said “The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things [s]he knows of and senses in the universe.”

I developed a passion for jazz in my later years, as a result of active listening. Slowly and with persistence, I began to hear a structure that I now understand is inherent in practically all jazz tunes. Often, but not always, the track starts with an introduction to set the mood; the introduction is followed by the melody, which is generally played with an instrument that has the ability to play chords of the tune underneath the melody. After the melody is played, it’s time for the true essence of the track, the improvised solo. The melody stops, but the chords keep going. Then, the soloist creates and improvises a new melody to fit the harmonic structure of the piece. It is while soloing that the musician gives reign to self-expression, personal creativity and inspiration. The rhythm section accompanies (also called comping) the soloist by generating the rhythm and carrying the beat.

It is this sophistication that compels the mind to grapple with the sound, which in turn helps build valuable habits.

While not a musician, I have come to value the beauty of jazz, through active listening. Jazz fosters the five Harappa Habits not only in the musician but also in listeners. But first, Harappa Habits –Think, Solve, Communicate, Collaborate and Lead–are a part of Harappa Education’s mission to unleash the potential of people at the workplace. This budding ed-tech start-up is developing 25 online courses to help equip individuals with cognitive, social and emotional skills to complement their technical skills .

While listening to jazz is by no means a substitute for Harappa courses, it serves as an effective metaphor for what Harappa is seeking to cultivate in learners. Understanding just how listening to jazz propagates the development of these beneficial Harappa Habits engenders palpable appreciation. Let me explain how:

THINK: Chaos or Structure?

Listening actively with a focus on jazz fosters critical thinking in the attempt to decipher form. As I said earlier, I have developed a passion for jazz only in my later years as a result of actively listening to it. It was only when I listened to the music without much distraction, did I cease to think of jazz simply as background music. I found myself wanting to make sense of the organized cacophony of different sounds emanating from my speakers. It was a challenge both for my ear as well as for my mind.

SOLVE: What Notes to Sound Next?

Having finally understood the basic structure audible to a jazz novice, I began wondering how the musicians know the notes another musician is going to play and how to respond. Since jazz is played in groups–duos, trios, quartet, quintet, big band or any other type of ensemble, jazz musicians need to decode the other musicians in the combination to enable themselves to solve the riddle of what to play next. There is always a degree of interplay in any ensemble with one instrument influencing another.

COMMUNICATE AND COLLABORATE: Learning How to Work in a Team

Jazz musicians in an ensemble deal with the unpredictability of each musician’s contribution. Such uncertainty makes jazz a collaborative art form. They cue one another, both through verbal cues as well as non-verbal ones. Verbal cues may be audible to listeners and non-verbal cues such as eye contact, musical communication, and body language , clearly are not. The musicians listen and watch for these cues and respond appropriately (call and response). The result is a musically rich conversation. Ensemble playing also calls for the musicians to take musical risks in creating and responding to improvisation and thus, must establish trust with the other band members.

LEAD: Learning to lead with the Ear

While jazz ensembles don’t have a centralized form of leadership, it has a visionary leadership based on who sets the direction for the group. The leader is also trusting and does not micromanage. Jazz ensemble leaders must be the most attentive of listeners to be able to listen to all the other instruments communicating simultaneously. And most importantly, the leader of the ensemble creates a culture of experimentation and continuous development.

With the five Harappa Habits forming the bedrock of their craft, if jazz musicians were to transition these habits to the workplace, their success would be the envy of the office. Meanwhile, it’s an activity closely associated with this particular collection of habits. Click to listen to playlists that I think serve best when you are building the Harappa Habits of Think , Solve , Communicate , Collaborate and Lead . One can hope that avid listeners of jazz too, have an upper hand in transitioning these habits to the workplace.

Tarini Mohan is a graduate of Wellesley College, US, and is currently an MBA candidate at the Yale School of Management, US. A summer intern at Harappa Education focusing on product development, she loves her cuppa joe, listening to jazz and exploring Delhi’s delightful culinary scene.

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Jazz History and Listening Assignment Ideas: Hear It, Sing It, Play It

By j. richard dunscomb | april 15, 2020.

During this period of “Shelter In Place,” consider becoming more familiar with our national treasure: Jazz! Especially relevant during the month of April, also known as Jazz Appreciation Month, jazz can introduce traditional music students to a new world of sounds, textures, and skills.

Jazz was born in New Orleans at the turn of the century. At that time, there was military music, classical music, piano music, vocal music, and small ensemble music. Elements of these styles—combined with the infusion of music the slaves carried on from their African and American heritages, and the blues, ragtime, and boogie-woogie—morphed into a new style of music: jazz .

Jazz became the popular music of the day in the ‘20s and ‘30s. One of the first standout recordings at the time was “West End Blues” featuring Louis Armstrong (trumpet and vocal), and Trummy Young (trombone).

Listen: Louis Armstrong, “West End Blues”

What Is Swing?

One of the foundational characteristics of jazz is swing. Swing is defined by professional drummer Jonathan Joseph as “drawing the audience into the pulse of your rhythm.” He says, “Swing is a feel, and the only way to understand the feeling is to understand how the rhythm moves.” In technical terms, understanding how that rhythm moves can be thought of as playing the first and last eighth notes in an eighth-note triplet.

Watching others feeling the pulse of the rhythm can also be helpful in understanding swing feel. Here’s an example of swing dancers, who physically demonstrate through their choreography an understanding of swing feel:

Watch: Swing Dancing

What Other Types of Swing Are There?

To help us further understand and generate our own swing feel, consider another famous rhythm called the blues shuffle. This rhythm has been described as the "mother of the swing feel."

Listen: Blues Brothers, “Sweet Home Chicago”

Big Band Swing

Listening to big bands is probably the most accessible place to begin when learning about jazz. Focus on the sound, balance, instrumentation, articulation, and styles that will be present.

The big band became the main jazz ensemble during the “Swing Era” from the 1930s to mid 1940s. The music of this era creates the foundation of big band music in the swing style.

Big bands  (jazz ensembles that traditionally includes five saxes, four trumpets, four trombones, and a rhythm section of piano, bass, drums, and sometimes guitar) originated in the United States, and through the years have also been referred to as jazz bands, jazz ensembles, dance bands, jazz orchestras, and stage bands.

Important big band leaders during the Swing Era included Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Joe “King” Oliver, Benny Moten, Jay McShann, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman.

Count Basie and His Orchestra

Count Basie was a part of the new music that was born in Kansas City in the late ‘30s. The Count Basie Orchestra (big bands were frequently called "orchestras," even though they were technically bands) became the most popular big band in Kansas City through implementation of  head arrangements (an arrangement that is not written down), riffs (a short fragment of melody), 12-bar blues (a twelve-measure form consisting of three four-measure phrases), call-and-response (a simple musical phrase that is played—the call—and then in turn responded to with a similar musical idea—the response), and improvisation (to create a new melody while performing, also known as spontaneous composition). The band was certainly built on the concept of swing.

The Basie band had fabulous musicians, among them were Lester Young, tenor sax; Buck Clayton, trumpet; Sweets Edison, trumpet; Jimmy Rushing, vocalist; and an incredible rhythm section called the “All-American Rhythm Section.”

Rhythm is fundamental to creating the feeling for any genre of music. It is therefore vital that the rhythm section must create the appropriate rhythmic feel and style of swing.

In a traditional jazz ensemble setting with the piano, bass, guitar, and drums, the goal of each player is to collectively establish a good swing foundation for the rest of the ensemble.

Let’s focus on the important role of Basie’s rhythm section, commonly referred to as Count Basie’s “All-American Rhythm Section.” They are a great example of a swing-style rhythm section.

The rhythm section consisted of Count Basie on piano, Freddie Green on guitar, Walter Page on bass, and Papa Jo Jones on drums. Let's listen and watch the great Basie Orchestra (big band) play their arrangement of "All of Me."

Listen: Count Basie Orchestra, “All of Me”

Listening is an essential part of the approach to successfully developing an understanding of the jazz language. Throughout this article directed listening tips will help inform in the same way jazz masters learned their craft.

Due to the internet we now have access to listening to millions of pieces of music. Fortunately, virtually the entire history of jazz is available. However, today’s listeners may hear a performance one time and move on to another.

Listening to a piece one time is great but to really understand it, repeated listening is necessary. It's important to be able to hear and identify various characteristics such as  melody (sing and identify the melody and identify what instruments are playing it), style (is it swing, shuffle, Latin, or rock?),  form (the design pattern of a musical composition), articulation (the attack or beginning of a note), balance/blend (bringing into proportion the melody, harmony, and rhythm), jazz nuances (bends, scoops, phrasing, sequences, etc.), tempo (a solid pulse or rhythmic groove), and much more. Listening and identifying these characteristics is a skill that can be enhanced with repeated practice. This is the way the jazz masters learned. The concept is “Hear it, Sing it, Play it.”

For this next listening example, snap your fingers on beats 2 and 4.

Listen: Count Basie Orchestra, “Moten Swing”

Below are short listening lists of some professional  jazz ensemble recordings. These recordings are primarily straight-ahead (swing) jazz in a modern style.

Big Band Recordings

• Count Basie:  Basie Straight Ahead , April in Paris
• Duke Ellington:  The London Concerts
• Bob Florence:  With All the Bells and Whistles
• Bill Holman:  A View from the Side
• Thad Jones/Mel Lewis:  A Touch of Class
• Quincy Jones and Sammy Nestico:  Basie and Beyond
• Bill Watrous:  A Time for Love
• Patrick Williams:  Sinatraland
• Gordon Goodwin:  Swingin’ for the Fences
• Woody Herman:  The Three Herds

Small Ensemble Recordings

After you begin to understand the jazz language through big band recordings, expand your listening to small group recordings. These small groups or combo ensembles will help you focus intently on all ingredients of jazz. The following list continues to focus on swing style. Some small group recordings may seem more abstract as they almost always include more improvisation.

Listening to jazz classics by jazz masters will be the best place to start. Here is a list by esteemed jazz artist and educator Shelly Berg.

• Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Seven Steps to Heaven
• Charlie Parker: Yardbird Suite
• Dexter Gordon: Go
• Art Blakey: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
• Oscar Peterson: The Trio
• Ella Fitzgerald: (anything!)

Famous Jazz Artists by Instrument

Although by no means complete here is a list of well-known individual jazz musicians for you to listen to:

• Alto Saxophone: Johnny Hodges, Paul Desmond, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley
• Tenor Saxophone: Lester Young, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson
• Baritone Saxophone: Gerry Mulligan, Serge Challoff, Pepper Adams, Nick Brignola
• Trumpet: Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis
• Trombone: Curtis Fuller, Carl Fontana, Slide Hampton, Bill Watrous
• Piano: Count Basie, Duke Ellington
• Guitar: Freddie Green, Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, and Pat Martino
• Bass: Ray Brown, Christian McBride, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, and John Patitucci
• Drums: Jo Jones, Ed Thigpen, Peter Erskine, Steve Houghton
• Female Vocalists: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson, Carmen Bradford
• Male Vocalists: Joe Williams, Jon Hendricks, Mel Torme, Frank Sinatra
• Clarinet: Buddy DeFranco, Eddie Daniels, Paquito D’Rivera

Many of the basic concepts in this article come from my new jazz band method Jazz Zone…The Beginning . See and hear more at jazzzoneonline.com . I hope you have enjoyed listening to jazz as much as I enjoyed writing about it. Dig deep into the music and by all means have fun!

J. Richard Dunscomb is the chair of the music department at Columbia College - the nation's premier visual, performing, media and communication arts college - located in Chicago, Illinois. He is recognized nationally and internationally as one of the leading authorities in the field of jazz music and music education. He was elected to the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) Hall of Fame and was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor by The Midwest Clinic.

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Music Reviews

On beth gibbons' 'lives outgrown,' the portishead singer invites us in.

Grayson Haver Currin

On Lives Outgrown , her first solo album, Beth Gibbons has never appeared so unguarded, so free of mystery's shroud. Eva Vermandel/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

On Lives Outgrown , her first solo album, Beth Gibbons has never appeared so unguarded, so free of mystery's shroud.

Even at the height of Portishead 's fame, singer Beth Gibbons seemed in self-selected exile from usual music-industry machinations. For 30 years, or ever since the Bristol trio stumbled into surprising stardom and helped usher in trip-hop as a genre, Gibbons barely participated in the promotional hubbub around infrequent releases. A 2019 tally suggested she'd done just two brief interviews ever. In one , from 1995, she mostly smiles, laughs and pantomimes uncomfortably; in the other , she stands shivering by a boat, then waffles about whether she wants to do press at all.

She seemed to know, however, exactly what to do with the ostensible windfall: Where others, like Jack White or J. Cole or even Neil Young turned major-label cache and earnings into their own eccentric empires, Gibbons made something much more familiar — an almost entirely private life. Aside from the occasional charity single , Grammy-winning guest appearance , symphonic turn or very rare candid photo , Gibbons receded into the ordinary work of just being an adult.

It was stunning, then, when she seemed to fling open the doors to her home in early May, a week before the release of her solo debut, Lives Outgrown , at least for a frame. In a photograph posted to her Instagram account, Gibbons sat at a live-edge desk , turning upward to smile at the camera as she signed small white postcards to be mailed with her record's deluxe edition. "Final touches before my [album's] released," Gibbons wrote, signing off with a red heart. There is math homework shoved to one side of the desk, tins crammed with colored pencils to the other. Outside, through closed windows, the yard is a wash of triumphal springtime green.

The snapshot is a fittingly interior image for Lives Outgrown , where Gibbons eschews the complicated electronic textures and percussive snap-and-sway of her famous band for the sort of softer sounds one might get in a living room as Saturday night stretches into Sunday afternoon. The drum kit, after all, consisted of a paella dish and a cowhide water bottle. There is bowed saw and hammered dulcimer, baritone viola and pedal steel.

What's more, Gibbons first hinted at Lives Outgrown in 2013, nearing the edge of 50. She is releasing it now at the precipice of 60. Gibbons' lyrics — delivered alternately with a velveteen softness or a tensile strength, her generational voice having gained grain while losing little flexibility — are suffused with the stuff that comes during any such transitional decade: talk of time, encounters with ache, hems of horizons. "Moon time will linger / through the melody / of life's shortening, longing view," she patiently sings during the closing pastoral, "Whispering Love."

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As time advances, Lives Outgrown affirms, all we've ever known recedes a little more each day. Gibbons has never appeared so unguarded, so free of mystery's shroud. In Portishead, she always seemed to be summoning some unseen energy; it is surprising, reassuring, inspiring even how lyrically familiar Lives Outgrown seems, the testament of an uncanny singer simply making it through each day. It feels as if she's invited us over to sit a spell.

Indeed, Gibbons announced Lives Outgrown with a handwritten letter , the first sign she was letting the faithful into her bubble, at least briefly. "My 50's have brought forward a new yet older horizon," she offered. "It has been a time of farewells to family, friends, and even to who I was before." In the first 90 seconds of the album, she summons abandonment and self-doubt, crowning herself "a lonely love." Exhaustion and even a trace of aged callousness creep into the anxious "Burden of Life," an elegy for the energy and optimism we've had. "The time's never right," she concludes, her voice fading over the barbs of a baritone guitar, "when you're losing your soul." There is the abiding feeling that the party, if not already over, is soon ending: "Fooled ovulation, but no babe in me," Gibbons manages with a gasp, as if surprised at the starkness of her own confession.

All this talk of aging, things lost, nice desks piled with chores and crafts: Lives Outgrown probably suggests some precious domestic folk affair by now, all acoustic finery and coddled vocals. And to an extent, sure. Gibbons' pick-and-slide guitar during opener "Tell Me Who You Are Today" is a loping wonder, as are her pensive vocals, which feel forever like an exhalation. But the album's true majesty stems from arrangements that are simultaneously grand and intimate, as if Gibbons has tucked an entire symphony into her living room only to bend it at her command.

Though the London collective Orchestrate, led by Bridget Samuels, does appear on two tracks, much of Lives Outgrown is played by a tiny crew: Gibbons, former Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris and producer James Ford, whose multi-instrumental facility gives this music its breadth and gravity. (On two tracks, Ford musters 14 instruments himself, from the humble recorder to a panoply of keyboards.) The plangent strings and questioning clarinet during "Rewind," the noctilucent long tones and ominous whooshes beneath "Oceans," the percussive pulses and cobwebbed background vocals during "For Sale": These are meticulously composed songs, their nested layers having more to do with, say, the later works of Robert Wyatt than the revival of Vashti Bunyan .

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André 3000 opens up about 'new blue sun,' his daring new solo album.

These instruments are forever responding to Gibbons, too, whether mapping the depravity and confusion of "Rewind" or ferrying along her sense of existential drift in "Floating on a Moment." End to end, this record is a response to Gibbons' personal testimony — no misdirection or guile, just an opening to an interior.

Lives Outgrown follows the release of another long-anticipated solo debut from someone else in an iconic act: André 3000 's New Blue Sun . No, Gibbons' heartfelt songs do not equal the hard left turn of that masterful rapper's "flute"-bound ascent into spiritual jazz. They do, however, represent the considered results of a similar retreat from the public eye, from making music, from meeting the demands of creative commerce.

This record, like New Blue Sun , feels like a concession to no one except oneself. It is a document of a life lived, a candid transmission from the many years that have passed since Gibbons' last songs. Just as André 3000's improvisations didn't absolutely sate all OutKast fans, Gibbons' inward acoustic hymns may miss some of Portishead's adherents. No matter: Lives Outgrown , where Gibbons molts any shell of expectation, is better for it, a little unexpected gift for which we've long been waiting.

• Beth Gibbons

Viola V. Madsen

Susan Devlin

Margurite J. Perez

My dad died 2 years ago of this rare, fatal disease. I can't stop thinking about this moment.

I will never forget the moment my dad's eyes danced with recognition. One of the last times his bright blue eyes met mine and meant it.

The sun poured in that gorgeous spring day in 2022 and pierced the dozen windows of our living room. It lit up the light green walls, too, and illuminated the bright teal kitchen backsplash. Woodpeckers pecked the gray siding outside, birds chirped within earshot of every bedroom. A tire swing – long unused – hung in the side yard. If I listened closely, I could hear a younger version of myself asking Dad to push me harder. Faster.

The living room TV stared back at us. Blank. The news was usually on in the morning at this hour if someone was home. Dad was never here at this time on a weekday. But everything changed when he started showing symptoms of aphasia – yes, like Bruce Willis – that turned out to be the one-in-a-million, always-fatal neurodegenerative condition known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).

He died weeks later.

"Dad, why don’t we go through the worksheet?" I urged. Like I used to when I was a kid and needed help with math homework. My 8th grade math "problem of the week" became our problem of the week.

But this time the worksheet wasn't mine. It was his. Homework from his speech pathologist. His aphasia kept getting worse, not better. He started forgetting things too quickly. The physician he once was became a too-distant memory.

Dad, do you remember your name?

"Hey Dad, what’s your name?"

“Mark,” he said. Right. Good.

“That’s right! What about my name?”

“Mark.” He said it like he was trying to say "David," but was defeated. No one prepares you for when your parent looks at you and can't remember the name that they chose. I had first experienced this a few days earlier during another beautiful spring day, on a walk through a park near my childhood home. I asked him my name after a trip around the large pond, after being warned he might not remember. I didn't look at my reflection in the pool. I couldn't bear the horror that would reflect back at me.

“No, I’m David," I stammered. "What about your wife’s name?”

“Mark.” No. Again. Lisie. Her name is Lisie. Your wife of almost 31 years.

“No. What color is this folder?” I asked, frustrated. 

“Yes!” My blue eyes lit up like wave pools and met his. He looked at me, but almost through me. Not totally registering my presence but not missing it, either. Like he was stuck between worlds.

The speech pathologist gave us this "red" trick. For whatever reason − one I’ll research another time − asking him the color of this red folder grounds him. Brings him down to earth from wherever his mind is at this point.

Maybe he’ll get better, I thought, every time he gets this right. But then I asked him to name objects around the house – a remote, a blanket – and we’re back at square one. Repeating the name “Mark,” or the color “red.”

His favorite song

“Dad, why don’t we listen to some music? Maybe ‘Take Five?’” He shrugged. I'm not sure whether he heard my question but either way it gave us both a break.

"Take Five," by Paul Desmond, is his favorite song. A jazz staple. I scrolled to my Spotify app and started playing it.

The drum beats began. Then the saxophone swung in, the star of the show. Dad played professional jazz in the Catskill Mountains of New York many years prior and wouldn't let anyone forget it. He played the clarinet, too, in a trio with a flutist and violinist, for decades. He often pulled out either or both instruments for family gatherings like Passover, for informal recitals. These memories swarmed my mind, musical notes leaping around like the plague of frogs.

“Da-da-da-duh-dah-“

He was … singing along? The same man who can't say my name, my mom's name, sometimes not his own name, knew the tune of "Take Five?"

He wasn't smiling. But he was singing. Somewhere, in the recesses of his brain that the CJD prion proteins were destroying, he remembered. Remembered playing "Let My People Go" at the Passover Seder with unnecessary (but beautiful) jazzy trills. Remembered visiting jazz clubs across New York City, probably hearing "Take Five" over and over again. Remembered reminding me to play the clarinet myself when I definitely haven't practiced, not once, even though my parents paid for private lessons.

He looked at me this time. Really at me. How was this possible? Why was this possible?

Did it mean anything?

How I think about 'Take Five' now

I wish it meant something. That maybe he was getting better, that the music would somehow shock his brain into working well again. That he could say "David" without hesitation like he did for nearly 30 years of my life.

What I gather it meant: CJD hadn't totally sucked the life out of him yet. The rapid decline was in full swing, of course, but it moved in slow motion too. In moments like this, both painstaking and poignant, melancholy and magnificent, terrible and true. Dad was dying but he was also still Dad. My dad.

We took a break once the song finished. His eyes returned to that stuck place. I filmed his humming, though, and I'm glad I did, so I can look back on it now. Do tears sting my eyes? Yes. But two years later, I press play on "Take Five" and think of him. Sometimes I hear it out in the world, and imagine him humming along. Or better yet, jamming on that saxophone.

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Provincetown’s busiest jazz player is ready to reintroduce himself to Boston

Mike flanagan, a berklee grad who’s among a small cohort of out-gay jazz musicians, makes his debut at scullers on may 17.

For the gay vacationer, Provincetown is like Oz; along its Yellow Brick Road, also known as Commercial Street, drag queens, Broadway divas, and camp cabaret make up most of the entertainment. Audiences there are not known as jazz lovers.

Yet alto saxophonist Mike Flanagan, who is gay, has become a local star by offering jazz that flies over nobody’s head. Warm, tuneful, and swinging, it fits nicely in almost any setting, from bebop-flavored combos to Whitney Houston and Pink cover shows. In Provincetown alone, where he lives full time, Flanagan plays five nights a week, two of them at Tin Pan Alley, a restaurant whose bar has become his musical workshop.

In order to survive, however, he has to keep several plates spinning at once. Flanagan is the booker for both Tin Pan Alley and the Post Office Café and Cabaret; those jobs require him to fill a total of 39 performance slots per week. Flanagan plays keyboard for bar vocalists and saxophone for singers Lea DeLaria and Matt Alber, two zealously out LGBT favorites. He also teaches music three days a week.

Flanagan, 39, has joined a small cohort of out-gay jazz musicians who have forged places for themselves in a traditionally gay-unfriendly field. Now he’s about to test his mettle in the “real” jazz world when he makes his debut at Scullers Jazz Club on May 17, to preview the forthcoming “Many Rivers,” his first full-out jazz album.

Singer Suede, the veteran earth mother of Cape Cod cabaret and jazz, foresees a bright future for him. “He’s an incredible go-getter, constantly working, making new connections, and growing as an artist. He does his homework — on tunes, theory, players, venues, promoters — and never seems to be stopped by thinking he’s over-reaching. He has that lovely balance of being comfortable in his own skin without an overly large ego taking up too much space.”

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As a Berklee College of Music student, Flanagan found his North Star in the late Yasko Kubota, the Boston-area jazz pianist and educator. She had enough R&B in her to catch the ears of New Kids on the Block, the famous boy band from Dorchester, who took her on tour. “I thought, I want to play jazz and make people feel the way she’s making me feel right now,” says Flanagan. Before graduating in 2008, the saxophonist — fiercely driven even then — landed a residency at the Sheraton Boston, where he led bands that he had stocked with Berklee faculty and students.

By then, the notoriously macho jazz field had a handful of openly gay and lesbian stars, including vibraphonist Gary Burton, pianist Fred Hersch, and singer-pianists Patricia Barber and Andy Bey. Still, Flanagan, who had come out at 21, felt like a misfit. “A lot of the bonding being done was over attraction to girls, or saying misogynistic things,” he says. “I thought, I’m never gonna fit into this boys’ club.”

He took a sharp detour. Adopting a cool-sounding handle, MikeMRF (his initials), Flanagan became the musical director and composing partner of Lisa Bello, a Boston-born singer of blue-eyed soul and hip-hop. (“She’s straight but an ally,” he explains.) Their songs, some of them gay-themed, earned two Outmusic Awards as well as the John Lennon Award, founded by Yoko Ono to honor young songwriters. In the video for “Trying,” Flanagan acts the part of a heartsick gay man involved in a breakup. “Trying” has scored more than a million views on YouTube.

Each July, thousands of men of Flanagan’s physical type invade Provincetown for Bear Week. In 2010 he was hired to play there for a drag queen. No one around had his jack-of-all-trades musicianship, and within a few summers his schedule was bursting. In 2016 he moved to Brooklyn and earned a master’s degree in music at New York University. He taught there and toured with Bello until the pandemic halted everything. It made sense for him to settle in Provincetown, where employment was assured.

Along the way, his focus on jazz had gotten blurred. “Many Rivers” seeks to restore it. The album’s personnel includes drummer Richie Barshay, formerly with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, and Steve Davis, a star trombonist and Berklee professor. “Although Mike’s style often leans toward an R&B/smooth-jazz approach,” notes Davis, “he can play changes and likes to bebop, too.”

On July 18, during Bear Week, Flanagan will, he hopes, fill Provincetown’s 708-seat Town Hall when he headlines a show he’s self-producing. An array of his closest colleagues, including Bello, will be there to help sweeten the package. Two other participants — Chris Grasso, Provincetown’s first-call jazz pianist, and Lauren Scales, a runner-up in the 2016 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition — will join him at Scullers, too.

Flanagan dreams of taking his act abroad, but not at the cost of his summers in Provincetown, where he has earned blanket approval. “It’s allowed me to implement jazz in an LGBT town,” he says. “Oftentimes the compliment we get is: ‘I don’t often listen to jazz but I want to see you guys again.’”

MIKE FLANAGAN

At Scullers Jazz Club, 400 Soldiers Field Road. May 17 at 7 p.m. Tickets $35-$110. scullersjazz.com

James Gavin is the author of “George Michael: A Life,” “Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee,” “Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne,” and “Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker.”