How I met cousin Morley, and how the saxophone saved my life

About five years ago I went to a conference on alcohol in Brussels with two objectives. The first was to meet a researcher from Finland, with a strange theory that the yeast and bacteria in our mouths help cause cancer when we drink alcohol. The second was to meet the television team that was due to film a program on bad breath (they later came to Israel, and went on to produce a film that won international acclaim, called "Breath from Hell"). Of course I also brought my tenor saxophone with the hope that I would get to jam somewhere in the land where the saxophone was invented.

I arrived the first evening of the meeting to a cocktail room full of scientists attending the conference. I looked over the list of participants, and one name immediately caught my eye. Dr. Morley Hollenberg, from Calgary. I had never heard of this person, but I sensed immediately that he was my cousin. Weird? Not at all. Hollenberg is a rare name, and many Canadians with that name are related to my Dad's family through his late Mom (my Bobi Bayla). One Hollenberg family had five sons who were all physicians in Canada. So I thought it was worth a try.
After asking the conference organizers to point out Dr. Hollenberg, I went over to him, and said "You never heard of me, and I never heard of you, but you are my cousin."
"How is that?" he asked. "Well, I said, just let me ask you two questions. Do you have a cousin in Boston named Dr. Norman Hollenberg (a famous physician and researcher)?" He answered affirmatively. "Were Uncle Irving and Auntie Sonya Hollenberg from Winnipeg your uncle and aunt as well?" Sure enough. One short cellphone call to my father clarified everything. Morley was a physician son of one of the five physician brothers who were Dad's cousins.
It's a small world when you are (i) named Hollenberg (ii) from western Canada and (iii) a physician to boot. But here's what makes it super special. Morley loves jazz, his son is a saxophonist, and the first thing we did together was go to a jam session.

I returned solo the same evening to the same joint, sax in hand, and got to jam with a guy who had played with Chet Baker. I stayed till about 2 a.m. and then asked the proprietors to order me a cab. A cab? they asked, the hotel is only four minutes walk – just go out the door, turn right, left, right again and then the hotel is just down the street.
Even in a town with a street grid like Washington I can get lost in a second. Here, it's downtown Brussels, two in the morning, and the streets are from the middle ages. They twist turn and bend like a Coltrane solo. Within two minutes, I am lost, with no hope of finding either the hotel, nor the jazz joint. I am heading into a lousy neighbourhood, down a small street. I am wearing a good suit, carrying lots of money and holding a rectangular case with my 1941 Holton silver-plated tenor sax. I pass two menacing figures and after about a hundred yards I realize that I have gone the wrong way. I head back up the alley only to see the two menacing figures standing at either side, waiting for my approach. I wonder whether I am going to get away with (i) my wallet; (ii) my saxophone; (iii) my life. I decide to "play it cool as can be" and just walk the walk. But inside I am quivering. As I approach they say something in French, and then take a look at me and somehow back off. I pass between them at a normal clip and somehow find my way back to the hotel. When I get back, I start to shake and savor my good fortune at not being stripped of my wealth and health. What caused those two Goliaths to back off and let me pass? I get to my hotel room and go to the bathroom to pee and wash my face. When I look in the mirror, I suddenly see how my saxophone has saved my life.

I was wearing a horizontal sax halter (instead of my usual vertical strap) that bears uncanny resemblance to a gun halter. They probably thought I had packed a piece beneath my suit jacket.

Morley and I maintained contact until recently. He is also a very talented artist who does Japanese brush work and has illustrated several of my wife's poems. And downtown Brussels? I steer clear.

Having Sax

Last night, I watched one of the modern masters of the tenor saxophone, Scott Hamilton, perform his magic at the Tel Aviv Opera House in front of a huge, immensely appreciative crowd. Scott has distilled the art of Ben, Lester, Coleman and Gene, and delivers an immaculately smooth sound with more subtle hues than the autumn leaves back in his native Rhode Island. His trademark ballads transport you like a 12 year old single malt whiskey. Scott was accompanied by his rhythm section (John Pearce on piano, Dave Green on double bass and Steve Brown on drums) direct from London. They were an immense treat. A quartet of great musicians and lovely people (I got a brief chance to chat with them).

Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in Belgium about 160 years ago. He died long before it found its true vocation as the instrumental voice of jazz in the 1920s. I wish he could have been in the crowd last night. My father-in-law calls music "the food of the soul". There was a lot on the menu last night.

Essential Mel

Essential Mel
Originally uploaded by Mel Rosenberg

Meira, who worked here in the Faculty of Medicine until recently, ordered this beautiful drawing of me as a present for her retirement.
It was drawn by a fantastic young artist: analgarlic.blogspot.com/ - whom I also thank for capturing my image so well!

What Jazz means to me

Life is funny. Back in 1975 I had the chance to sit backstage at a Frank Sinatra concert in Jerusalem, and blew the opportunity. I guess I wasn't enough of a Sinatra fan at the time. What an idiot I was then! When I entered Hillcrest High School in 1964, I could have learned saxophone and played in the school big band. Instead I signed up for woodwork (a disaster for me and the poor remains of the trees I abused), and waited thirty years to start learning to play that divine instrument. By the way, the saxophone was invented in about 1840 by Adolphe Sax, who spent his life trying to convince people to play it, and fighting off imitators. The problem was, Adolphe invented the sax about 80 years before it found its ultimate cosmic role as the soothing melodic voice of jazz. Poor Adolphe Sax. He didn't live to see his great triumph. But if you go to Belgium, try to see his museum.

Tonight is remembrance day in Israel (all holidays and events start and end here in the evening, in accordance with Jewish custom). One of the great friends I lost here over the years is Gaby Ben Artsi (Friedlander), who was killed in a military exercise thirty years ago, this very month. He was one of the most brilliant people I ever met, cut down at 21. He was an airplane pilot (navigator), loved bridge, basketball, and mankind. About six weeks before he died, I helped him buy a Yamaha saxophone. He was making progress on it when he died. After his funeral, his parents asked whether I wanted to play his sax. I couldn't bear to. It took me almost twenty years to hold a sax in my hands. But as soon as I did, music started to come out. And it hasn't stopped since.

I started playing classical piano in grade three, but didn't find out about jazz till I was about twenty. Classical music is great, but it involves a sort of bondage to the composer, however brilliant, who wrote the piece. You are limited as to how much leeway you can take with a classical composition. But jazz is all about leeway. You take a 'standard', or 'blues', or original composition, or whatever, and go with it where it takes you. In jazz there are also some forms and rules, but if you break them in an appealing way, then you may be on your way to stardom. I love the way that playing and singing a jazz standard frees you to put a lot of yourself into it.

Jazz, like many music and art forms is a language, and wherever you travel around the world, you find others who speak it. You might not be able to exchange a sentence, but you can play a whole tune together. One of the great things is walking into a place with a horn, and 'sitting in' on a tune or two. I've done this in London, Vancouver, Washington, Tokyo, Brussels, etc. and it's a great feeling (actually it feels even better when you play well).

Jazz is also about teamwork and sharing. Good jazz occurs when the musicians are attentive to each other's playing, and inspired by it. I've met some great and wonderful jazz singers who have shared their knowledge freely (Sheila Jordan who's in this picture with me, and Anita Wardell), and have jammed with some really super sax players with true camaraderie for greatly inferior players (such as myself), Ian Ritchie, for example, who tours with Roger Waters.

More on music on a future posting.