“Ode to Joy,” from Beethoven: Ninth symphony, 4th mvt.:Phil. Orch.
SHEEP MEADOW In the summer of 1965, the New York Philharmonic put on a series of free concerts at Sheep Meadow, in Central Park. Aaron Copland soloed in his piano concerto, Benny Goodman in a Mozart clarinet concerto, and Bernstein conducted orchestra and chorus in a performance of Beethoven’s transcendent ninth symphony. We were there for all three concerts, with our friends John and Kay Coldiron, who had just moved to New York from Chicago. Like the other 90,000 people there for the Beethoven concert, we brought a blanket to sit on and food (fried chicken) and drink (wine). We were among the first 30,000 to 40,000 to get there –we’d learned that it was smart to get there early . Sheep Meadow looked like it does in the photo above that early in the afternoon. Later, it was so densely crowded that it was difficult to walk between people to get back to your own lawn spread.
We sat there, eating chicken and drinking wine. And as the sun set, the choral finale of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” wafted over us.
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HUNTER COLLEGE In the spring of 1966, Hunter College (now part of CUNY) hosted an evening of jazz piano. Billy Taylor hosted it and in succession, Willie “the Lion” Smith, Thelonious Monk, Wynton Kelly (Miles’s old piano player), Herbie Hancock (Miles’s current piano player), Mary Lou Williams, and Taylor played sets of thirty minutes each. There may have been a drummer and bass player for the pianists to use but I don’t remember them.
Willie ‘the Lion’ Smith: Echoes of Spring (1958)
Willie “the Lion” Smith, a showman as well as a pianist, kicked off the evening mixing reminiscing and playing. One of the giants of stride, he had a deft touch and strong hands (an incongruous combination, but it’s true). Monk followed Smith, parodying him on his first piece and in the process showing how much this odd bop era goliath Monk owed to predecessors like Smith.
Kelly was predictably bluesy: Miles had wanted him in his quintet/sextet because he played roots. Hancock was fluent –the only other player as fluent as him was Mary Lou Williams– and he played much the way that he was developing in the second great Miles Davis quintet of Davis, saxist Wayne Shorter, Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony William.
Mary Lou Williams was unbelievable! She had started out in the ’30s as a boogie woogie player, made the transition to bop and then modal music, and never until she died did she stop growing. I’ve never been impressed by Billy Taylor’s piano work but he performed competently.
Here my memory fails me: it seems right that the pianists should play together or in quick succession at the end of the concert but I can’t fix it in my mind. I have a vague memory of Thelonious Monk bowing out of whatever happened at the end. That probably means the other pianists did join to play together.
Whatever, it was a hell of an evening.
Thelonious Monk: Memories of You (n.d.)
Mary Lou Williams: unnamed blues (1980)
MUSIC & ME 