MY MUSICAL PAST

I seldom write about my musical past. It lingers on the misty edge of a distance that no longer seems real. It is impossible to ever fully recapture those times, and - to be truthful - it's heartbreaking for me to remember what was....

...my youth in California when I was inspired, exuberant, energetic, optimistic. To say that I was a professional musician is no exaggeration. Despite my reckless, shiftless Hollywood years, I also managed to (later) go to college and study with some of the finest teachers in the country. I composed, conducted, worked as an accompanist, and gave solo concerts. I also performed with numerous orchestras.

After I left California at the age of 34 (for too many reasons to go into) I embarked on a life far removed from any semblance of excitement, fulfillment, glamor, or inspiration. I lived in the Missouri Ozarks, West Texas, and now Tennessee. During this time I encountered more problems, obstacles, and incredibly bad luck than I'd care to remember - which eventually expunged my heart and soul. I was rendered nothing more than a bitter, cold relic - a pale shadow of my former self.

Despite everything, I still had my music and my memories to hang onto. When I moved to Tennessee, however, the movers lost all of my diaries, journals and mementos. They also lost many of my California photos and more than half of my music manuscripts. That's when I finally completely gave up. My past was rudely severed forever.

During my active years as a musician, I made over 300 piano recordings (all are catalogued). Many of them were lost, but - fortunately - I still have some of my ancient, original cassette tapes.

The other night I started listening to some of the tapes, and somehow my spirit was rejuvenated. They are completely unedited, crude, and in mono - but at least they retain glimpses and glimmers of my musical past.

I'm presently in the process of transferring (some of) these tapes from cassette to 3MP files - via Audacity.

Last night I made two of these files into videos for YouTube. The videos themselves aren't very good, and the audio is extremely poor - but at least it gives an idea of my former piano virtuosity.
These piano tapes were both recorded in Los Angeles when I was in my very early 20's.

DISCONNECTED

I'm thinking of how disconnected I am from my musical past. Sometimes it seems so far away that I can hardly believe it was real. Time has a wicked way of diminishing the potency of things that were and eventually eclipses our shining absolutes with shadows of doubt.

I look at my two abandoned pianos gathering dust and  am disheartened at the fact that I've only played them once or twice since I moved here. I'm in a dreary mood lately, battling private ghosts of melancholia.

I think of those golden California years when music and the piano were a major part of my life. I was a soloist, accompanist, ballet rehearsal pianist. I performed with orchestras, chamber groups, choirs. It was a wonderfully full life, overflowing with creativity.


For the past decade or more I've had far too many other pressing concerns to think about music. Lately, the only music that fills my life are the soothing songs of Mother Nature: chattering birds in forest trees......the great breath of the wind singing through towering branches......the lean, hungry midnight howls of coyotes.

It was your choice to abandon music, wasn't it, Jon?

We don't choose the cards that life deals us. Life is a vicious bitch that kicks us in the ass and knocks our dreams into the endless void beyond raw reality.

Bitter, Jon, really bitter....

But I'm not here to lament or philosophize. As usual, I've taken a very long road to get to the point.

I'm thinking of my past music work and the annoyingly infrequent documentation of it. Some of my public performances were filmed but heaven only knows what happened to them (or who is in possession them). Those were the days before the rampant popularity of videos and cell phones. Documentation wasn't as easy or frequent as it is now.

When I moved to Texas I had a small music studio in San Angelo. I also got my first camcorder (better late than never...). I'd prop it up on a bookshelf and film myself rehearsing or practicing the piano. These are some of the piano videos that I have on my YouTube channel. Jayveesonata

Unfortunately my virtuoso days were long gone. I was in my 40's and out of practice. The quality of my playing on these videos is mediocre (according to my critical standards).


There is a bright side to this murky mess of self-degradation. When I lived in California and was an active musician I recorded an enormous amount of my music on audio cassettes. I tossed the tapes into boxes and nearly forgot about them.

While recently going through the chaotic mess of things piled in the garage, I came across a box of my old audio cassette tapes (one of the few things the movers didn't "lose"). 

There are over fifty audio cassettes in the box and they contain many of my serious piano recordings: loads of classical music, a great deal of ragtime and blues, even some of my own compositions (which I thought were lost forever). I even found a unique recording made when I was twenty -  my performance of Gershwin's original rare solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue.

I plan to transfer these old cassettes to CD and MP3. There are numerous cassette converters available, such as the USB Cassette Capture (but I've heard some negative things about the sound quality). 

I should probably just use the free Audacity software, although - after having looked through the tutorial - it seems rather daunting. Anyway, I want to begin this project ASAP. It will be fun.