Many of you have heard that my drummer and dear and close friend, Ed Soph, recently had a bout with cancer. Knowing this business as I do, pronouncements of impending doom are more likely than not. So, I want to inform everyone who reads this - especially you musicians and educators - that Ed is well and healthy, and the problem has been resolved.

A growth in the colon was discovered and removed. It had not spread elsewhere in his system. His recovery will be complete and he will be back at work shortly, teaching at UNT and performing with me and many others in concerts, clinics and workshops in the fall.

So any of you wishing to have him participate in your clinics and festivals or go out with your groups, feel free to call upon him. Any reports of impending doom have been grossly exaggerated!

Since last writing of the activities of the Quartet, the Duo with Bill Mays and my own touring as a soloist, many things have transpired and come to fruition. It is certainly a busy and exciting time for me, and I have found it all to be musically and personally inspiring. Though it takes a great deal of work and time to maintain a career performing and touring, writing and recording, while still trying to balance it all with a family life, what comes out of that effort makes it all worthwhile. And certainly having the honor and privilege of working with people like Ed Soph, Bill Mays, Rufus Reid, Jay Anderson, John Abercrombie and others contributes greatly to the joy I get from it all. While I’ll try not to bore you with all the details, here are some highlights of what’s been happening.

I have been performing as a soloist in various settings and working also with a variety of groups. Ed Soph and I took a quintet out for a week in October that featured the talents of pianist Stefan Karlsson, bassist Fred Hamilton and saxophonist Will Campbell. We did concerts at three colleges and a high school in Oklahoma, then moved to Texas where we performed at the Univ. of North Texas. We finished the tour with one of our annual concerts for Citizens for Healthy Growth, an environmental group headed by Ed and Carol Soph to promote environmental protection and awareness in Denton, TX.

In November, I performed in concert with the Ridgefield (CT) Symphony, a really fine group, then flew to China with the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band to perform concerts in Beijing and Shanghai. This was a very interesting tour both musically and culturally. It was my first trip to China, and I was surprised in that we were allowed total freedom of movement in both cities. No restrictions were placed on our movements nor were we told any place was out of bounds.

Of course, George’s tours are always musically exciting because his music is so adventurous, always stretching the limits. The tour also preceded the band’s recording a new CD three weeks following the tour. This recording had special significance to me as we recorded George’s arrangement of my first composition, Two as One. The band was comprised of myself, Alexander Sipiagin, Kenny Rampton, Matthieu Michel, tpts; Dave Bargeron, Luis Bonilla, Gary Valente, Earl McIntyre, tbns; Chris Hunter, Sal Gorgianni, Larry Schneider Donny McCaslin, Scott Robinson, saxes; George Gruntz, piano; Mark, bass; Danny Gottlieb, drums; Mike Richmond substituted for Mark Egan on the second day of recording - a sensational group!

In December, I worked once again at Tula’s, a fine Seattle jazz club, with a quartet organized by drummer Gary Hobbs that featured pianist Mark Seales and bassist Doug Miller, two great Seattle Jazz musicians. The attendance of Canadian Brass trumpeters Ryan Anthony and Jens Lindemann (since departed from the group) and Seattle Symphony Assoc. Music Director Allistair Willis graced our appearance there. It is always fun and inspiring when good friends drop in to hear you play.

Prior to the Tula’s engagement, I was invited to perform in concert for the Portland Brass Society wherein I performed a piece with a group from the Society, then a set with a rhythm section again organized by drummer Gary Hobbs that included pianist/composer Dave Frishberg.

2001 started off with a bang as the Quartet played a New Years Eve performance with the Reading (PA) Symphony. This was a great way to start the New Year - playing with a fine orchestra and being with my dear friends, Bill Mays, Rufus Reid and Ed Soph and their wives doing what we love most to do. Maestro Sidney Rothstein, who also conducts the Ridgefield Symphony, is a fine musician and sensitive conductor. This was a special New Years for us all.

January continued with a California trip to record a CD with master tubist Marty Erickson. Marty is a special musician and a special human being, one of the best of the best. But highlighting the month was my performance with the Billy Taylor Trio on “Jazz At the Kennedy Center” which is to begin being broadcast July 10th. It was an honor to be invited to perform on this venue with this icon of Jazz and his musicians bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Wynard Harper. Workshops at Howard Univ., the Univ. of Maryland and Blake High School followed my appearance in the D.C. area.

February, March and April provided dates at a number of universities, this further underscored by excellent concerts with the Charleston (SC) and Middletown (OH) Symphonies and the 1st Annual North Texas Jazz Festival. Several days in March were spent with the band at Travis AFB in California. They have an excellent program there, and I very much enjoyed my time there with Capt. Monroe and the band.

In May, the Quartet performed two concerts in Pittsburgh, and then I went overseas again with the George Gruntz-CJB, this time to France and England. We performed a concert for Radio France in Paris followed by a weeklong engagement at Ronnie Scott’s in London. On this tour, Mike Richmond played bass; Jack Walrath substituted for trumpeter Matthieu Michel and drummer Ralph Peterson played for Danny Gottlieb. This again was a well-received and successful tour for George and the band.

After attending the International Trumpet Guild Conference, followed a rare and wonderful week at home, I saddled up again, this time for Virginia with the US Army Continental Band at Ft. Monroe. Flying in after a three-hour delay, I dragged in to rehearsal to be greeted by a band that played my music superbly! What a wonderful group led by Maj. Beth Steele and Sgt. 1st CL Keith Felkner! We performed concerts at both Ft. Monroe and in Williamsburg. Excellent young musicians seeking experience in the Jazz or classical fields should consider the military, even if only for one tour. I have played with many of the groups in all the services, and have found them to be generally excellent.

Bringing us up to date is the new CD I just completed for the Troppe Note/Cambria label in Las Vegas featuring pianist Stefan Karlsson, bassist Tom Warrington and drummer Eliot Zigmund. We recorded six original compositions, two of Stefan’s, two of mine and one each from Dennis Dotson and Lars Jansson. We also recorded three standard tunes, two being ballads. I am looking forward to the release of this CD in the fall as I feel the music to be exciting and interesting. Before leaving Las Vegas, I also took part in recording by excellent tenor saxophonist Wayne DeSilva for the same label.

Following the recording, I flew to Switzerland for two concerts as part of a large Brass Festival in Fribourg. I performed the first concert with the Max Jendly Sextet and the second with the Big Band du Conservatoire du Fribourg; both are excellent groups.

Over the rest of the summer, I will be performing with The New York Voices for a week July 31 – August 5 at the Blue Note in New York and again on August 31 at Tanglewood in Lenox, MA. Also, August 9 - 11, I will be appearing with Pianist Dick Hyman at the Oregon Festival of American Music in Eugene Oregon. I’ll also be doing several other very important dates that are mentioned below and finishing a big band CD for Jack Cooper. Jack is the excellent composer/arranger and saxophonist who is Director of Jazz Studies at the Univ. of Memphis. He is a contributor to my symphonic library and has an excellent article giving important guidance to band directors who need assistance organizing and Jazz program; it appears in this section of the web site.

The quartet is really the realization of my musical fantasies. To play with musicians who are so completely in sympathy with one another musically and personally, and who come to every performance seeking to find that defining “thing” - that is the reason for playing this music. Bill Mays, Rufus Reid and Ed Soph are extraordinary musicians all of whom consistently play to the limits of their creative skills, never letting down. For one such as myself, this is a constant challenge to go beyond my own limitations, forever striving to expand the borders of my own creativity. Whatever the components, this is a musical formula that works.

The Quartet performed in our annual fund-raising concert for ABC/Ridgefield, an organization dedicated to extricating talented young ladies living in educationally-disadvantaged urban areas such as the South Bronx, East Los Angeles and depressed areas of cities like Cleveland. The organization brings these young ladies from various ethnic groups into the Ridgefield, CT School System to there finish their education. They provide them with a home and supervisor and help them achieve their goals to qualify to be able to attend a fine college or university, thereby bettering their lives and those of their families. Many return to their communities to help others like them to do the same. We have been very proud to be a part of this process.

I recently performed with the Quartet with the Charleston, SC, the Reading, PA and Ridgefield, CT Symphony Orchestras, all fine orchestras. We have other concerts planned for the coming months. We performed at the North Texas Jazz Festival in April, opening the concert for James Moody and Shirley Horn. Bassist Jay Anderson was with us for this engagement. Clark Terry and Christian McBride performed the following night.

The Quartet also performed two concerts that were videotaped and recorded “live” at the Manchester Craftsmen’s’ Guild in Pittsburgh. This is a marvelous 400-seat concert space with state of the art video and recording facilities that is an absolute delight in which to perform. We asked guitarist John Abercrombie to join us for these concerts. The results of these recordings will be released in a future CD, and I will inform everyone when and by whom this CD is going to be released when all is decided.

In the spring, Bill Mays and I appeared “in duo” at College of the Mainland for Sparky Koerner, an excellent trumpeter and fellow alumnus from North Texas. The next day, we performed our annual concert/workshop at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, TX. My old and dear friend, Bill Habern, an attorney and musician who strongly believes in music education, very generously provides this for HSPVA every year. Dr. Bob Morgan who was at the helm of this program for 23 years, retired from HSPVA two years ago, but continues to be involved in music education and as an active pianist, composer and arranger. Warren Sneed, a fine saxophonist and excellent musician now heads up the program and carries on the fine Jazz tradition at HSPVA.

Bill Mays and I have been invited to perform together at three venues in July. We will fly to Brazil to perform at the Winter Festival in Campos du Jordão with the orchestra from the Conservatorio du Tatuí under the directorship of Maestro Antonio Carlos Neves Campos. Upon our return, we will be part of a concert of duos at the 92nd Street Y at the invitation of pianist Dick Hyman. The 92nd Street Y is a premiere concert space in NYC whose presentations run the gamut of a variety of music. Immediately following this concert, Bill and I fly to Honolulu to participate in the Hawaii Jazz Festival.

I feel I am among those most fortunate of musicians because I have experienced and been part of a period time when work was plentiful and so much great music was made. I have had the opportunity to work with many of my heroes and be a part of several of great musical organizations like The Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Duke Pearson Orchestras, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band and the American Jazz Orchestra. I have worked with the likes of Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and played next to Bernie Glow, Ernie Royal, Ray Crisara, Snooky Young, Phil Woods, Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler, Randy Brecker, John Lewis and many more too innumerable to name here. I have experienced some of the best that music has to offer and, in company with the musicians I have named elsewhere in this Cadenzas, continue to do so.

So… what is the point? So many people come up to me and say, “You’ve had a great career, Marvin, and you’ve done it all yourself!” Nothing could be farther from the truth. From the beginning - with guidance from my band directors Jack Foster and A.E. McLain, my trumpet teacher, Perry Wilson in Memphis, through North Texas with Gene Hall, Leon Breeden and John Haynie, and all the pros in Memphis and Dallas/Ft. Worth and later all the musicians and band leaders I have been associated with in New York and elsewhere – all of them have helped shape my career! Yes, I have the talent, the dedication and willingness to work hard, but no one does it alone… anyone! So when I write about education and my wonderful musical colleagues, these are not hollow words. These people and all they have done for me are the reason I write so often about teachers and education and my colleagues; these are the reasons why I so strongly feel we should be generous with one another and be willing to share our knowledge with each other, young and old. This is what keeps the music alive, and what makes music and the musicians so special.

For many years, I found working with young people to be quite inspiring, something that re-charged my batteries. No matter what was going on outside of music, the young musicians I worked with were bright of eye and with willing spirit.

In the last ten years or more, something has changed drastically. It seems that a great number of young musicians, many of them college students, no longer are motivated to work toward a goal. More often than not, I see dullness in their eyes and am confronted with an unwillingness to meet and overcome a challenge, any challenge! Many times, it seems they feel no obligation to learn their parts to the music I have sent two or even three months ahead of an appearance. They scuffle for the fingerings to simple parts, yet do not seem bothered by that at all… they just don’t seem to care! What has caused this change, and are we able to do anything about it?

Sociologists would probably come up with many studies about this, and there are, I am sure, many valid reasons they would use to explain this phenomenon. But two of the reasons have to be a lack of parental supervision and a lessening of the authority teachers are able to exercise. We are no longer allowed to have expectations of our young people, and imposing penalties for not meeting those expectations, such as passing their courses and upholding their obligations when they are members of a group, is a forbidden entity. To do so means that the students might feel put upon and experience failure, even though they may deserve only that. So we give them an “easy way out”, and, rather than their rising above themselves to reach beyond that which is expected, we encourage their failing without their ever even attempting to succeed. This even though it is a proven fact that everyone rises to the level of that which is expected from them, so if we expect more, we get more, and people will reach beyond themselves and rise to a higher level.

We are cheating our young people, and we have given away both their and our abilities to reach for the stars and try to fulfill our dreams and fantasies. We have sold our birthright for an easy way out. Along with that, we have become a complacent society that sees no reason to work diligently and to strive for that which is beyond us, and, by that action, never becoming more than we are now. This is not the America I grew up in. What must we do about it, or do we want to do anything at all? To change things will require that we adopt a much different attitude about so many things in our lives. We will have to stop seeking the “easy way out” and take a stance that indicates we are willing to work for what we want rather asking someone to give it to us. Do we really want to do this? Are we willing, through our own efforts, to do what is needed. I wonder...

                                                                                                                                                                          - Marvin Stamm