Aaron Weinstein Transcript
Aaron Weinstein:
He was another one who was outrageously respectful and he was curious. He was talking about these extraordinary things and he would sometimes pause and ask me what I thought. And I had nothing interesting to say. What am I going to say to Les Paul, that made me feel really as a very young musician to have someone like that ask what I thought, even if I had nothing to say. It had an effect, for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. My guest today is the phenomenal jazz violinist, mandolinist, arranger, and writer, Aaron Weinstein. Aaron is a self-taught violinist and attended the renowned Berklee College on a four-year talent-based scholarship. As a young man, he performed and recorded with many jazz legends. In this episode, we talked about some of these mentors, including Bucky and John Pizzarelli, Les Paul, and this interview is full of Aaron's stories and insights as a performer and educator. He's generously agreed to let me use two of his previously released, self-produced videos, so you can hear some of his playing. I first discovered Aaron in his comedy series with Linda Lavin. I encourage you to check it out along with his other projects and albums all linked in the description.
Hi, Aaron Weinstein. Thanks so much for joining me.
Aaron Weinstein:
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
So I discovered you because of your comedy series with Linda Lavin. And there's so much to talk around that whole world and your writing and all that. But I thought it might be interesting for people who don't know you as a musician that I think you're one of the very few jazz violinists who started out not as a classical player.
Aaron Weinstein:
Well, perhaps, I can't speak to every other jazz violinist, but I can speak to myself, and that was my path. I started out in old time fiddle music, specifically Missouri-style, old time fiddle music, and I would go to rural Missouri and find the master fiddlers and learn tunes from them. It helped that one of the great masters of that style named Charlie Walden, lived a town away from me in the suburb of Chicago. So that was my introduction. But through him, I would go to these places and learn that repertoire. It's been so long since I've played that music that I don't feel I have any authority to speak about it. But it was a great ear training experience because there was no music. These incredible fiddlers would basically play the section, the eight bar section, and then look at you to play it back, and then when you screw it up, they would just play it again. And so it did develop certain aspects of that kind of skill.
Leah Roseman:
And then also, I think what's probably more unusual about you, is that you had this really extensive apprenticeship with great old masters as a teenager. So can you tell the story about how you sent a demo to Bucky Pizzarelli and what happened with that?
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah, there was a certain point when I started, I wouldn't even say playing jazz, but being interested in jazz, being interested in trying to learn how it all worked. And I knew nothing about theory or really the nuts and bolts of how we played the music, but I was looking for guidance and I was young enough and bold enough to just decide to ask my favorite living musicians for guidance. So for a while, I would write to these masters whose addresses I could find and send them a little demo recording of myself playing, and a letter, and ask for anything they're willing to share about the music. And some of them responded and Bucky was one of those people, and he invited me to...
Actually, his son, John Pizzarelli, who's also an extraordinary guitarist, called me when I was in New Jersey working at a jazz workshop and said that Bucky's playing and he's waiting for you to sit in and go. And long story short, I did, and it was the beginning of a incredible, I think, apprenticeship is the right word. He taught me so much about what it meant to be a jazz musician, and he did it by showing me there were not lessons in any kind of a formal way, but I found the lessons that have stuck with me are the ones that are not so formal.
Leah Roseman:
I forget which year you made the album with John, his son. I was just listening to that actually, which I have to say I wish you'd put more of your albums on Bandcamp, Aaron, because I object to these streaming services.
Aaron Weinstein:
Well, those are on a record label that I don't run.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I know. It's up to the label, right?
Aaron Weinstein:
That's right. It might have been 2007 that happened, John, I think. Thrilling for me and challenging for me, when it's just two instruments you need to really, well, you need to do your best always, but there's not a lot of places to hide.
Leah Roseman:
And some of the arrangements, you wrote some of that stuff out when you guys are really playing so close. You know what I mean?
Aaron Weinstein:
On that record with John?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
There was a little bit of arranging. I think on one tune I took one of his solos and I just transcribed it and then played it as though it had been arranged after it did and after the fact. There were some little lines within tunes that we had figured out ahead of time, little harmony things, but for the most part, it was an old-fashioned jazz record of figuring out the tunes and just playing them.
Leah Roseman:
I also, I bought your books, your Mel Bay books, out of curiosity. They're really, really cool. So what do you call it? The swing and jazz fiddle solos.
First of all, I thought you'd be amused because I did buy it directly from Mel Bay. And then I went back to look to see if there were backing tracks if you had put that out, because I knew for the mandolin ones you'd done videos and I couldn't find anything. But it was funny because the website I was on, which was not Mel Bay, you know how they suggest if you bought this, you should buy this. So I thought you'd find this amusing. So they said, now that you've bought Aaron Weinstein Swingin' Jazz Fiddle Solos, we suggest you also buy, we've recommend purchasing Protocol: A Guide To The Collegiate Audition Process For Violin.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yes, I agree. I think that that's a good companion.
Leah Roseman:
So this book, it's not like lead sheets. I was confused when I was reading.
Aaron Weinstein:
Well, I guess the premise of that book was essentially etudes, solos, under the guise of etudes, or maybe it's the other way around. No, they're definitely not lead sheets, if I remember. They're all based on standard tunes and bonus points if you could figure out what's what. But they didn't want to do any kind of an audio companion to it. And so it remains etudes that it's not everything. It's something if someone doesn't play classical, excuse me, doesn't play jazz at all, only plays classical music, it might give them a little sense of what playing jazz is, and that's about all that it will do.
But sometimes that's an accessible first step. If someone's not an improviser, telling them to just go improvise is I think very scary. So that was the whole purpose of that, it's not a toolbox of licks and tricks and things like that. It's just saying, it's kind of what happens if you transcribe a solo. You might not know why they played the thing they played, but it gives you a sense, especially if it's a violin player, gives you a sense of how, pick your violinist, Joe Venuti, or Grappelli, or whomever, what they did.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. This first video is Aaron on both violin and mandolin playing Avalon.(music)
And the mandolin chord melody thing is more involved with more theory. And even as a fiddle player, I do have a mandolin, but I don't play it. So actually it's interesting because we bought this mandolin for our older child who was playing violin and quit, and I thought mandolin is really close, and that'll be a good instrument, which it was, it was actually cool for her. And for you, you got into mandolin because of the interest in jazz, because of Don, how do you pronounce his name?
Aaron Weinstein:
Don Stiernberg. There was around the same time that I was sending these little demo records to these incredible musicians. I was looking for some kind of formal guidance. And at the time, I couldn't find, it didn't occur to me that you don't need to sit down with the violinist to learn jazz on the violin. One of the cool things about the music is it's not instrument specific, but I didn't know that at the time. And so yeah, Don Stiernberg who is one of the world's great jazz mandolin players, he also lived the town away from me.
So I thought exactly as you did, that mandolin is close to the violin. So at the time, at the beginning, I thought, "Well, that's the best I'm going to do. That's the best I can do." And very quickly I realized that it's a completely different, even though it's tuned the same, it's a completely different instrument and it's a real missed opportunity to think about it as a violin with a pick. And needless to say, it opened up a massive world for me, huge rabbit hole. And when I'm playing that instrument, I think about it completely differently than when I'm playing violin.
Leah Roseman:
This next selection is Aaron on mandolin playing Give Me the Simple Life.(music)
I know you've done a lot of arrangements of, especially during the lockdown, you were arranging for multiple mandolin parts. You love arranging. So do you think differently with mandolin as opposed to violin because it's so much more chordal?
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah, completely. When I'm playing the mandolin, I think more of it more like a guitarist maybe. When I'm playing violin, my feeling about it, and these are completely at odds with each other, when I'm playing the violin, I'm think, "Oh, it's like a trumpet, or it's a saxophone." It's a single line instrument. And of course, you could play double stops and triple stops, but I don't know, it doesn't often fit into what I'm hearing in terms of jazz. I think it's beautiful when I hear it done by someone, and that's part of their concept. It just doesn't really fit into mine. And so to me, it's the people I listen to as jazz improvisers are at this point, often horn players and someone like Sweets Edison, trumpet players, someone who I go back to constantly. And I'm in awe of the simplicity of the line and, it's almost a cliche, but how it's just about finding those few really beautiful right notes and getting rid of all the other stuff.
And it's the hardest thing to do on the violin when you don't have to breathe. You could just keep that bow moving. It's often at odds with what I'm trying to do in the music. So on the violin, that's where my head's at. It's resisting all of the violinistic urges, so to speak. On the mandolin, so basically I'm saying I'm playing the violin and I'm not considering the instrument itself. I'm considering it as a vehicle to play jazz. And on the mandolin I am saying I considering the instrument itself and using that instrument and feeling that it would be a missed opportunity to just play that single note line. Maybe because plectrum picks and guitars have found a way into jazz that's so integral to the music, that doing all that stuff on the mandolin makes a lot of musical sense to me in a way that these quadruple stops or whatever on the violin, it doesn't really swing to me. So that's really the big difference. I'm following a guitar tradition on the mandolin and on the violin I'm dealing with a different tradition.
Leah Roseman:
And you've mostly recorded with string bands like the sonority often, like guitar and bass and mandolin, or violin, or just...
Aaron Weinstein:
I guess that's probably true. There's all sorts of exceptions to that. Pianos and trumpets.
Leah Roseman:
But your last album, I know that was under the Chesky label. Was that their choice to have that instrumentation?
Aaron Weinstein:
It was. They called me with that concept. They wanted a violin, bass, and guitar, and they had this very kind of advanced technological concept, and they wanted songs from a certain time period, and they wanted us to go into the studio and not rehearse and just play. So that's what that was. It was an assignment. It was a very specific assignment. And that's fun. It's fun and it's challenging to not be able to do overdubs, to stand around one microphone essentially and do something. The way that so many of the records that I love listening to, that's the way that they were made.
Leah Roseman:
The collegiate experience. So going to Berklee, your first formal violin training. So what was that like? I'm curious, because Berklee, it's not just even jazz, right? There's different strands.
Aaron Weinstein:
My first formal classical violin lessons were with Sandy Kott at Berklee. And she was amazing for me. Up until that point, and to some degree to this day, I've developed certain homegrown techniques and just ways to get around the music. And so to deal with someone who's coming from such a different place, while respecting the music that I did play already, lacked fortunately less and less. But there's still this thing sometimes where if someone's a classical violinist, I've heard some comments that are maybe are less respectful than I would like, but that was not the case at all. It was a total respect, but it was very clear I was there to learn how to actually play the thing.
And it was wonderful because she would tell me, change the way you're holding your bow and move this finger and arch that. And I would sometimes say, "But look, I like it works for me this other way." And then she would do some kind of spiccato or some kind of technique that I couldn't do because of the way my hands were. And it was very a maternal in a certain way, the consequences and so forth. If you hold your hand this way, you will not be able to do this. And it was great.
It was, for me, inspiring and thrilling to get to study a little bit of Bach with someone who has spent their life doing that, because it was so much in those sessions, in those lessons, it was so much more than how to play the notes. It was why you might bring out something, why you might bring out a phrase. It was very music forward and she approached it from a harmonic standpoint that I could really understand in terms of he's outlining this chord and this was kind of an interesting thing for that time. And so consider that, it's not just a line of notes. So it was totally thrilling.
Leah Roseman:
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And how about the atmosphere with the other students? Because you were keeping so much to yourself, I imagine in high school, because your interest, well, because you were playing with much older players and the weekends, I can imagine, and so much into this one style of music. So to go to this place where, I don't know, what did it feel like for you?
Aaron Weinstein:
Well, the style of music that I liked playing, that I do playing, it wasn't popular at Berklee. There were certainly, and I was surrounded by musicians, but a lot of them were interested in different kinds of music or different eras of jazz. I found people. I found people who are interested and really to play music, how many people do you need? If you find one, if you find three, you don't need everyone. You don't need everyone to play with. You don't need everyone to what you're playing. It doesn't take that much. So some of the professors were great. They were real song people, which is kind of how I saw myself. I was like a song book person. I was incredibly interested in what we call the American Songbook, Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers, et cetera. I spent a lot of time at the Boston Public Library where they had original lead sheet music, and I would transcribe it and on my paper because you couldn't photocopy and...
Aaron Weinstein:
On my paper, because you couldn't photocopy. Yeah. It was perfectly fine, but also, I wasn't there at Berklee to jam. That wasn't that interesting to me. I was there to learn what I could learn in an academic music setting. So something like an arranging or orchestration class was wonderful and that I found really, really valuable.
Leah Roseman:
Speaking of mentors, so sometimes on Mondays you'd go up to New York to play with Les Paul, was another one of your mentors.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah. He was incredibly supportive and incredibly warm toward me, and he made it very clear that anytime I wanted to show up there I was welcome. He was a walking history of American music. He was a part of so much of it. So when I would go, I would always go early, because I had learned quickly that he always ate dinner beforehand and often he was just sitting alone in his dressing room eating. He was happy to talk about anything and answer questions.
He was another one who was outrageously respectful, and he was curious. He was talking about these extraordinary things and he would sometimes pause and ask me what I thought. I had nothing interesting to say. What am I going to say to Les Paul? I did find that made me feel really, as a very young musician to have someone like that ask what I thought, even if I had nothing to say. It had an effect for sure.
Leah Roseman:
When you were playing some of these gigs, because you were starting what at 16, to play in these jazz clubs with pretty big players, so they wouldn't always have a set list, if I understand, they would just start playing tunes sometimes with-
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah, there was rarely a set. It's an old school part of the jazz tradition, which is basically you're expected to know every song that ever was. It doesn't just mean like, oh, yes, I've heard of that song. It's knowing the melodies and knowing the chord changes, and go. That's the expectation. Now, these are people who grew up as these songs were being written and in some cases, so it was a little easier to keep up. I'm playing catch up there. Yeah, there was no set list. There were times when I would ask before the gig, so what are we going to start with, and sometimes they would be angry. It was a stupid question for me to ask. Aren't a musician? You'll know. That was the mentality.
I remember the first time I worked with Annie Ross, the jazz singer. There was no set list and I'd met her before the gig. I did ask her what she wanted to play. She basically said, I've heard you play and I like it, and so you'll be fine. Just go up and play, which is terrifying. I think I was less scared then than I am now. I think about some of those situations and I don't know how I was so relaxed in them, because it was terrifying. Yeah, there was almost never a set list.
Leah Roseman:
Well, maybe back then you didn't quite realize how much you didn't know and now you have that awareness.
Aaron Weinstein:
I think that's a huge part of it, for sure. Yeah, I saw it all as a learning experience. I would make note of the songs that were called that I didn't know. I would do my best with them. Then I would go home and learn.
Leah Roseman:
When you were used to learn standards, would you try to memorize the words to help you with the melodies?
Aaron Weinstein:
That came much, much later. For a long time, the idea that there even was a lyric was, I was totally indifferent to it, because what am I going to use a lyric for? I'm not singing, which is so naive, especially for a ballad. To phrase the melody in any kind of, I think, intelligent way, you don't need to know the lyric, but it's incredibly helpful to know the lyric, because it was all created together. That came much, much later. My appreciation of lyrics came much, much, much later.
It is part of the reason that for so long I resisted someone like Steven Sondheim, because I couldn't use his stuff. Largely, he doesn't write 32 bar songs. So often, it's about the emotional content of the lyric. I was just, well, but I'm not going to use the lyric and I need a 32 bar tune, so what use do I have for him? Which again, is such a ridiculous thing to say.
Leah Roseman:
Was it working with singers more later on that led you to that?
Aaron Weinstein:
Not even singers. It was getting absorbed into a New York theater community where Stephen Sondheim is God. When I first moved to New York, very shortly after moving to New York, I befriended someone named Andy Zerman who was a casting director for shows like Cats and Miss Saigon and Dreamgirls. He was part of, at the time, the only casting organization in New York for theater, so it was all the big shows. He was a walking encyclopedia of theater, which I was so naive about.
So when I'm like, oh, Sondheim isn't really, he almost had a heart attack you. It's saying Bach is no good, or Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington is, and it was a totally ignorant thing for me to say. He sat me down and really showed me, played me things, explained to me why this is important, and he really helped me understand why everyone that talks about someone like Steven Sondheim, what he did. So it was the theater people really who helped me with that.
Leah Roseman:
I understand you do quite a few shows with musical theater artists that are a fusion. You do monologues and they tell stories. It's not just music.
Aaron Weinstein:
Sometimes, yeah. I've found it very important to really have an appreciation for the thing that's trying to be accomplished and not go into the situation, as someone trying to create it or just someone trying to evaluate it, looking for something that it's not. In other words, if a Broadway performer is doing their act, so to speak, an evening with, and there is probably more of a narrative, and it is stories and songs, to listen to that and say, well, it's not Ella Fitzgerald, but it's not trying to be.
I feel much the same way about jazz musicians, about improvisers. There was a point at which I realized that everyone, it's so obvious, but wasn't, everyone has an individual voice and that means that there's going to be some things with each person that are extraordinary, but there's also probably not going to be other things as present. To listen to someone and make a checklist of what you're not hearing is, well again, I think it's a missed opportunity, as opposed to really appreciating what it is that they are bringing.
I think that's across the board with, certainly with singers and singers of different genres, and also with musicians. With anything, if you go to see a movie and it's a drama and you come out of the movie and you say, well, that wasn't that funny? That's a stupid thing to say. So just to have an appreciation for the thing, meeting the thing where it lives is very helpful to me.
Leah Roseman:
Do you find that you're less critical as you get older?
Aaron Weinstein:
No.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Aaron Weinstein:
No, I think... Well, critical, what do you mean by that?
Leah Roseman:
Well, you were just saying the way that the audience or fellow musicians will listen and listen for faults or listen for things they think aren't up to par. I think that's what I was hearing you talk about.
Aaron Weinstein:
Oh, no. I wasn't really saying that. Actually, I think for the most part, the audience isn't there with the tally sheet. I think an audience is there to have a good time. I think it's a helpful thing to keep in mind as a performer. Most people are not waiting for you to fail. They want you to succeed. That's why they're there.
No, I was just saying if someone is a cabaret performer, for instance, if someone is a Broadway performer, to appreciate their point of view musically, and if they are singing a standard and there's a jazz rhythm section, but maybe they're coming from a different place, perhaps that's what they want to be doing. That's what I'm saying.
In terms of being critical, yeah, I think I'm probably more critical now in certain ways. There's certain things that I do myself that I have less tolerance for. The flashier aspects of playing, it doesn't really do much for me. A really very, very smart saxophonist, and I don't know if he would want this attributed to him or not, so I'll leave his name out of it, but he said if someone's playing solo, a jazz solo, the more the audience applauds, the less musical the solo was. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think there is truth to that.
It's fine if someone wants to play a solo and their goal is to get the most applause. I think that's a perfectly fine objective. What's important to me is to just be clear on the objective. If I'm really trying to actually improvise a melody and I do something that's all flashy and gets a lot of applause, I've failed in my objective at the moment. There are times when I'm playing and for whatever reason, I'm not terribly comfortable. Something is not right. Either I'm having a bad day or the rhythm section is not feeling good or there's someone in the audience who's doing something, and I just need a little applause.
Of course, we all have tricks that we can do that can guarantee that essentially. I don't know why it can, but it just does. Again, so maybe I'll abandon any musical purity to try to get some applause, so I could not have a panic attack. Again, it's like I'm not going to fool myself into thinking they're clapping because of great musicality. People like fireworks. They're not a bad thing, but I think the clarity of it is, knowing what you're doing, for me is important.
Leah Roseman:
If we could just circle back to mentors for a second. I was reading about how Joe Venuti had inspired you. So I was researching him and it came up, his things he did with Eddie Lang. So you know what Eddie Lang's original name was?
Aaron Weinstein:
Salvador something or other?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, Salvador Massaro. So they met in grade school playing violin. Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
There's lore about it. I don't know what's true. I've heard that they were deciding who was going to play violin and who's going to play guitar and they flipped a coin or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. It's the same thing where Django Reinhardt messed up and Grappelli - There's wonderful folk tales about it. I like the story.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
It was interesting, also about Venuti, just how his career took different twists and turns. I was also reading, oh, what is it I want to mention? Oh, yeah, Johnny Frigo, who I'd never heard of until I was researching you. Interesting. Did you know, because he'd done so many things in his career, that he was also a published poet?
Aaron Weinstein:
Yes. Yes, he was. Johnny Frigo was a fascinating creative mind, and needless to say, one of the great jazz violinists, and had a extraordinary career as a bassist before. Which makes perfect sense when you listen to him play, because he's so connected to the chord changes. Not to say that, and obviously they all are, all the people that we've mentioned, but there's something different in the way that he approaches it from his contemporaries.
When I would see him play, he would often do this thing where he would tell the rhythm section to lay out. He would play a chorus or two of whatever tune. Then he would just tell them to lay out, and then he would play another chorus or two without the rhythm section. Then give them the cue and they all come back in, it's a big thrilling moment. When he was playing solo, you knew exactly where you were in the tune. His sense of harmony was so clear. So I feel very lucky that I got, he was a Chicago guy and I grew up in Chicago, and I feel lucky that I got to listen to him as much as I did, as early as I did.
Leah Roseman:
It might be interesting to find out how you got to know Linda Lavin and how that relationship...
Aaron Weinstein:
It was a very serendipitous, New York thing. I was playing at Birdland and she happened to be there. She was in a Broadway show at the time and I think the show ended and she came over. She approached me right away and was very enthusiastic. We started working together shortly thereafter. The weirdest thing for me about it was, one of the first things she says, "I want you to write some arrangements for me." There was nothing that she had heard or seen that would indicate that I was able to do that.
I do, I love arranging. It's something I do a lot of, but it was a weird thing, because it's not like it was a night of my arrangements or anything. It was very much an old-fashioned jazz situation. Lots of solos, in other words. So I started writing her some charts and playing with her on concerts and a wonderful friendship has developed, and as well as a working relationship.
Leah Roseman:
So you were working with her well before the pandemic?
Aaron Weinstein:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think we started working together in maybe 2012, or 13 or 14, something like that. So yeah, we had done a huge amount together, mostly musically. I had written some other things that she had had very generously been willing to do a reading of her things like this.
When the pandemic hit, just to occupy myself and keep my sanity and so forth, I started making little goofy videos. Very early, she said, "I want you to write something for me." I said, "Well, great. Do you want to play yourself or do you want to play a character?" She said, "No, I want to play a character. I want to play your yenta agent." That was the instruction. So we did one and had a good time, and then we did, I think, another 12.
Very labor-intensive, because they were all these phone conversations or Zoom conversations, but she did all of her part first. So she would send me all her takes and then I would edit them together, and then I would rehearse mine. It was very musical in terms of rehearsal of timing. It was a complete rhythmic exercise, because she was the metronome, so to speak, and I had to interject and make it fit. So it was great and challenging and a lot of fun for sure.
Leah Roseman:
I'm assuming your actual agent is nothing like the character Yvette Slosch?
Aaron Weinstein:
My first agent there is a lot of Yvette, for sure. He was an extraordinary. His name was Irvin Arthur. I think he was the oldest agent. At the time, I think he was the oldest living agent. Reportedly, he put Barbara Streisand with Marty Erlichman and at the dawn of her career, and he represented Steve Allen. He goes so far back.
He was a very old school, completely optimistic, but very old school, New York figure, of which there really aren't anymore in the way that he was. I miss him a lot, because he would just yell at people on the phone. He had no trouble yelling at people, but he could do this because he's yelling through a 50 year relationship he's had with these people. It's a completely different dynamic these days. Yeah. There's certainly a lot of him and various other people for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. So did you end up with him because someone suggested he'd be good fit or he said, I want to represent you?
Aaron Weinstein:
Someone did suggest him? He was Dave Frishberg's agent at the time, the great pianist and songwriter, who I revered. He was Dick Gregory's agent and Irwin Corey's agent. So it's obviously a very different generation of people, but these were all people who I loved. So I was curious to talk to him, for no other reason than just to talk to someone who had been in that show business for so long in a capacity that I find so interesting.
Yeah, he was wonderful and he really cared, not all agents do. I don't know if he was in his late eighties or early nineties at the time. I might be off on that, but he cared so much about what he did, in the same way that I care about what I do or that you care about what you do. So I liked it.
Leah Roseman:
As someone I spoke with recently in Europe was saying that it's hard to have an agent, because they might love your music, but they don't realize how hard it is to sell jazz, to book things.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah. I think that an agent is on the business side of things. It's not just with jazz. It's with anything. If someone's job is to sell something, they need to be able to sell it. I think there's considerations in terms of how much they want to try or how much they want to work. If they have a real emotional connection to it, I think that makes a big difference, but it's absolutely right. In other arenas, it's the same story. If someone writes a script, if it can't be sold, which is to say if someone doesn't think that there's a sufficient audience for it, then it's not going to be made.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
Quality helps, but it's certainly not everything, that's just the reality of it. If someone's wanting to, or trying to, or actively pursuing a career in jazz, it's never going to be popular in the way that it was when Benny Goodman played Carnegie Hall, it's just not. It's an unrealistic expectation. It's about deciding what your priorities are. If Taylor Swift-level popularity is what you're going for, there are flukes that can happen, but playing jazz on the violin probably will not do that.
Leah Roseman:
Most gigs you play, are you playing both mandolin and violin?
Aaron Weinstein:
It varies. Sometimes it's one or the other, often it's both.
Leah Roseman:
Do you play guitar for fun at all?
Aaron Weinstein:
No, I can't play guitar. I've never really tried, but for someone who's spent their whole life in the violin fretboard world, the guitar is so incredibly massive in my hand. Even really simple chords that every 12 year old who picks up a guitar plays, I find it very challenging. I've studied a whole bunch of guitar players extensively, in terms of how to do it on the mandolin, but that's as close as I get.
Leah Roseman:
Do you know Hamilton de Holanda, the Brazilian-
Aaron Weinstein:
I certainly know who he is, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
You haven't met him?
Aaron Weinstein:
No.
Leah Roseman:
When my daughter was playing mandolin, I was researching mandolin, it might have been still the days when you could go to a record store and buy records, but I found these records of his, and I just was completely blown away. Very serendipitously, I live in Ottawa, Canada, he was coming here for the National Day of Brazil, playing at the National Arts Centre, where I work, and I got to hear him live a week later. It was just a phenomenal concert. He plays a bandolin, which is bigger. Have you tried a larger instrument in that family?
Aaron Weinstein:
No, I haven't played a five string violin. I'm totally occupied with the two things that I deal with. I love listening to people who do explore that stuff, I think that's really cool, but I'm happy working with the four string versions.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just curious about that. In terms of your short films, which I love, and have watched many times. I first saw them, I think it was during lockdown, or one of our lockdowns. Of course, everyone was teaching online, and it was new for us at that time. You did this hilarious Skype lesson parody, where you play the student saying, "I want jazz."
Aaron Weinstein:
Right, exactly. I teach a lot, and I love it, and very few people are that. There is sometimes a misconception about jazz, about wanting jazz, what it means to play the kind of... you don't wait for inspiration. You learn the mechanics of it. It's really helped my playing to explain something to someone else. People say that all the time, but it's true. The way to think about the thing, jazz improvisation in this case, the way to think about it and the way to hear it, the clarity of that, I think is everything.
I know from the experience of hearing that music for a long time without really understanding what was going on, it can sound like just an avalanche of notes, and it can be very exciting to hear, but intimidating if you want to actually try to do that. If you look at certain writers, some of them have more expansive vocabularies, and some of them are very simple in their language. It's the same thing with various improvisers. If you don't really know how to listen to the music, or how to think about it, and you're hearing this massive, virtuosic avalanche, that could be really intimidating. I've found, if you could chip away at what's really going on in the underlying structure of things, and the core questions to ask yourself as you're playing, it makes it a lot more accessible.
For instance, it's occurred to me, and again, it's so obvious, but in terms of note choice, when you're improvising, if you're thinking harmonically, if you're dealing with a chord structure, there are really two questions. You're playing upon a chord, how do you want to enter the next chord, and what do you want to do once you're there? There are entry points, and then, you have a little bit of time with the chord itself before you think about your next entry point. It's intentionally oversimplified, but really, you could break it down into that, and suddenly, there's something tangible to work with. It then begs the question, what makes a good entry point? Now, it's not just, "Play your feelings," there's something a little more concrete about it.
Leah Roseman:
I assume you're teaching both in person and online?
Aaron Weinstein:
Mostly online at this point, mostly Zoom, or some kind of platform like that, which works fine for me, because there's not a lot of playing together, jamming, which of course, is not workable at this point, because of the time delay. Yeah, I have no problem with that.
Leah Roseman:
I interviewed last year Diane Nalini, who's a jazz singer and ukulele player, and also a Rhodes Scholar in physics. Amazing story. Her husband, Adrian Cho, set up a company called Syncspace Live. He's a jazz bass player. We talked about it in that episode. People are playing together online. It gets rid of the delay enough that it's workable. They've mostly put on a lot of jazz concerts last year, with people in different cities. They have some sort of teaching platform, but I'm not sure how good it is, in terms of playing with people. It's definitely progressing. Lots of people probably are working on that problem, so that you could actually play in sync with people.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah, that sounds so cool. In terms of teaching, especially if someone's doing single note improvisation, if that's the thing being worked on, a lot of it is working on various little concepts to consider, and injecting those into the solo. At a certain point, it's not so much about it was wrong or it was right, but it's more about someone is relying on a certain set of tools, and it helps to consider that there's other tools. It's realizing what's there, and what's maybe less present, and just trying to keep grabbing from the toolbox, and adding, so there's not a sameness. It is all about variety, that's part of what makes something interesting to listen to. If someone's playing these elaborate eighth note lines, what about some little rhythmic ideas? What does that mean to play? Looking at that separately, before putting it back into the fold. That's the way that I go about things, isolating a little element, working on that in a saturated way, and trying to put that back into the fold.
Leah Roseman:
I wanted to ask you, in your short films that you made, for people haven't seen them yet, I would describe them as satirical, mostly comedic. Your brother is a Hollywood film editor, so he helped you with a lot of that.
Aaron Weinstein:
He did it.
Leah Roseman:
He did it.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
There's one you did called, "What do you think," about giving feedback to people, and being kind.
Aaron Weinstein:
Right.
Leah Roseman:
Was it really about your father, and his book?
Aaron Weinstein:
No, my father's not a writer. He was a stand-in for anyone who's asking. I deal with it a lot, I think we all do, on both sides of the equation. I think that sometimes, we say we want to hear the truth, and we just want to hear encouragement, and I think that's fine. I've also found that most people who ask, they just want to hear nice things. There's a select few people who are in my life, who I know when they ask, they actually are asking because they are working on a thing. There's a time and a place for it. If something has already been done, a record for instance... gosh, it's so specific. It depends on how well you know someone, it depends on what you're really trying to do. It depends on what you think they really want.
In my life, I've had certain jazz musicians actually sit down with me at certain points and tell me something that was very hard to hear, various things about my playing that they thought was not really working so well, and it was such a gift. They weren't mean about it, but at a certain point, you don't really know necessarily what you're doing wrong, or that you are doing something wrong. Not even right or wrong, but that maybe you're approaching something in a different way than you could, or should, or would be interesting. The people who have done that with me... there's this unspoken rule I've found, especially with an older generation of musicians, where if you ask them, "How was it?" they'll say, "It was great. Just keep playing."
If they really care, that's when they will actually take the time and the effort to tell you what you're doing wrong. That takes time. It takes enough time for them to decide that you're worth the criticism. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a really wonderful thing, especially when it's coming from a place where they're telling you what they're telling you because they care about you as a musician.
Leah Roseman:
When you first moved to New York after attending Berklee, I think I must have heard in another interview how you're saying it wasn't as easy to get established as you thought it would've been, considering you had those connections.
Aaron Weinstein:
At this point, I don't know what established means. Not to sound like an old person, but with social media, and with the career that one can have on social media, conceivably, you can just totally X out any established tradition, or getting the thumbs up from an older generation, and have a really nice career. I think things have changed a lot. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I do think it is a thing. It's a reality. When I came to New York, because I had been spending time in New York while at Berklee, I knew some musicians, for sure. They all said, "When you get to New York, give me a call," and I did. Many of them said, "That's so great. All the best."
It was a naive assumption, but I thought I would call these people, and I would get started that way. A few of them did help me out. I remember, when I called John Pizzarelli, the first paying gig that I got after moving to New York was John giving me a gig to work with him, which was great. It's a very scary thing. Where do you start? To have people who do believe in you, and help you out in tangible ways, it was very helpful. There was a lot less of that than I would have thought, but that's only because I was unrealistic in my thought.
Leah Roseman:
I know you really enjoy arranging, Aaron. Are you arranging for bigger ensembles, big bands or orchestra at all?
Aaron Weinstein:
I have. I wouldn't say that I do that. I have done that for various projects, but no, not at the moment. Frankly, there are people who do a lot more of that than I do. Often, if someone asks me for something that I don't feel I can do in the way that I would feel happy with in the time that I'm given, or at all, for that matter, I'll give them numbers and names of people who can give them that. It happens less and less now, but I still get called for classical violin work of one kind or another, and almost always, I give them the names of friends who actually do that. Most of the arranging is small group stuff, but sure, I've done a little bit of the large ensembles.
Leah Roseman:
I'm sure they'd be amazing, just based on your-
Aaron Weinstein:
Thanks. I think I did all right.
Leah Roseman:
Have you done classical gigs?
Aaron Weinstein:
No, that's what I'm saying. I practice it a little bit, mostly because it's beautiful music. Why would you not want to play Bach? That's not to say I'm going to go perform it. Forget the way I might play it, I don't know if I would want to hear that, I don't think I've given it the proper thought to have a point of view. When you have something like that kind of music, and I feel the same way with jazz, something that's been around so long, if you're going to do it now, if you don't have a point of view, if you don't have some kind of a take on it that you think is different than something else, I have a tough time with it.
That's an important thing for me both as a player, but also a listener. When I hear a jazz singer sing now, a new jazz singer, if it sounds like a really good version of Sinatra, or Sarah Vaughan, or Ella Fitzgerald, for me, no matter how technically gifted the person is, it's not terribly thrilling to hear, because I could go put on the actual Sinatra record, or whomever it might be.
Leah Roseman:
You mean, because they haven't really found their voice? They're just imitating?
Aaron Weinstein:
For me, at this point, I think the thing I gravitate toward the most is some kind of originality. I don't mean you're doing something that no one's ever done before, but some kind of specificity. We're all influenced, obviously, but I think there's a difference between an influence and a carbon copy.
Leah Roseman:
You're really known as a interpreter of standards. Are you writing music at all? Are you writing original tunes?
Aaron Weinstein:
No. I've done a little of it for various specific things, but where I scratch that inch it is with arranging.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
You could have the 32 bar standard, but there might be more original material in terms of solis and lines, and interludes, than the song itself. The way that I arrange is compositional. I love standards, and it's an endless well of stuff. There are the 12 that everyone plays, and for good reason, they're great songs, but if you look at the catalog of any of those people who compose those 12, there are just countless other equally great songs to work with.
Leah Roseman:
There was one I was listening to recently, "The Second Time Around," and I think you labeled it on YouTube, "A song that many old people know, and some young people." I've actually never heard that one.
Aaron Weinstein:
Possibly. It's a wonderful song. We could spend all day talking about wonderful songs. I appreciate that that's not where everyone lives musically, and it's perfectly fine with me.
Leah Roseman:
Do you continue to do your writing, in terms of, is it all comedy, or do you write more serious things?
Aaron Weinstein:
It's largely comedy, sometimes there's a mix of things. We're not talking about writing really, but if you're dealing with someone talking about a conflict, or a crisis that they're in there, there's an underlying drama to that. The way they can express it might be funny. It's a cliche, but comedy and drama are really so related, almost the same thing. There are more expansive things that I can't really talk about right now.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, cool.
Aaron Weinstein:
I spend an enormous amount of time on it.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Aaron Weinstein:
Which makes time management really important. There are two instruments, and there are music things, and then there are also word things.
Leah Roseman:
It's funny with comedy and drama, my husband sometimes asks me, "Are they billing this as a comedy?" We often notice the promotion for a new show or movie might be the one comedic moment in it, but actually, it's a very sad drama, more and more. There's that whole genre of, what do they call it, traumedy? I don't like that term.
Aaron Weinstein:
This is true in music, too, the way things are marketed, that's its own own thing, for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Actually, one of the lines you wrote for the little Linda Lavin character, Yvette Schloss, was, "People don't know what they want until you show them."
Aaron Weinstein:
Sometimes-
Leah Roseman:
I thought that was great.
Aaron Weinstein:
Sometimes it's true. Unfortunately, I think sometimes that that's true. Even in a little way, I've seen this, where maybe you're doing a show, or a series of concerts, and just trying to get people to come to that is a struggle. Then, the New York Times writes something nice about it, and suddenly, now everyone wants to go. But that's the way things are. There are people who don't care what someone else writes about something, and they just are totally independent in their thought. But I think a lot of people are influenced by, whether it's someone on Instagram saying something or someone writing in a column.
Leah Roseman:
We talked about Johnny Frigo earlier in this conversation, and I was reading a quote. He was on Johnny Carson, and you probably know this quote. Carson had asked him why it took him so long to become a success as a violinist. Did you hear the story?
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah, sure, sure. But I bet you have the quote more exact than I would.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I wrote it down. Yeah. "I want to take as long as I could in my life so I wouldn't have time to become a has been."
Aaron Weinstein:
It's a really funny line.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah. He was a brilliant guy. He was a very, very funny, massively intelligent person, who had an incredibly wide range of talents and interests, so that's why he played. He painted and he wrote poetry, which he would read during his concerts, and most of it was light versed, kind of Ogden Nash type stuff. It was wonderful.
Leah Roseman:
That's why I was kind of curious about your writing, because you were playing jazz violin at such a high level so young, and then had this pretty... Well, being signed with a label when you were what, 19 or something to make your first album? Like an unusually meteoric rise in the jazz world, I would say as a young person. But then you've been doing it for so long, I was thinking, "Well, maybe it's very interesting to devote yourself more to writing." You're obviously so gifted with words. No-
Aaron Weinstein:
There's something in where there's like an implication that I'm tired of the other, and then that's not the case. I think I've remained open to possibilities and things feed each other. I like listening to writers talk about how they write. I find musicians are sometimes not the best at describing their process. Some are great, but writers tend to be more articulate about that stuff. There's a huge overlap in terms of process, in terms of creative process, in terms of the frustrations and how to work through stuff. I learn a lot from looking at how other creative people go about their business, and remaining open-minded to possibilities. Trying to write if I have an opportunity to do that, and realizing I enjoy that, and then looking at how to do it more proficiently. It's a kind of learning process, not unlike learning an instrument.
The difference is when you're writing something, you can work on the sentence until you get it as right as you can. When you're improvising a line, you're doing that as to the best of your abilities in real time. The challenge in terms of playing is just getting better and better at saying what you mean in that moment. Occasionally... It's kind of cool when sometimes people will send me CDs that they recorded at early, things I did with Bucky Pizzarelli when I was 16 or 18 or something. I listen back to some of that stuff. Sometimes I have to really stop listening because I don't agree with most of what I'm doing. If I heard someone playing like that, I would have all sorts of suggestions. There might... I've never thought I'd have real proper technique, but I do appreciate there's a facility of some sort. However, I don't know how high level the solos were at that time for me, in terms of what I appreciate now.
Leah Roseman:
One thing we haven't really talked about, Aaron, is etiquette for younger players coming onto the scene. Do you have advice for young jazz players?
Aaron Weinstein:
Well, all I can offer is how I went about things. I leaned very far in one direction, and that direction was a kind of reverence, almost kind of a monarchy like reverence. The most that I felt comfortable doing was letting people know I existed. If they wanted to invite me to do something, I was thrilled, of course, but the most I would... I almost felt at times that it was overstepping to, for instance, send someone a demo recording. But that's how I approach things. These were superheroes to me, and if they even chose to respond, that was so thrilling.
As someone who is sometimes at some points no longer the youngest person in the room, I have seen younger musicians act in different ways. I think everyone is working from a good place for the most part. I think people have different goals in mind. It's very interesting. Sometimes I've seen, or I've been a part of a situation when a younger musician will want to sit in, maybe, and then they set up an iPhone and their tripod, and it seems like it's about content. It's about having a bit of content that they could then post and that that's just... Obviously, when I was 16 and 17, there was no content to post because there was no place to post it. But it was really about that interaction in that moment, and that's the only place my head was at. I wasn't thinking about, "Is this framed correctly or let me play a solo that my followers are really going to like."
It sounds like you're a cult leader, my followers. For me, it was about the opportunity to be in proximity to someone who I just think is astonishing. Trying in that moment to understand a little bit more about the thing that I'm trying to do by listening to them, who have done it for so many decades and are such masters of it. That was my goal in doing that. Again, in the same way as we spoke about with solos, where if you're doing it to try to get applause, that's not a terrible thing. If you're doing it to try to play the most musical solo you've ever played and you don't care about applause, that's also not a terrible thing.
But to have a clarity in what you are trying to do, I think, is very helpful. Because it helps expectations when expectations are kind of out of whack with reality that I think things you can get into some trouble. Same way with practicing. If you're working on something and the expectation is that it'll take a year before you see any results and in six months you see a little progress, it's kind of thrilling. If your expectation was that in a week's time you'll have mastered whatever this thing was and you haven't, it's incredibly disappointing.
When I work with people in a lesson, a teaching situation, I hear the phrase a lot, "Well, I should be able to do it by now."It's a canned response. But I do say, "Who told you this? Where does this timeline come from?" A really, really smart musician told me when I wasn't in my teens, he said, "You're not going to play them tomorrow, the way you're going to play a year from tomorrow." You can't fast forward that. There's something very peaceful about that, actually. When we listen to these masters on record, we're hearing an end result or we're hearing a point at which that... We're not hearing them practice.
I think there's a big difference. I love listening to early recordings of people, even when they're astonishingly good. It's almost always different than what you're hearing them play at now or later. It really shows that everyone goes somewhere. Maybe it's not a place that you personally appreciate, but it, things do move and progress is made. For all the wonders of social media, and it is a wonderful thing, I think. YouTube is an incredible resource, but there is this weird thing that I've seen where people are posting what they call a practice session, and really it's not a practice. It's like a performance.
I think that kind of throws a wrench into the whole structure of what it means to practice. When I practice or when I talk with students about how to practice, which I think is hugely important to know how to practice, I always start by playing. When I pick up the instrument, I play something before I get into the practice of the day, and I end by playing something. I do it just to kind of clarify the mind and get myself ready to go. But also so there is a difference. You don't fall into that trap of jamming under the guise of practice. You can play.
Then it's like, "Okay, it's time to work and it's not going to sound good." That's the other thing. It's like becoming comfortable with the idea that practicing is going to often sound bad, because you are practicing something hopefully that you can't do or that you can't do very well or that you want to do better. If it sounds too good, maybe you're not practicing the right thing. At a certain point, hopefully it sounds acceptable, but I think being comfortable, sounding really terrible, not feeling like you're a terrible musician because you're playing, you're trying to learn something you don't know how to do right now, and of course it's going to sound bad. Doesn't mean you're a bad musician though. We can argue that it means you're a good musician.
Leah Roseman:
Actually. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about what I would call performance mode as a opposed to practice mode. Especially as a classical musician, I find in my teaching, students often have trouble with performance mode because they'll be playing something and they'll just kind of repeat it like they didn't like what they heard. Instead of going on with the flow of the music, they'll just circle back and they're not conscious of this. It's a habit you have to help people break, and it's often comes from not performing enough and actually just practicing too much, or not practicing the feeling of performance, but for jazzers it's different, right?
Aaron Weinstein:
Practicing and performance?
Leah Roseman:
Well, the way of thinking, because you're in this flow of... I don't know, maybe not.
Aaron Weinstein:
Well, I guess it depends on what you're practicing, but if we're talking about single line improvisation. Improvising, you can't truly practice improvising. The whole notion of improvising is you're improvising. You can't do that. But what you can do is you can practice the tools that you use when you improvise, kind of in a general sense. When you are on the fret board, on the fingerboard in a place, you know the landscape, what your options are. I referenced this a lot because I think it makes a lot... To me, it makes a lot of sense.
There's an old, I think it's the Jack Paar show where Jonathan Winters, the great improvisational actor comic, Robin Williams' big influence. Jack Paar gave him, it's like a stick. He said, "What could you do with this?" Jonathan Winters stands up and goes through, I don't know, a dozen different characters and different, he's a lion tamer, he's a conductor, he's a fisherman. It's all these things, what can you do with the stick? Practicing improvising is kind of practicing possibilities. In terms of practice, it's kind of exploring. Again, it's also specific, but depending on what you're working on, exploring what you could do. Then when you're performing, you do one of those and you do your best. Yeah, it's a whole different thing. You can't stop during a performance and say, "Oh, I made a bad choice."
What you're practicing is the mechanism of dealing with maybe the thing you didn't intend to do and making something out of that, musically speaking. We all play notes... When you're improvising, you play notes that maybe you didn't intend to play. That's not such a bad thing. But then it's not getting terrified and running to a lick that you know is going to work, but dealing with the note and that's the new reality. You can practice how to deal with that, definitely.
Leah Roseman:
When you're practicing violin, are you hearing the chords in your mind? You know what I mean? Like the full harmony?
Aaron Weinstein:
In certain way... That's the hope. If it's a new song, if it's a new progression, it's not so clear. I'm not hearing the chords as though they're being played on the piano, but my goal is to try to play what I am actually hearing, as opposed to something that I know might work nicely. That's always like the negotiation during a performance. It's tricky.
Leah Roseman:
I heard you talk about in another interview about Les Paul. That he developed arthritis towards the end of his life, which I have now, so I relate, and that he couldn't... Maybe you could speak to that.
Aaron Weinstein:
What he told me, and I have mentioned this a bunch, because I think it's such a kind of an inspiring notion. He had perfect pitch and he had extraordinary facility for most of his life, and so he could play whatever he heard. Then he had some pretty severe arthritis. It got so bad, I think at the end of his life, he had maybe one or one and a half fingers that he could use. What he told to me was he had two choices. He could either continue hearing those things, those ideas and get frustrated because he couldn't play them, or he could train himself to hear new ideas that he could play.
When you say it like that, it sounds pretty simple, but go ahead and try that. Of course, he could do it. You know what I mean? He was so brilliant. But I think there's something very inspiring about that, and it speaks completely to what I think it means to play a honest solo, which is dealing exclusively with what you are given in that moment. It's a challenge, but it's part of what makes it fun.
Leah Roseman:
I'm trying to close this off. You keep saying all these wise things. I often ask people, and you can choose not to answer this question, if you could have looked back on 12 year old Aaron and just maybe given him some advice or said, "It's going to be okay," are there things you might have said to him?
Aaron Weinstein:
No. No. I'll tell you why. If we're talking about the age of 12, what I was interested at that point had nothing to do with what I'm interested in now. I remember I was maybe around 12, 11 or 12, and I had a choice in Chicago on the same night. Bill Monroe was playing and Stéphane Grappelli was playing, and I couldn't go to both. I could go to one and I chose to go to Bill. I wanted to see Bill Monroe. Now, you know what I could have told... I could have said, "Well, but this is one of the great jazz violinists, and you'll be very happy to have seen this person, because he will play a fairly significant role in your musical development. You don't know that yet." I would've gone to see Bill Monroe. I have nothing to say to my former self. We change, and sometimes for a veteran and sometimes differently, and I think it's all fine.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I'm guessing, was that your last chance to hear Stéphane?
Aaron Weinstein:
Yes, it was.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah. I had one chance and I chose not to do it.
Leah Roseman:
Your parents offered you this choice?
Aaron Weinstein:
Yeah, they were totally supportive of my interest in music and I guess I knew who Grappelli was. I had a few Django Reinhardt records, but it wasn't an interest. Six months later it would've been, but not at that time.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for today. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk to you.
Aaron Weinstein:
My pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. I have featured several jazz violinists in this series, along with a diversity of musicians worldwide pursuing unique paths in music. Thanks for following this podcast. Have a great week.
