{"id":141724,"date":"2019-12-19T11:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T16:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=141724"},"modified":"2022-09-06T13:57:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T17:57:02","slug":"nows-the-time-an-interview-with-david-amram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/19\/nows-the-time-an-interview-with-david-amram\/","title":{"rendered":"Now\u2019s The Time: An Interview with David Amram"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jennifer Hasegawa, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the highest compliments in my lexicon of praise is the term <\/em>lebenskuntsler, German for \u201can artist of life\u201d\u2014and high in my pantheon of the <\/em>lebenskuntslers I\u2019ve known is the musician\/composer\/conductor David Amram. Still flourishing at age eighty-nine, Amram has an impressive resume. As the New York Philharmonic\u2019s first composer-in-residence, for which he was chosen by Leonard Bernstein, he has created funky jazz numbers as well as classical symphonies and concertos. Then there is the rich music Amram has written for Arthur Miller\u2019s plays, including <\/em>After The Fall; for Joe Papp\u2019s earliest Shakespeare in the Park productions; and for legendary films such as Elia Kazan\u2019s <\/em>Splendor In The Park and John Frankenheimer\u2019s <\/em>Manchurian Candidate.<\/em><\/p>\n

But Amram does far more than write scores (or \u201cfigure out which correct notes to choose and then write them down on each day\u2019s new empty page,\u201d as he puts it). He\u2019s often on the road, teaching students of all ages, leading orchestras, \u201csitting in\u201d with any musician who asks him to, and performing his own public concerts. These \u201cAmram Jams\u201d can last up to five hours, and feature Amram scat-singing improvised songs along with a diverse array of guest artists. Amram has jammed with local musicians from all over Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, becoming, according to the <\/em>New York Times, \u201cmulticultural before multiculturalism existed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

True to the title of his seminal 1971 double album <\/em>No More Walls, he has played Latin music to audiences in China, played Kenyan music in Latvia, and worked frequently with Native American artists. This last connection led, in 1977, to <\/em>The Trail of Beauty, a piece for mezzo-soprano, oboe, and orchestra whose libretto featured traditional indigenous texts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Amram frequently plays the piano, the penny whistle, the French horn and the Spanish guitar, but he can also coax melodies from the shanai and the dumbeg and other instruments that few Americans have heard of, much less heard. During his daily life he even wears some of these instruments around his neck, along with amulets and other gifts he\u2019s received.<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the decades, Amram has preserved his artistic adventures in three memoirs: <\/em>Vibrations (1968), <\/em>Offbeat: Collaborations with Kerouac (2002), and <\/em>Upbeat: Seven Lives of a Musical Cat (2008). He\u2019s currently working on the fourth, to be entitled \u201cDavid Amram: The Next Eighty Years.\u201d Born in Philadelphia in 1930 to a Sephardic Jewish family, Amram was raised on a dairy farm in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, where, he says, his father was a major ethical influence and where he loved hearing \u201cthe old hog callers, who excelled in this special style of performing art,\u201d he writes. \u201cWhether or not they impressed any hogs, these farmers made me see that you can find music and beauty anywhere if you pay attention. They also made me see that you can transform anything into a form of expression all your own.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

After studying history at George Washington University, serving as a soldier with the Seventh Army in Europe, and working as a busboy, a soda jerk, a janitor, a gym teacher, a moving man, and an amateur boxer, Amram wound up in postwar Paris, where he spent time in cafes with George Plimpton and Peter Matthiessen as they created <\/em>The Paris Review. Back in New York, he joined Charles Mingus\u2019s band. Around 1959, Amram acted alongside the writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso, as well as the painter Larry Rivers, in Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie\u2019s groundbreaking short film <\/em>Pull My Daisy (for which Amram also composed the soundtrack). This \u201cpromising young composer,\u201d as he now waggishly describes himself, has made music with Bob Dylan, Charlie Parker, Johnny Depp, Willie Nelson, Thelonius Monk, John Prine, Frank McCourt, Dizzy Gillespie, Paddy Chayefsky, and Patti Smith.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apart from <\/em>kunst, Amram is equally impressive with the <\/em>leben part of the <\/em>lebenskuntsler equation. He\u2019s been an indefatigable social activist, a prodigious raconteur, and, as the critic Nat Hentoff aptly phrased it, \u201ca ubiquitous deliverer of good cheer.\u201d Recently I visited Amram at his home in Beacon, New York, which overflows with books, CDs, framed photos, DVDs, instruments and awards. We had a long and lively conversation, presented here in condensed and edited form. \u2014Gary Lippman<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are you surprised to find yourself nearing the age of ninety?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

You bet! I never thought I\u2019d make it to thirty<\/em>. We came up in the \u201clive fast, die young\u201d era. But contrary to the old saw, turning eighty-nine didn\u2019t<\/em> happen quickly. Anyway, I don\u2019t have time for old age to catch up with me. The title of Charlie Parker\u2019s great 1945 anthem \u201cNow\u2019s The Time\u201d remains my mantra.<\/em> People are already planning celebrations for my ninetieth birthday in different cities around the world. So I am eating extra vitamins and trying to get at least one good night of sleep a week to be ready.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Where have you traveled recently?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

I visited, twice, Silicon Valley\u2019s high-tech, high-rent, high-IQ, high-ranked, center-of-high-expectations marquee city of San Jose. When I first went there in the summer of 1948, San Jose was a small, sleepy agricultural town. Having just graduated high school, I used to drive my truck through those streets as a carpenter\u2019s helper and plumber\u2019s helper, never dreaming that seventy decades later, I\u2019d be back for the West Coast premiere of my latest orchestral work. And this time, I didn\u2019t have to worry about finding a place to park my truck.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are there any overarching lessons you try to impart when you find yourself teaching?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

The work ethic and high standards I learned from those master carpenters and plumbers way back in 1948, their dedication to their chosen path, and their creativity and constant problem-solving on the job. Above all, I want students to do what they feel that they were put here to do and never give up trying to do it. If they are ever told by their career counselors that they are too old<\/em> for their art and should give up, perhaps they\u2019ll remember an older cat like me, someone who is grateful<\/em> for being able to spend his life doing what he loves to do, and say quietly to themselves, Maybe I\u2019ll give it another two years, anyway.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You must be a fun father.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

I did the same thing with my three children that my parents did for me\u2014keep stuff simple, teach them to not to judge others based on gender, pigmentation, education, or location, and leave enough space so that the kids could discover things on their own. In this way, without knowing it, I was following what a musician friend of mine, Charlie Chin, said is an Asian-American metaphor for child-rearing. It\u2019s what they call \u201cthe thousand-year-old egg.\u201d You put this egg in the ground and, through osmosis, the egg becomes nourished by all the nutrients there. So, expose a child to anything of beauty\u2014a concert, an art museum, good friends, a good meal\u2014and don\u2019t worry if it looks like they\u2019re not paying attention, because they\u2019re there. <\/em>Like that thousand-year egg, they\u2019ll absorb all that beauty, all those nutrients.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Does this apply to adults as well?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Oh, sure. Especially when you\u2019re a composer. If you\u2019re around all kinds of beautiful music, it will nitrify and enrich your DNA. Sonny Rollins, who\u2019s two months younger than I am, told me recently, \u201cDavid, I can\u2019t walk around so well anymore, I can\u2019t play the saxophone, I can\u2019t do many things that I love to do, but I\u2019ve never been happier, because I\u2019m just spending all my time understanding and following the golden rule.\u201d Sonny is someone who\u2019s really arrived spiritually, and he did not get to that level by buying a course, or subscribing to an installment plan in order to be spiritual.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Your great mentor Dimitri Mitropoulos, who was the conductor of the New York Philharmonic when you were a young man, told you to \u201clove the music more than you love yourself.\u201d What did he mean?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Mitropoulos had known people who\u2019d become celebrated but then had a downfall and forgot what we\u2019re all supposed to be doing while we\u2019re here on this earth. He always said that if you\u2019re not responsible for the artistic gift bestowed on you, or if because of pain or denial or any bad state of mind you don\u2019t use it, then that gift might be taken away from you. Mitropoulos believed that we were lucky to be able to make art, and our responsibility was to get better at it and to pass it on and encourage others to do the same.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Mitropoulos seems to have been a very encouraging sort.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

One time we were riding an elevator together and the elevator operator said to Mitropoulos, \u201cMaestro, I\u2019m a songwriter!\u201d Instead of saying, \u201cI\u2019m not interested, just be quiet and take me to my floor,\u201d Mitropoulos said, \u201cOh, really? What kind of songs do you write? Do you like Cole Porter? Do you have any songs with you? You do? Then stop the elevator!\u201d And the maestro looked through the guy\u2019s song sheet, saying, \u201cThis is interesting. This chord here, I think it\u2019s a C-sharp minor\u2014you left the sharp out \u2026 and I like this harmony here\u2026 \u201d Mitropoulos gave the elevator man a whole crash-course Juilliard Ph.D. in music theory\u2014and in a nice way. He always went out of his way for anybody and everybody.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So he didn\u2019t let his ego get in the way of his humanity.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Right. He made me see that, for artists, the only thing worse than obscurity can be too much recognition, because then you are told that now it is time to move to a \u201chigher level\u201d\u2014get rid of all those in your life who love you but are not in a position to help you to \u201cadvance.\u201d You may also be advised to cease celebrating your cultural roots, whatever they may be. But follow that advice and you\u2019ll soon be feasting at the trough of swine! While it might seem tempting, the policy of \u201cfull greed ahead\u201d won\u2019t lead to growth.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So being a somebody can make you a nobody.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

But actually there are no<\/em> \u201cnobodies.\u201d If someone says to me, \u201cI\u2019m a nobody,\u201d I refer them to my friend Hondo Crouch. When Hondo bought Luckenbach, Texas, this ghost town that was just two blocks long, he made a fun toy city out of it, declaring himself mayor, creating the Luckenbach Air Force, and putting up a sign that said, \u201cPOPULATION: 7\u2014EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY IN LUCHENBACH<\/small>.\u201d The point is, everybody is somebody, everywhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In one of your memoirs, you write, \u201cIf you get bitter, you\u2019ve had it. If you get envious of others \u2026 you\u2019re already ordering your own coffin.\u201d Despite all your brio, have you ever gone on any bummer trips?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

[Laughter]\u00a0<\/em>For years and years! I experienced everything\u2014bitterness, jealousy, rage, pettiness, competitiveness, all those things. But I found older people to emulate and study, people who\u2019d been through their own feelings of disgust, rage, and discomfort but had somehow managed to make a living in the arts while behaving with positivity. Whatever the situation was, they would turn it around to make others and themselves feel good. I found older people like Mitropoulos to emulate and study, people who\u2019d somehow managed to make a living in the arts while remaining human. Before long, I could understand my own negativity and cancel it out. As the ancient Greeks said, Physician, heal thyself!<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So you don\u2019t allow yourself to indulge those feelings anymore?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

When I was playing with Oscar Pettiford\u2019s big band in 1957, at the New York nightclub Birdland, I got talking with Jimmy Cleveland, a great trombone player. After rehearsal I started whining about my landlord, and my then-girlfriend leaving me and my lack of work\u2014whine, whine, whine\u2014and Jimmy just sat there going, Mm-hmm. Finally he said, \u201cLet me pull your coat to something.\u201d (That\u2019s the vernacular, meaning \u201cLet me give you some advice.\u201d) He said, \u201cDon\u2019t put your business in the street.\u201d Bam! Jimmy made me understand that no one wants to hear David singing the blues\u2014unless it\u2019s a psychiatrist, and they now get three hundred dollars an hour for that.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How can you stay positive in the face of negativity, though?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

When that friend of mine Charlie Chin was performing with me in 1976 in Toronto, hypnotizing everyone with his songs about the Chinese-American experience, a heckler with a braying voice kept shouting, \u201cCharlie, you suck!\u201d The audience was horrified. Finally Charlie just flicked his moustache and said, \u201cLadies and gentlemen, as a Buddhist and a Maoist, I\u2019m always in conflict with myself, but I have learned that we are all basically one person. We\u2019re the same person. And sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m such a drag<\/em>.\u201d The audience screamed with therapeutic laughter, the heckler slunk off\u2014and later, when I complimented Charles on how he turned around the situation, he said, \u201cWell, what I said was true. With that heckler, the Great Spirit was showing us how disgusting that dark part of ourselves is, so that when we know that, we can quell it from within.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Sort of a higher-level \u201cgolden rule.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Which reminds me of Sonny Rollins again. I complained to him once, \u201cSonny, there\u2019s this musician who just keeps playing one note on his tenor saxophone, honking away like that for four minutes!\u201d This was back in the fifties, when Sonny himself would play magnificent improvisations, thousands of notes, like a Beethoven symphony. But Sonny told me, \u201cDon\u2019t put that one-note guy down. That\u2019s the best he can do. That\u2019s his thing, that\u2019s how he supports his family. If you don\u2019t care for it, do something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The great photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank once thanked you for a compliment by saying, \u201cI don\u2019t need your approval but I appreciate your enthusiasm.\u201d Do you similarly not crave, or even need, approval?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

My main concern in composing or conducting or performing is to feel that I\u2019ve done what I hoped to. And if the musicians involved feel moved, or rise to a certain level and discover or celebrate their own creativity, then I\u2019m on the right path. When you\u2019re conducting, you try to make everybody listen\u2014to pay attention!\u2014and to feel something and dare to put themselves into that moment and to celebrate that mix of formality and spontaneity, the magic that happens \u2026 It\u2019s like a summer night when you go outside and feel that thing<\/em> in the air. You don\u2019t understand it but it\u2019s present. The great unknown.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

For all your belief in tolerance and respect, did you ever just want to lash out at someone who was being a scoundrel?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Sure. At the funeral for my friend, the singer Dave Lambert, I was serving as a pallbearer, and some guy walks up to me\u2014right while I\u2019m helping to carry the coffin\u2014and he says, \u201cHey, listen, I left some stuff up in Lambert\u2019s apartment, do you have a key?\u201d I knew what he meant\u2014he wanted to steal from my friend\u2019s home. And I was glad, being a pallbearer at the moment, that my hands were occupied, because even though I\u2019m a pacifist, I wanted to clock<\/em> that guy. Instead, I just said no and tuned him out. But that was a lesson. If you see bad behavior like that, then you learn how to act differently. He showed me how not<\/em> to be.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So you\u2019re not revenge-minded.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Feeling vengeful is like getting cancer. That messes you up and diminishes you and hurts you more than you could ever hurt someone else.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Another lesson you learned in New York was when Mingus told you, \u201cJust find one person and play for that person all night long. All you need is one person in your life to really be listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Right. If you can make even one person feel more creative or foster something good in them, then you\u2019ve done a hell of a good thing in your life.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

But connecting with listeners also requires patience, of course.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Moses was in the desert for forty years, so if it takes awhile to get recognition for your work, you\u2019re right on schedule.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Since you mention forty years, I love your remark that \u201clongevity is the artist\u2019s best revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

I have an addendum to that. \u201cPremature expiration is highly overrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you have a sense of what happens to us when we die?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

At one of my big school reunions, an old classmate said, \u201cNow let\u2019s talk about how we\u2019ll deal with the afterlife.\u201d I thought, Oh, man, I didn\u2019t realize this was going to be an undertakers convention. I thought we were here to see old friends and celebrate being alive! Some people said, My guru says this<\/em>, some other people said, My psychic says that<\/em>, and I joked that, because I believe in reincarnation, I\u2019m trying to be a vegetarian so that I can come back in the next life as an artichoke or an eggplant.<\/p>\n

I think that leaving the planet is like when the front-desk clerk at a hotel calls you in your room and says, Time\u2019s up. Please make room for the next guest. Time to move out and move on. It\u2019s all a big mystery, of course. I have a vague sense that there\u2019s a spirit world beyond us, and I\u2019m in touch with it, but I haven\u2019t developed that aspect of thought too much\u2014or made any advance bookings! [<\/em>Laughter]<\/em>\u00a0The singer\/actor\/humanitarian Theo Bikel summed it up. At his eighty-fifth birthday party at Carnegie Hall, people asked him, \u201cTheo, are you okay?\u201d and he said, \u201cNot to worry. In the theater, we never die, we just go on tour.\u201d So whenever I think about everyone I\u2019ve lost, which I do a lot, I just figure that they\u2019re \u201con tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Kerouac wrote to you not long before he died at a young age, \u201cSomeday when we\u2019re old men, we\u2019ll lie in our hammocks with toothpicks and rejoice in all the work we\u2019ve done, and smile like Buddha, and pray for all our friends yet to be discovered.\u201d Do you ever feel sad that he wasn\u2019t able to grow old alongside you?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

Mmm. It\u2019s almost like I\u2019ve been doing my work for Jack, too, and for all the other people I loved who didn\u2019t live long enough to see all their dreams come true. I know that Jack would feel the same way if he had been the one who got to live a full lifetime. Charlie Parker, too.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Parker\u2019s death was another big early blow for you, but it prompted you to get more serious about your work. As you wrote about that experience, \u201cI felt a real determination and force inside myself that had to get the music out at any cost and at any price.\u201d<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

You never believe that people like Jack and Parker, glowing examples of graciousness and appreciation, are going to die. That doesn\u2019t seem possible. At least it\u2019s terrific that with Youtube you can still see and hear an artist\u2019s work and hear the artist speak about their work.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you think a lot about your own mortality, about \u201cgoing on tour?\u201d<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

I\u2019m mainly reminded of death because people mention it to me all the time, saying, \u201cHave you prepared for this or that?\u201d My oldest daughter now is forty and I\u2019ve thought, How can I possibly be so old as to have a daughter of forty? Then I remembered that I was already forty-eight when she was born! Pete Seeger told me on his sixtieth birthday, \u201cDavid, when you turn sixty you\u2019ll be amazed by how many friends\u2019 funerals you\u2019ll have to go to.\u201d I thought, This must just be Pete in a down mood. But of course it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are there any previous projects you look back on with special pleasure?<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

My piano sonata from 1960 is starting to be played again and I listen to that now and think, Wow, this young cat has some nice stuff here! But I try not to rest on my laurels. One of the things I always liked about New York was, you could finish the most colossal project and people would just say, What are you doing next<\/em>? I understood that workaholic ethos when I was composer-in-residence with Leonard Bernstein at the Philharmonic. The morning after the glorious opening night of their 1966\u201367 season, Bernstein and the whole orchestra were back at work, sawing away, preparing a whole new hard program for the following week\u2019s schedule. They didn\u2019t even have the chance to take a day off. They had to get up and grind on and then go back every night to repeat their concert from the night before and make it even better. I thought, Man, they\u2019re doing this all year long! And I vowed that I would never complain about being overworked or dare to say, I\u2019m not in the mood to work today.<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You sound as focused on making art as ever.<\/p>\n

AMRAM<\/p>\n

I am. I\u2019m excited about my new compositions, my new memoir, and my upcoming concerts. And, as usual, I\u2019m trying to do better than is expected, be grateful, be happy, and behave in an excellent way. There are no shortcuts. You just have to keep on trucking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

NOTE: This year\u2019s Amram Jam will happen at 8PM<\/small> on December 19 at the Theater For A New City, while Carnegie Hall will host the New York premiere of Amram\u2019s latest chamber music composition, <\/em>Bulgarian Wedding for Violin and Horn, on December 23<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Gary Lippman is a lapsed lawyer. His novel <\/em>Set The Controls For The Heart Of Sharon Tate was published recently and his heart is in the Highlands.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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