News and Updates
Projects and Activities Fall 2014

After a busy spring and summer, I am mostly concentrating on mathematical research: For the rest of 2014 I’ll be on Fellowship Leave (Sabbatical) from my professorship at Lehman College. This will give me time to dig deeper into my main research interests involving 3- and 4-dimensional topology. Mathematical research both stimulates and complements my music, and new compositions have been flowing these days, along with energized practicing and performances, including hitting at New York’s musical gem, Smalls Jazz Club (http://(www.smallsjazzclub.com/indexnew.cfm) with the Tad Shull 4tet… This fall I will also be returning to the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics (MPIM) in Bonn, Germany, for inspiration, collaboration and other research support. Bonn is a beautiful city, and is now the epicenter of mathematics in Germany, housing both the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics and the Hausdorff Institute for Mathematics, as well as having a top university. Also, both institutes are equipped with pianos, and during a previous visit I had the honor of performing trios with master bassist John Goldsby and the wonderful drummer Hans Dekker at the Bonn university as part of the Mathematische Arbeitstagung, a famous ongoing collaborative mathematical workshop originally founded by the late great mathematician, Fritz Hirzebruch. This fall we have plans for a Jazz and Mathematics performance-presentation-discussion at MPIM, inspired by an essay of mine, “Can One Hear the Sound of a Theorem?”, published in “The Best Writing on Mathematics 2012” (Princeton University Press). The article was originally written for mathematicians (it first appeared in the journal “Notices of the American Mathematical Society”), but hopefully much of it is accessible to a wider audience of interested readers, especially musicians…
An extra special trip for me last summer was my first visit to Bilbao in Basque country, where my long time friend, New York born pianist Joshua Edelman, has opened a new music school/performance space called the Jazz Cultural Theater of Bilbao (http://www.jazzculturalbilbao.com/), inspired by Barry Harris’s musical community center on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan back in the 1980s. Besides teaching and performing there, I played a second piano part on a couple of tracks from Josh’s new recording Manhattan Bilbao Jazz-Zubia. “Zubia” is a Basque word for “bridge”, which symbolizes the theme of this recording (and Josh’s life) linking together Basque and Jazz (and other) elements.
Another musical highlight for me these days is my participation in Brian Lynch’s Unsung Heroes project (short for Tribute to the Unsung Trumpet Heroes). Besides being a master trumpeter, composer and arranger, Brian has a unique blend of intellect and funk which lifts his music to another level – his last recording won the Latin-Jazz Grammy. In this project he’s put together a band with great chemistry that includes the masterful Vincent Herring on alto saxophone, together with serious young lions Alex Hoffman on tenor, David Wong on bass, and Pete Van Nostrand on drums. Along with Brian Lynch original tributes, the music includes many never-before-performed tunes written by classic trumpeters like Tommy Turrentine, Louis Smith, Idrees Sulieman, Howard McGhee, and Charles Tolliver. The first Unsung Heroes recording received 5 stars from Down Beat, and Volume 2 is now available (http://brianlynchjazz.com/projects/unsung-heroes/). We have performed at the Amazonas Jazz Festival in Manaus Brasil, at Sculler’s in Boston, and the Detroit Jazz Festival. Look out for live performances later this year at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York…
I’m still enjoying playing music from my last Reservoir Music recording  Glass Enclosure, featuring my friend and musical mentor Charles McPherson, with Todd Coolman on bass and Leroy Williams on drums. The material includes some well-known tunes, a few of my own compositions, and polar pair from the pen of Bud Powell, including the title piece. Although the haunting Glass Enclosure is usually taken as a reflection of the torment surrounding Bud Powell’s tragic life, I believe that it illustrates clearly how jazz defies categories and transcends boundaries. In fact Bud Powell’s music stands at the center of several main crossroads in Jazz: Tatumesque impressionism is combined with a Bird-like lyricism, the rawness of the Blues is on equal footing with a refined European classical sensibility, and more than anything a joyous simplicity coexists with sophisticated complexity.
Also blissfully borderless as a player and composer is my special guest on the date, Charles McPherson. Charles has been a source of inspiration to me for over 25 years now, not only influencing my music though his improvisational freedom and radiant sound, but also helping to ignite my interest in mathematics through his metaphysical musings… I’m into the ninth year of my gig as a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Lehman College, the Bronx campus of the City University of New York. It’s something of a return to my roots, since I was an undergraduate at the City College campus of CUNY (as was my grandfather). Besides working on my research (see Reflections I), I’ve been exploring connections (and “disconnections”) between Music and Mathematics. The starting point which interests me is that the content (the “meaning”) of both Music and Mathematics can be expressed (exists) without any direct reference to objects or concepts from the natural world. Of course mathematics can refer directly to the natural world, and most non-mathematicians only see these applications of mathematics. But to mathematicians mathematics has a life of its own, independent of any applications. The same goes for music: Music refers directly to the natural world whenever it is associated with images, words, dance, or ceremony, etc.; but instrumental music can also express meaning that transcends any language, somehow telling a story without words and pictures — or sometimes magically creating words and pictures in the mind of the listener… I’ve also been composing some new tunes, as well as revisiting some older material. I usually write away from the piano, letting the song develop as much as possible before nailing down the details. For me, composing is almost the opposite of doing mathematical research: I don’t try to write music, I wait for songs to come to me; whereas doing research in mathematics requires lots of searching down false leads and retracing ones steps…On the other hand, the collaborative side of mathematical research does have analogies with small group musical improvisation: Mathematicians working together to prove new mathematical theorems exchange ideas in real-time, alternating lead and accompaniment roles, guided by a thematic problem, developing material statement by statement, pursuing tangential ideas, adapting to mistakes, being ready for unexpected results, and never knowing for sure if the original goals will be achieved…