Secret Sustainability Sauce

4 A’s worth sharing this week: re-labeling our tools as toys, celebrating 100 years of Thad Jones, Coldplay’s secret sustainability sauce, new music, and more…

Here are four things (A’s) we thought were worth sharing this week:

A1. Can we get closer to play if we re-label our tools as toys? That’s the question writer Austin Kleon wrote about a few weeks back on this blog post, “Book As Toys.” Referencing a 1923 letter from author C. S. Lewis to the mid-20th century bishop Arthur Greaves as proof of concept, Kleon encouraged us all to read with a pencil, having fun in the margins and remaking the book as a toy in the process.

Montessori said play is the work of the child. Play is also the work of the artist. — Austin Kleon

Speaking of books, have you heard the big news? Foray Music is starting a book club! We’re reading the producer Rick Rubin’s new The Creative Act: A Way of Being this month, with a live hang scheduled for Sunday, April 23rd. Hope to see you there! 

A2. Celebrating the centennial of jazz bandleader, composer, and arranger, Thad Jones. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (formally known as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra) is on tour this month in Europe paying homage to one of its founders, Thad Jones. While on the road, members of the band as well as other prominent musicians recount their stories of Jones and his impact on them and the music.

Just as Dizzy Gillespie codified bebop language with a big band in the 1940s and ‘50s, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra did likewise with post-bebop language, including the modal jazz of John Coltrane and the like. Even more importantly, they had an emotional impact: on a spiritual level, they changed the game forever. — London Jazz News

A3. Chris Martin of Coldplay reflects on preserving the band’s integrity in an interview with Conan. Martin describes their song-making process as a “production line”: he gets the skeleton, and then the band layers their parts in. They always split their publishing royalties, regardless of who is on a track; this guarantees making a living and serving the music. In other words, if an instrument does not support the song’s vibe, the musician does not record a track, but they can still make a living while also preserving the band’s integrity. 

So, for whatever reason, we’ve all got our gifts in the world, and mine is I get sent songs and I get a very clear idea of where we’re supposed to go as a band. — Chris Martin 

He discusses “counterbalance” and how particular bandmates’ skill sets help to decide where they’ll play and when they’ll release—they are “naysayers in a good way, to make sure we don’t do all the stupid ideas”

A4. New music this week: from Chicago composer/clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid, whose new song-suite, Requiem for Jazz, “feels both radical and deferential, primitive and conceptual—roots, not as a settled concept but something alive and ever-changing” (Apple Music). After a nine-year hiatus, Nickel Creek released Celebrants which “lifts us, carries us into the depths of the human condition, and then transports us into its heights” (Folk Alley). And, Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily’s new album on Verve, Love in Exile. As Iyer poetically said of the single “To Remain/To Return” in press materials, “I hear Shahzad and myself establishing these haunted cycles, then slowly and delicately transforming them, as Arooj glides across like a dark moon.”

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We think you’re super,
Charlie & Amy + Alexandria

Extra credit: tiers for fears.

Cullen Crawford @HelloCullen

you're saying there are tiers for fears?

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