A new hit on Winston.

"Thank you for your attention. All tray tables must be put back and locked and seat backs upright and in position for landing."
I notice that the woman sitting catty corner to me in the aisle seat has her hands making a familiar mudra...index finger and thumb making a circle, eyes closed in meditation. She must be visualizing a safe landing. I'm happy that she's working on it. Since she has that covered I decide to relax and flip through pictures in my iPhone that I just took during my weekend in Portland. I was meeting my first grandchild.

I thought I'd feel transformed and very old having this new descriptor 'grandma' in front of my name...but I just feel elation having this little guy in the world.  Aside from feeling like the same Suzi, I've gotta say it's quite amazing watching my son holding his son...that is crazy beautiful continuity.

George says he looks like Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill must have been mighty cute.

Oregon was smokey the entire time I was there. Fires from California and Washington blowing over the state made the air gray.  Every morning I'd walk to the corner coffee shop where there would normally be a good view of Mount Tabor park but it was enveloped by a smokey haze.

The coffee shop had the relaxed murmur of people chatting Saturday off from work conversations layering warm waves of sound bubbling up and periodically quieting down as if on cue from an invisible conductor. There was a singer on the overhead speakers and her music laid on top of the talking textures. She sounded like so many popular singers...a whiney almost child like lazy slurred word delivery of every line. Why did this annoy me?

The bounce of the airplane as the wheels hit the ground brought me back to my seat from my day dreaming. I felt my weight move forward until the plane came to a slow taxi.
"We know you have many choices when making travel plans so we thank you for flying Southwest and enjoy your stay in Burbank."

Burbank. In 20 minutes I'd be home in our new southern California abode. I checked in with my gut feeling about that. It was a good feeling. I'm looking forward to getting plugged into life in L.A. writing more music, making new connections and hiking in the mountains.

Change is inspiring and I'm looking forward to all the great things these big changes will bring along the way.

I'll sign off for now!

With much love,

Grandma Suzi

Smelling the roses.

In spite of the lack of rain here in southern California plants seem to be thriving. The street we live on is luscious and green with bizarre looking succulents that have figured out a way to manage the dry hot summers. I'd like to talk to these alien looking botanical wonders and learn the secret of their seemingly content existance on zero water and tons of sun.

Magically, creatively, auspiciously lucky, George scored a perfect sweet little old hobbit-ish house made of white stucco on a beautiful tree lined street in Pasadena. We've been camping out inside of it for a week because our "stuff" doesn't arrive for a few more days.

The mornings are cool enough to sit on the front porch with coffee and toast and call out chatty niceties to people walking by with dogs and babies in strollers.

I'm excited about setting up my studio and getting back to work.  Soon enough! It's always good to take a break from routine and give the well a chance to fill up again...and I'm grateful for this temporary down time of not having any deadlines and to actually be able to stop and smell the roses...although have you noticed that roses don't smell like roses any more?  What's that about? For the past several years I've been on a quest to find roses that smell rosy to little or no avail. I'm actually someone who does stop when I pass by a bush in bloom. It used to bother me that lately roses are for the most part without fragrance, but today on my morning walk through our new hood I bent over to sniff a lovely pink bloom and I realized that even though you may not get to enjoy that memorable scent of rose,  it's still a nice thing to take that moment...a pause...get close to the open petals and really appreciate it even if it only smells like any generic plant these days.

So we all figure out how to keep blooming don't we? The succulents without water...the rose with no scent. Smart plants.

That being said, I miss my sense of community in Austin. I miss the family I left there. But I know I'm going to enjoy this new chapter of our creative life together in a new place.

Onward...and I'll keep you posted on musical things happening very soon.

Much Love,
Suzi

Change and a 5 second walk in the woods

I keep an old holiday card on my desk in my music studio.  It's a scene of a deep wood blanketed in snow and a creek running through the middle of it. The glitter on the card sparkles like the real stuff. I like to look up from my work and stare at the sparkling scene as a beam of Texas sunlight comes through the window across the card and remember the experience of snow....it had a crisp almost metallic smell and it felted everything in a world of quiet.  It's a 5 second walk in the woods and it makes me feel still.

I'm about to move to another sunny state where it doesn't snow and stays green all year round. The plans for our move to L.A. have me living half in the present where my body resides, and half in the vague movie I'm living in my head of the little white stucco southern California house and our new life in Pasadena.  Change is exciting because it always inspires. I hold onto that thought when I mourn over the fact that I'm leaving this comfortable, sweet, supportive world in Austin. In Pasadena we will be a walk to the Huntington gardens and art museums, a short train ride to one of the most amazing concert Halls in the world and surrounded by unbelievably creative and productive musicians and artists. I really can't complain!

When I think of it what I leave behind isn't being left anywhere because it's a part of me and I'm taking every bit of that with me! My unbelievable friends, the women in my life who have seen me though love found and love lost, births, marriages, divorces, successes, failures, extreme highs and extreme lows, deaths, more births and marriages...so goes life...and I am fortunate beyond description to have so much love in my life...so much support...so many people who have always had my back. Those wonderful women, my children, my George and my family are home for me and that really isn't about the state I reside in...it's about the state of my heart.

And for me most recently...a change way beyond this big move we're making is the arrival of my first grandchild. My son René and his beautiful wife Selena are parents now. Their tiny little boy puts the wonder and the miracle of this life we're all living into clear perspective. It really is all quite amazing isn't it? Change...movement...growth...life.  Let's not forget to enjoy it!

I'll keep you posted on the little guys changes, new musical creations, and our life on the left coast.

Bye for now and off to California!

Much Love,

Suzi

The richest kid on the block

A jazz enthusiast came up to a seasoned veteran piano player after her gig and asked her why she chose jazz as her life's focus...the pianist replied "I don't like crowds"

I thought I'd start my blog today with some humor about my career, but as I was trying to remember musician jokes I was thinking about how the jokes that make us laugh the hardest do so because they're based on truth.

A band leader calls out a tune to the vocalist on the gig:  "I Remember April" the first 6 bars in Ab, bar 7 modulate down to the key of F, bar 12 change to 7/8, modulate back to Ab to end the head"
The singer looks concerned and says "Oh I couldn't possibly do that!"
Band leader: "You did it that way last night!"

I tell this joke to my voice students. It's an effective way to say "don't do that!"

Humor beautifully magnifies life's absurdities and makes us laugh at ourselves instead of the painful alternative.

What's the difference between a dead squirrel on the side of the road and a dead trombone player?
The squirrel was on his way to a gig.

How did the jazz musician end up with a million dollars?
He started with 2 million.

Actually I've always been a bit proud of the fact that I chose this esoteric path knowing it more than likely would not be a lucrative path. That approach to life must be in my DNA. My grandfather was in Vaudeville and along with grandmother Grace raised 4 children and had a rich life full of travel, culture, music, theatre and most importantly humor. My father found a way to be a jazz musician and support a family with 4 children giving us everything we needed and much more. I never felt like I lacked for a thing...quite the opposite...I felt like the lucky kid on the block. Our house was the house that everyone wanted to play at. My mother encouraged spontaneous living room plays,  performances, parades down Sterling Avenue and always there was music.
My childhood was like a Judy Garland /Micky Rooney film "Hey Andy! There's costumes out in old mister Greens barn!"
     Well, not quite...we didn't have a barn...but we were constantly singing and dancing and dressing up and performing with the assistance of my creative parents. Memories of my childhood were pretty close to idyllic. Music was part of every single day in our home and that was...is still...priceless.

So what's the difference between a large pizza and a jazz guitarist?
The pizza can feed a family of four.

Might be true...but truth be told I feel very rich.


My parents...



Mother on tour in the early 40's



My uncle Don and my grandfather Thomas in their Vaudeville Act


My father...



Mother pregnant with me! My earliest press shot :-)

Long Time No See!

Hello Music Lovers,
I've been off of the computer and away from my blog site for so long that I almost forgot how to log in!
Well, hello again! Here's what's up: I have been busy the past two years co-producing a wonderful music festival here in Austin. The concept is "Women led bands" not that all the collaborations are made solely with women but women are in the leadership role in each ensemble...playing their own music, with a woman's vision, leading their own bands...all styles of music...not just jazz but improvisation is definitely at the heart of each set. It is so inspiring to see women like trumpeter Ingrid Jensen at the helm performing her amazing compositions...and the extraordinary jazz pianist Helen Sung who were two of our featured artists at last years festival.

We also have an entire day of clinics in improvisation and ensemble work for aspiring young musicians, culminating in a master class to experience having that ultimate spontaneous musical conversation with a professional rhythm section.  In 2019 we hope to get enough funding to extend the festival to a longer weekend with more educational opportunities.

This year has a broad and varied offering of musical styles from Texas singer song writers Emily Gimble and LeeAnn Atherton to the astounding jazz drummer Allison Miller and grammy nominated Jazz violinist Sara Caswell to jazz pianist and festival artistic director Peggy Stern (no relation!)  and I'm thrilled to have the chance to showcase some new compositions that I wrote for the occasion to be premiered with my group which will also be featured at Lulufest this year.

If you're in the Austin area I hope you can make it to the concerts which begin at 5:00 and go until 10:00 PM in the beautiful newly renovated Jones Hall at Saint Edwards University. more details, like location, directions, tickets to purchase etc. at:  www.lulu-fest.com

Happy spring to all of you...Happy Easter...Happy Passover....happy whatever you celebrate to announce the coming of spring!  We had the sweetest seder with friends and family around the table discussing the green of spring...the renewal of life and hope that it brings and how precious freedom is.

Hope to see you on the 14th and thank you for reading my blog!
Much Love,
Suzi

Saturday April 14th

6:00 

at

St. Edwards University

3001 South Congress

Ragsdale Center, Jones Auditorium

The Suzi Stern Group

with 

George Oldziey piano, Paul Unger bass, Joey Colarusso woodwinds, 

Javier Chaparro violin and David Sierra Drums

Directions, tickets and all the information you need at: http://lulu-fest.com/index/

I’ll be premiering several new compositions!  Hope to see you there!

Musically Yours,

Suzi

Looking into 2018 with perspective

 I was taking a walk with my dear friend Ann, freaking out about my personal situation…money, gigs, artistic fulfillment, finding more time to be with my family and friends, and falling into deep despair about the direction that our world seems to be taking. She shared this beautiful paragraph from an article written by Maria Popova, that gave me perspective and I wanted to share it with you as we move into a new year. 

Wishing you all a 2018 filled with inspiration, joy, good health and hope! 

More on my music and January gigs here: www.suzistern.com  

and here is the paragraph…enjoy! 

"When the Voyager completed its exploratory mission and took the last photograph — of Neptune — NASA commanded that the cameras be shut off to conserve energy. But Carl Sagan had the idea of turning the spacecraft around and taking one final photograph — of Earth. Objections were raised — from so great a distance and at so low a resolution, the resulting image would have absolutely no scientific value. But Sagan saw the larger poetic worth — he took the request all the way up to NASA’s administrator and charmed his way into permission.

The “Pale Blue Dot” — the Voyager‘s view of Earth seen from the outer edge of the Solar System. (Photograph courtesy of NASA.)

And so,...the Voyager took the now-iconic image of Earth known as the “Pale Blue Dot” — a grainy pixel, “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” as Sagan so poetically put it when he immortalized the photograph in his beautiful “Pale Blue Dot” monologue from Cosmos — that great masterwork of perspective, a timeless reminder that “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was… every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician” lived out their lives on this pale blue dot. And every political conflict, every war we’ve ever fought, we have waged over a fraction of this grainy pixel barely perceptible against the cosmic backdrop of endless lonesome space. 

In the cosmic blink of our present existence, as we stand on this increasingly fragmented pixel, it is worth keeping the Voyager  in mind as we find our capacity for perspective constricted by the stranglehold of our cultural moment. It is worth questioning what proportion of the news this year, what imperceptible fraction, was devoted to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for the landmark detection of gravitational waves — the single most significant astrophysical discovery since Galileo. After centuries of knowing the universe only by sight, only by looking, we can now listen to it and hear echoes of events that took place billions of lightyears away, billions of years ago — events that made the stardust that made us. 

I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us. 

The Holidays

I'm in the Baltimore airport waiting for my next flight back to Austin.

The Southwest Airlines counter is donned in plastic green garland with wrinkled red ribbon and a bad arrangement of "let it snow" is playing on the airport intercom occasionally interrupted by a Siri sort of voice telling us to report suspicious activity to officials when ever you see something creepy. 

I was up north visiting my family before the holidays.  My mom who just turned 99 still lives in the same house where I grew up in north Buffalo.  Even though her home is beautiful I felt a melancholy being there as things are of course quite different now. 

My children are adults starting traditions of their own, my father and sister Shay have passed away and my once vibrant mother who would create memories of candle lit dining room tables decorated with fragrant pine and set with grandmothers silver is now the one we take care of...now we set the tables and light the candles...and rightly so.

Her house was dark when I arrived and desperately needed the warmth of company and light.

My heart kept flipping between a sense of joy that she was still with us...this amazing smart beautiful woman, to a nostalgic sadness knowing nothing can ever be as it was in those years of holiday's past.  Happy no school feelings, baking smells, singing and dads violin, constant company, the warm crackling of vinyl playing Ella, Nat King Cole and George Shearing, sitting on the radiator watching falling fat flake sparkling silent snow around lamp post light in blue cold night evenings from out our front window. 

On my week of visiting I found myself searching for a moment...anyone of those memory moments...to grab even just a glimmer of and drink it up. 

Waiting at my gate to return to my life in Austin I got a call from my son and his wife. 

They both sounded excited and happy as they shared their news with me...I was so touched by the sound of their exuberance and I was reminded of the cycle that is this life we all live.

Things move and shift and change and I can't really recover the little jewels from my past but I can find new gems moving forward...and how lucky am I to have those memories.  Life is an interesting and wonderful journey and my life has been an incredibly fortunate one.  Not so for many.  I am filled with gratitude. 

Happy holidays and may the new year be one of good health, inspiration, happiness, creativity, and time spent with the people you love...and in the bigger picture I hope that this year will bring a greater awareness of inclusiveness, an understanding and practice of true equality, magnanimity, care for this fragile beautiful planet, less divisiveness, more compassion,  more honesty, empathy and kindness.  Wouldn't that be nice?

To my Texas fans, see you at JEN in Dallas Jan. 3,4 & 5 and The Suzi Stern Quintet will be at the Elephant Room in Austin Jan. 18th. Come by and say "hello".  I would love to see you. 

Happy New Year and much love,

Suzi

                                            Snow in my Austin hood the morning I returned.

Just this 1/4 inch dusting of the frozen white stuff got everyone in town excited and school was cancelled...somewhat amusing to a Buffalonian!

It was magical...I got out a bit too late with my camera because much of it had melted already.

I felt like the snow was a gift...one of those wonderful memories I got to grab a taste of for a few hours.

The grand Dame herself...lovely at any age.