Joshua Redman: Headin’ Home

Joshua Redman's 2000 album Beyond

Birthday greetings to saxophonist Joshua Redman, who celebrates No. 43 today.

Joshua follows father Dewey Redman in most jazz CD collections, but it wasn’t Dewey’s path which put him there. Nor was it so much his father’s influence, but his mother’s.

Renee Shedroff was a dancer and librarian in California; she and Joshua’s father never married, according to enotes.com. Shedroff raised Joshua — they would see Dewey when a concert tour brought him near, and Joshua would hear him among the sounds of a house filled with music — and she introduced him to the arts.

“His mother . . . was the driving force that nurtured his creativity,” wrote Matt Pierson on the liner notes to Redman’s debut 1993 album.

“Materially, I did not grow up privileged,” Joshua told the crimson.com in a 2011 interview. “My mother and I were on welfare at times when I was growing up. I wanted a sense of stability, and playing jazz wasn’t my first choice economically speaking.”

Medicine might have been. Or law. Just not music. Because of his scholarship, Redman didn’t lack for opportunities. He graduated first from his class in high school and went to Harvard, from where he graduated summa cum laude (he may not be the best saxophone player ever — he’s certainly up there — but he’s pretty surely the smartest).

Redman was accepted into law school at Yale, and according to pbs.org, intended to work in civil rights or social work. Like a lot of college graduates, he took time off before matriculating at Yale Law. Redman intended it to be only a year’s sabbatical; we’re now at 21, and counting. We’re guessing Yale’s not saving a spot for him any more.

“I didn’t grow up with my father around, but I know that he struggled to put food on the table for himself and for his family,” Redman told the crimson.com. “I knew that there were many challenges to becoming a creative musician with integrity.”

Perhaps so, and perhaps the challenges are more than we can appreciate. But we also can guess this much: Redman became a “creative musician with integrity,” because he started as one, more than two decades ago when he decided the world could do with just one less lawyer.

“The reason I am playing music is because there is a part of me that feels that I can’t do anything else or there is a part of me that feels I have to play music,” Redman said in an interview with Fred Jung at jazzweekly.com. “It gives me an inspiration and a fulfillment and a joy that nothing else does. That is why I chose to play it. So it wasn’t a career decision. It wasn’t a rational decision in that sense. It was a decision of the heart and soul.”

Sources: enotes.com, crimson.com, jazzwekly.com, pbs.org, baltimoresun.com

Jane Siberry: False False Fly

Jane Siberry's 1993 album When I Was A Boy (''calling all angels, calling all angels, we're cryin' and we're hurtin', and we're not sure why'')

 

Birthday greetings to singer/songwriter/poet Jane Siberry, who spent three years known as Issa — not to be confused with, or in recognition of, the California congressman of the same name. Siberry celebrates No.56 today.

Siberry might be mostly anonymous south of the border, but not in her native Canada. If you didn’t know her home country, you might have guessed if you ever heard her song Hockey. Who else but a Canadian, or Canadiens’ fan we presume (she’s from Toronto, but we don’t hear any Leafs references in the song), could work the night of the riot at the Montreal Forum and Hall of Famer Jean Beliveau into the same song (“this stick was signed by Jean Beliveau, so don’t f——- tell me where to f—— go”).

Siberry’s work is hard to categorize, except as . . . varied and different. You can easily decide for yourself since Siberry’s website, janesiberry.com, runs on the honor system. Visitors are invited to download her music from the site and pay what they can or nothing at all. According to Alexandra Gill on osdir.com, less than 1 in 5 downloaders were doing so for free, and of those who paid, most paid the normal fee. Of those that didn’t, more paid more than paid less.

Whatever they paid, Siberry is a bargain, and her voice is beautiful. Don’t expect to typecast her music, or her. We know this: she resembles, to these eyes, Meryl Streep; she seems to love dogs (“if you remind me of my dog, we’ll probably git along,” she sang on Everything Reminds Me of My Dog); and she must spend a lot in business cards — the artist formerly known as Jane Siberry and formerly known as Issa is known again as Jane Siberry.

“I felt the need to make some strong changes in my life,” Siberry told Sarah Terez Rosenblum in 2009 at windycitymediagroup.com. “It seemed important to change my name, so I did. I changed it to a name that I thought was simple, an empty cup. I had never heard the name Issa before, and it turns out to have some wonderful meanings, including a haiku poet in Japan, and the name that Jesus had in India. But . . . I officially changed my name back to Jane Siberry. I felt with the name change, I had gotten in my own way, in terms of devoting myself to my career, making my work available to people. So, Jane Siberry is my name again until further notice, but I feel richer from having been Issa for three years.”

A link and lryics to False False Fly from the 2000 album Hush below:

“Will you come along with me?”
said the False False Fly
To the lovely little child on the road
“No, I won’t come with you,”
said the lovely little child
She was only but seven years old

Sources: wikipedia.org, janesiberry.com, bittersuiteband.com, osdir.com, windycitymediagroup.com