Category Archives: performance

public presentation; art, music, dance, drama;

Joe Rozler.

September 10, 2016arts education, classical music, classical musicians, creative writing, dreams, guest poets, human behavior, musicians, performance, personal testimony, professional musicians, social commentary, sociology, tributesAmerican songbirds, Buffalo arts scene, Buffalo NY, Buffalo NY music scene, creative legends from Buffalo NY, German heavy metal bands, Gigis in Buffalo NY, Joe Rozler, legends in their own time, Man O War, musical legends in their own time, Neitszche's, Pausa Art House Buffalo NY, Snow Belt capital of the Rust Belt Buffalo NY, the American song, the American Songbook, The Party Squad, the rock trio, The Sid Winkler Trioruth ann scanzillo

Buffalo, New York doesn’t get nearly enough press.

Or, I should say, it gets far too much of the dreary kind: Snow Belt Capital of The Rust Belt. The End. Thank you for coming.

But, nestled between the heart and soul of the big Buffalo is a bird. A song bird. His name is Joe and, if I had my way, he’d be the household word where everybody else calls home.

Granted, there are enough televised competitions already presenting the freshest young talent. And, occasionally, hidden gems have found their way to these stages. But, for a legend in his own time, there is no Tv show. That is because a Tv show could never do justice to the likes of Joe Rozler.

I met Joe in the halls of Fredonia State University, in 1980. He was probably loading equipment from a practice room to the trunk, heading off to a gig at the Jumping Frog on Route 5 for the weekend. All I remember was that voice, and a pair of legs that went on forever. And, his rendition of “Imagine” by John Lennon.

To say he seduced me is an understatement. I was completely overtaken, mesmerized by every sound he made and the way he made it. That, and the faint scent of Royal Spyce: he had me, with a warble and a hook, for life.

We were both the odd ones, returning after a two year absence – me, to earn enough to fund myself across the finish line, he to follow his bliss. Mark that last phrase; Joe never did anything but follow his bliss.

And, we’d both converged in the midst of completing that last bastion of fallback options, the Bachelor of Music in Music Education, a certificate that told the world in official terms that we were qualified to do what we were already born to. We were creatives; college was just where we came of age.

Or, I did. Joe was already the oldest soul on the block, caught in a body that bounded around like a nine year old at summer camp.

I’ll never know what precise configuration of DNA, or momentary inspiration, drove Joe to be who he was, but I do know this: Joe always knew. And, that was enough for Joe.

A natural rebel, he never wasted time submitting to any authority, or system, or institution that prevented him from living out his life’s intention. In school, he was already writing arrangements and selling them to a studio in Utah; in the summers, a metal band from Germany enlisted his keyboard wizardy for their tour.

But, the only thing Joe ever intended to do was sing, or play, or sing and play, the song.

Oh sure, we completed the requirements to obtain the degree. He played a piano recital; I played one for cello. Mine took six hours a day, and four months of those, committed to two works of music. Sitting in the audience for his, I remember thinking about hearing him do two straight sets at the Frog, engine revving until I thought he’d just pop right there in front of everybody, and deciding that this lone piano recital was just a parenthesis, merely the half time show of what would become the totality of his life.

As it turns out, thirty five years hence, I was right.

By now, there is no tune ever written that Joe has not sung. He, at the age of something like sixty, is the oracle of the American songbook. He has become the song.

So, while lesser mortals steamroll through their days, clamoring for their piece of the greedy pie, bowing at the feet of expectation and the promise of reward, Joe Rozler will still be singing. And, you’ll swear you never heard anything else quite like him in your life.

All you have to do is find your way to Buffalo. You can shuffle, or you can hustle but, however you make the trip, Joe will be there when you arrive, just a couple blocks shy of Elmwood, at the piano. With his guitars and synth, and even a ukelele, nearby. And, if you’re lucky enough to catch his solo act, he’ll play them all, nearly simultaneously, just for you.

The song will be yours. You’ll recognize it. You’ll remember it. You’ll know it. And, he’ll be bringing it on the most dazzling silver platter your eyes and ears could possibly behold.

Joe Rozler.

The American songbird.

Buffalo Hall of Fame.

Buffalo, New York.

littlebarefeetblog.com

Reflection.

September 1, 2016classical music, classical musicians, drama, musicians, performance, sociology, The Art of Practicing Institute 2015Bach Suites, cellists recording at home, Courante from Suite I, J.S.Bach, Unaccompanied Bach Suites for celloruth ann scanzillo

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A woman learns to be vain.

She learns from the casual commentary of family women. The subtle bias toward “fine” features, say, vs. the “coarse.” Certain preoccupations, even when the gift of beauty may be absent, with what constitutes an [ acceptably ] “pretty” face or figure.

All things being generational, really, mine came of age parented largely by the cast of MAD MEN. But, our parents were a decade older than most, on account of having been married twice to one another. Dad was preferred barber to just about every flat top crew cut and Princeton in town and my mother, being the “seamstress”, dressed her only daughter like a paper doll almost weekly. Both parents served the art of vanity, at the top of their class.

So, it is with this preoccupation that I step gingerly into the blogosphere with, well, my live physical presence. Customarily fixated on hair, make up, and the fit of garment whenever the threat of a candid shot creeps into the mix, I present instead behind the relief of the protective costume of my music.

And, oddly, PhotoBooth, the filming program provided freely by Macbook.

Which is actually, for reasons only the developer can explain, stuck in reverse.

I love that irony. You will see me, for the first time, not as I am but as I see myself.

In the mirror.

Herewith the Courante, from the Unaccompanied Suite No.1 by J.S. Bach.

Played by your host, littlebarefeet.

YouTube channel : Ruth Ann Scanzillo (still in its awkward, fledgling stage…)

littlebarefeetblog.com

One Dry Sabbath.

August 6, 2016blog site access problems for littlebarefeetblog.com, classical music, Deep Thoughts, gratitude, human behavior, musicians, nostalgia, performance, sociologyanti-Semitism, Jerry Tanenbaum, piano accompanists, reversing anti-Semitism, Sabre Dance, the Coda, the Gentile perspective on being Jewish, Thomas Friedmanruth ann scanzillo

Well, goodness.

How were we to know that being panned for an entire Saturday in late summer would render this self – involved blogger intensely concerned that she had offended, what, an entire following collective with just one, indirect reference to a specific national heritage*?

Having toyed with taking a more brazen stance, I’d opted instead for a sort of meandering through device and subtlety, just seeing where one word would direct the next. My intentions were almost too much, even for me to face; addressing the whole thing under veil of inference was somehow safer.

So much for safe. Haven’t we been preoccupied by safe, for the better part of the last fifteen years?

I mean, I could have done the simple thing. I could have said that I’d seen a boy again whom I’d adored from a distance at a tender phase of life, a boy who, in genuine appreciation for my having jumped to the Coda precisely when he did, went the extra step and had a bouquet of flowers delivered to his accompanist’s door.

But, that would have been just too naked.

I couldn’t expose a man who’d attended an Ivy league school, been married for years, sired three sons, established a successful professional practice, and then returned home to say goodbye to his father. Rather, waxing on and off and on again about his character, and how it was sourced, with bits about how much I honored him for everything his gesture represented at a time when I couldn’t have known how pivotal such an act would be to me in my own life? That seemed almost worthy.

So, yeah.

I saw a boy again. And, it was nice. And, I wanted it to mean something. But, of course, it could only mean what it was. Just a nice little chat, at his father’s wake. Not some treatise on the comparative theological value of Judaism. Not the apologist’s view of the Jewish character from a Gentile-based mentality. No study of social construct; no mask for ulterior motivation. Just a little visit, with the boy who played Sabre Dance on the xylophone in 1974.

Call me some kind of bigot; I really have no defense. I do not know the meaning of “Anti-Semitism.” If you think you do, then by all means, judge me and cast me off.

Otherwise, have a nice, dry Sabbath evening.

L’chaim.

*Twelve Pink Carnations.

littlebarefeetblog.com