peter jaques clarinetist & trumpeter

Athens, Greece ~ Oakland, California

[peterjaques]

Dec 16 Thessaloniki w/Hainides

λαιβ στο Block33 / Θεσσαλονίκη 16 δεκεμβρίου με τους Χαΐνηδες!

https://www.facebook.com/events/531076510572471/

[peterjaques]

Friday + Saturday in kadıköy ~ Cuma ve cumartesi kadıköy'de (at Kadıköy Özgürlük Parkı)

[peterjaques]

under Hungarian skies

[peterjaques]

What an inspiring weekend playing (and eating many, many mussels) with such incredible musicians & lovely people... Thanks Brenna & the gang, hope to play more soon! (at Mustafa Kemal Kültür Merkezi)

[ghettost4r]

[carlmckissickjr-deactivated2018]

Sad that this is still relevant

[peterjaques]

Yep

[peterjaques]

From my window

[peterjaques]

Έξω απ την πόλη, προς την Χαλκίδα

[peterjaques]

Such a good devotee.

[peterjaques]

Πανσέληνο πανό απ την Ακρόπολη ~ full moon over the Acropolis

[peterjaques]

Χάρηκα πάρα πολύ που επέστρεψα στην Ελλάδα… Και που έχω ένα φίλο που μπορεί να με φιλοξενήσει σε τόσο όμορφο μέρο

[peterjaques]

Karaburun

[peterjaques]

Selim hocam

I'm devastated to report: Selim Sesler, master Turkish Rom clarinetist, incredibly generous teacher, brilliant bandleader, and a sweet, kindhearted man, has passed away.

He hadn't performed for a few years, as he'd been awaiting a heart transplant. But when I was here for a month in 2007, I must have seen him 15 times. His music carried pure love through the air, and from the first note you heard, you immediately felt uplifted.

Allah rahmet eylesin, hocam. May your memory be eternal, and may your music live on through your sons & students. You brought incomparable beauty to the world. Elinize sağlik, ruhunuza barış.

[peterjaques]

28 feb part 3: practice, aka dancing with our watery reflections

It is this dynamic of practice — and also improvisation, and perhaps of playing music as a whole — which is most fascinating: we are expressing something, but don’t actually know exactly what we’re saying until we then hear it. This gives us the opportunity to listen to & assess & interpret what we’re expressing, and then immediately to respond, as if to someone else. And then that new, intuitive response immediately becomes an utterance of that someone else, round & round, turtles all the way down. In short, whether we’re practicing & hearing & “correcting” our mistakes & foibles, or improvising and responding to our own surprising statements, we’re dancing with our shadows, our reflections in a pool of water which itself ripples with our flailings.

Of course, this reflected rippling watery image doesn’t exactly resemble us; it in fact has its own movement based on tides & waves & interjecting sea creatures. Similarly, our music often doesn’t sound like something we ourselves said, or even what we meant to say; maybe the instrument interjected a squeak or squall, or you ran out of breath early, or maybe our fingers spoke for themselves (again). Maybe the bass player changed chords, so your phrase destined for A minor found itself suddenly inhabiting F major, saying & evoking something entirely different. We hear all of this, and are surprised. 

It thus becomes almost inevitable to see that voice which we’re hearing, the ripple with whom we’re dancing, as, well, someone else. Actually else. Every musician with whom I’ve had such a conversation has reported this feeling, that we’re not actually “doing” it, that something else is moving our fingers, our very breath, and we’re in fact just conduits for something beyond ourselves. So not only are we free dancing, with our rippling reflections for partners; but we don’t even know if our limbs dance at the ends of a puppeteer’s strings.

[Archanes, Crete, 3 Feb 2014, 7am]

[peterjaques]

28 February 2014, part II : on becoming a beginner

Larisa Station, Athens

I left Oakland, California, 390 days ago. At the time, I would tell friends that I wanted to approach my next phase — of music & life — as a beginner, open to planting new seeds, a whole new orchard even. But I've only recently begun to realize my tactical error: "becoming a beginner" doesn't mean telling everyone you're a beginner & wearing timidity, while ego secretly crouches, yearning for validation, aching to be recognized as not really a novice. This way lay madness; a community will quite readily take you at your word if, in professing neophytism, you amputate your confidence while feeding your pride table scraps. No, to become a beginner — to become one — requires the exact opposite: the confidence to arrive to listen, to ask, to not know, while diligently weeding your bitter dandelion pride, to prune its suffocating shoots again & again, leaving it to wither & rot, where it can feed more uplifting saplings which, nourished by hearing the music emanating from loving spirits, ultimately spring from the simple act of practice: of hearing ourselves, and sensing (ever more subtly, I hope) what it's supposed to sound like, what our soul meant to say, and seeking how to bring that intention more perfectly into expression.

[Nikos & olives, near Houdetsi, Crete ~ February 2014]

[peterjaques]

28 February 2014, 2:30pm ~ Athens, Larisa Station

I find myself beginning the first of nine hours waiting for an overnight standing place on the train to Thessaloniki, stationed inside the Everest snack bar while surreptitiously finishing my feta sandwich from Grigoris (the other tyropita megachain).

I have basically all my earthly possessions with me, in two bags that demonstrate a new form of alchemy (which would perhaps be wondrous in some other circumstance), by transmogrifying my instruments, sheet music, dictionaries & novels, & tiny wardrobe into pure lead. Alas, this metamorphosis being invisible from without, any passing opportunist would undoubtedly mistake their heft for that of gold. Thus, unable to comfortably traipse the rainy city, a reasonable man would avail of the left luggage concession, if only such a thing had survived the two-pronged service devastation of wildcat strikes & nepotistic cleansing. Alas, I instead find myself mourning the demise of lockers which, while never having known self awareness, much less higher ideals such as altruism, had once been devoted sentinels of weary travelers' junk.

In a word, I find myself stuck. In what amounts to the Greek version of Taco Bell. Until my midnight orthogonal departure. Instead of enjoying Athens' music & friends one last time before leaving the country which has housed me for a year, and which recently exhibits a creeping feeling of "home."

In fact, that's a welcome state of affairs. My last days, weeks, in Crete were quite filled — with protracted farewells, concerts of some favorite musicians in the world, local wine & Maria's cooking & music till dawn, a hike up Giouhtas mountain, and of course packing & the attendant paring down of my goods to unmanageable size — that I'm grateful for the calm that arises from anonymity in a city center.

[view from the side of Giouhtas, with Iraklio city & Psiloritis mountain in the distance]

I can finally reflect, and with a tiny bit of perspective even, on the closing of a thirteen month odyssey, walking the terrain of Kazantzakis & the Minotaur, peering down on the city named for Hercules, built atop Minoan ruins (hell, I had Minoan ruins in my backyard) from atop the mountain supposed to be the actual face of Zeus (either sleeping or dead, depending on speaker's affiliation & agenda), striking outward from the island once smack in the middle of the civilized (i.e. seafaring) world, feeling traces of Ottoman spirit among monumental neo-Byzantinism, the echo of shepherd's flutes reverberating (and reverberating) from a clarinet, the manic Dionysian wail of zournas whispering romances of the kleftes — the mountain bandits whose petty privations once occupied the vanguard of resistance & independence, & whose spirit lives on in a quite thoroughly corrupt government; all swirling together in a siren's whirlpool, attended by my own personal harpies.

More to come...

[peterjaques]

[peterjaques]

Pema Chödrön ~ three step practice

First, come into the present. Flash on what’s happening with you right now. Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions. Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful. This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying, 'This is my experience right now, and it’s okay.' Then go into the next moment without any agenda. from Pema's book Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change Thank you Shambhala Publications for Heart Advice of the Week. To get yours, sign up at www.shambhala.com/heartadvice/