But the more I knew about him, the more I got to like him … This purity of spirit. He's a beautiful person. There's nothing not to like about the guy. Tom wouldn't take a walk with Angela because, he said, somebody might see him.
Those crises included sudden disappearances, rapidly changing mood swings, a suicide attempt, and a toxic reaction to a medication that almost killed Harrell. Trying is one thing, but succeeding is another. How to explain the mysterious explosion that blasts through Harrell's illness and transports him to the highest level of his art? A clue may come from Harrell himself: "I don't know whether I'm playing the music or whether the music is playing me.
Cerra, transcription is copyright protected; all rights reserved. Is that correct? It is a chemical imbalance so I take medicine for it. Society keeps changing very rapidly and modes of communication are changing, too.
Although music is probably the most social … [of the arts]. I was going to go into graphic arts but I was frighten by the solitude that was going to impose on me. But then I realized later that this was also the case with music as well, especially if you spend a lot of time composing.
WBGO: And in some sense, the artistic process, as you say, is a lonely one sometimes. It can be a lonely one in terms of being by yourself, but you are not necessarily alone. TOM: Well yes, because you are always aware that you can bring it to other people and that you are doing something with the ultimate goal of sharing it with people so as I think of Buddha sometimes they said that he went into the mountains to meditate and found this beautiful thing within himself.
He wanted to share what he found with other people. So musical composition is like doing that too. I think that ultimately it becomes like a religious experience because those idea that you have when you are by yourself come from somewhere beyond yourself that you want to share with others. Sometimes I hear something in my mind and I want to write it down and as I do this I become more and more inspired. It shows the subconscious at work. Too me, I relate psychiatry and psychology to religion, in the sense that the subconscious is a way for God to speak to us, because it is our Life force.
Our entire mind is a Life force and in a sense each person is like a universe. Sometimes I have to sacrifice a certain amount of writing and piano playing to practicing the trumpet because it is such a difficult instrument.
So I try to practice as much as I can, at least four hours a day, or even more. So I usually spend more time writing when I have long stretches between concerts.
I get into a two-day cycle when I stay up all night and sleep in the next day. It takes away from my trumpet chops, but during these long breaks, I do try to write everyday. I have note books that I keep everything from fragments to ideas in.
WBGO: When you write for this quintet, do you write like Duke Ellington would write; do you write the part for that person? TOM: Yes, I write for each individual. I try to find things that will make them excited.
What makes it worthwhile for me is when the music comes alive while we are performing. What is Prana? Its what keeps our lives basically moving. Because you seem to be completely engaged when the trumpet is in your mouth, and then when your solo is gone, you sort of move off to the side of the stage and are not making any kind of eye contact with any of the audience or the band members.
Do you think that it is a massive mis-characterization to say that you are not engaged at that point? Long ago, I was introduced to the idea of keeping a groove going along with everything else in life that you are trying to do.
Someone once said: even when you are not practicing, you are practicing. While you are going for a walk you are learning about life; or reading a book — same thing. You can learn something everyday that could apply to your life whether it is musical or non-musical. As a musician, I tend to see everything in terms of music. But everything is related to cosmology and related to it. WBGO: Tom, thanks for joining us. TOM: Thank you; nice talking to you.
It does not define him, either personally or creatively, but schizophrenia has been a shaping influence for much of his adult life. Schizophrenics never make any bones about it, and Harrell has even been known to joke about his condition, once commenting as he entered a hotel suite that there was a room for each of his personalities.
Sometimes he prefers a closet, but tonight the corner will do. He's clearing the voices from his head, trying to stay cool. Don't worry, he tells himself over and over, be positive The banalities don't stick, but they help push aside the voices a bit, and now he is ready to go to work. Harrell shuffles out of the darkness and onto the stage, where the four members of his band wait, and he begins shaking.
His eyebrows twitch. His lips smack. He stares at the ground, trying hard not to make eye contact with his audience. He doesn't want to give the voices or the hallucinations a chance to pop back into his head. As he raises his trumpet, the golden spotlight strikes stars on the horn's bell.
Even as he puts the cold mouthpiece to his lips, his twitching never quite stops. He takes a deep breath, and for one frozen moment, all is quiet. Tranquility hangs on an unplayed note. The trumpeter begins to blow, playing silky ribbons of sixteenth notes that rise and fall. Behind him, the band beats a latin-jazz rhythm. Then he tosses in a handful of slower, cloudier notes that curl and fade away. Harrell is one of the finest jazz trumpeters in the world. He is also schizophrenic.
Backstage after the set, he is impossible to talk to. He sits alone on a ragged sofa in a small dressing room. His wife, Angela, ushers me into the room and makes the introduction.
I try small talk, but he is unable to speak. His head shakes, and his lips move as if he's trying to release trapped words. I tell him that I would like to interview him at his home in New York.
He tries again to form sounds. Fifteen seconds of silence pass, and I am tempted several times to fill the empty space with babble. I arrive on a hot Friday afternoon in August, trumpet case slung over my shoulder. Tom Harrell photo: Michael Ian. Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music's best journalists and critics.
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JazzTimes Newsletter America's jazz resource, delivered to your inbox. His head is bowed, his chest caves in, the hand holding the trumpet hangs limp. His face is without affect or reaction. For more than four decades he has struggled with the illness and with the debilitating side effects of the imperfect medications used to control it.
His appearance unnerves people, even as their hearts go out to him. We have all, as listeners, experienced its charms—been soothed by lullabies, excited by fast tempos, consoled by stately rhythms. There is no cure for schizophrenia, although generations of drugs developed during the past 20 years have made the disease more bearable for many. But it remains very hard for a schizophrenic to make a coherent life, much less construct a stellar career. His fellow performers report that he is remarkably dependable and considerate.
When told about Harrell, neurologist Oliver Sacks, the author most recently of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, was reminded of one of the most studied cases of schizophrenia in history, that of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German who died in Harrell also benefits from his marriage to Angela Harrell, a Japanese-born science and medicine writer whom he met 16 years ago when she interviewed him for a joint Japanese TV and Discovery Channel documentary on creativity and the brain.
She acts as his manager, booking performances and looking after his music publishing. Hundreds of his songs, orchestrations and arrangements are used by other musicians. As a teenager, he sat in on Bay Area jam sessions that sometimes included famed saxophonist Dewey Redman.
In the s he moved from big, brassy bands to more experimental music, playing with jazz pianist and composer Horace Silver. Silver was a pioneer in hard bop style, an extension of bebop that pulled in gospel, and rhythm and blues. By age 30 Harrell was leading groups of his own. His 21 albums consist mainly of original works, with a few standards tucked in. Some of his most impressive pieces are experiments in the interplay of trumpet and voice. Our interview took place in a Lower Manhattan hotel room, with Angela sitting quietly nearby.
Harrell spoke with eyes downcast, sometimes closed. The sound is magic. Don Cherry once said, and Freud, too, by the way, that words themselves are magic sounds. His father, Thomas W.
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