“In 1967, I went to London and there, through my London family, I met Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, two of the big jazz stars of that time. Cleo told me to look up jazz singer Sheila Jordan when I got to New York and after three weeks of phone tag I finally got lucky. She took me under her wing and introduced me to all the jazz greats of the era including Ornette Coleman, George Russell, Jaki Byard, Elvin Jones, Roland Kirk, Jimmy Garrison, Charles Moffet, Ted Curson, Howard McGhee, Booker Ervin, Billy Hart and so many others. I had moved to New York after having taken the medical exams in South Africa and immediately went to work at Bellevue Hospital, Grasslands Hospital and New York Hospital and all the while I was playing at night in clubs like Slugs and the Village Vanguard, The Village Gate, Pooky’s Pub and Musart with many of my newly found jazz friends that Sheila had introduced me to. Some of the people who saw me at the clubs ended up in my care at Bellevue and they wondered if I really knew what I was doing as they’d seen me as a jazz musician the night before!” “The music was inspiring me so much and I knew that I wanted to learn still more, especially about jazz. Around that time I heard that Gunther Schuller was starting a jazz division at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, so I applied to the school and after two auditions and letters of recommendation from Bill Evans and Ted Curson, I was accepted in the jazz department. I moved to Boston and I was surprised to find out that although I was a jazz piano major, they had no piano teacher for me! I protested and they asked who I would like to have so I suggested some of the great players I’d heard in New York, like Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Hank Jones , Roland Hanna , John Lewis or Jaki Byard.” “Gunther said ‘OK, we’ll get one of those people for you. In the meantime I studied with classical piano teachers who taught me the correct fingering and hand positions that I’d never learned. I practiced carefully for three months and then the school flew me to New York weekly to study with the great Jaki Byard. After a few weeks, other students heard about this and so the school decided to fly Jaki to Boston on a weekly basis to teach several students at NEC.” “During my time at NEC I was also holding down positions as a physician at Harvard University Health Services, the student medical center at MIT and I was even the prison physician at Walpole Prison. I also moonlighted at various emergency rooms and in intensive care units. Again, I always needed to balance the rigors of medicine with those of music. I had a wife and family at this time as well.” “I put together a band called “Sagov” and it featured trumpeter Stanton Davis and drummer Anton Fig, both classmates at NEC at the time. We opened for Gary Burton at one point and the famous jazz manager and booking agent Ted Kurland offered us a deal to go on the road and record. It was, for the music business, a pretty good deal, but in contrast to the steadiness and security of my medical career and in thinking about my wife and child, it seemed impossible to take the on challenges of touring.” “I never expected to stay in Boston after my stint at NEC but I found New York to be a ‘cutting contest’ which was very harsh, almost racism in reverse. I was sympathetic to the reason for this, but really preferred the camaraderie of playing with musicians like I had done in South Africa and in Boston. I’m somewhat wistful about those choices now but I feel now like having my high tech studio with all the latest gear enables me to keep my chops up and write music. I now produce about a CD’s worth of music per month in my mini studio, playing all the instruments myself.” “I’m idealistic about music. Jazz is a bridge between races. Neither could exist without the other. Jazz is a very unique music and rock and roll exists only because of it. It’s a mixture of European influences with sophisticated African rhythms and it’s a discourse, a conversation that is going on that can only happen in the moment, in real time. It’s being open to each other, in a creative context in which everyone is winning.” I was a disciplined student by day but also a mad man at night! STANLEYSAGOV 2010 7 “The title of my 2008 CD was L o o k i n g F o r w a r d t o Remembering The Future. That’s what came up with this album . . . it’s music that in a way, compared to music I’ve played, is pretty serene, reflective, drawing on tradition, but still fresh. It’s got its own group feel. It has eclectic openness to all that is in this place, at this moment. The meaning of the title has to do with the fact that by the time you and I know anything, it’s already over. We’re never in the present because it’s already over. We’re operating as if it’s now, but in truth, it’s already over. So, in jazz, we’re remembering that note that’s over and responding to that and the irresistible drive to get to the next moment. Jazz is a sexy mix of head and heart, and in order to experience a bit of now, you have to be impelled by the future oriented momentum of the music. It’s like making love with the other musicians in real time right in front of all of our audience. Nobody really dies in jazz, Miles, Dizzy, Ellington, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, they’re all really still so alive in our passionate resonance to remember them and anticipate and make the next possible musical gesture happen right now!” S TA N L E Y S A G OV & T h e Remembering The Future Jazz Band is a bunch of grizzled jazz veterans who never really grew up, still love to play the music and want to share that experience in the moment of creation with YOU!! “I’m idealistic about music. Jazz is a bridge between races. Neither could exist without the other. Jazz is a very unique music and rock and roll exists only because of it.” Stanley Sagov