isen.blog

I missed the gig Rossano Sportiello played in Woods Hole last year, but I couldn't miss the buzz among the local musicians. It persisted for weeks after Sportiello's performance, which was, by the several accounts that I heard, stunning. Apparently, the boy can play piano.

Sportiello came to Woods Hole this Fall again, and I missed it again, and I heard about it again! So I went to his Web site and found out he had several NYC area gigs. Finally, last night I caught him at Small's Jazz Club in Manhattan.

I don't have enough adjectives in my bag to describe Sportiello's playing. Words like, "awesome," don't do it justice. "Impossible," hints at the kinds of things his hands were doing. And when, after an enthusiastic round of applause, I muttered, "Wow, too much," from my front-row seat, he replied, "Yes, probably," and all four of us in the audience laughed.

Yes, that's right, this world-class piano player, playing in a noted jazz club in one of the music capitals of the world, had drawn FOUR listeners. Four. Me and three others. One was probably a friend of his, and the other two were snuggling in a booth in the corner.

OK, OK, by the end of Sportiello's set, the room had maybe 20 people in it. One of the newcomers asked me, "Who was that? He's good!" He was there for the next act.

Sportiello isn't alone. Have you heard of John Miller? Joe Weed? Ginny Snowe? Joe Sutton? Savely Schuster? Beverly Smith and Carl Jones? [UPDATE: David Grier? Matt Fliner?] These are skilled masters of their craft, just as worthy of kudos as the musicians we know as household words, or more so. I've seen them all in small rooms with maybe a dozen other listeners. If they showed up in your town, I'd bet they'd draw in the low-dozens at best, even with good publicity.

I know, I know, long tail, blah, blah, blah . . . I think there's something different going on. I think there are great musicians everywhere. I am not underestimating the skills of the great ones, but I think musical greatness is way more accessible than the Star Maker Machinery admits.

I think if there were means to discover who the great musicians in my neighborhood were, I'd be amazed. My guess is that most of them don't play in public at all, and that this, in itself, is a market failure. I think the market failure in music is in treating "the market" as if it were the entire country, or bigger. I think the market failure that is live music needs to be de-failed -- our culture would be richer, our lives more meaningful with more live music.

[By the way, I got email yesterday suggesting that isen.blog was a tech blog, and shouldn't stray into other topics like music, fishing and politics. Especially politics. My response: too bad. If I want to write in public about music, or the people I love, or the a55h01es that run the country, or climate change, or the joys of fishing or flying or sailing or cooking, or about my kitty cats, I will. Don't like it? Don't read it, like billions and billions of other people.]

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