Arts & Sciences

Malcolm Gladwell on the role that skill plays in appreciating writing, or art

“I thought of this as well the other day when I read a long post on a sportsblog ripping into Bill Simmons. I know, I know, I’m totally in the tank for Simmons. But here’s why: because the degree of difficulty of the kinds of columns he writes is sometimes off the charts. He recently did a really long account of a trip that he and two friends took to Green Bay. It was a kind of running diary. Was it the best thing he has ever done? No. Was it perfect? No. But here’s the thing. As someone who writes for a living, I know something that a non-writer can’t know, namely how hard a running diary like that is to write. Try it sometime. Getting the tone right, and making the prosaic interactions of a group of friends interesting and funny to an outsider audience is really really difficult. That’s what I wanted to scream at the bloggers going after Simmons. You don’t like that? Try pulling that off yourself sometime!”

The Bad Plus’s blog, DO THE MATH, is a must read. They’ve had some cool stuff lately, like an extensive series on the underappreciated jazz albums of the 70s.

Here’s a great post of a conversation between Ethan Iverson and Jason Moran.

In celebration of Sonny Rollins’ 76th birthday, and brand new album, “Sonny, Please,” nine classic concert videos have been released on SonnyRollins.com.

My favorite one is this 1981 performance of “Moritat” with George Duke, Stanley Clarke, and Al Foster:

I think this must be an encore, since Sonny is the only soloist on the 8 minute track. (And I believe that Moritat is a pretty rare track for him to play live.) This clip captures Sonny’s massive presence on stage: his tone, how hard he swings, the momentum in his melodies. You can tell that its a pretty special moment from the shit-eating grin on Stanley Clarke’s face.

The new issue of Seed has an thought-provoking article, “How we Know,” that explores some research on learning. The article discusses K. Anders Ericsson’s work on expert performers, in which he studied brain surgeons and concert pianists. Ericsson found that practice accounts for most of the difference in performance that could otherwise be attributed to “talent”:

“For example, when Ericsson studied classical pianists, he found that the winners of competitions had practiced over 10,000 hours by the age of 20, while less accomplished performers only practiced between 2,000 and 5,000 hours.”

The 5,000-10,000 hour figure sounds about right. The saxophonist Bill Pierce once told one of my friends that he would need to practice 4 or 5 hours a day, for 4 or 5 years, in order to play at a professional level. That works out to about 4,800-7,500 hours, right within the range that Ericcson describes.

And, as Ericsson’s work suggests, the greats may just outwork everyone else. Remember, Coltrane was famour for practicing in the dressing room between sets, and the Sonny Rollins once said that he practiced 18 hours a day during his famous sabbatical on the Williamsburg bridge.

A live clip of Donny Hathaway’s band cutting loose on the “The Ghetto:”

This song is on Donny Hathaway’s spectacular “Live” album, which contains tracks from two performances in NYC and LA. In addition to a great version of “The Ghetto,” the album also has a gritty, passionate version of “What’s Going On” – my favorite version of the song.