David Amram arrived at TIA with a lot of bags, but very little baggage.
I found him Tuesday night near the luggage carousel. He was already weighed down by two large carry-ons. Moments later, a huge silver, triple-zipped bag circled by. I picked it up and thought perhaps it was filled with rocks.
“Don’t worry, it has wheels,” he tells me.
But when he’s happily rummaging though the bags back at his hotel – looking for a belt he packed so he wouldn’t have to remove it at security – I notice there are almost no clothes in the bags.
They are chock-a-block with books, CDs, DVDS, and various flutes and hand drums. From one bag, he pulls out a thick wad of white pages – the score for a new concerto.
He locates the belt and one pile of dark fabric – folded tight – that he tosses unceremoniously to the floor. It’s his outfit for his Palladium show on Friday (follow this link for info and tickets).
“Is there a place I can get these pants hemmed – or should I just wear them rolled up?” Amram asks me.
When you’re an 86-year-old musical wizard – honored as a classical composer (his work has been performed by major orchestras), a jazz man (playing with Dizzy, Mingus, Getz and dozens more of that caliber), a folkie (he’s appearing with Judy Collins and Roseanne Cash among others at the Kennedy Center this Saturday for a concert honoring his pal, Pete Seeger), and a composer and arranger of Hollywood film scores (Splendor In The Grass, The Manchurian Candidate, The Arrangement), nobody cares about the status of the fabric around your ankles.
Spending a few days with him, I realize Amram lives happily in both in the present and the past.
He’s planning upcoming concerts, while telling stories about going barefoot to first grade on Pass-A-Grille in the 1930s, playing jazz in Cuba with Dizzy, Getz and Earl Hines in the 1970s, attending the University of Hangoutology with Jack Kerouac in the 1950s, eating osso bucco with Leonard Cohen in the 1990s, and attending Hunter S. Thompson’s funeral (where his remains were launched into space) in 2005.
His Friday night show at the Palladium Side Door is going to be a little like that – an eclectic mix of the diverse elements that make up this man.
We’ve lined up three great jazz players – Alejandro Arenas on bass, Mark Feinman on drums and James Suggs on trumpet to join him as Amram plays piano, flutes and French horn. Two American Stage Theater talents, Jim Sorenson and Colleen Cherry (who recently sang as David Bowie at the Palladium) will read some Kerouac while the band jams behind them. And Amram’s pal, John McEuen, founder of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, will bring his banjo up from Sarasota to play some more bluegrassy/Americana tunes.
Hanging with him can make you wonder if he actually knows everyone.
I mention Amram to Jeff Multer, artistic director of our Palladium Chamber Players, and he says “You mean the great composer, David Amram? My father has some of his music on his paino.”
Backstage before Wednesday’s chamber concert, cellist Ed Arron tells Amram that he played under his baton for an opera – and so did his father. Violist Danielle Farina realizes Amram worked with her music teacher.
When Michael Pastreich, president of the Florida Orchestra, meets him at intermission, he realizes that Amram played in the Greenwich Village Symphony with his father.
It goes on. Stories of his children – two of them are musicians – his friendship with the folksinger Odetta, composing scores for Joe Papp’s original productions and eventually for his “Shakespeare In The Park” events.
Stay curious. Live in the moment, and be ready for what life hands you. Whether that’s what keeps him young at 86, it is certainly the perfect prescription for living the creative life.
Hopefully, I’ll see you at the Side Door Friday night. David Amram will make sure it is a special night. With him, they all are.
For tickets and information you can call the Palladium box office at 727 822-3590 or follow this link for online tickets.
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