"Me and my dad in a courtyard at HUMC"
In a brief moment, everything could change.
My brief moment came in the early morning of Aug. 4, 2008, when I was standing atop the ladder of my family’s above ground 4 foot deep pool, knowing full well, that I shouldn’t dive into it, but at the same time, planning my dive. That was it.
A brief moment later, I was floundering around in the pool like a wounded seal, my right side unresponsive from the fractures I had just caused to my cervical fifth, sixth, & seventh vertebrae. I was lucky. My spinal cord was only mildly impinged, and nerve damage was minimal.
The next day I scared the shit out of my family and friends as they waited as patiently as possible for me to come out of spinal fusion surgery, one that took eight hours and could have left me paralyzed. Again, lucky.
After a week in bed at the fine Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC), I came to Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, NJ, a place famous for taking care of Christopher Reeves. I’ve now been here for 5 days, and am doing awesome. I just got a laptop, enabling me to stay in touch with friends, write and blog. The people here are inspiring. From spinal cord injuries to amputees to paralysis victims to brain trauma victims, all here are working for a common goal, getting back to life as they knew it. I am, again, lucky. I’ll be out of here soon and I can walk, talk, read, write and even still play guitar. My right hand is a little ‘slow,’ but that’s what therapy is for.
Is there a lesson in all this? I don’t know. It is personal, maybe it is focusing on creating the positive energy that moves me. Music, writing, & life. We'll see what happens.
Saxophonist Namery, an Old Tappan resident since 1995, and his quartet represent a group of passionate performers who are helping to carry the legacy of the great American art form of jazz into the 21st century. While the lineup of Namery’s Jazz Focus could change on any given night, the players will always be awesome. Schooled in theory and practice, many, including Namery, are linked to some of the all time great innovators of jazz.
“The nice thing about jazz is you basically don’t have to rehearse with anybody,” says Namery. “You could basically be called by people who never saw you before, but have a great night of music because the camaraderie is wonderful. There is a magic about jazz.”
No rehearsals? This common aspect of jazz is made possible by the virtuosity of the musicians who are drawn to the style and spend their lives mastering its many nuances. The inventive spirit of improvisation has always been a part of jazz music going back to its inception. On July 9, Jazz Focus certainly wasn’t shy about improvising, as they tackled some of Namery’s compositions without ever having seen them until he passed them a piece of sheet music. They didn’t miss a beat.
“To me, listening to great jazz musicians, it seemed like there was something very magical in their improvisation,” said Namery two days before his performance. “I think that there’s a versatility that Jazz musicians have that enables them to just be confident that they’re going to be fine when they fall.”
That’s why it was no big deal to Namery when his third annual performance in Oakes Park, a park he helped design, was rained out, pushed back a day and two musicians he had planned on playing with weren’t available the next night. A few phone calls latter, he booked drummer Eliot Zigmund, a former drummer for the late great pianist Bill Evan’s among others, and prodigious acoustic bass player Sue Williams. Namery’s planned piano player Jim West was able to make it for the gig. That night at Oakes Park they were able to weave improvisations and interact like a band that had played together their whole lives, all the while anyone who wanted to listen could have heard their sounds for free.
“ If you allow yourself into a network of musicians in the area and they have some respect for you and you have respect for them, you wind up using them in situations when you get called for gigs and they use you,” said Namery.
And what better of a place for a network of great musicians than the larger New York Metropolitan area? Jazz Focus was founded by Namery in 1977 and both as a leader and a sideman he has maintained a busy playing schedule which includes famous Manhattan locations like the Blue Note, Birdland and the Rainbow Room. Often now you’ll find him performing and jamming in Nyack, NY area and in Englewood, NJ area: both where he says good jazz scenes exist.
Namery’s own roots in Jazz did not begin in New York City, but in West Paterson during the mid-1970’s when area clubs gave him the opportunity to interact with some of the great players in jazz.
“There was at one time in West Paterson, a real amazing scene going on. And being that I grew up in Paterson, I was there all the time,” said Namery. “It was just an amazing mix of the greatest musicians at the time.”
There he would interact with jazz masters Thad Jones, George Coleman, Billy Higgins, Phil Woods, Joe Pass, and Chet Baker to name a few. Namery would later travel to Boston’s Berkley College of Music and earn a bachelor’s in performance and then to Rutgers University where he earned a master’s degree in Jazz Studies learning from legendary jazz pianist Kenny Barron. But he also took in just as much knowledge and experience outside of the collegiate environmental as well. Perhaps the most important thing to note is the time he spent in the tutelage of saxophonist George Coleman. Coleman is the tenor sax on Miles Davis classics Seven Steps to Heaven, My Funny Valentine and more. His time with Coleman was made possible by a grant Namery secured from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Namery was also able to win a string of NEA performance grants that enabled him to put on concerts and workshops in libraries, schools and other venues. These types of grants were stopped in 1995.
Despite a busy playing career, he has taken up a career as an educator, running a music program for a Jersey City satellite high school. He credits his job as an educator for providing him with some of the securities that a career in music just can’t normally cover.
“It helps because it covers benefits. That’s one of the hardest things for musicians. So many musicians wind up getting sick and having no coverage,” said Namery. “As a musician, to live in this metropolitan area, you do have to wear several hats. I do stay very busy. I feel like I’m a full time musician, because I do a lot of gigs.”
But the true expression of music can’t be transferred to the page. It was legendary jazzman Thelonious Monk who said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” So go out and see him play!
Namery performs about three to four times a week and he is available for all kinds of gigs. Interested parties should E-mail him at allannamery@yahoo.com to book Jazz Focus or find out where he’s playing. He also said he’s still willing to teach private music lessons, but only to serious students because he is very busy. In addition to playing Tenor, Alto and Soprano Saxophone, he also plays the flute. He is frequently called for professional recording sessions and has even recently played flute in Techno music studio recordings. But his passion will always be jazz, exemplified by the name he gives his band, every time he takes the stage as a leader: Jazz Focus.
It's been less than a day and I don' t understand how Michael Tetta is no longer with us. His energetic exuberance was unparalleled. My most sincere condolences go out to Mrs. Tetta and his family and friends. I can not make sense of this tragedy.
