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A Sound Legacy
Octogenarian musician Marvin Kahn
debuts his newest compositions.
.
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11/9
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86
lives in Traverse City, was instrumental
in bringing Legacy to fruition. She
suggested her father apply for a grant
from ArtServe Michigan, a statewide
nonprofit organization building sup-
port for the arts, to fund the composi-
tion and production of the recording.
He was successful.
"I'm very proud of that woman,"
says Kahn of Tarnow. "She's so strong
and able to take charge," he says. "I
have three daughters, and they're all
like that.",
etroiter Marvin Kahn laughs
when he talks about the
"intermission" in his musical
career. It lasted 25 years.
Now in his "second set," the 84-
year-old alto clarinetist will premier
his new CD, Legacy, Friday, Nov. 16,
as part of Jazz Fridays at the Detroit
Institute of Arts.
The recording is a jazz tribute to
Michigan Legacy Art Park, a 30-
acre wilderness sculpture park at
Crystal Mountain Resort, located
near Lake Michigan between
Cadillac and Frankfurt in the west-
ern part of the state.
Kahn first visited the park in 1999
for one of his many performances
with the Jeff Haas Trio, and returned
the following year with pianist and
collaborator Keith Vreeland.
Experiencing the park made a last-
ing impression. "I loved the usonian
quality — how things in the park
are part of the physical properties
surrounding them. It's a wonderful,
natural place," he says.
The park didn't inspire him to
write the songs on Legacy, he
explains. "I think 'being inspired' is
very fictional."
Instead, Kahn reacted.
For the song "Frog," he would look
at or imagine the large galvanized steel
and copper patina-covered amphibian
in the park while practicing, and play
Marvin Kahn: "By the time I was 14,
whatever melodic line it seemed to
I wanted to be a bandleader like
suggest to him.
Glenn Miller"
"Red Demon," after a sculpture by
Jim Pallas, is "a crazy little piece," and
can be interpreted as anger, humor or
Budding Musician
ridicule, Kahn says, just as the sculpture
can be interpreted by viewers in differ-
When Kahn was in middle school in
ent ways.
Highland Park, he took up the clarinet
The phrase, "Ooh, look at the
and discovered his "natural love" of
trees," came to Kahn as he meandered
the instrument and of swing music.
through the park, and he composed a
"I got hung up on it; I was obsessed.
By the time I was 14, I wanted to be a
"flowing melody" for that line.
Kahn wrote the piece "Vessel" after
bandleader like Glenn Miller. I wanted
artist Joe Zajac's work of masonry.
to be famous and have a lot of money
Shaped from stones, the sculpture
and a lot of girls."
rises at an angle and widens at the top,
In his early 20s, Kahn "was going
great guns" under the moniker Tommy
just like the musical line, which "starts
low, goes up and then swells at the
Marvin. His band played Detroit's
top," explains Kahn.
major venues in the late 1930s, includ-
Kahn's daughter, Terry Tarnow, who
ing the Graystone Ballroom, then