The publication of Alan Dershowitz’s latest article, A Victory Over Bigotry at Friends Seminary, from The Algemeiner on February 2 has me frothing with confusion once again over the charge that New York’s Quaker Friends Seminary is a harbor of anti-Semitism and bigotry. This time, the article is dedicated to Dershowitz’s conquest of the school, a kind of published victory lap reminding everyone of the undeniable power of ‘The Dersh.’

My confusion comes from the sheer amount of spin and misinformation present in all of Mr. Dershowitz’s writings on the concert at the Quaker Meetinghouse. As someone intimately involved in the production of the concert, I just don’t quite know What Dershowitz is getting on about and why the school is in the middle. It seems like the Dershiverse is capable of bending any fact into a tool to manipulate and injure the Friends Seminary.

Reading Mr. Dershowitz’s piece I was reminded that I have a major problem with the way we do things in this country. I have a problem with the rhetoric. I have a problem with the media and those who manipulate it for their own gain. Mitt Romney bugs me. I’m annoyed by Newt and his brand of politics. Sarah Palin gives me acid reflux and I think Santorum deserves his Google Problem. All this being said, I have a real problem with people like Alan Dershowitz. In fact, I have a problem with Alan Dershowitz. Personally.

Mr. Dershowitz uses cultural taboos to bully and shame people he doesn’t agree with. Charges of bigotry and anti-Semitism against his philosophical and political opponents are so common that R.J. Eskwo said in the Huffington Post that, “Dershowitz hands out accusations of bigotry like a clown hands out balloons at a birthday party.” (read: Guess What? Alan Dershowitz Thinks You’re a Bigot!).

Frankly, Alan dershowitz is a man of no moral grounding who will smear anyone in the most vile and politically expedient way possible in order to achieve his goal, which is unchanging. It has become plainly clear to me through this whole boondoggle at Friends Seminary that the glorification of Alan Dershowitz and his personal causes is reason enough to do or say anything - his flexibility in this arena is Romneyian, to say the least.

All of this comes down to one unavoidable realization. It explains everything. Alan Dershowitz is a neo-McCarthyite. Really, he is. It is a strange comparison to make, I admit, but it is one that must be made. I was reminded by a friend involved in the Atzmon MLK concert of Joseph Welch’s blistering condemnation of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. The invocation of McCarthy got me thinking about Dershowitz’s ghoulish din. The connection between Senator McCarthy’s tactics and those employed by Dershowitz in the Atzmon fiasco with Friends Seminary can’t be missed. You can read the full list of charges in my last two comments on the debacle, Alan Dershowitz, an Amoral and Impotent Dwarf and, Wall St. Journal Ignores Dershowitz’s History of Attacks in, “School Hits Sour Note.” Dershowitz’s cause is Israel, not communism, but the zeal in which he employs his McCarthyian tactics is at least on par with the late Senator.

McCarthyism can be broadly defined as a hysterical practice of publicizing (often groundless) accusations of political dissent with little regard to evidence, and the use of unfair investigatory methods in order to stifle free thought and inquiry. Senator McCarthy was a man who was unbound by conventional morality. I think in McCarthy’s eyes, his cause was a higher one, who’s ends always justified the means. Mr. Welch bravely said to Senator McCarthy, ”Senator, may we not drop this? … You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” I think Mr. Dershowitz has left himself no sense of decency as his behavior continually demonstrates. He should apologize to The Friends Seminary and the parents, teachers, and students that have been negatively affected by his untruths in the press. Sadly, he is without shame, so my call for his apology will go unfulfilled. The late Christopher Hitchens had a great line he used to commemorate the death of Jerry Falwell that I think would apply to Mr. Dershowitz equally. Hitch said that, ‘If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox.’ Indeed.

WSJ: School Hits Sour Note, Friends Seminary Grapples With Musician’s Political Views  - By Sophia Hollander

Here is my response to today’s WSJ article on my MLK Day concert with the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra. It should be noted that I had zero interest in Alan Dershowitz, or his causes, prior to this boondoggle with Gilad and The Friends Seminary.

Sophia,

It might have been worth noting that Alan Dershowitz has engaged in vindictive campaigns against all kinds of groups and individuals who’s views differ from his own. Norman Finkelstien, a man who rivals Gilad as a target in Mr. Dershowitz’s eyes, has been the recipient of similar attacks. Mr. Dershowitz has written that Finkelstien’s mother was a Nazi Collaborator. She survived Auschwitz and later testified in war crimes hearings. Her whole family was exterminated, and Mr. Dershowitz calls her a collaborator? Really? He uses the imprimatur of Harvard to lie and mislead the public. People see Mr. Dershowitz’s name and think, ‘well, it must be true - or at least some part of it- he teaches at Harvard.’ Is none of this relevant to the situation at Friends?

Mr. Dershowitz has co-opted the term anti-semite and has begun using it to describe anyone who he doesn’t agree with. He’s taken a very serious accusation - an idea that actually means something - and has turned it into something petty and self serving. We all know, In our country, it is a mortal sin to even flirt with anti-Semitism (as it should be). Dershowitz is using that vile charge as a tool of political expediency, a way to punish Friends and silence Gilad. His claims that Friends Seminary is a harbor of anti-Semitism is a kind of cheap moral blackmail. Dershowitz uses our culture’s very justifiable knee-jerk reaction to the invocation of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial as a tool to manipulate his readers. Is none of this relevant to the debacle at Friends?

Reading your piece I was left hoping that people are aware of Mr. Dershowitz’ moral flexibility in regards to scholarship, as he’s know widely as a plagiarist and a manufacturer of convenient narratives and histories. The scandal surrounding his book, “A Case for Israel” really colors his scruples in my eyes as it should in yours and the Journal’s. I hope people see the transparency of his tactics so his efforts to bully Friends are unsuccessful.

Despite the Dershowitz-distraction, this was a fun concert. Here is some video of a few tunes we did at the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra MLK fundraiser.

I had the good fortune to write arrangements for the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra this Fall for a benefit concert hosted by Manhattan’s Friends Shelter, the charitable arm of the E. 16th street Quaker Meeting House. The show featured the great British-Israeli saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and my arrangements of his tunes.

The afternoon of the concert a letter from Alan Dershowitz was delivered to Friends Seminary, a school connected to the Quaker Meeting House but unaffiliated with the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra, demanding that the concert be cancelled because of the band’s choice of guest soloist. In Mr. Dershowitz’s letter he threatened to create a scandal for the school in the New York Times branding them a harbor of anti-Semitism, owing to the recent publication of Mr. Atzmon’s new and very controversial book, The Wandering Who?.

Atzmon’s book is a philosophical exploration of Jewish identity politics and Israeli. The book has been positively reviewed by top academics in the United States and abroad. Mr. Dershowitz has been the book’s chief opponent and used the Quaker Meeting’s apolitical fundraiser as an opportunity to try and censor Mr. Atzmon. The school responded to Mr. Dershowitz’s letter honestly, stating that they are unaffiliated with the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra and that any complaints should be directed to the band.

The next day New York’s The Daily News published a ghastly article by Mr. Dershowitz that was clearly an attempt to discredit an institution that stood up to him. The fact that his attack was so obviously personal should say something of his cause generally. I am deeply troubled that a man of Dershowitz standing would hold a school hostage like a common terrorist for not complying with his demands. Friends Seminary drafted a response to Mr. Dershowitz within a few hours, a response he denies getting in his article, and then proceeds to spread his untruths in the press as punishment for the school’s insolence.

Mr. Dershowitz seems to be very concerned about Friends Seminary and the principals it stands for — I dare say that he might benefit from a moment of self reflection on that most grave and important matter. What are Alan Dershowitz’s principals? It is plainly unethical to bare false witness, to put it  in terms Mr. Dershowitz will understand. I think the school is owed an apology by Mr. Dershowitz, not only for his ridiculous piece in The Daily News, but for asking an academic institution to censor a man searching for truth understanding.

I wrote a letter to the editor the following day (1/14/12) and sent it to The Daily News. It reads as follows:

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Alan Dershowitz, in a spiteful, mean spirited, and misleading article from 1/13 in The Daily News, Gilad Atzmon, vile anti-Semite, makes new Friends, falsely conflates the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra and Manhattan’s prestigious Friends Seminary in an effort to churn controversy and scandal where none exists. Through innuendo and accusations of the vilest sort, Mr. Dershowitz has indiscriminately smeared Friends Seminary as part of a larger campaign to silence the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra’s guest saxophone soloist, Gilad Atzmon.

This attack on Friends is the result of the school’s refusal to kowtow to Mr. Dershowitz’s irrational demand that the Martin Luther King Jr. fundraiser concert be cancelled, an event the school had no claim to. Mr. Dershowitz never bothers to mention in his feculent and prolix piece that the school had nothing to do with the concert’s creation, though he insinuates many times the opposite is true. The concert was hosted by the Friends Shelter and independently produced by the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra as an entirely apolitical evening focused on raising money to feed and shelter those poor New Yorkers who need assistance.

The ethical implications of such a clumsy attack are obvious but must still be noted. Dershowitz behaves similarly to a whining toddler, unconstrained by facts, reason, or the broader consequences of his untruths in his quest for Mr. Atzmon’s silence. Dershowitz seems to be a man who has no ethical qualm smearing the innocent in an effort to suppress Gilad Atzmon’s voice in any way possible. Dershowitz’s attack should be seen as little more than a temper-tantrum thrown by an amoral and impotent intellectual dwarf.

One might ask why Mr. Dershowitz would trouble himself with a concert produced by an independent Jazz Orchestra that chose to feature a musician of international renown intended solely to raise money for New York’s poor. A fair question, indeed.

Upcoming Gig: A Concert to Benefit the Friends Shelter with saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra, January 12, 7:30 pm at 222 East 16th Street, in Manhattan, $20. I wrote the arrangements and I’ll be conducting the band. We are doing tunes from Gilad’s 2004 ENJA release, Exile. It should be a great night of music!

My friend died today. My mentor. Someone who has meant so much to me as a musician, a man, is no longer with us in body. I don’t know what exactly to say about the death of someone that I’ve been so intimately entangled with for so long. He was a partner in the truest sense of the word, someone who for my entire adult life has been present and willing to traverse the rocky terrane of my personal development. He showed me love. He showed me compassion. He invited me into his life with a kind of openness that I have rarely experienced. Bob shepherded me through breakups, recordings, rehearsals, triumphs, sorrows, death, my education as a composer and a human - the list really goes on and on.

I started studying with Bob at the tender age of eighteen. I went to Boston because Bob was there. I studied with him for four years, until he left New England Conservatory for heath reasons the summer before my first year in graduate school. I think he still owes me a couple of lessons, actually. The photo up top was following my second Jazz Composer’s Orchestra concert at New England Conservatory. I wrote a floaty piece that was very derivative of Maria Schneider, though at the time I don’t think I could have acknowledged that. My first lesson after the show he told me he was proud of me but it was time I graduated from “pretty,” and started writing lines. I’ve never stopped.

Bob insisted I be an individual. He insisted this of all his students and could be quite obstinate about it. He knew that I was never going to be Maria Schneider (who he loved!), no matter how much I tried. And I really, really tried. He knew a lot about me as a person, and spent an amazing amount of time with me investigating who I was and what my sensibilities were, be they political,  musical, etc. He knew I was kidding myself writing what he lovingly referred to as  ”vanilla-fudge.”

Through his prodding and guidance I came to realize that I had been writing in a style that was easily liked and externally validated; it was pretty, light, meandering, and sensuous in its own way, but it wasn’t me. He gave me the confidence to eschew “an easy get,” as he used to say from the audience and search for something more intrinsically myself. He taught this by example, as his own music’s arc demonstrates. Bob introduced me to Kurt Weill, who I have been imbibing passionately ever sense, a decade long love affair and still going strong. He held meet and greets in his Jordan Hall studio with Bartok, Ligiti, Earl Brown (who had been a mentor of Bob’s), and countless other composers who he knew I would gravitate towards. I did. All of them, actually, to my surprise in many cases.

To that end, Bob also - this time literally - introduced me to my other great mentor, teacher, life-model, Vince Mendoza, who I contacted at Bob’s behest. Once my association with Vince began, Bob always asked after him when we spoke. I’m not sure if they were close but their mutual respect for the other’s craft was apparent in every word the two spoke of one another. I think the word Vince used to describe his feelings towards Bob was genuflection, a new and strange and entirely exotic word for a non-Catholic to hear and understand fully, but one that I now see as a bit of eunoia. Bob was a kind of priestly figure in our art. The introduction to Vince’s sound world was game changing for me. Bob knew I would love Vince’s music. I did. I do.

Bob took the time to know me. Not what I wore as a mask, but the marrow. Through all of this he provoked me into being original. He fought me and I him, but in the end I was able to see into myself in a way that had previously eluded me. He showed me who I was. He lifted the veil. Every time I sit down to write, I compose more earnest music than would be possible had he not taken the time to know my core, and champion my own intrinsic value. What I learned from Bob was less about music and more about honesty and the cultivation of an accurate sense of self. He had both of those things in spades. He was deeply honest.

When I got the news I was writing an arrangement for a concert coming up in January. A few minutes before I heard of his passing, I finished a section of the tune where I had written some very prickly counterpoint and had remarked to myself that “Bob would approve.” It is strange to think that now that “would,” which occasionally floats into my mind while I’m writing will now be a would’ve. The idea of shifting from present to past-tense is jarring and scary. It is just so sad, loosing him, and I can’t help but think he will remain very much in the present-tense in my mind moving forward. How could he not?

I want to share the letter I sent him on his eightieth birthday, which I think has a clarity that I am currently unable to muster in my current state. His reply was so Bob. I got an email back that said, “I did all that? Feeling very warm. A very happy birthday indeed! Love, BB.”

Bob,

On your eightieth birthday I can’t seem to find the appropriate words to express the ineffable impact you have had on my life. I can’t imagine what being on this planet for eighty years feels like, but I would imagine that, as the years progress one might begin to look at their time on this world in a more reflective way than in one’s youth. And to that end, on this day in your life, I would like to share a few thoughts about my experience with you, and really, of you that has helped shape my world in a positive way.

In no particular order I think you should know that you: taught me to own it; cared for me; guided me; challenged me; let me challenge you; hugged me; showed me what it means to be engaged; shot the shit with me; told me I was wrong; told me I was right; gave me your time; broke bread with me; shared your life’s history; made me feel welcome in your life; let me just be; accepted my faults; developed my core; lead me through rough spots; acknowledged the smooth ones; let me feel satisfied with myself; asked me why; made me do it over and over and over again; reminded me why I do what I do; encouraged me; and most importantly you gave me something of yourself that has made it’s home in my art.

I can’t thank you enough for these things and while this letter fails to communicate my appreciation of this short and less than complete list, I hope you take from it that you have given me something special by giving me something of yourself these last seven years. So, happy birthday. Enjoy the cake and be well.

Love,

Nicholas

Jazz and poetry are soul mates. Since the live club sessions that paired writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg with jazz adventurers, and before, the two art forms have informed, supported, enlivened and challenged each other to higher expressiveness. From poetic firebrand Jayne Cortez to cerebral jazz/poetry synthesist par excellence Steve Lacy, the range of moods and subjects covered is panoramic. Saxophonist Archie Shepp once said that jazz was the lotus that grows in spite of the swamp. And barroom bard Charles Bukowski “grows” beautiful blossoms of poetic verse, in spite of his harsh surroundings and chronic alcoholism: his garden is a place of conscious contemplation of life’s grating contradictions beatified. Bukowski’s poetry finds in jazz composer/arranger Nicholas Urie an empathetic respondent, who creates jazz “flower beds” for eight poems to flourish. His pieces serve to expand the poems core qualities by bonding them with jazz orchestral works played a crack 12-piece band and vocalist Christine Correa. There is a film noir feel to tunes, especially “Slaughterhouse,” featuring outstanding soloist soprano saxist Jeremy Udden. Bukowski’s knowing humour makes an appearance in the robust “Round and Round,” wherein Correa vibrantly and repeatedly declaims, “You have my soul and I have your money.” Urie’s juxtaposition of street roughness, bedroom intimacy and razor-sharp sonorities make My Garden an organic, sonically rich greenhouse of poetry-and-jazz flowers.

Glen Hall

Things seem to be going well in Chicago as evidenced by this lovely write-up by Neil Tesser from the Chicago Jazz Music Examiner, “A U.S. premiere: Kurt Elling in Chicago, with a little Danish on the side.” Neil says in the piece, ”These days, Klüvers Big Band features a number of arrangements by Nicholas Urie, an American-born wünderkind arranger, who at the age of 26 has released two ambitious and uncompromising albums of original compositions while penning arrangements for a slew of other artists.” If you’d like to see the show in NYC, below is the info from the New York Times.

On a personal note, I am really excited that the band is playing in New York. I don’t get to go to many gigs where my arrangements are being performed (travel economics) and to have this wonderful band that I love working with in town, is just, well, special. I feel like I know everyone in the band already, despite my never having had the opportunity to shake their hands. It will be wonderful putting a face to a line on score paper. Very excited, indeed.

★ Kurt Elling, With the Klüvers Big Band (Tuesday through Oct. 30) On “The Gate,” released on Concord this year, the mercurial jazz singer Kurt Elling seeks out a meditative mood, without forsaking the imperatives of a searcher. Here he draws partly from the album with an estimable big band from Denmark, making its New York debut, and a succession of guests, beginning with the alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón (Tuesday), the tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin (Wednesday) and the tenor and soprano saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (Thursday). At 8:30 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080, birdlandjazz.com; $40 cover, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen)

Here is a recording of my arangement of John Scofield’s A Go Go.  Kluvers, per usual, sounded amazing as did Scofield and Stewert. Amazingness all around. I bought the A Go Go record at the tender age of +-16 and gave it my undivided attention for the better part of, well, a long time. It was such a pleasure to be able to participate in this project and get to work on some music I have a real attachment to - this music is as much a “standard” to me as anything else.