Reggie Workman INTERVIEW by DAVID ADLER ✦ PHOTOGRAPH by JIMMY KATZ

The Personal File Computer? travel case. I had to choose a car according be where you are, under any circumstances.” “I am learning. I’m in touch with young musi- to the size of that case. But I usually com- cians, and that’s their world. This has to be mute by bus to New York, because I can’t af- Reading? part of my world too, to stay in tune with ford to park.” The shelves are overflowing with books, but the new energies. I just got Sibelius; I’m Workman singles out Michael Levine’s Deep learning that program. I’ve got to get a bicy- Travel? Cover (a critique of the drug war), Charles cle and catch up!” “I like the [Caribbean] islands, I like Brazil, I Mingus’ Beneath the Underdog, Valerie like Japan, I like Florence. I love the world. It Wilmer’s As Serious As Your Life and Lucien Car? just depends on what’s around you. The Malson’s Histoire du Jazz et de la Musique “A Ford Taurus wagon, which fits the bass buck stops here—your favorite place has to Afro-Américaine. 34 JAZZTIMES >> APRIL 2005 OPENING CHORUS @Home Reggie Workman INTERVIEW BY DAVID ADLER ✦ PHOTOGRAPH BY JIMMY KATZ eggie Workman smiles warmly teaching. He mentions Howard Gardner’s when our JazzTimes contingent theory of “multiple intelligences,” and be- rolls up to his door on a quiet, lieves students of all ages are best served by a Rresidential block in Montclair, thorough intermingling of arts and aca- N.J. But Julia, his black-and-white Shih demics. “We plant the seed with the little Tzu, simply can not contain her glee. Her ones at the pre-K,” he says, and ideally, the ecstatic welcome dance lasts a good five process continues, through young adult- minutes. Workman ventures a guess as to hood and beyond. “It’s one community,” what’s going through the dog’s mind: “Real he adds, noting that the children of Billy people! I don’t have to hang out with this Hart, Wallace Roney and Geri Allen and boring guy all day!” others have come under his tutelage. Boring? This hardly describes Work- Milenovic also helps out with Work- man. An unassuming master of the music, man’s performance career. There are several Workman, 67, a Philadelphia native, mi- ongoing projects: Ashanti’s Message, fea- grated to the New York area in 1958, and turing the remarkable pianist Yayoi Ikawa; his achievements as a bassist, bandleader Statements, a group involving some of and educator have yet to stop piling up. Workman’s Slovenian students; W.A.R.M., He recorded and toured with John a fledgling supergroup with Pheeroan ak- Coltrane’s classic quartet, shared the band- Laff, Sam Rivers and Roscoe Mitchell; and stand with Freddie Hubbard and Wayne a Coltrane Legacy band employing Charles Shorter as a member of Art Blakey and the Tolliver’s transcriptions for big band and Jazz Messengers, subbed for Ron Carter in choir. There is also Trio 3, Workman’s the mid-’60s Miles Davis quintet and has spellbinding collaboration with Oliver appeared on some of the greatest jazz al- Lake and Andrew Cyrille. Juggling these bums ever made. groups and teaching full-time leaves room Workman and his wife, the Slovenian for little else, but this accords with Work- choreographer Maya Milenovic, have made man’s philosophy of life: “Find out what their home in Montclair since 1993, a year things you can handle, the things that are after the birth of their daughter, Ayana. important to you, and concentrate on that, (Workman’s grown daughter, Nioka, is an do that well.” accomplished cellist.) Together, Workman Workman is a health-conscious person and Milenovic are a pedagogical force— who prefers not to dine out: “You don’t they codirect a local prekindergarten pro- know what you’re getting.” Before moving gram, a jazz-and-dance summer institute in to Montclair, he and the family lived in a Slovenia and the Montclair Academy of Jersey City condo, in “an area where the Dance and Laboratory of Music, along military used to have all their factories, and with its performance arm, the North Star they dumped radon into the ground, and Navigators Youth Theater. In their living people were dying from cancer. You could- Food? room there is a rail affixed to the far wall, a n’t drink the water.” Montclair also offered “I haven’t eaten red meat since 1958, but I leftover from the days when the dance better schools. eat fish and fowl. My father was a chef, academy was home-based. The move was just one instance of and I used to cook a lot when I was It’s no exaggeration to say that Work- Workman going the extra mile for his fam- younger. I don’t do it as much anymore— man’s life revolves around education. He is ily. He shaved his head some years ago, at as a matter of fact, I’m in the doghouse a full-time professor and curriculum coor- Ayana’s urging. “She loves Michael Jordan,” because I don’t cook as often as I could for dinator at the New School University’s jazz Workman explains. “I made a deal with the family. Where I need to find the time and contemporary music program. “I’m her: I will shave my head if you will stop to cook is in front of the keyboard or on concerned about working with the young being careless, and do the things you’re sup- the bandstand.” students, to get them interested in passing posed to do. She did her part, so I did my the ball to the next generation,” he says, al- part. Now she’s after me to get an earring, though collegiate jazz is only one facet of his but I don’t think so.” JT JAZZTIMES.COM 35.

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