Hot Pursuits Bassist Matthew Berlin by Lydialyle Gibson
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MONTAGE work, including Pass if not in reopening old ents an unparalleled opportunity to experi- Over and its prede- wounds: the protago- ment and to speak to a diverse America that cessor, Breach, as at- nist in Tuvalu is a black exists nowhere in physical space. “I’m not tempts to use theater woman looking back asking people to forget their hatred as a way as “therapy.” (Breach on her adolescence in of glossing over it, but to engage with their presents a young writ- Los Angeles, amid the hatred as a way of letting it go.” er-teacher trapped O.J. Simpson trial and But for transformative emotional journeys between compet- violence in her own through storytelling, Nwandu believes the- ing expectations and home. Now, Nwandu ater remains the place where it’s truly pos- struggling to forge NWANDU ANTOINETTE OF COURTESY says, the challenge is sible for humans to really connect. In her her own identity.) She Director Spike Lee filmed a Steppenwolf to marshal those ele- words: “We are meat packets who need to stands by those plays, performance of Nwandu’s debut play, ments to leave the au- sit next to other meat packets sometimes, Pass Over, for Amazon Studios. and the version of her- dience with something at a very basic level.” self who wrote them, but now sees them as more than a reiteration of pain. In Tuvalu, Nwandu meditates on the no- “masochistic” at the root, she says. “I’ll never The current political moment sharpens tion of apocalypse. What happens after the hurt myself to make art again.” the urgency of that challenge. Living through worst happens? What new kinds of relation- But Nwandu’s childhood also bequeathed what she calls “the day-by-day formation of ships and realities become possible in the her artistic instincts: the theatrics of the a fascist state” has given her a new mission: wake of true disaster? But for the moment, church, the particularities of her family dy- to build community through storytelling and in the midst of intensive rewrites, she can’t namic, and the ideas of ’80s popular television. create a space to heal. For Nwandu, televi- be much more specific than that. “I just don’t And she remains interested in autobiography, sion, especially in the era of streaming, pres- want to pin it down yet, even for myself.” Hot Pursuits Bassist Matthew Berlin by lydialyle gibson atthew berlin ’89, a jazz and Goodman, Lena Horne, blues bassist who also knocks Louis Armstrong, Ella around in folk, ragtime, and clas- Fitzgerald, and Billie M sical and performs sometimes Holiday. “His band was three or four nights a week, is quick to tell incredibly tight,” Berlin people that he’s not a real musician. “A hack,” says. “The feel was that he insists, half-kidding. His regular job is as they were swinging so a trust and estates lawyer in a Boston firm. hard, and it just was so But the truth is, he’s been a musician—a se- effortless and clean and rious one—longer than he’s been anything dignified and cool.” else. “It’s just always been there,” he says. That’s a feeling the That comes through in his most recent album tries to repli- project, a jazz album released this year: I cate: the way the pia- Just Want to Be Horizontal. Berlin produced it no intro to a song like and played bass; the album is a collaboration “Lover Come Back” with two of his oldest friends and band- opens up into a win- mates: singer Samoa Wilson and the leg- some, easy swing; the endary folk guitarist Jim Kweskin (whose way the guitar and bass eponymous 1960s jug band attracted imi- take their time soaking tators including the Grateful Dead and the into the notes of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; for this album, Kwe- title track, “I Want to skin gathered a nine-piece jazz ensemble). Be Horizontal”—a 1934 The album takes its title, and its inspira- jazz ballad transformed Matthew Berlin tion, from the music of swing pianist Teddy here into a modern Wilson (no relation to Samoa), who ran a blues—while Wilson’s voice glides across and Kweskin made a point of unearthing old studio band in Kansas City during the 1920s the melody. Many of the album’s songs were verses, lost in the intervening decades, even and ’30s and played with jazz greats Benny recorded by Teddy Wilson’s band; Berlin as they updated some of the arrangements. 54 March - April 2020 Photograph by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE “So, these old songs that people think they know?” Berlin says. “They often have these beautiful parts that just dropped out over C hapter & Verse time. We wanted to restore those.” Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words Berlin’s first instrument was a cello; he started taking lessons when he was six. His parents were accomplished avocational mu- Margeret Lindsey hopes someone knows the source of “Unmeasur’d space is the sicians: Gerald Berlin was a prominent civil- Lord’s habitation, His hand upholds creation’s realm...”—“the beginning of a hymn-like rights attorney and a clarinetist who played chorus which was one of the pieces our school choir sang at a schools’ competition occasional concerts with the Boston Sym- at the Sydney Town Hall some 60-plus years ago. Certain things on Google are some- phony Orchestra and wrote classical mu- what similar textually, but no cigar, and there is nothing musically. Any assistance would sic criticism for The Jewish Advocate; Miriam be most welcome; this has been driving a friend and me mad for decades.” Berlin, Ph.D. ’57, was an expert in Russian history who taught at Wellesley and Har- Send inquiries and answers to Chapter and Verse, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, vard and played piano and flute. “She could Cambridge 02138, or via email to [email protected]. sight-read anything,” Matthew Berlin says: “Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok.” Berlin showed some talent, and his par- Van Halen, Cheap Trick, and Blondie. bass. Then he dove back into classical music, ents pushed him to practice every day, en- At the same time, music became a kind of taking classes at the New England Conserva- visioning youth symphonies and conserva- deliverance. After some rough teenage years, tory and considering a professional career. tory auditions. Instead, he pushed back. during which he sold his guitar, withdrew Tendinitis ended those thoughts (“My “The cello became a focal point of resistance from playing, and struggled “basically with arm felt like it was on fire,” he says), and Ber- and self-determination,” he recalls. When how to get along with the rest of the world,” lin found solace in a different kind of music, he was 14, he took the $350 he’d earned dur- a return to music’s structure and discipline leaving the rigors of the conservatory for the ing a summer job and bought a bass guitar led him back to himself. He fudged his way open, easygoing jazz scene in Barcelona. The (a “cheap little Fender knock-off”) and an into a jazz band in tenth grade, pretending culture there, he says, recognizes the arts amp, and started teaching himself licks from he knew more than he did about the upright “as a part of the fabric of society, and so you AVAILABLE NOW “Bert Fields, who could be the greatest consigliere of them all.” — Mario Puzo Author of The Godfather A delightfully readable tour of a remarkable career among the rich and famous. marmontlane.com BERTRAM FIELDS GRADUATED MAGNA CUM LAUDE FROM HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, J.D. ’52 Harvard Magazine 55 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE could always get work. Kids like us could trated in social studies and played with the lin headed to law school at the University of put in for a grant and somebody would find Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, the Bach So- Oregon: “Eugene has a great music scene.” the money to put up a stage and lighting for ciety, the Mozart Society, and a handful of Today he plays regularly with half a dozen a concert at two o’clock in the morning at campus ensembles and pop-up jazz clubs. Boston-area bands with evocative names: some square in the old Barrio Gótico.” “My days were just totally lit up, after the the Dixie Cookbook, the Busted Jug Band, A year later he came back, renewed, to academics, with jazz and classical music.” Jazz Is in the Air, the Racky Thomas Blues Cambridge and Harvard, where he concen- That was also true after college, when Ber- Band. Whenever he puts together an ensem- ble of his own, he calls it the Berlin Hall Rep- ertory Orchestra, a nod to the juke joint that Legal journalist Adam Co- his grandfather, a Latvian immigrant, ran OPEN BOOK hen ’84, J.D. ’87—last seen in above the family’s dry-goods store in New- these pages with an excerpt port News, Virginia. For some years, Berlin from his book on eugenics, played and traveled with country-bluesman Court-Ordered focusing on University lead- Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, “the last ers’ support for that species of the great black string-band musicians.” of social engineering (“Har- When Berlin goes to other cities for work, Inequity vard’s Eugenics Era,” March- he tries to set up gigs with musician friends, April 2016, page 48)—has who are scattered all over.