January 2010 Jazz Inside NY www.jazzinsidemagazine.com

73

  — Creator of Educational Jazz

Publications including The New Real Book Series

The founder of Sher Music and creator of The New

Real Book series shares his perspectives about music

and business

JI: Could you give us a synopsis of the driving fac-

tors that led you to create Sher Publications and the

various New Real Books that you’ve published?

Chuck Sher: In the late ‘70s, I had an extended pe-

riod of tendonitis which prevented me from playing

for about a year. In order to make lemonade out of

lemons, I gathered the notes I had kept from teach-

ing bass and created my first book, “The Improvi-

sor’s Bass Method.” So my becoming an author and

publisher was an accident in a way, but my ability to

organize a lot of material has always been my strong

suit and it certainly comes in handy in writing and

publishing books.

JI: What do you see as some of the shortcomings

and strengths in the arena of institutionalized jazz

education - both in schools and in the area of pri-

vate instruction? What suggestions do you have for

improvements?

CS: I am not all that familiar with the institutional

academic world, but it seems like getting students

ready for performances rules the roost, sort of like

“teaching for the test” in other academic domains.

While that has its benefits for the student as well

as the teacher, my intuition is that it doesn’t leave

enough time to focus on helping students figure out

how to access the music that is latent within them-

selves. I know as a teacher I try to get my students

to play what they hear internally, above all else. I’ll

show them licks to get them familiar with what

certain scales or rhythms are capable of, but sooner

rather than later I like to have them find their own

voice, using the specific material at hand. This has

seemed more and more important to me as time has

gone on, because I find in my own practicing that

this is the key to really enjoying learning. I’ve had

some moments of real bliss lately just practicing the

C mixolydian mode, for example, and actually hear-

ing internally what I wanted to say before it came

out of my fingers. Big fun!

JI: How has the rise of downloadable and digital

media affected your business? What changes have

you had to make to survive and thrive in these

changing times?

CS: Don’t get me started! The phenomenon of

people scanning our books and then illegally sell-

ing CDs with our books (and 40 other fake books

on them) on eBay, or putting them on sites where

people can download them for free has basically

put me out of the fake book business. We still sell

our current books but I can’t justify the expense of

putting out new fake books if people will simply rip

me (and the composers) off as soon as the book is

released. So I’m in the position of not being able to

afford to put out new fake books and the whole jazz

world is the loser. Why would anyone participate

in something so obviously unethical? One explana-

tion is that people raised primarily by television sets

have a tendency to have an atrophied sense of right

and wrong, since TV programming certainly has no

shame and people have unfortunately picked up on

that as a role model.

JI: Talk about the value of copyright and protecting

intellectual property - i.e. in our case printed music,

recordings - and the need to inform both students

and people in our society of how it benefits them.

CS:As I wrote in my essay “On Piracy” (on the home

page of www.shermusic.com), you wouldn’t walk

into Wayne Shorter’s house and rip off his stereo,

even if you knew you could get away with it, right?

Well, ignoring any artist’s right to benefit from their

compositions (or sales of their recordings) is no dif-

ferent. On principle, I can see no other moral choice

but to refrain from any use of someone else’s work

without their being compensated. In an ideal world,

where money wasn’t an issue, then we could all be

creative and skip the benefits thereof, but that’s just

not the reality we live in, so I would recommend that

people really think and use the Golden Rule before

taking actions that affect others.

JI: Talk about your own ongoing education - which

started with lessons, continued on the bandstand as

a performer, and then as an author and publisher?

CS: I am pretty much a self-taught musician and

spent many years in the trenches playing every jazz-

related gig I could. One thing I’ve learned in the

40-some years I’ve been doing that is that it matters

what shape my internal world is in. I don’t mean

what mood I am in, but rather to what extent I have

some internal presence, some internal mechanism

that reminds me to be in the moment, to appreciate

whatever life has brought me at this point in time. I

have been fortunate to have been studying the teach-

ings of G.I. Gurdjieff for several years now and it has

really helped me see how things actually work in my

world. I find it immensely useful to have some way to

gain a broader perspective on things.

JI: Why is it important for artists and musicians to

understand business? And, what are a handful of the

more essential aspects that will help ensure success?

CS: Artist or not, we all have to figure out how to

keep body and soul together. Even though it may

seem to be a distraction from being a musician,

I try to live by the old saying, “Nobody can waste

your time but you.” From that perspective, all life is

art, all of it is music, in the broadest sense. So I try

to have fun improvising my way through whatever

tasks my daily scene needs, just like I would playing

music.

JI: What have you learned about human nature

from being a musician and a business professional -

and how have those discoveries impacted you?

CS: To me, human nature is immensely variable -

from the greatest geniuses to the most decrepit, ru-

ined lives. What an amazing range ‘human nature’

contains! For myself I know I have all those possibil-

ities latent within myself, so as Santa says, “Be good

for goodness sake!” The business world is not all that

different from the music world - again a great variety

of behaviors, from great to terrible. To me, the cru-

cial thing is which side of myself I am putting out at

any point in time - hopefully, more of the good than

the terrible. One thing that I find to be very helpful

in that regard is that, as time goes on I find myself

being less judgmental of others, which I find to be a

great relief. We’re all brothers and sisters under the

skin and we all deserve to be given the benefit of the

doubt, whenever possible. And on a related question,

I’ve been finding that radical self-acceptance and

radical acceptance of reality in general, exactly as it

is, is the key to a positive outlook on things, at least

for me. Which doesn’t mean that you can’t work for

change, but rather that those efforts are more effec-

tive when you are digging being alive in the middle

of it all, regardless of how things turn out.

JI: Out of all the books you’ve published over the

years, which would you put in your top 5....which

will stand the test of time the most, and stand out

from the crowd?

CS: That’s tough, since each one is the most useful

book ever published on its own topic, in my humble

opinion. Mark Levine’s books will certainly be clas-

sics long after our generation is all gone from this

world, as will The New Real Books, The Standards

Real Book and The Latin Real Book, I’m sure. I’m

also very proud of my latest book, “Foundation Exer-

cises For Bass,” which I hope will inspire bass players

to really dig in and learn their craft from the bottom

up, long after I’m gone.