Sy Johnson

“You know what your problem is?” he asked me. I had more answers to this question than he could have possibly imagined, so I decided to let the question stand as the rhetorical question it was meant to be. “You're scared. You let fear get the best of you.”

This was only my second lesson with Sy Johnson, at 6-foot-1 and 76 years old, one of the five greatest living jazz arrangers, Charles Mingus's right-hand man until the day he died, a big name in the jazz community, and for two to three hours every three weeks, my composition teacher.

“Y'see, right here, you held back.” He pointed to the fifth measure of the arrangement of “But Beautiful” I had brought in. “You wrote something that is perfectly nice, but you could do so much more. You're too simple. You've got a muted trumpet, a muted trombone, and a flute in three octaves. Beautiful combination; but you have 10 other instruments! Use them!”

I took notes using the pencil Sy had just given me – a “Mingus Pencil.” My success in the music industry, Sy explained, was based on my use of this pencil. It was once owned by Charles Mingus, though never used. Mingus bought them in bulk, and when he died, Sy was given the rest of them. Sy now gives one to select students.

“Fear gets the best of us all at times,” Sy continued. “Take me, for example. I was once conducting an orchestra doing a live performance of a film score in Cannes. Afterwards, I was at the bar and the most beautiful women I'd ever seen came up to me and asked to go to bed with me. Fear, my boy. Fear got in my way. I still wonder.”

I paused. Sy did not.

“Now in measure 7...”