Sam Sadigursky
Inside the Solomon Diaries: Clarinetist Sam Sadigursky on Jazz, Broadway, and Philip Glass
Just above the transcript here is the link to take you to the podcast, video and show notes for this interview with Sam Sadigursky on Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman.
Sam Sadigursky:
Absolutely. I think when I was younger, I really had to have something that excited me and that I felt was going to be kind of like the hook of the piece before I even started anything. And I think my ability to write a lot more now has come from the fact that I don't feel that pressure. I'm much more patient that maybe it'll emerge later, and if it doesn't, composing for me is just bliss land. I completely lose track of time. So if nothing comes from it, I got to live in that world for a little bit. And that's okay too.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, You’re listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman.Sam Sadigursky has released thirteen acclaimed albums as a leader and has appeared on over sixty albums as a side musician, including several Grammy-winning projects. He’s a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble and has toured and recorded with artists like Brad Mehldau, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, and Gabriel Kahane. Sam also served as the onstage clarinetist for the Grammy, Tony, and Emmy-winning Broadway show The Band’s Visit, and has performed in over twenty other Broadway productions. In addition to his performance work, Sam has published five volumes of original clarinet etudes and duets. In this episode, we focus on his Solomon Diaries project with Nathan Koci, featuring excerpts and full tracks—details are linked in the show notes with timestamps.Sam reflects on his early career in jazz, shaped by mentors like Brad Mehldau, Bill Berry, and Lee Konitz. As this episode is released, he’s touring Europe with the Philip Glass Ensemble, performing, among other pieces, the iconic "Koyaanisqatsi". We also dive into his thoughts on how improvisation training extends beyond music into life, the issues with streaming algorithms, and the cultural history of the Borscht Belt. From biking to Tower Records as a kid in L.A. to his diverse compositional influences, Sam discusses how his musical evolution remains deeply personal. We begin by learning about his musical immigrant family and the roots of his journey.
Hey Sam, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Sam Sadigursky:
Hey there. Thanks, Leah.
Leah Roseman:
I'm was a bit overwhelmed with your output the last few years, but I understand a lot of it was pandemic related that you had more time.
Sam Sadigursky:
Correct. Yeah, the first three Solomon Diaries were very much a pandemic. Well, a lot of them were composed before, but we kind of went nuts recording three albums because we had that time and that focus to do it. Nathan is so busy. Nathan Koci is the accordionist my duo partner, and is very much, it's now morphed into very much a collective project with the two of us. He's writing for it, and it's built around the things he can do and his creative so much, but he's so busy now. It was an incredible gift in a way, to have him almost all to myself during that period, and so I ran with it.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I hope to dig in quite a bit to the Solomon Diaries, especially volumes four and five, but also later on, get to some of your other projects. You do so much. You're so interesting.
Sam Sadigursky:
Sure.
Leah Roseman:
So let's get for people to get to know you a little bit. I was interested in that your parents had immigrated from the USSR in the seventies. I mean, there weren't a lot of people able to get out at that time.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, they were kind of part of the first wave of Jews who were allowed out under an agreement that Nixon made with the Soviets that was basically trading Jewish immigrants for food assistance. So yeah, I mean, I think my parents and their extended family always had this intention to leave by any means they could, and they got it. And yeah, I have an older sister who was actually born there who came with them, and my brother and I were born in the U.S.
Leah Roseman:
So growing up in California. And in terms of integrating with some kind of Jewish community, what was that like for you as a son of immigrants?
Sam Sadigursky:
I was raised pretty secular, I'd say. I mean, I think there was always a cultural amount of Judaism and my brother and I both had Bar Mitzvahs, and we lived in a place with a pretty substantial Jewish community, so I didn't feel like an outsider, really. But yeah, I don't think it was something that was very deep in my consciousness necessarily growing up. As I grew older, I started to just realize that this identity really just shaped the course of my family's life. I mean, my parents' whole ability to not only all the things that happened in Europe and the Soviet Union before they left, but also their ability to leave was basically because they were Jewish.
Leah Roseman:
Did they talk to you or your grandparents about what it was like? Because I came from the generation, part of my family left in the twenties, and some of them left earlier, but the same part of the world. Had they tried to get out earlier?
Sam Sadigursky:
I don't think there was just any avenue for getting out. I do have, my father had an uncle who actually immigrated to Palestine before it became Israel and fought in the War of Independence there. But as far as I know, he's actually the only one who kind of got out before that period. And then, yeah, my parents had some musician friends who defected in various ways. They were musicians, and there's actually a great joke. How do you form a Soviet duo? And the punchline is you put a quartet out on tour. But yeah, I mean, in terms of Russia, I think it was much more an awareness of this immigrant and Russian culture. I mean, my parents continued to really be close with a lot of people who they had grown up with and they had gone to music conservatory with. And I think if anything, I grew up in two worlds in terms of that wanting to assimilate and be an American kid and also on weekends be dragged to the Russian restaurant to party that would go on until 2:00 AM.
Leah Roseman:
And would your dad play music at some of these parties?
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, I mean, not just my dad. I mean, their whole kind of circle of friends were musicians. Some of them sort of were able to actually carve out livings as musicians, and some of them kind of had to go into other professions. Actually, my father, as far as his vocation, became a piano technician around the time I was born, or maybe a little bit before that even. But yeah, they would always become somewhat drunken jam sessions as the night went on. And yeah, I have very, very fond memories of those moments. They were mostly classically trained musicians, but there was this sort of folk element with them. And yeah, you wouldn't hear them at those parties. They wouldn't be playing sonatas. They'd be playing kind of like Russian and Jewish folk songs, and there'd be a lot of vodka flowing.
Leah Roseman:
I was just curious because your dad played accordion and clarinet.
Sam Sadigursky:
Correct.
Leah Roseman:
And you really leaned into jazz growing up and saxophone?
Sam Sadigursky:
I did, yeah. My father really, really loved jazz. It was not something he could really, really play, but he did have a love for it and was really amazing. And coming back from working an 11 hour day tuning pianos and then would take me into the city in LA to go hear a lot of my heroes, and those were
Leah Roseman:
Very, that's great.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have any musical memories from that time, like a show you've heard?
Sam Sadigursky:
I mean, so many. I consider myself so lucky to have grown up in L.A., which was a major hub for not all musicians who live there, but musicians coming through and hearing Joe Lovano early on and Joe Henderson were Lee Konitz a lot of times Charles Lloyd. Those were really huge for me. And the second I got my driver's license when I was 16, I was in the city at least two or three nights a week going to see whatever I could.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. And your mom's a pianist and piano teacher,
Sam Sadigursky:
Correct.
Leah Roseman:
I'm imagining a lot of the composition you do is on piano.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes. I've actually tried to move away from that a little bit more over the years. I have some training on piano. It was my first instrument, but I don't have the independence of hands that I would really like to have. And so I find myself kind of limited by that. And also, yeah, sometimes my writing at the piano can lack a certain imagination I think that I have when I'm playing the clarinet. So yeah, I would say now it tends to be a mix. I'll record a lot of voice memos of things that come up into my phone, and then later on I might move to the piano to realize them.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, let's get into the albums a little bit. Yeah. Track nine, VNP Hora is dedicated to your dad, Isaac?
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
What is VNP?
Sam Sadigursky:
Okay, so a young piano technician at my father's, there was a gathering after his funeral, gave a speech. My father, when he was sick, was actually sending a lot of his clientele to this young tuner and a few others. He was talking about these little abbreviations and my dad's kind of client records that he would find. And so my dad was really, really great about keeping notes about where the dog's name and where their kids were going to college and what they were majoring in. And he would look at this right before going to a client's house. The clients would be really, really amazed that he could remember this. And of course, he had a cheat sheet. But anyways, he had a lot of VIP clients, and he would always kind of put that in there. But VNP was very nice person. So yeah, some people got the VNP, and then eventually when there were enough V nps, some people got the VVNP. So anyways, yes, my father was an incredible VNP himself, and so it was a dedication (Music)
That piece, I actually wrote sort of in the Jewish tradition, the gravestone is not unveiled until the one year after the person's passing, and there's typically a ceremony of the closest family that goes. And I was going to travel to Los Angeles to be there for that with everybody. And then unfortunately, my son came down with strep that morning and I had to cancel the trip, and I wrote that song that morning.
Leah Roseman:
Oh yeah. I'm sorry to hear you. Couldn't be there for the unveiling. That's hard.
Sam Sadigursky:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And being so far from family, you moved out to New Jersey for college. What was that like? I mean, your access to New York must've been so exciting, but the change from West Coast to East Coast
Sam Sadigursky:
In a weird way, moving to New York was something I knew I was going to do from probably the time I was 15 years old or something, when it was really just clear that I had choice, but to follow this path with music. And my heroes lived in New York and kind of like my heart was already here in a way, even before I had physically moved here. And so I don't think the weight of that really bears on an 18 year old's mind and what that actually means in terms of practicality and what it's emotionally to be so far away from your family and the community you grew up with. But I was really lucky to immediately find a community here. And I went to William Paterson, which is, yeah, 20, 25 minutes from the George Washington Bridge. And almost every night of the week, there was a caravan of students going into the city.
Sometimes we didn't even have a specific show we were going to go see. We would just, at that point in time, this was the late 1990s. I mean, you just went and parked in the West Village and you walked around to see what was going on, or you might've picked up a Village Voice and found a listings there. But there were so many clubs in a concentrated area at that time. And that's something that I really makes me very, very sad when I think about that no longer existing. I mean, there's just kind of a few left in that area, but now there's a lot of music venues, but they're spread out. A lot of them are in Brooklyn, and they become a special destination in themselves.
Leah Roseman:
I haven't been to New York that often, but I was there in the late eighties and early nineties, and I remember that being able to walk around in all these jazz clubs. You know, just randomly, I saw this movie called Paterson set in Paterson, New Jersey. Have you seen it?
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, I have. I liked that movie a lot with Adam Driver, right?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Yeah, Jim Jarmusch, yeah. I just thought I'd mention it. It was a beautiful movie that Pat Irwin, I don't if you've run across him, he'd recommended it. He's on this podcast a couple of times.
Sam Sadigursky:
Okay,
Leah Roseman:
Well, let's get back to the fifth album. Volume five, Six Miles at Midnight, which I love. First of all, it features Meg Okura who've been on this podcast, so I want to mention that.
Sam Sadigursky:
Love it!
Leah Roseman:
And I hear a trumpet, but there's no trumpet credit?
Sam Sadigursky:
We did put it in. That's Nathan Koci, actually, amazingly, Nathan Koci was a classical french horn player in college, and actually, it's what he moved to New York kind of intending to really pursue. And accordion was kind of a side instrument that he picked up as a teenager besides French Horn. He also plays various trumpets. Yeah, his trumpets really came to the rescue on that track
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's beautiful. Maybe I missed it because his name was already listed and I didn't see the extra instrument listed, so maybe you have it there.
Sam Sadigursky:
Gotcha. Yeah, no, it gives almost like, I don't know, Tijuana brass kind of energy. There's something really, really deliciously kind of kitschy about it.
Leah Roseman:
It's really beautiful.
Sam Sadigursky:
Good. I kind of love that. That was a track that we recorded later in the day. I mean, I'm a little nuts. Not only do I put out a lot of records, but we record them in sometimes just a few days. I mean, these volumes four and five where two days of tracking in a studio, and it's a lot of music to track in two days. So I think some of the tracks end up kind of being compromised in some way, just either you're rushing through them or doing 'em at the end of the day. And that was one that we did do at the very, very end of the day. And I think we were just a little cooked, as my kids would say by that point. And it felt a little bit kind of lethargic and draggy. And I think those trumpets just like that we added later, gave it an amazing lift.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I would've said dreamy, but so the title Six Miles at Midnight, is that coming from your experience of recording late?
Sam Sadigursky:
No, that's actually a reference to Eric Satie. I mean, that piece really to me had his influence written all over it. He would apparently have this, I don't know if it was three miles each way or six miles each way, but he played, he was a cafe pianist for his entire life, and the place was actually quite far away from him. And so he had this walk that he would do coming home every night from there. So the title came from that. (Music) Always loved Satie, and I think, yeah, I mean, my sort of biggest professional association now, and a huge influence on me has been being part of the Philip Glass Ensemble and this world of minimalism has really changed the way I think and the way I listened to music. And really, Satie was one of the first minimalists for me.
Leah Roseman:
So coming from this kind of denser jazz background in terms of harmony and rhythm and playing with the Philip Glass Ensemble, what has changed for you?
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, I think the jazz mentality is always, I think I was always taught you want to add new material, let's add this scale language, let's add this sort of riff or whatever. Yeah, I think that that world, that Glass resides in, it's just like, how much can I do with this really bare amount of material? And yeah, I like that. I listened to an interview with Shai Maestro, the incredible jazz pianist, and just, he's one of the I most amazing voices in creative music for me. And he talked about so much modern jazz feeling like taking somebody to an amazing exhibition in a museum, but shuttling them through on a moped and just how quickly a, so much jazz just moves through material. And I think I've really come to appreciate just trying to slow that down. I don't know. I think a lot of the things I really love now, I would've dismissed as easy listening 20 years ago. And I think these are just the shifts that people make in their listening and their own creative pursuits. And yeah, I think there's something really nice about reaching middle age and being okay with these directions.
Leah Roseman:
The film Koyaanisqatsi featuring music of Philip Glass, I saw it in the theater when it had first come out, and I was a teenager in 1982. In fact, I think it's the one and only time I've ever seen a film by myself just randomly. And it just made this huge impression on me.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, it's amazing that you even remember that detail and yeah, that is our workhorse piece that we travel the world doing, and it's amazing how many people come up to us and have those clear memories of seeing it for the first time and kind of how, I dunno if earth shattering is the word, but it really, it's a powerful piece that I think even people coming to see it for the first time when we do it, it still speaks to them only 40 years later.
Leah Roseman:
You're doing it with the film. That's what I was curious about
Sam Sadigursky:
With the film. Sometimes with orchestra, there's a full orchestration and sometimes just as an ensemble.
Leah Roseman:
So for those people who haven't seen it, can you just speak to it a little bit?
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, it's a collaboration between Godfrey Reggio, the filmmaker and Philip Glass. And it actually sort of reversed, I think there was a basic concept for the film, and it's all just footage that Godfrey Reggio has gone around the world shooting. Some of it's of nature, some of it's of society, but he really, Godfrey sort of assembled the film based on the music that Philip had written. It kind of reversed the typical process, which is somebody writing to a film that's already made. So there's really, really, there's a depth there. And the film speaks to sort of Koyaanisqatsi means out of balance, so human beings and civilization being out of balance with nature.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I'm sure people can stream it nowadays, but if they can see it live with your ensemble, I saw your touring schedule, they should check it out.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, absolutely. It's considered the first real kind of minimalist film score as well, so I think it has a lot of weight as that as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So some of your music, even on, like Migrations on volume five, definitely hear that influence.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah. It's hard to, you can't run away from it. It's so powerful, but I hope bits of me are slipping in there.
Leah Roseman:
Of course, yeah.
Sam Sadigursky:
So yes, I mean, yeah, I'm very conscious. I mean, Philip Glass has been so maybe imitated more than any other living composer, I think, and especially if you watch film and television score, I think his language is just so powerful and effective that lots of other people are using it. And so yeah, I have some self-consciousness about doing it, but I think now I don't put so much pressure on myself as a composer in terms of starting off with material that I think is particularly original or brilliant or fetching. I love the process now where if I have the time launch into it with something that is kind of stupid or banal or cliche or whatever, and I think there's now a trust that something of me will emerge and something that is good will emerge.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I've been improvising just for a few years, coming from a classical background, but what I found very freeing about it is just that you can create something out of anything.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, absolutely. I think when I was younger, I really had to have something that excited me and that I felt was going to be the hook of the piece before I even started anything. I think my ability to write a lot more now has come from the fact that I don't feel that pressure. I, I'm much more patient that maybe it'll emerge later, and if it doesn't, composing for me is just bliss land. I completely lose track of time. And so if nothing comes from it, I got to live in that world for a little bit, and that's okay too.
Leah Roseman:
That's one of the best quotes ever. Well, for those clarinetists and clarinet teachers listening, I do want to point them towards your book of Etudes and solo pieces and duos. These duos, you recorded both parts. Was that hard to do?
Sam Sadigursky:
For some of them? I was very, very lucky to work with Joe Brent, who is the founder and the real driving force of Adhyaropa Records and a really phenomenal engineer and musical mind himself. And he does a lot of tracking of his own records on his own. And I think having his musicianship and creativity, I'm very, very indebted to him for making all that work.(Music: Eleven from Rhythmic Duets for Clarinet)
Leah Roseman:
I assume you teach.
Sam Sadigursky:
I do,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Yeah. I was curious if your approach to teaching is different than what you were exposed to and how your, how you encourage your students to be creative.
Sam Sadigursky:
The teaching I'm doing is much more beginner and intermediate. I made this choice. I never got a master's degree, so a lot of the higher ed teaching was closed off by that. I live in the suburbs of New York. I'm in Westchester County, a little bit north of the city. And so there's not a huge amount of musicians living up here and competition. So instead of sort of pursuing maybe higher level students somewhere, I've sort of chosen to stay at home and teach more beginner oriented students. I teach piano as well. I do, I mean, I feel like my early teaching, the teaching that I got early on from my teacher Vince Trombetta has really shaped me creatively in how I approach things and just learning by doing things and not learning out of books or feeling this need to really study something before just doing it. The way I learned to improvise, for example, was just by, he would have me compose solos, and this was before I really had built any semblance of an actual jazz improvisation language at all. I mean, I would just really only knowing how to play these chords in root position would sit at the piano and just find lines and little melodies. That sounded good to me. Yeah, there was just kind of a learning by doing that. I think I still am shaped by,
Leah Roseman:
So that was back in L.A.?
Sam Sadigursky:
That was in L.A., yeah. I was very lucky. I grew up kind of in the suburbs of L.A. and Vince was somebody who lived in the next town over.
It would be really, really fun to work with somebody at 20 year olds with a lot of drive and talent. And once in a while, I do get to do that. Higher, the world of higher education, academia is just not for me. And I even felt that going to college, college for me was more of a way, there were a few teachers I did meet who did have a lot of influence on me, but in terms of things that happened in the classroom, there was very, very little effect. And I think it was more just a way of getting to New York and building a community. And there are a few people I went to school with who I still see and play with now and then. So that's an incredible connection to still have
Leah Roseman:
A lot of people I've spoken to on this series, even if they went to the fanciest most expensive school, it's really the collaborations, the people they met, that was often the thing that impacted them the most longterm.
Sam Sadigursky:
Definitely.
Leah Roseman:
Hi just a really short break from the episode, I’ve linked several episodes you’ll love in the show notes with Meg Okura, Tasha Warren, Yale Strom, Colleen Allen, John Hadfield and Rachel Eckroth. In the show notes you’ll also find a link to sign up for my newsletter, where you’ll get exclusive information about upcoming guests, a link for my Ko-fi page to support this project directly, and my podcast merchandise store with a design commissioned from artist Steffi Kelly. You can also review this podcast, share it with your friends, and follow on your podcast app, YouTube, and social media. All this helps spread the word! Thanks. Now back to my conversation with Sam.
Back to the Solomon Diaries. Lucky for Sarah with Danny Fox on piano.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, lucky. It's actually one of the only songs that we do in kind of a traditional jazz format in which it's an 18 bar song, which is what the title comes from. 18 is the number high in Judaism and is a lucky number. And Sarah's, my wife and I met her on August 18th. We were married September 18th. So it has a lot of resonance for us. And she's wanted a song for, she's been wondering Where's my song for a long time. So she got her song. And yeah, it's an 18 bar song, and it's the only one we do kind of in that traditional jazz format where we play ahead and we solo, and then we play the head again. It's kind of like a jam kind of song. Danny Fox is a pianist and composer, and we actually go back to our teenage years meeting in the National Grammy Band when we were, I dunno, 16 and 15 or 17 and 16 or whatever. Yeah. And I've kept up with Danny, and it's one of the most special and prized relationships for me. And yeah, I think all the guests we brought on for volumes four and five, not only musically had very special places in our life, but also I think personally as well.(Music: Lucky The Solomon Diaries, vol. V)
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I wanted to ask you about some of these teenage experiences you had. You got to tour Japan, you played with Brad Mehldau, you had all these early experiences. Was there a particular mentor or experience that really stayed with you or affected you from that time?
Sam Sadigursky:
I think most of all it was the music that I saw. I did, yeah, that concert with Brad Mehldau was an incredible thing. I mean, he's somebody, he moved to LA for a little bit and really didn't know anybody there. And yeah, we were introduced and I don't know, a bit of a precocious and punkish little 18-year-old who had a lot of opinions, and I think he got a kick out of that. Yeah, we got to play a little bit, and he asked me to do this duo gig with him, and then later on, once I'd moved to New York, invited me to be part of something at Zankel Hall with him. So yeah, that's been, both those experiences have been very, very prized for me. And then, yeah, I went to Japan with the Monterey Jazz Festival, High School All Stars, which I think is a program that's actually still going.
I'm not sure that they, hopefully they still go to Japan, but that was an amazing experience. That was with a cornet player named Bill Berry directed that ensemble. And Bill had toured with Duke Ellington in Duke's kind of later period in the seventies, I believe. Bill actually became kind of a mentor for me, and I would go to a lot of his gigs in LA and he would have me sit in, and those are very prized experiences. And then my first actual recording session, like real professional recording session in a studio on an album that came out was something that Bill invited me for. It was a record with the Japanese clarinettist Eiji Kitamura, and the rhythm section was Ray Brown and Jake Hannah. So Ray Brown being perhaps the most recorded jazz bassist alive and one of the most influential. And so yeah, I was a lucky little kid.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I'm curious, now that you're a dad, how are you managing arts education for your kids?
Sam Sadigursky:
I am doing my best. With kids, you have to meet them where they are. And my kids are growing up in such a different world from the world that I grew up in. And I think more than anything you model, you do your best to model certain behaviors. And I think as kids grow up, they remember those things and maybe they are shaped by them, and maybe they're not. I mean, I think some kids are more pliable than others as well. And yeah, I think some of the best advice that I've gotten as a parent or that I can give is number one you choose your battles, and also to meet your kids where they are. Just in terms of the way music is consumed, it's so incredibly different now. And my kids stream all their music and with that becomes a lack of patience and a certain passivity to just let the algorithm dictate what they listen to. And it's really, really frightening, and it's really frightening to see that happen in my own house under my very own eyes. So I hope it's something that can somehow be reckoned with or addressed in some way. I feel like, not just for me, but for my generation growing up, I mean, the things we listened to were really for a lot of us, very, very personal and defined who we were as people, and I'm afraid that it's just becoming a big monolith.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I mean, there's something to be said for growing up with those few albums or few mixed tapes or
Sam Sadigursky:
Absolutely, yeah, there was a certain choice you were making and a commitment to the music you were consuming. I mean, I started teaching music lessons when I was 14 years old. Every cent I made just went to riding my bike over to Tower Records, which was nearby. And building a music collection.
Leah Roseman:
Were you able to keep those albums or what happened to them?
Sam Sadigursky:
I have the CDs, but yeah, I kind of lost the room to display them, and now they're in boxes in the attic, which is a sad thing. But maybe someday some sort of home setup will emerge again where I can actually have them out and start consuming music in a much more wholesome way again.
Leah Roseman:
So for many years you played on Broadway and you had "The Band's Visit", it really influenced and you had an onstage role.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes. That kind of happened a little bit by accident, and I got attached to the show where it's based on an Israeli movie of the same name, and it's about kind of a band of Egyptian musicians traveling to Israel to perform a concert, and they kind of get on the wrong bus and end up stranded in this kind of nowhere town in the middle of the desert. And it's a very, very human story that I think transcends politics about just humans interacting and seeing each other's lives up close. And oddly enough, I was actually one of these Egyptian musicians, and the musicians were on stage, and most of us didn't have any lines, but we were real characters in it, and there was a lot of quasi acting to learn, and we became very, very close with the actors who were in it. And I'm really happy that I've carried a lot of those relationships with me since the show closed in 2019.
But yeah, being part of that show gave me a real love for theater and appreciation for it that I hadn't had before, even though I had been playing on Broadway for 15 years before that. It's typical that the orchestras in a show are just brought in basically a day or two before tech begins, or actually, no, just at Tech. And they're not really part of the process of actually building a show. And since we were on stage in The Band's Visit, we were part of six weeks of full-time cast rehearsals before we went into the theater at all. And I really just saw the show built by the incredible team that was behind it. David Cromer was the director, and he's really one of the genius directors of our time, noted MacArthur Genius, seeing the actors work and the commitment they brought had a really, really profound effect on me. And then on top of that, it was an incredible experience. This was a situation where the musicians were not only on stage, but a lot of the music we played was sort of featured like a concert and was improvised. So really the music had a lot of Arabic and Israeli influence in it.
I'm not trained in any way in either of those, but I can fake it. It's going to be on my tombstone, "but he could fake it". But anyways, yeah, I learned from the people around me and got really deeper and deeper into it. I mean, I think there were some real talents in that show who I think had a lot more schooling that I really, really got a lot from.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I mean, you could call faking it, having great musical instincts and skill. It's a different way of putting it.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah. I mean, no matter how much training you have in anything, so much in life is faking it and making it up as you go. And I think actually the training that we do get as improvisers actually is such great training for life and back to teaching. So few people will actually go into music and make a career out of it, but I think the lessons they might get from that are so incredibly valuable no matter what they do.
Leah Roseman:
And Sam, I believe you're writing a musical now as well.
Sam Sadigursky:
I was. It's something that I have walked away from a little bit, but this was another wild unexpected pandemic project that lands under my lap. It was about Joseph Pulitzer, who I hadn't really known anything about before being approached to be part of this. But there was basically a full sort of book for this musical, and they were looking for a composer, and I did it, and I wrote 12 or 13 songs that I'm very, very proud of. But yeah, musicals take many, many years to see through, and it's a tough mountain to climb. And I think just at some point I wanted to put my energy into things that I could kind of see through and put out. So we'll see. I still have those songs, and one day if the chance arises, I would love to actually produce some of them and release some of them because I'm very proud of them.
Leah Roseman:
You have an album of solo piano music that's very interesting from 2022 Figures/Broken Pieces inspired by lives that were lost in 2020, but not necessarily COVID, like different causes of death.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, there was a period of about four months in the beginning of the pandemic when I kind of just stopped playing when instruments altogether to just sort of help my family out and help my kids. They were here home from school basically all the time, and it was a very challenging time. But I did continue to play piano during that period, and I think the germs beginnings of a lot of these pieces kind of came around then.
And then, yeah, I got a little bit of funding from somebody who's been a bit of a patron of my music. And I don't know, I was very, very lucky in the pandemic in that terms of my wife has a grownup job, and our ability to pay our bills was never really imperiled in the same way that it was for a lot of my colleagues and friends. So it felt a little bit weird to keep that money to myself, and this was a way of dispersing it to some friends and having them record some of my music.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, they're short pieces. I thought it might be interesting. You had mentioned Lee Konitz earlier. You have a very tiny little piece Incidentalee
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah
Leah Roseman:
Dedicated to him.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, I got to know Lee a little bit. I saw him play so many times and he is one of the strongest influences on my musical world. And I did actually take a lesson with him when I was in school, which was an incredible experience. I tend to write short pieces. Again, I think this is partly a reflection of a lack of training in terms of form and knowing how to build out something in a more grand way, I guess. But I don't know. I also, I like the idea of just being in and out with something as well, so it works. All those pieces are actually in 3/4¾ on that record too. I don't know. Something about that that worked for me at the time as well.(Music: Incidentalee dedicated to Lee Konitz, from Figures/Broken Pieces performed Nick Sanders)
Leah Roseman:
So you grew up playing piano and saxophone, and then I understand you just played a lot of different instruments just to get all the gigs, but you've been focusing more on clarinet the last number of years.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes. Piano was my first instrument. My mom was my first teacher, and that's kind of a difficult relationship to have. So eventually she started sending me to a friend of hers or a colleague of hers, and then my mom would teach that colleague's daughter. And that lasted a little while, but learning the piano is kind of a solitary pursuit for a long time. And I think once I got to junior high school and had this opportunity to be part of a very, very strong school band program, I took up the saxophone, which was something my father had a saxophone in the house that he would play on weddings and such. So yeah, immediately there was a magic to me, not only in the instrument, but being able to do it in a group with peers. And that really excited me and I kind ran from there.
But my two early teachers were both sticklers for what sax saxophone players called doubling, which is also developing competence on the flute and clarinet because it's very, very common for the three instruments to be in one part, and it makes you much more employable as a musician if you can play them. And I kind of started them really, really early and I think was incredibly lucky in a lot of ways to do that because they became part of my voice in a lot of ways. They made me very employable once I got to New York and was out of college. And then I think for a long time I was the guy who was called because I could do everything. And that kept me busy for a long time. And then I think I started to really get tired of what that meant for me, and I started paring it down. And the clarinet, I think also just started to feel like more and more of a voice, and it felt like there was more and more room in the clarinet world to explore. And I think it just started to feel more personal. I also started to play a lot more kind of Jewish music as part of my living for the past almost 15 years now. A lot of my steady work is playing for synagogues in the New York area. Very, very grateful for that work, and it's really shaped what I do.
Leah Roseman:
So The Solomon Diaries, the first three volumes, you have these images of the Borsch Belt hotels, and I understand they're actually stock images, but they were influenced by
Sam Sadigursky:
Marisa Scheinfeld, the photographer.Yes. So yes, there were complications in using Marisa's images on the covers. So we did find some more historical stock images that we did use. But yes, finding Marisa's book. Marisa has a book called "The Borsch Belt" actually. And what she did, she actually grew up in the Catskills amongst these places, and one of her teachers, as she was coming up, she was having trouble finding her creative path, and she was told: "You know what? Go photograph what you know." And she went home and always, she had grown up going to a lot of these places that were kind of now abandoned and falling into disrepair and got to a lot of them just in time before they were kind of leveled completely
And has these very incredible photos of the remnants of these once incredible resorts and bungalow colonies. And finding those photos launched me into this fascination with that story of the rise and fall, the Borsch Belt. I didn't grow up connected to any of these places whatsoever. I grew up completely on the West Coast and had no family on the East coast who were connected to these places. And to me, I only about the Borsch Belt as kind of this kitschy reference to a certain brand of comedy and entertainment. But hearing the story of just how it rose and fell really resonated with me, I think particularly as a first generation immigrant. And it was a story more than anything for me of immigrants in a new land and the things that happened, the assimilation, the rejection, this sort of real act of revolution that happened amongst Jews after being kind of rejected from vacationing with non-Jew, sort of their response was to build their own destination.
Leah Roseman:
I've seen some of those of her photos, Marisa's photos online and read a few articles actually in the last few years about the Incredible wealth, I forget the name. There was some director. They're putting on original musical theater performances every week at one of these places. Just the amount of work that went into the creative work is quite inspiring.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes, absolutely. And I mean, the list of entertainers that came through or not just came through, but really got their starts there. And Nathan and I have been really lucky to perform this music, and there's hardly a performance that we do in the New York area where somebody doesn't come with telling us that they either work, they grew up working in the region or playing music in the region or got married there. So yeah, it's a place that has an incredible resonance and meaning for a lot of Jews, and I think even this influence on non-Jewish culture as well. And we do programs with Marisa now and then she has a slideshow where she shows both her own images and historical images, and I mean one of the most powerful images as of Martin Luther King actually speaking at event, at an event at one of the big hotels a week before he was assassinated.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So did you meet Marisa as a result of the Solomon Diaries? Did you reach out to her?
Sam Sadigursky:
I did, yeah. As soon as I had this music and had even some rehearsal recordings, I did reach out. And she lives in Westchester County, actually about 20 or 30 minutes away from me. So we've been really lucky to get to know each other. And besides her photography, she's actually now doing some incredible work with what's called The Borsch Belt Historical Marker Project, where they're going into these towns and the sites of these once incredible destinations that no longer exist, and actually putting historical markers of what was once there. And eventually, I think there's going to be 28 of them or so, and that there's going to be a drive with an audio tour that they're creating that people will go be able to spend the day doing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, I'd seen her website. I looked at that. I think it's funny, one of my daughters, she lives in Rotterdam, speaking of moving away from home when you're 18, I do read a plaque when you pass. It's always been my habit, what happened here, kind of thing. And I remember her saying, what, you actually read the plaques? I'm like, yeah, I try to. But in Europe, really, you don't always know the reference, but sometimes it's really chilling to see what happened at that place.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah. I love finding those plaques kind of accidentally sometimes. I mean, walking in the city and you see a plaque of Charlie Parker's house on Tomkins Square Park or a Bartok's place on 57th Street. I mean, both of those are ones that I kind of saw accidentally
Leah Roseman:
On volume four of the Solomon Diaries you have Secondhand, which is dedicated to Guy.
Sam Sadigursky:
Guy, Guy Klucevsek. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So he was Nathan's mentor in some way,
Sam Sadigursky:
I should say. That's a composition of Nathan's. It's one of the two compositions. And yeah, Nathan actually plays, his main accordion that he plays is one that he actually bought from Guy. So I think it's a reference to that accordion and a little pun of all the things Nathan is doing with both hands when he plays. But yeah, that's become one of the staples of our live performance. And I don't know, I kind of joke that I am a quantity guy with compositions and Nathan's a quality guy. But yeah, I mean, his compositions, we do two of them secondhand, and there's another called home theme on the two records, and they are two of the strongest. (Music: Secondhand The Solomon Diaries Vol. IV by Nathan Koci)
Guy Klucevsek. Yes, A mentor to a lot of accordionists and just incredible creative force. Somebody who's inspired me, not just as an accordionist, but with just the level of output that he had. Yeah, there's something really special about people who just for me, I don't know, put out a lot of music and don't feel this pressure there. If you talk to classical people, they'll talk about two models of composers. There's the Haydn model and then the Brahms model or something. And there's a lot of validity with both. And I don't know, for me, I just love making music and making records so much that I haven't really curated my output so much, and I haven't put that pressure on myself for everything that I put out has to feel like my best and the greatest thing, it's all just like where I was that day or that year or whatever early on. I'm sort of going a bit left here. But yeah, early on, I think after I put on one of my first records, there was a track that still to this day, I'm kind of embarrassed about that. I just don't think it's very, very good. And from one of my friends who's a very, very, somebody I have a huge amount of respect for as a musician, and creatively, he loved that track. It was really what spoke to him.
Or even you saying Six Miles at Midnight, which is a track that for a long time, Nathan and I went back and forth about scrapping because it had a lot of problems. So anyways, yeah, I just decided that it wasn't going to be my place to curate this, and that's ended up being a little bit problematic for me. I think in today's world where somebody might go to my page on one of the streaming websites and just pick the first thing or pick a random thing and they hear something that's like a solo piano record or clarinet, duets, yeah. They're missing out on something that I think could have represented me in a better way or in a more whole way. But that's fine. I mean,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I'm a Bandcamp user, so for Spotify, I believe they curate, you can't say feature this.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, no, it's problematic. I mean, so many non-musicians who aren't, I dunno, fluent in the way of navigating the streaming platforms. I mean, if you look me up on there, the first thing that come up or the things I've done with Darcy James Argue, who probably gets more plays than virtually any their stuff where I'm listed as an artist. And so yeah, so many of my kids' friends will say, oh yeah, we checked you out on Spotify, we listened to, and then they tell me the track, and it was Darcy James Argue's track. So anyways, that's one of the pratfalls or downfalls of the streaming world. And the way these platforms are designed,
Leah Roseman:
My podcast is available in all these different platforms. And originally I was hosted by a smaller company that got bought out by Spotify, so they were actually my host. And then I was disgusted because they started removing episodes because even people would be improvising on the podcast and they say, we don't recognize this music as licensed, or it's not recognized, so we are just removing the whole episode. So I never liked them, but this kind of thing. So I encourage people to not listen to this podcast on Spotify, 'cause there'll probably be things missing anyway, go to another,
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, well, it's on the other streaming platforms,
Leah Roseman:
All the other streaming platforms and YouTube and Yes.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yeah, because started listening, I deleted Spotify a while ago. To me, they're the most appalling and disgusting and also the biggest force in the music world right now. So I moved over to Tidal, which is to me has less of the toxic elements. I mean, there's still no actual meaningful remuneration to the musicians who are making the music. But yeah, title actually doesn't have podcasts. So I've had to kind of listen to my podcasts elsewhere.
Leah Roseman:
It's interesting how many platforms there are, and there's these dedicated podcast apps that have special features that like Overcast. I actually just use Apple Podcasts usually for myself. But if you look on my website and I link all the platforms, I don't know, there's like 20. It's crazy. It's just all these different platforms people use.
Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of generative and creativity, you have these other albums with poetry, and in fact, you're one from 2008, the Words Project Steve Smith named the Vocal Album of the Year.
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes. That was my first record as a leader. I think I was in my late twenties, and I don't know, I think I had actually, compared to today's standards of 19 year olds making records, waited a long time and really wanted to feel like I had something to give and something to say. And yeah, I think I've just never liked this world of music for musicians. And I mean, I think that's part of my problem with academia and that world as well, is it's sort of like we're just going to speak to ourselves. And I sort of discovered this world of using texts and poetry. I was not the first to do it at all. But yeah, to me it was a way of maybe reaching people who were not the Illuminati in the jazz world.
And I loved collaborating with singers and what that meant. I mean, I actually don't play very much on those records, and that didn't really matter to me. And yeah, I was very, very lucky with that first record. Mean there was still, when it came out, I mean, first of all, it was before streaming, and I think still making a record had a certain weight to it. And I was really lucky to team up with the people at New Amsterdam records very early on, who I was one of the first people that they put out, but have since really become a force and this kind of genre less indie, classical, indie rock world.
So yeah, I got a lot of support from them. And there was still sort of a ecosystem of music critics and music journalism that really gave that record a huge lift. And actually the record's actually coming up on 20 years old, and I actually determined to kind of market in some way, or maybe try to perform it live, but that I went on to make kind of four more albums that use text and poetry. And I still think that first one is actually the best and the strongest and amongst the best of anything. I've made a lot of making albums and making art is, I mean, you put in the work, but there's just a lot of luck too. And I'm not talking about luck in terms of it catching and finding an audience, but luck in terms of it being documented in the best possible way. I mean, just really assembling the right team and finding those people at really when they're all in a good place and healthy and everything, and everybody getting along. That record was a really, really special experience where I just feel everybody on. It was all in, and it was my first record. I didn't know a lot of the things that I knew now that I know now about making records had just an incredible team of people. And insanely enough that record was made on one frenetic six hour rehearsal of just the, I think it has four singers on it. I mean, each singer is just coming for an hour and a half to do their things.
And I mean, I will say that I'd gotten together with people individually, everybody on the record. I think I had done individual rehearsals, but there was just one rehearsal with everybody, and somehow it worked. And I'm very, very proud of that record. And also, there are some singers on there who've gone on to do some incredible work as solo artists, and it's cool that I got them early on. People like Becca Stevens and Heather Massey in particular.
Leah Roseman:
So do you have any upcoming new projects with Nathan or other
Sam Sadigursky:
Yes, I do. I just recorded a duo record with an Israeli pianist named Yotam Hai that will hopefully come out later this year. I am trying to do one thing a year. I've really set that goal. And so yeah, it gives my life meaning to have a creative thing that I'm working on. And so yeah, this thing with Yo Tom, it's some of my compositions and some of his, and then a lot of his arrangements of some Israeli kind of folk songs as well. And it's a project that has a lot of meaning for me personally, in the same way that the Solomon Diaries did. And even the words project, the settings of text and poetry. I mean, a lot of the poetry that I chose to set not only resonated with me as poetry, but I said a lot of a number of Soviet poets who I set in that series as well.
So yeah, Nathan and I are continuing to perform. I mean, one of the goals with The Solomon Diaries was that it's just a duo and we can kind of perform anywhere. We don't need a lot of infrastructure. We basically just need two armless chairs and we will come play for you. So we've done a lot of house concerts and concerts in sanctuaries and places that might not always host music. And I'm really, really, it's been incredibly freeing to have that. I mean, one of the things with the Words project, working with the singers and with piano and guitar and drums, it was just very, very difficult to put together a gig to assemble the people and to find the right venue and whatever. And it's very, very freeing to now kind of be more in this kind of world of duos where there's just one other mouth to feed.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for this today. I really appreciated it.
Sam Sadigursky:
Thank you, Leah. It was a pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at LeahRoseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Kold. Have a wonderful week.
