Zeitlin In The Journal

In today’s Wall Street Journal, I write about Denny Zeitlin. The piece is pegged to the simultaneous releases of his new trio CD on the Sunnyside label and a Mosaic box set with nearly all of Zeitlin’s Columbia trio recordings. The article begins:

In October 1963, a 25-year-old Johns Hopkins medical student sat at a concert grand piano in the East 30th Street studio of Columbia Records in New York and played a masterpiece of a jazz solo. Denny Zeitlin, from a Chicago family devoted to medicine and music, had come to New York for a 10-week fellowship in psychiatry at Columbia University. But the medical student, a pianist since the age of 2 and a professional musician during his high-school years, had also found time during his New York sojourn to study with the seminal composer George Russell, who became one of his champions, and to sit in with some of the city’s leading jazz players.

It goes on to tell the story of Dr. Zeitlin’s extraordinary life-long equal commitments to music and medicine, which…

… are not enough to absorb Dr. Zeitlin’s curiosity and energy. Tall, bearded, lean as a figure in an El Greco painting, he is also devoted to mountain biking, fishing, gastronomy and wine. Nor does he dabble in those interests. As with music and psychiatry, he pursues them.

To read the whole thing, click here, or pick up a copy of the Journal at your doorstep or the nearest news stand.