This is the band recorded live before a sold out crowd of 240 enthusiastic fans at the RegattaBaR IN Cambridge, Massachusetts. Interactive close listening and swing hard is what draws us and our fans to share the live Jazz experience!!


7 MP3 Songs in this album (79:15) !
Related styles: Jazz: African Jazz, Blues: Jazzy Blues, Mood: Upbeat

People who are interested in Bill Evans Miles Davis Thelonious Monk should consider this download.


Details:
We have playing together in various combos for decades . We never rehearse , rarely repeat a recording take or duplicate our set list . We have learned to trust that whatever we do in this band will work and be fresh , spontaneous and surprising to us and our audience. We are celebrating the joy of close attention and painting our sound image of a world in which everything counts and is noted and given a response.
Here is a link to the band website for more info ., Bios , events and videos.
1
Looking Forward To Remembering
The Future
Stanley Sagov is a dazzling jazz
pianist and composer who is
skilled on a number of other
music instruments and who is also
skilled with surgical instruments,
as he simultaneously has a full
time career as a medical doctor.
He constantly amazes his
colleagues in both music and in
medicine with his ability to lead
such an intense dual life both as a
physician and as a musician.
Dr. Sagov is again releasing a new
CD but he produces enough
music to fill the contents of a full
CD almost every month in his
home studio. Sagov is also a top
notch photographer who shoots
nature, people and places with the
eyes of an unusually sensitive
personality.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa
in 1944 to a Jewish family that
had immigrated there to escape
the chaos and anti-Semitism that
followed the Russian Revolution,
the young Sagov grew up in the
midst of the horrid South African
regime of Apartheid and its
resulting police state.
The young boy was born with
Gordonâs Syndrome, an extremely
rare genetic disorder which can
cause club feet, cleft palate,
dysplasia of the hip and also
thumb in palm deformity. He
suffered greatly as he was forced
to endure the horrors of sixteen
different surgeries in London,
New York and Boston during his
first 13 years to help correct
various deformities. At school he
was stigmatized and teased by
other boys because of his
awkward gait and the necessity of
wearing leg irons for many years.
Marked by this great difficulty, he
had a sudden insight at an early
age.
âNobody really
dies in jazz,
Miles, Dizzy,
Ellington, John
Coltrane, Charlie
Parker, Louis
Armstrong,
Thelonious
Monk, Bill Evans,
theyâre all really
still so alive!â
Stanley Sagov
STANLEYSAGOV
Sagov Bio 2011
2
âThis was not my fault,â says Sagov, âSuddenly
there was a realization about this around age 9. I
remember walking uphill from a violin lesson one
day and suddenly understanding the parallel
between my being stigmatized for looking unusual
and the terrible way that black people in South
Africa were being treated by whites. How could
others think that this was something that I had willed
or caused and for which I should be blamed?â It is
actually a genetic disease affecting both my
daughters and my grand daughter.
âNo one in my family played music professionally
though my mother dabbled in it a bit, but when I
was age six, I suddenly asked to play the violin. I
have no idea why I did this! I was a bad but
enthusiastic violinist! I remember wearing a British
school uniform with a dark jacket and gray pants in
the winter and riding on the top level of the English
style double-decker buses with my quarter-sized
violin. I had leg irons on because of the multiple
surgeries and I must have been a strange sight.â
âI always felt a kinship with the black people of my
country. The Passover story with its themes of being
strangers in a strange land and needing to be freed
from slavery and oppression and the cruelty and
mass murder of my fellow Jews and family members
in anti-semitic Europe resonated with my
perceptions of the unjust society in which I was
living. All white people in South Africa had
servants, even if you were extremely poor and on
welfare, you had servants. Our servants would carry
me around and take care of me and I sensed a kind
of nobility about the Bantu people in Cape Town.
They had a lot of pride. In those days [the â50s]
there were so many more black people than white.
The ratio was about 4 to 1.â
Cape Town was the legislative capital and in those
days there were only three white members of
parliament who strenuously opposed the ruling
nationalist party.. One of them came to stay with
the Sagov family during the 6 month legislative
session every year and had a great impact on the
young Stanley.
âSuddenly there was a realization . . .
how could others think that this was
something I had willed or caused
and for which I should be blamed?â
I sensed a kind of nobility about
the Bantu people . . .
STANLEYSAGOV 2011
I was listening
to folks like
John Henry,
Leadbelly and
Big Bill
Broonzy. I was
crazy for
Lonnie
Donegan. Soon
I was hooked
on the guitar
and was
playing homage
to the Chicago
blues men and
English skiffle
music.
3
His name was Leo Lovell and he played ukulele. Soon, he
taught Stanley how to play the instrument.
This led to his purchase of a guitar on the way to England for
another surgery.
âI was immobilized for a long time in England and there was
blues revival happening there even before it really took hold in
America. I was listening to folks like John Henry, Leadbelly
and Big Bill Broonzy. I was crazy for Lonnie Donegan. Soon I
was hooked on the guitar and was playing homage to the
Chicago blues men and English skiffle music. When I went
back to South Africa, I brought this music with me.â
âBack in Cape Town I remember that I auditioned for a band
and I was wearing studs on my jeans. They liked me so I began
playing with this very popular group called the High Five Plus
Two. We played Fats Domino tunes, Little Richard and Jerry
Lee Lewis titles and stuff by Buddy Holly and the father of
rock & roll, Chuck Berry.â
âIn a local band competition an R&B band led by a guy named
Morris Goldberg who played reeds, won. Later Goldberg went
on to play with Hugh Masakela and on the Graceland album
tour with Paul Simon. So, when our bandâs piano player got
sick, I picked up the piano and learned how to play those hip
R&B licks in our band.â
âMy sister liked jazz and also my parents were listening to
Django Rheinhardt, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and
Glenn Miller, so I was exposed to lots of jazz at home as well as
to the music of the African penny whistles on the street. I
heard the exciting music of the Black Township, this was
Mbakanqga and Kwela music.â
By age 16, Sagov met a jazz bass player who was a romantic
charismatic character; his name was George Kussel and he led
the teen fully into the jazz world.
âThe jazz scene in South Africa was a scene in the country that
was strikingly integrated and different from the rest of life
there. It was a life of beat philosophy, drugs like marijuana, sex
and jazz. (naturally we also never inhaled!) This amazing music
represented the fusion of European and Black cultures. This
was an unusual niche in the apartheid society in which blacks
and whites could reach out to one another. It was multicultural
SOUL. It wasnât about âitâs a black thing and you wouldnât
understand it.â The jazz scene was always integrated in South
Africa. It was a statement that said âwe arenât a part of this
Apartheid thing.â There was sex across the color bar, and clubs
that were openly integrated even in the face of it being totally
illegal. Part of why it was sanctioned however is because the
government was also using these jazz clubs as locations where
they could spy on people, as many in attendance were real
radicals and revolutionaries.â
âThe music was great. Stan Getz, Bud Shank and John
Mehegan came and toured. This was the â50s and early â60s.
They told us that we were creating the only jazz outside
America that was REALLY jazz. Many of the same elements
of race, social protest, suffering and pressing through racism
were the same as they had been in America. Grass-roots
Political resistance efforts were happening at that time and
people were coming together around those themes as artists.â
âDollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim), Chris McGregor, Kippie
Moeketsi, Dennis Mpali, Dudu Pukwana, Todd Matshikisa,
Early Mbuzi, Martin Mgajima, Winston Manququo, Johnny
Gertse, Monty Weber, Chris Schilder, Midge Pike, Cecil
Barnard (Hotep), Basil Moses, Hugh Masekela and Miriam
Makeba were some of my heroes at that time. I got to play
with all of these amazing people and they would come and visit
at my home as well. I always had sessions going on with jazz
people. This was striking because it had such a social, spiritual
and integrationist agenda around the music.â
âI saw jazz as an oasis. Dollar Brand was such a brilliant player
and actor. There was this amazing club called the Vortex
which was owned by an Indonesian guy with incredible dope
and good food and the music there was always very, very
powerful. Sometimes Dollar would be playing and there was so
much black humor in the society there . . . there was a deep
feeling of implacable forces of oppression on one level, but we
were young and simply into the music. Our mix of African
and American jazz elements had the power behind it and
Dollar would perform satirical guerilla theatre, skits, poetry and
always his deeply soulful and swinging music.â
I was immobilized for a long time in England
and there was a blues revival happening . . .
STANLEYSAGOV 2011
âThe jazz scene in South Africa was a
scene in the country that was strikingly
integrated and different from the rest of
life there.â
âI saw jazz as an oasis.â
4
âThese years as a teenager were wild
years for me. I had a fling with an Indian
woman, which was totally illegal. One
day when my parents were away in
Europe, my sister and I had one of our
open jam sessions. By morning the house
was filled with musicians sleeping
everywhere and I was in bed with Aisha.
Then my aunt showed up unexpectedly,
checked all this out, phoned my parents
and the next thing I knew, my sister and I
had to live with my aunt till my parents
returned!â
One night a wild jazz guy named Bob
Tizard who played bass and trombone
decided I needed to learn how to play
âPerdidoâ and so we stayed up all night
playing in a trio with Don Stegman on
drums from 1 am to 7 am until I finally
got it and could keep track of the 32 bar
song form with cyclical changes and
improvise on something other than the
blues..â
While all this jazz life was going on, the
young Stanley Sagov was also heavily
influenced by medicine, as heâd been in
and out of hospitals for most of his life
with all the terrible surgeries to correct
his club feet. Throughout high school he
played music but he was equally drawn to
science. Rebellious in high school, still he
received high grades. There was never
any pressure from his family to become a
physician, but because heâd experienced
so much surgery, he had met lots of MDs
and was drawn to the profession. At age
13, he went to England for several
operations there and met a great Harley
Street surgeon known as Dennis Browne
who headed up very formal tours of the
hospital dressed in striped pants and tails.
Dennis Browne was a famous orthopedist
who was subsequently Knighted by the
Queen for his work and he took a liking
to the young Stanley. Sir Dennis wrote to
him through medical school and he asked
him to study and come to work with him
in London. Stanley also was inspired by
several uncles who were prominent
physicians in Cape Town who were also
very important in his choice of a medical
career. In addition, Sagov had evolved a
deep under s tanding about how
Apartheid was so oppressive to people of
color and how that affected the death
rate in rural areas of South Africa. In
those days, 50 of black children
perished by the age of five years old in
rural areas. The life expectancy was
essentially plotted against the color of
oneâs skin and even by the depth of the
pigment. As a doctor, Stanley could see
how unfair the society was based simply
on medical outcomes. He wanted to
make a difference. So, in 1962, Stanley
decided that he would attend University
of Cape Town to study medicine.
âAt this time I was still playing in clubs
and had moved from guitar to piano.
Just before going to the university, I had
the feeling that I really wanted to know
more about harmony and counterpoint.
The Juritz family had moved in next door
and the husband was a professor of
physics who also played first rate bassoon
and harpsichord with the Cape Town
Symphony.â
âWe became amazing friends. Here I
was, a seventeen year old Jewish boy
hanging out with a patrician musician
named John Juritz. We had a great
affinity and he taught me recorder and
introduced me to my first oboe teacher.
We formed a group that played baroque
chamber music., I learned a lot about
classical music from this saturation
experience and played oboe in an
orchestra and opera company at the
University of Cape Town. He was a very
important part of my musical career.
Even as I was studying medical journals I
also read through every page of Groveâs
Dictionary of Music; I wanted to learn
everything about the subject and I was all
over the map musically all the while
studying medicine to the hilt as well.â
âI wanted the music, but at the same
time I wanted to have a good impact on
people who had such terrible medical
care in the black townships outside of
Cape Town. As a trainee, I became
skilled at re-hydrating scores of patients
in our well equipped hospital. Theyâd
walk in looking like death and leave
looking pretty well, but then they might
die a week later from something as simple
a s chi cken pox o r me a s l e s o r
gastroenteritis. I could take care of black
people but black medical students were
not allowed to see white patients. That
was how insane the conditions were there
for medical students and doctors then.â
âIn the black townships there was an
amazing music scene. Though black
people were not considered citizens in
South Africa, they were given 13 of the
land, usually the least arable land and
they were only allowed to be in South
Africa as workers. The townships were
essentially ghetto compounds with
thousands of segregated people living just
12 to 15 miles out of town and all of
them either walking or taking buses to
work in the city every day. In order to go
into a township, you had to have papers
and report to the police to tell them
where you were going and why. I went
every week to perform with the musicians
and never reported to anyone but I never
felt afraid. I knew that my black friends
would always take care of me. It was
such a police state. Iâd go every week,
perform in concerts and then take
musicians home in my car. Sometimes
there would be riots in the township, but
theyâd put me behind a piano and protect
me.â
âI worked in the townships as a doctor as
well. As a senior med student I always
had the need to do medicine AND music.
I always gave equal time to music as I did
to medicine. It took a lot of energy, but I
had a real NEED to do and have both in
my life. I was always totally prepared
every day for school and I never
crammed. I was a disciplined student by
day but also a mad man at night! We
had block parties, with music playing all
the time and weâd even bring in huge
grape trees and have these Bacchanalian
orgies! Once we got arrested and I was
taken before the university council! The
STANLEYSAGOV 2011
5
âThere was this element of desperate
gaiety and the flouting of authority in my
life but I was always a diligent medical
student.â
Stanley Sagov
university issued a public edict that I was not allowed to go to
parties!â
âThere was this element of desperate gaiety and the flouting of
authority in my life but I was always a diligent medical
student.â
âI got into the jazz scene in Johannesburg as well through a
connection with South African born pianist Chris McGregor
who had been playing in a band for the show,âSponono.â This
show followed the groundbreaking jazz opera King Kong, the
story of an African boxer who was a tragic hero and this show
also spawned a lot of other musicals. Miriam Makeba was in
King Kong. Chris also recorded a very important big band
album at the Castle Lager sponsored the area jazz festival . It
mixed jazz with Black Township music and documented our
unique South African synthesis of the tradition. I had the
heady privilege of playing with many of the musicians who
were part of this era and this ushered me further into the
African jazz experience.
âThe music was a hot, heady mixture and some rich white
people whoâd be, in a certain way, slumming, by inviting us over
to their very courtly upper crust houses enjoyed the music and
blacks and whites would play together. This was totally illegal.
Sometimes Iâd sleep over in Soweto which was also illegal but I
always felt protected by my relationship with the musicians and
the spirit of the music.â
âIn the black townships there was
an amazing music scene.â
STANLEYSAGOV 2011
6
âIn 1967, I went to London and there, through my London
family, I met Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, two of the big
jazz stars of that time. Cleo told me to look up jazz singer
Sheila Jordan when I got to New York and after three weeks of
phone tag I finally got lucky. She took me under her wing and
introduced me to all the jazz greats of the era including
Ornette Coleman, George Russell, Jaki Byard, Elvin Jones,
Roland Kirk, Jimmy Garrison, Charles Moffet, Ted Curson,
Howard McGhee, Booker Ervin, Billy Hart and so many
others. I had moved to New York after having taken the
medical exams in South Africa and immediately went to work
at Bellevue Hospital, Grasslands Hospital and New York
Hospital and all the while I was playing at night in clubs like
Slugs and the Village Vanguard, The Village Gate, Pookyâs Pub
and Musart with many of my newly found jazz friends that
Sheila had introduced me to. Some of the people who saw me
at the clubs ended up in my care at Bellevue and they
wondered if I really knew what I was doing as theyâd seen me
as a jazz musician the night before!â
âThe music was inspiring me so much and I knew that I
wanted to learn still more, especially about jazz. Around that
time I heard that Gunther Schuller was starting a jazz division
at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, so I applied
to the school and after two auditions and letters of
recommendation from Bill Evans and Ted Curson, I was
accepted in the jazz department. I moved to Boston and I was
surprised to find out that although I was a jazz piano major,
they had no piano teacher for me! I protested and they asked
who I would like to have so I suggested some of the great
players Iâd heard in New York, like Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson,
Hank Jones , Roland Hanna , John Lewis or Jaki Byard.â
âGunther said âOK, weâll get one of those people for you. In
the meantime I studied with classical piano teachers who
taught me the correct fingering and hand positions that Iâd
never learned. I practiced carefully for three months and then
the school flew me to New York weekly to study with the great
Jaki Byard. After a few weeks, other students heard about this
and so the school decided to fly Jaki to Boston on a weekly basis
to teach several students at NEC.â
âDuring my time at NEC I was also holding down positions as
a physician at Harvard University Health Services, the student
medical center at MIT and I was even the prison physician at
Walpole Prison. I also moonlighted at various emergency
rooms and in intensive care units. Again, I always needed to
balance the rigors of medicine with those of music. I had a
wife and family at this time as well.â
âI put together a band called âSagovâ and it featured
trumpeter Stanton Davis and drummer Anton Fig, both
classmates at NEC at the time. We opened for Gary Burton at
one point and the famous jazz manager and booking agent Ted
Kurland offered us a deal to go on the road and record. It was,
for the music business, a pretty good deal, but in contrast to the
steadiness and security of my medical career and in thinking
about my wife and child, it seemed impossible to take the on
challenges of touring.â
âI never expected to stay in Boston after my stint at NEC but I
found New York to be a âcutting contestâ which was very harsh,
almost racism in reverse. I was sympathetic to the reason for
this, but really preferred the camaraderie of playing with
musicians like I had done in South Africa and in Boston. Iâm
somewhat wistful about those choices now but I feel now like
having my high tech studio with all the latest gear enables me
to keep my chops up and write music. I now produce about a
CDâs worth of music per month in my mini studio, playing all
the instruments myself.â
âIâm idealistic about music. Jazz is a bridge between races.
Neither could exist without the other. Jazz is a very unique
music and rock and roll exists only because of it. Itâs a mixture
of European influences with sophisticated African rhythms and
itâs a discourse, a conversation that is going on that can only
happen in the moment, in real time. Itâs being open to each
other, in a creative context in which everyone is winning.â
I was a disciplined student by day but also
a mad man at night!
STANLEYSAGOV 2010
7
âThe title of my 2008 CD was
L o o k i n g F o r wa r d t o
Remembering The Future.
Thatâs what came up with this
album . . . itâs music that in a way,
compared to music Iâve played, is
pretty serene, reflective, drawing on
tradition, but still fresh. Itâs got its
own group feel. It has eclectic
openness to all that is in this place, at
this moment. The meaning of the
title has to do with the fact that by
the time you and I know anything,
itâs already over. Weâre never in the
present because itâs already over.
Weâre operating as if itâs now, but in
truth, itâs already over. So, in jazz,
weâre remembering that note thatâs
over and responding to that and the
irresistible drive to get to the next
moment. Jazz is a sexy mix of head
and heart, and in order to experience
a bit of now, you have to be impelled
by the future oriented momentum of
the music. Itâs like making love with
the other musicians in real time right
in front of all of our audience.
Nobody really dies in jazz, Miles,
Dizzy, Ellington, John Coltrane,
Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong,
Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, theyâre
all really still so alive in our
passionate resonance to remember
them and anticipate and make the
next possible musical gesture happen
right now!â
STANLEY SAGOV & The
Remembering The Future Jazz
Band is a bunch of grizzled jazz
veterans who never really grew up,
still love to play the music and want
to share that experience in the
moment of creation with YOU!!
All photography
©Sadye & Stanley Sagov
[except 1970s pics on pages 2 & 5]
and photo below by Sue Auclair
STANLEYSAGOV 2011
âIâm idealistic about music.
Jazz is a bridge between
races. Neither could exist
without the other. Jazz is a
very unique music and rock
and roll exists only
because of it.â
Stanley Sagov