{"id":78375,"date":"2020-01-27T11:30:07","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T16:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=78375"},"modified":"2020-01-27T11:30:07","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T16:30:07","slug":"mild-mannered-bu-employee-by-day-flute-ace-by-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2020\/01\/27\/mild-mannered-bu-employee-by-day-flute-ace-by-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Mild-mannered BU Employee by Day, Flute Ace by Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"550\" height=\"310\" src=\"\/\/www.bu.edu\/buniverse\/interface\/embed\/embed.html?v=1LwvxO0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By day, you might have to make an effort to find Lance Martin. He works behind the counter at the BU School of Medicine Diversity &amp; Inclusion Office as the administrative assistant.<\/p>\n<p>But on certain nights, you can step inside a place like Darryl\u2019s Corner Bar &amp; Kitchen on Columbus Avenue in Boston, and he\u2019s hard to miss. He\u2019s the guy in the beret and in the spotlight, throwing himself into a flute solo on a jazzy trio version of Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cLove on Top,\u201d say, or something more traditional, like Cedar Walton\u2019s \u201cBolivia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday mornings, you\u2019re likely to find him at Twelfth Baptist Church in Dorchester, where he\u2019s been playing at services and functions since 1980. And at other times, he\u2019s out at Wellesley College, where he teaches flute improvisation to undergraduates raised mostly on classical music. And he has been playing more and more functions at BU\u2019s Medical Campus.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_78376\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78376\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-Resize-19-1759-LANCE-039-1024x684.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78376\" width=\"1024\" height=\"684\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-Resize-19-1759-LANCE-039-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-Resize-19-1759-LANCE-039-1024x684-636x425.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-Resize-19-1759-LANCE-039-1024x684-768x513.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-78376\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Martin works on improvisation with Wellesley College freshman Gabrielle Wahlers during a flute lesson on the Wellesley campus recently. Photo by Cydney Scott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Some people have side hustles. Martin has a whole side life\u2014with the flute.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love the instrument,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a pure instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Martin has developed a style he calls \u201cphysical jazz,\u201d a style where, let\u2019s say, it\u2019s not hard to tell when he\u2019s feeling the music, swaying and swinging, walking into the audience or even into the next room. \u201cI can\u2019t stand in one place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt makes a different player out of me.\u201d (Moving around is good for his sciatica, too.)<\/p>\n<p>He leads a few different combos. The Lance Martin Jazz Trio includes guitar and bass, and they play all-request sets, consulting a digital \u201cfake book\u201d on his iPad when necessary. The night at Darryl\u2019s, they also covered John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, the <em>Odd Couple<\/em> TV theme, and even <em>BU Today\u2019<\/em>s request for the Mamas &amp; the Papas \u201cCalifornia Dreamin.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe all-request shows give us a chance to interpret. We play it our way,\u201d he says. \u201cI love the instrument because you can do so much with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2 class=\"quote-sizing\">&#8220;I can\u2019t stand in one place. It makes a different player out of me.&#8221;<\/h2>\n<h5 class=\"caption\">\u2014Lance Martin<\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<p>That particular set list at Darryl\u2019s, though, doesn\u2019t quite do justice to the role of gospel in Martin\u2019s music, and he\u2019s as likely to break out in something by Kirk Franklin as a hit by Shaggy or a jazz standard. His father was a Baptist minister, the women in his family were all involved in the choir, and \u201cwhen I started,\u201d he says, \u201cI would just play \u2018Amazing Grace\u2019 because that was the only song I knew.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Is playing in church very different from playing a gig like Darryl\u2019s? \u201cNot really,\u201d Martin says, \u201cit\u2019s just a different genre. Everything is about knowing your audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a boy in Pittsburgh, he fell in love with songs like Duke Ellington\u2019s \u201cSatin Doll\u201d while listening to WAMO, then the big R&amp;B and jazz radio station. \u201cThen I found Gershwin and <em>Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> blew me away,\u201d he says. He started going to the library to play records, including Boston Pops recordings of Gershwin. When he was seven, he found the flute.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMusically, you can do a lot of things with it,\u201d he says. \u201cI found out because I used to stay in the basement and just play flute. I remember one Saturday my mother sent my brothers out looking for me because I was down there practicing from morning till night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He would listen to as many flute players as he could, and he even watched <em>The Lawrence Welk Show<\/em> just because there was a flute in the band.<\/p>\n<p>As a teenager, Martin played, arranged, and even taught for a community youth orchestra, the Ozanam Strings, playing pieces from Gershwin to the \u201cTheme from Shaft.\u201d After high school, he studied at Berklee College of Music, where, he says, faculty member and tenor sax player Herman Johnson \u201ctaught me how to control the band while playing, communication-wise.\u201d Johnson taught him how to tell the band to get into the solo section, to end the solo section, using just gestures and eye communication.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_78377\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78377\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-2-Resize-19-1481-JAZZ-036-1024x684.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78377\" width=\"1024\" height=\"684\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-2-Resize-19-1481-JAZZ-036-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-2-Resize-19-1481-JAZZ-036-1024x684-636x425.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/files\/2020\/01\/Lance-2-Resize-19-1481-JAZZ-036-1024x684-768x513.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-78377\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Martin and the Lance Martin Trio performing during JazzFest in West Roxbury last year. Martin works in the BU School of Medicine Diversity &amp; Inclusion Office and is also a professional jazz flautist and flute teacher. Photo by Cydney Scott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Church is probably the only place where Martin has played longer than at Cambridge\u2019s late, lamented Ryles Jazz Club, where he gigged for 36 years before it closed in 2018. But his most memorable gig was at Boston Medical Center, he says, and it\u2019s very much a case of him knowing his audience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy former boss, who\u2019s in charge of the BU Medical Center Band, came in and asked me one day, \u2018Do you have your flute with you?\u2019 And I said, \u2018I don\u2019t carry my flute to work,\u2019\u201d Martin says, beginning to laugh. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018The reason why I\u2019m asking, they asked me to play for a wedding at the hospital, and I don\u2019t have my harmonica.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll do it if I can go home and get my flute,\u2019 and he said OK.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When he got back, he found a Latino couple waiting. The man was in a wheelchair and was going to hospice, and his last wish was to marry his fianc\u00e9e. \u201cThere\u2019s a song that\u2019s an icebreaker, \u2018Guantanamera,\u2019\u201d Martin says. \u201cWhen I play it in hotels, the workers, Latino people, they come out from the kitchen, they come out from everywhere, it\u2019s almost like an anthem. So I started playing \u2018Guantanamera,\u2019 and he said to her, \u2018I must dance. Please help me stand up, I must dance.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo the man\u2019s sons propped him up on both sides, and he put his arms around his fianc\u00e9e, and they danced to \u2018Guantanamera.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI finished the song, and the minister said, \u2018Play it again, play it again!\u2019 So I did, and the two families were just huddled together, dancing to \u2018Guantanamera.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd I was like, wow, you can\u2019t beat this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This BU Today story was written by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/today\/author\/joel-brown\/\">Joel Brown<\/a>, video by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/today\/author\/devin-hahn\/\">Devin Hahn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lance Martin&#8217;s music, from Gershwin to Coltrane to Beyonc\u00e9, blends jazz, soul, gospel, and standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78375"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78380,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78375\/revisions\/78380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}