By NATE CHINENNot quite a month ago the alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo had a major seizure while driving his elderly landlady to a store in Brooklyn. “I was convulsing all over the place,” he later wrote on his blog, “grabbing onto the steering wheel violently, biting my tongue and basically acting crazy.”
Fortunately, the driver behind him recognized what was happening, and after quite a bit more drama — in the ambulance, Mr. D’Angelo apparently tore through the straps of his gurney and tried to strangle an emergency medical technician — he underwent testing that revealed a large tumor on his brain.
Within days he was scheduled for surgery and had started writing about the experience at andrewdangelo.com. He was clear about the fact that he had no health insurance.
The health of jazz, as a topic of conversation, has long inspired a lot of hand wringing among sympathetic parties. When the focus turns toward the health of jazz musicians, the discussion assumes a different, less abstract character: solicitous and supportive. Most people who play jazz for a living are accustomed to self-reliance. When that system fails, they lean on one another.
“Since I’ve been on the scene, there have been benefits for musicians that were in need, unfortunately, because so many of us are,” the guitarist John Scofield said in the rear stairwell of the Village Vanguard on Monday night. Along with the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he was playing a benefit for the bassist Dennis Irwin, who has recently been struggling with a spinal tumor.
“I’m lucky enough that I can afford health insurance,” Mr. Scofield continued, “but a lot of people can’t. On a jazz musician income they’re getting by from gig to gig, keeping the roof over their heads and feeding a family, and insurance doesn’t happen for them.”
Mr. Irwin, the regular bassist with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and a seasoned sideman who has logged extensive time with Mr. Scofield and Mr. Lovano, is another uninsured musician.
The sudden struggles of Mr. Irwin, 56, and Mr. D’Angelo, 41 — musicians equally beloved in different sectors of the New York jazz grid — have abruptly brought the issue of health care to the foreground within jazz circles. Their stories have resonated with musicians, who tend to absorb news of this sort with a tribal concern: jazz is a collaborative art, after all, even if its artists are the ultimate individualists. It may seem negligent that so many jazz musicians lack basic health-care coverage, but monthly fees through an organization like the Freelancers Union easily run to several hundred dollars, and these days many gigs in New York literally involve a tip jar.
The Vanguard sets were a great success, financially as well as musically (it was Mr. Scofield’s first time performing with the orchestra, and he nailed it). There will be another, bigger chance to support Mr. Irwin on March 10, when Mr. Scofield and Mr. Lovano spearhead an A-list benefit concert in partnership with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Proceeds will go to the Jazz Foundation of America, a nonprofit organization that provides aid to jazz and blues musicians.
Mr. Irwin, speaking this week from his Manhattan home, said he had just completed radiation treatments. His ordeal began in December with a mysterious back pain. The Jazz Foundation referred him to the Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute and Memorial Fund at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey, which regularly provides free treatment to jazz musicians. (Dr. Frank Forte, the institute’s director and a jazz guitarist, treated Gillespie there during the final months of his battle with pancreatic cancer in 1993.)
The Jazz Foundation does considerably more than steer musicians toward services. Its mission also involves protecting musicians from eviction, malnutrition and other misfortunes.
“We get 60 cases a week like this, each having its own urgency and desperation,” Wendy Oxenhorn, the executive director, said. Referring to Mr. Irwin, she added, “I’ve never seen an outpouring of so much for one musician.”
If that’s true, Mr. D’Angelo runs a close second. “I knew that I was loved,” he said this week, “and I knew that this musical community was close. But I had no idea the compassion ran this deep, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
Mr. D’Angelo is a key figure in Brooklyn’s underground jazz scene, and part of a peer group that includes the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, the drummer Jim Black and the saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Speed. He has a strong new album, “Skadra Degis,” on Mr. Speed’s label, Skirl, with Mr. Black and the bassist Trevor Dunn. Its release party had long been scheduled to take place Friday at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope.
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The gig is still on, but now it will be one of more than a dozen benefits for Mr. D’Angelo, spread across the United States and Europe. Mr. Black, Mr. Speed and Mr. Dunn will perform, as will the multireedist Oscar Noriega and the drummer Matt Wilson, two more of Mr. D’Angelo’s close compatriots. A separate benefit is scheduled for next Thursday at Barbès, also in Park Slope.
Mr. D’Angelo has received financial support from both the Jazz Foundation and the MusiCares Foundation, a program of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. His operation was a success in the sense that most of the tumor was removed, with no adverse effects. But further analysis revealed that he has an especially serious form of brain cancer.
“The doctor said that without treatment, I will live for five years,” he wrote last Friday, after receiving the news. “Seems dismal and I’m unwilling to accept it.” He is likely to begin radiation treatment shortly, having ruled out further surgery.
Apart from the dramatic nature of their stories, Mr. Irwin and Mr. D’Angelo are sadly not exceptions. A few years ago, for instance, the tenor saxophonist Michael Blake had two operations for a ruptured appendix. Having no insurance, he chose Bellevue Hospital Center for its sliding-scale fee; he also received assistance from MusiCares. He still has no insurance, though he is obviously aware of the risks. (He just spent the weekend at Bellevue watching over Scott Harding, a prolific record producer and engineer who was critically injured in a car accident last week. Mr. Harding does not have insurance either.)
The situation is the same for Mr. Speed, who has spent a lot of time visiting Mr. D’Angelo in hospitals lately. “A lot of my friends, myself included, don’t have insurance, which seems really idiotic, especially now,” he said. “But it’s also very expensive to get coverage.”
It should be noted, too, that even musicians with health coverage encounter serious financial needs; this is one of the major areas of concern for the Jazz Foundation. The costs associated with an illness can go well beyond the literal costs of treatment, because a musician who is not working usually translates to a musician without an income.
Last October the pianist George Cables, who does have private health insurance, had simultaneous transplant operations, receiving a new liver and kidney. While the procedures were covered, he has not been able to earn a living during his recovery. So he was fortunate to have two all-star tributes presented in his honor recently, in San Francisco and New York. He received about $12,000 from each, he said.
But the money wasn’t the only benefit, so to speak. “One of the best things for me was how people came together, and expressed their concern, and expressed their support by coming and playing,” he said. “That was better than anything.”
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