Black Pearls: Improvisations on a Lost Year

by Sascha Feinstein

Sascha Feinstein grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the only child of parents who were both artists. While he was still in high school, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and died less than a year later. It was during the trying period of his mother's illness that he became consumed by jazz, both as an emotional salvation and as a necessary form of escape. Later, during his college years, he discovered the crossovers between jazz and poetry, and a life's love was forged. Feinstein's passion for the creative arts and his fragmented memories of the heartbreaking loss of his mother entwined to become the book Black Pearls. In the spirit of jazz improvisation, these gentle, evocative essays are governed by theme and variation more than by strict chronology, each essay repositioning riffs and choruses of personal experience within the broader cultural landscapes of literature, painting, and music. Although the project began as an exploration into the archeological nature of lost memory, it matured into a far more expansive understanding of personal identity.

Genres: Memoir, Music

176 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2008

Reviews

[Mick Carlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a word, this is a sacred book. I am blown away by its beating heart, its poetry, its remembrance of loved ones now gone. If you love Jazz, if you love one (or both) of your parents, if you love poetry, you must read Sascha Feinstein's BLACK PEARLS. There are images--a shoulder tap on a dark evening in Stockholm; an afternoon spent in an Italian castle with Ezra Pound's daughter; Howard McGhee's trumpet in a small Manhattan jazz club--that will stay with me forever. BLACK PEARLS is one beauty of a book.

[Patrick Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bias confession: Sascha was my final advisor in my MFA program with the Vermont College of Fine Arts. But part of the reason I wanted to study with him was because of this book. It contains real tenderness without being melodramatic. He does a great job of weaving the narrative line of his musical growth with his coming to terms with a personal pain.