Blindness As A Way Of Seeing

In college, I studied improvisation with blind saxophonist, Eric Kloss.

Back in the 1970's, he had recorded with Chic Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Pat Martino and many other jazz giants. Eric was one of the greatest musicians I had ever heard.

Once a week for a number of semesters, I was in his improvisation class with 4 other musicians. Basically, we played and improvised for about 2 or 3 hours during the class. Eric always played with us.

Once in a while a professor in the next room would angrily knock on our door and ask us to keep it down. Our room was cramped and hot. It wasn't much of a classroom.

Sometimes one of us would turn off the light without Eric's knowledge (since he was blind). It was completely dark and there were no windows. Then we'd all play together and be blind with him. The lack of eyes forced us to "see" everything with our ears. We seemed to play better this way.

I sometimes think he could tell when the light was out by the way we played.