Inside a snug, spartan room at the Harold Washington Library Center, Shimon Marcucci had fine-tuned what probably amounted to several albums’ worth of music before I’d ever played a note there. For four years, the middle-aged bureaucrat turned amateur composer had spent his lunch break on the eighth floor of Chicago’s mammoth central library, soprano saxophone in tow. Standing in one of the six first-come, first-served rehearsal rooms—each outfitted with an upright piano and available for an hour at a time to anyone with a library card—Marcucci had been dreaming up and polishing a range of world-jazz fusion material that would eventually become a self-released record.
This improvised treatment for the tension of daily life thankfully requires no mastery of the instrument. Beyond a basic knowledge of the locations of notes and the construction of a limited assortment of chords, I have only the vaguest grasp of what I’m doing when my fingers hit the keys. But luckily I’m playing for an audience of one. No one would mistake my free-form style for Rubinstein, but to my ears, I don’t sound half bad. Occasionally I’ll cue up YouTube instructional videos, which have taught me how to noodle my way through a limited but eclectic repertoire that includes Adele’s “Hello” and “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” by Phil Collins. Sometimes I close the thick double doors that keep the rehearsal room relatively soundproof, take a seat on the bench in front of a Yamaha or a Baldwin, and do a pitch-perfect cover of John Cage’s silent masterwork “4’33”.” I’ll just sit and listen to the muffled resonance of people in adjacent rooms, running through scales on piano, violin, or trumpet. If the rehearsal spaces are all empty, I’ll take in the steady hum of the library air conditioner or heater. This counts as meditation in a city where searching for peace and quiet often seems as futile as attempting to dodge gravity.
