The Law, Race Relations, and All That Jazz

JAZZ SAXOPHONISTS can often size one another up by the age of their instruments. An old and weathered sax sounds the way an aged wine tastes: smooth and mellow, but with a bite. Last year's vintage is for the nouveauriche, the amateurs.

To measure him by his sax, Joshua Shedroff '91 is a heavyweight musician. His "horn," nearly old enough to be his father, perfectly fits Shedroff's description of "hip and delacquered."

"I love my instrument," says the Adams House senior. "I just have to learn how to play it."

Those who have heard him play would say that Shedroff already knows the sax. He played with the Harvard Jazz Band until his junior year, and since then has performed in New Orleans and San Antonio with Delfeayo Marsalis, younger brother of the better known Branford and Winton. Shedroff's name pops up often in New England jazz circles, and he has jammed with the best of Boston.

Thus far, his life resembles that of any number of promising jazz musicians: hour after hour spent with saxophone in mouth or ear bent towards a scratchy Coltrane recording, performances at bar mitzvahs, weddings or wherever he's wanted, and a healthy dose of optimism for the future.

But Shedroff, who in his spare time away from the saxophone has earned honors grades as a Social Studies concentrator, owns something most aspiring sax players wouldn't even know what to do with: a spot in next year's class at Yale Law School.

In an environment touted for its diversity, Shedroff is a rare find. His dual interests in jazz and law have somehow fused him into a cross between Charlie Parker and Oliver Wendell Holmes. To this date, he has juggled the two passions adeptly; for instance, he wrote his senior thesis on race relations among jazz musicians.

From September to May, schoolwork has come first, but Shedroff has reserved his summers exclusively for music. Since his freshman year, he has spent summers playing jazz, either in California or in Boston at the highly respected Berklee School of Music.

Shedroff understands that the curtain will soon close on his long juggling act, the four years he has spent keeping his fanciful dream and his academic pursuits up in the air. Graduation will demand from him a choice. Behind door A may lie fame, success and an even older sax, or only disappointment. Door B hides fewer surprises: a career in the law with an emphasis, he predicts, on public service.

For now, though, the California native has chosen Door C.

SHEDROFF PLANS TO SPEND a year or so in New York, trying to service off his performance ability in the city's thriving jazz scene. Yale, meanwhile, will have to make do with a deferral from the Harvard senior.

He admits that his plans and goals for New York are "looking pretty nebulous." But he's sure of one thing: "the idea is to play music." He has found an apartment in Brooklyn, which he will share with other musicians, but for now no steady gig or salary awaits him-- only a loose agreement with Delfeayo to perform with the band in some upcoming performances.

If he can snare a steady and satisfying gig after a year or so, Shedroff plans to stick with jazz and say goodbye to law. But he admits that "the thing that would keep me out of Yale is unlikely to happen in a year or two." Still, he'll never know if he doesn't try.

"I want to see what the New York scene is like," Shedroff says, "because that's where all the great players are."

Shedroff's post-graduate plans are iconoclastic enough to give the most cavalier of parents a coronary or two, but he has received only encouragement from his mother, a former dancer. "She's cool about it--she's the one who really got me into music. The law school thing was all my idea."

Shedroff lived with his mother, now a librarian at an elementary school, in a one-bedroom apartment in Berkeley, Calif., until he left for college. They were on welfare for his entire childhood, but despite the scarcity of money, Shedroff says his childhood was a nurturing one.

"I'm definitely not a kid from the ghetto. I had a great childhood, just not a lot of luxury... I don't feel I had huge obstacles to clear."

IT WAS HIS MOTHER who introduced him to non-traditional, non-Western music such as Indian and Indonesian forms early in life. By five, he was playing the Indian drums and recorder; by fourth grade, the clarinet; and by fifth grade he had discovered the saxophone.

Shedroff also credits his musical success to his upbringing in Berkeley, long a friendly environment for musicians. The school district nurtures hopeful musicians at early ages with jazz bands at the fourth and fifth-grade levels and has produced, in the past, several well-known jazz players. Despite such an encouraging environment, though, Shedroff admits that his work ethic while in high school left more than a little to be desired.

"I never took my horn home," he confesses. "I didn't really start playing jazz until I got out here." Although his high school jazz band won state competitions in California, Shedroff ascribes their success to that fact that "we were a little bit less clueless than the rest of them."

All through high school and to this day, Shedroff has never taken formal music lessons. "To learn jazz, you listen to records and learn from the masters," he explains.

Unlike the enigmatic violin, he says, the saxophone is an easy instrument to learn, one that lends itself well to self-study. Which explains why, all throughout high school and college, he has "mostly just played and jammed."

It also explains why he chose Harvard over a music performance school such as Berklee. With jazz saxophone, "you don't have to be in a homogeneous environment" to improve.

By about this time next year, Shedroff anticipates a time of reckoning, when he will choose either to continue pursuing his dream of becoming a jazz saxophonist or taking up Yale's offer and becoming a lawyer.

"Up to this point, it feels like I've never made a decision; everything's been a non-decision," he says. Coming to Harvard, studying social studies ("it seemed like the least commitment to a specific discipline") and trying to balance music and law after graduation have all been means of avoiding a firm resolution on the direction of his life. "At some point," he admits, "this huge decision's going to come."