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COVID Conversations is a series that \u00a0looks back through my talks with musicians since we first got locked down and moves forward as long as we’re stuck where we are. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n At the Passover Seder I attended last month, the Four Questions came and went without the usual fanfare. Zoom meetings can be like that. Yet that first question\u2014Why is this night different than all other nights?<\/em>\u2014struck me with fresh, COVID-era implication.<\/p>\n All questions are newly timely right now.<\/p>\n The title track of Arturo O\u2019Farrill\u2019s new release, \u201cFour Questions<\/a>\u201d are drawn from the W. E. B. Du Bois\u2019s book,\u00a0\u201cThe Souls of Black Folk”:<\/a><\/p>\n What does integrity do in the face of adversity \/ oppression? What does honesty do in the face of lies \/ deception? What does decency do in the face of insult? How does virtue meet brute force?<\/em><\/p>\n O\u2019Farrill was moved to consider these questions by the author, activist and theologian Dr. Cornel West, via West’s\u00a02014 speech\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0to a packed house at Seattle\u2019s Town Hall a few days before his 10\/13 arrest at the \u201cMoral Monday\u201d Civil Disobedience Actions in Ferguson, Missouri, in response to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. O\u2019Farrill met West at another protest against police brutality, and again at a symposium where they both spoke. The two got to talking\u2014about shared commitments to social justice and swinging rhythms. O\u2019Farrill ended up composing a piece, which had its premiere performance at\u00a0The Apollo Theater\u00a0in 2016, for which his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra was joined by Dr. Cornel West as a guest soloist, conductor, and percussionist. As recorded, “Four Questions,” the centerpiece of an album devoted exclusively to O’Farrill’s compositions, \u00a0is dense and intense, by turns angry and celebratory; it\u2019s about ancestry, shared inheritances and a common sense of purpose.<\/p>\n O\u2019Farrill typically splits his time between New York City, where he leads the nonprofit organization he founded, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, and Los Angeles, where directs a program in Global Jazz Studies for UCLA\u2019s Herb Alpert School of Music. Now, he\u2019s holed up in L.A. for the foreseeable future. We talked about his collaboration with West, and about what this extended moment means.<\/p>\n How did you connect with Cornel West?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a fan of Dr. West for a long time. I\u2019ve admired him as a civil-rights hero, author, theologian, and as one of the most gifted speakers I\u2019ve ever heard. We were both part of a public dialogue about revolution and faith, presented by a church. He gave a speech that electrified the audience. As I was watching him, I started seeing him as a saxophonist. I felt like he embodied spirits of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. The cadence of his speech has so much jazz rhythm code. So I\u2019m sitting there, stunned, the hair on the back of my head standing up, and I\u2019m thinking, he\u2019s a jazz soloist, alright<\/em>. I got the idea to write a concerto specifically for him.<\/p>\n How did you approach that?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I took his speech, the one in Seattle, and I transcribed its cadence and rhythms. I thought about the questions, handed down to him from W.E.B. Du Bois, and now from him to me. And then I did what I always do. I gave a great performer room to move. The Apollo had commissioned me, so we performed it there at first. By the time we got into the studio, he had changed it up, which is what I wanted and expected him to do.<\/p>\n When you embarked on this project, you couldn\u2019t have imagined the world we\u2019re living in right now. Does it change how you feel about it?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t change the nature of the work itself. But I\u2019ve clung hard to those four questions, and the ideas that flow from them because right now we\u2019re experiencing not just a pandemic, and not just the ways in which that crisis reveals inequities based on race and class, but also we\u2019re watching yet another episode of what it means to live in a country by insane and unscrupulous people.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve also suffered great loss, right?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, I\u2019ve lost friends and mentors, especially Andy Gonzalez<\/a>, who I owe a lot to.<\/p>\n How have you approached the challenges posed by this crisis?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When it all came down, I was in Los Angeles. I was about to attend the soft premiere of \u201cFandango at the Wall<\/a>\u201d at the San Diego Film Festival, and to do a concert. I was supposed to give a world premiere at Columbia\u2019s Miller Theater, and do something at the Joyce Theater.<\/p>\n All of that and more got canceled. Of course, I\u2019m very fortunate in my faculty position at UCLA. They had built me a wonderful studio here. I figured I could stay here and work and write and practice. And I could run the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance from here, too. But a week later, UCLA closed all the buildings.<\/p>\n Right away, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance has established an Emergency Artist Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n