<<  -- 2 --  David Lipp    THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN FLUTE

You have three special anniversaries this year: your sixty fifth birthday (8 December 2004), your fiftieth stage anniversary, and your twentieth wedding anniversary. Do you have plans to celebrate?

'Well, no particular plan. You know, I'll tell you one of the great secrets of being married, between my wife and me. We're absolutely tremendous at hanging out. We are in New York now and as soon as we got off the plane from Europe, we walked all over the Upper East Side, to Lexington Avenue, then all the way down to 56th Street and then across a couple of streets to this restaurant and it looked like a fun place and we went in. We did all that walking.'

Considering that you've done some jazz, I just wanted to ask you how you feel about going from classical music to playing jazz and do you feel there is much of a difference between the two?

'Of course there is. Classical music is written down and composed by people who sit at a desk. Jazz is a guy who gets up and plays in the middle of a bar or anywhere and that's it. That's the first difference. The second difference is that jazz has no limits to the way in which people can interpret it, whereas classical music has a lot of limits. It's highly sophisticated.'

Were you comfortable playing jazz when you started?

'Sure. I listen to a lot of jazz. I just listened to a fantastic thing. A friend of mine, composer Dave Heath, he made a record of his kid, fifteen years old, Liam, playing the trumpet. I couldn't believe my ears. I think he thinks he is Miles Davis, because he definitely sounds like Miles. It's amazing. I'm a big admirer of Wynton Marsalis and his group. The group is so tight you can't believe it.'

Are you excited about spending your first Christmas in years away from your home in Lucerne, Switzerland?

'Oh, I'm excited about spending it in America with my wife's family because they're absolutely great people and they're fun. The kids are a total riot. I can't wait to see them all in action at Christmas. It must be an absolute gas!

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