“Aging is not for the faint of heart.
It requires a slower pace, a steadier step,
and the wisdom to say goodbye without fear.”
—Meryl Streep
“I never heard of a jazz musician who retired.
You love what you do, so what are you
going to do, play for the walls?”
—Nat Adderley
I’ve been thinking about retirement.
For old road dogs like me, retirement is a tricky proposition.
Do we even want to retire? We love what we do. Why should we stop?
Occasionally you'll hear about a musician retiring “from stage to page,” exchanging public performance for the solitary work of composing music or writing a memoir. Others become painters, poets, or novelists. That's less retirement than reinvention.
Nobody expects us to retire. Most of our heroes didn’t. Unlike professional athletes, jazz musicians don’t “age out” of the business. When our strength, stamina, or chops begin to wane, we adapt. We simplify. We change our style.
Most of us can’t afford to retire. Self-employed artists rarely make enough to build any real retirement savings, and many end up with modest Social Security benefits. We’re responsible for our own healthcare. We don’t get paid vacations. We don’t receive paychecks, pensions, or 401k matching funds. We’re out here on our own.
A fortunate few get to expire on the bandstand. Bonus points if you drop dead during the applause, right after your brilliant solo! This exit strategy is called The Big Finish. We should all be so lucky.
The retirement plan for most of us, however, is The Slow Fade. You keep working because you must. Over time your health, mobility, and mental sharpness begin to decline. At the same time you experience a decrease in professional activity and cultural relevance. It feels like ageism, but it’s entropy. Fewer gigs, smaller crowds, less attention. A gradual slide from relative notoriety into obscurity and, eventually, total anonymity.
Fading out was never my plan. I wanted to finish the story on a high note. I wanted to go out on top.
When I was first starting out, I envisioned my career as a steady climb upward until finally, in my ultimate season, the capstone: a glorious Farewell Tour! I imagined joyously returning to all my favorite festivals, clubs, and concert halls for one final performance. I would play my heart out, then retire to a quiet life of leisure.
Now both of those dreams—the steady ascent and the victory lap—sound grandiose and incredibly naive to me. I've had a good run, but it felt less like scaling a mountain than navigating a winding river. Not a disciplined escalation so much as a cunning negotiation of life’s twists and turns, ebbs and flows, ups and downs.
Nevertheless, the idea of “a quiet life of leisure” sounds pretty good right about now.
After ten thousand gigs and half a century of hustling, I'm ready to rest, though the rewards of a life in music rarely arrive in a brokerage account. Most of them are non-monetary. I can't afford to quit working—not anytime soon, not in this economy.
I’ll need to keep earning a living for the foreseeable future—and perhaps that’s for the best. Creating, performing, and contributing are what give my life meaning. I would surely miss the connection with the audience and my bandmates, were I to leave it all behind.
But I can’t just keep going until the wheels fall off, and I won’t wait around for the slow fade to occur naturally. I must shape the process intentionally, little by little.
This body, mind, and spirit call for a deliberate downshift to a sustainable pace.
Maybe “retirement” isn't the right word. Maybe what I'm after is merely a gentler tempo.
I’ll continue to make the best music I can for as long as I can, for whomever is listening. I’ll simply do more with less: smaller projects, shorter tours, fewer gigs. From here on, it’s quality over quantity.
No retirement party.
No celebratory splash.
No farewell tour.
Just a long, slow decrescendo.
Diminuendo al niente.
