=== My Two Polish Grandfathers: And Other Essays on the Imaginative Life ===
My interest in jazz probably started as an act of adolescent rebellion, since my father played and listened only to classical music. I bought my first jazz record album, Count ’Em 88, on the strength of the odd title and the cover art—a photograph of a white grand piano. I didn’t just listen to the music. When there was no one at home, I would set up a record on my father’s hi-fi and drum along. Jazz was a private pastime, since none of my friends listened to the music. Making my own way was part of the pleasure. St. John’s did not have a jazz club, but the tobacconist’s shop did carry Down Beat. The magazine was like a jazz correspondence course. It was also—and this was part of the attraction—an escape from a sometimes dreary and always provincial town. My father didn’t accompany me to Birdland, but several times in Montreal we did go to jazz concerts together, not only Goodman but also the Modern Jazz Quartet and Duke Ellington. These occasions were memorable because it was rare that the two of us went out. It’s not that we didn’t spend time together, but it was usually with the rest of the family, on vacations, camping trips, outings. He was a private man and, with me at least, somewhat remote. This remoteness was probably unintentional—he suffered the disadvantage of many immigrant fathers: his boyhood had been so different from his son’s. The things that he had done as an adolescent—kayaking, spending summers at country houses, going to formal social functions, giving piano recitals—were not things I did. The books he read as a boy were not my own (I could not read Polish). Playing the piano was his sole pastime, so he did not have hobbies to share—he was not a fisherman, or a golfer, or a do-it-yourselfer—nor did we go to baseball or hockey games together. I don’t mean to sound rueful. Despite my schoolboy athleticism, I was not attracted by the spectacle of sports, so I didn’t feel I was missing anything. When I reached Birdland, I felt slightly let down. The basement club, with no marquee and no grand entrance, didn’t look like a jazz Mecca. I tried to appear nonchalant as I went in. Just as Down Beat had described, I was shown to a raised section in the rear of the dark room and served a soft drink. It was early in the evening, and no one was playing.
=== Passage B by Karen Wilkin ===
HUMANITIES: Passage A is from the article “This Modern Painter Kerry James Marshall, born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Watts, Los Angeles, lives and works in Chicago. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, among other prestigious awards, and has exhibited in major institutions in the U.S. and Europe. His work figures in important museum and private collections, including a permanent installation, completed in 2008, in the lobby of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—vast frescoes of George Washington at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Yet the Tower installation at the National Gallery of Art in 2013 was his first one-person exhibition in Washington.