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."
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