‘Music does what words cannot do’: How a diagnosis led Dr. Stanley Sagov to new musical insights

This week on the Joy Beat, a sudden and dire diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic melanoma in both lungs led retired Dr. Stanley Sagov on a path to treatment, recovery and rediscovery. Now, three years later, he’s back on the performance stage.

Sagov joined All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss his new album Coming Back to Life, his new band — Remembering The Future Jazz Workshop — and new insights about music. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Arun Rath: There is so much I want to talk with you about, but let’s start right with this brand new music. The first thing I have to tell listeners is that you are playing all of the instruments on this, what we’re hearing. 

Dr. Stanley Sagov: Yes. I mean, since the pandemic, when we all — musicians — lost the venues, we took advantage of the technology that allows us to make music on our own. And especially with wind controllers, one can make music that sounds very much like a live band. And I’ve been doing this kind of music with electronic stuff in the studio, but to simulate live music for about 20 years.

Rath: Wow, that’s brilliant. Well, let’s talk about this comeback, what you’ve been through getting to this album. It was three years ago now since you had the diagnosis? 

Sagov: Yes, I had a condition which was a chronic recurrent condition for which an image was taken. It had resolved by the time the image got taken, but at the edge of the image, there was an incidental finding of these melanomas that you mentioned, which were completely asymptomatic. I had no symptoms, I was not short of breath, I was not coughing, I didn’t cough up blood, I had no exercise intolerance — and if I hadn’t had the study, I would be dead.

So by accident, it was found, which is increasingly the case now. Because we’re increasingly using images in emergency rooms and other places where incidental findings — that are often advanced at the time of diagnosis — have to be revealed to somebody that had no idea they were sick.

Rath: Wow. And you’re somebody who was a medical doctor and that was a surprise to you. 

Sagov: That’s true. So there’s an increasing amount of that.

And the good side of it is that, at the same time, the treatment of advanced cancer has improved considerably because at any other time other than this last decade or so, I would not be having this conversation with you. I would’ve been dead within months.

Rath: Wow. And how did you work with — or not work with — music over the course of this recovery? Getting to this record that we have now, how does the record reflect that?

Sagov: Well, music does what words cannot do. Let’s start there. I’m tearing up a bit because there’s certain kinds of expression that music is better at than any other form. It’s got sound, it’s human, it’s got the feel of being produced from someone’s body. And after 10 or 15 years of applied, motivated learning so that you become a mature musician and know your own style and taste. And there’s nothing that allows me to transform emotions, especially powerful and especially difficult emotions, into expression than music.

Rath: It was interesting hearing this album. This first tune that we heard is fairly representative. It’s joyful, a lot of the songs are quite playful.

Sagov: Well, you know, the emotions in music are associative. If I were to talk to you as Beethoven does, [Sagov sings, imitating the dramatic strings in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony] we don’t talk like that. I don’t talk in a serious tone to you and then immediately switch with apparently no distinction to something lighthearted and meant to evoke a different emotion.

But music does that routinely. And it’s part of what makes us incapable in a way of defending ourselves as much as we might with other media, like reading or even looking perhaps at graphic images. Because the music’s happening in real time and it’s here and it’s gone and it’s here and it’s gone. And that emotion that you had. You already had it. You can’t control it. You can’t stop having had it. You can’t un-feel what you feel. And of course, that’s why we love it. And especially because it communicates bittersweetness in a uniquely effective way.

The blues person in that song that I played may be playing about having been betrayed by their woman or whatever, but that’s the beginning of the story. That’s not the end of the story. There’s going to be perhaps an accounting made, perhaps there’s going to be another romantic possibility, perhaps the person’s going to just vent their expression of how they feel. The story is never, it’s not, “Oh, my woman left me so I’m done.” It’s: “Something happened, and I’m still here, and I’m here to express myself.”

Rath: Dr. Sagov, recording in the studio, I have to imagine, is one kind of pleasure. But this is jazz, and performing live with an audience who is reacting and feeding into it is something entirely different. How are you feeling about performing at the Regattabar this weekend?

Sagov: Well, you know, it’s a very interesting example of what jazz includes. When I was getting treated, I was in conversation with my publicist Sue Auclair, and with Seiko Kinoshita from the Blue Note that books me at Regattabar. And they, throughout the pandemic and throughout the three years of treatment, they were saying: “When do you want to come back? When could you come back?”

And I kept not feeling able to imagine when I would be strong enough to be able to play a concert and to manage the alertness and the interactive virtuosity that’s required to play jazz at a high level and share it with an audience.

I have a band that’s been playing together, you know, since the 1970s. My bass player, John Lockwood, we’ve been playing since we were teenagers together in South Africa. So I have a long history. But two of my core members couldn’t make it this time — they were already booked. So, I’m meeting two people that have never played with our band on the bandstand. They’ve heard the music, as you have, that I made in my studio. They came to my house each one, one day each, to meet with me in person and to hear the music in person and to play a bit with me.

But we’ve never played on a stage together and we’ve never all played together. So, you in the audience — and you’re coming, too, I believe — will see us meet each other on the stage in real time, except for the sound check.

Some of the music is quite complicated, and the way I’ve handled that is, first of all, I’ve chosen to play with people that are very good at what they do. And I try to hire people better than I am, and I’ve succeeded, I think, this time again. So, I’m relying on them to show me all the things that I know that they can do and will love to do.

And all the time that I’ve been practicing for months now, I’ve had them in my mind, these two new players. What might they sound like? What vehicle could I make to make them comfortable, to show how they love to play? And I sent it to them, you know, after I finished something, and they tell me. And then I write it down, I make a transcription of the head, what they need to know, and make a chart of it.

And I’ve sent them 20 pieces. They’ve seen the titles of a couple of the pieces. On the night, you’re going to see me from the keyboard say, “Let’s try this.” And then they’ll shuffle around and I’ll get it and look at it, and then I’ll start to play.

And my wife said: “Well, what do you want from the audience?” I said, “I want from the audience exactly what I want from the musicians: I want attention. I want respectful engagement. I want you to really enter, with us, into our imagination of: What did we just play? And, what was that? And, what does it mean to you? And what’s next? I want us to be present together.”