Tribute to Gordon Parks

There is a story told by jazz aficionados that when somebody asked Dave Brubeck why the legendary and innovative saxophonist Paul Desmond started to play the way he did Brubeck replied, "Because nobody told him he couldn't."

Gordon Parks passed from this earth into the next life.

There are few individuals who stand out over the passage of time.

I was in Ventura, Calif., teaching the Platypus Workshop, when I heard that Gordon Parks had died.

He sits at his piano, fingers moving effortlessly over its keys, and as smoke curls from his pipe, there is a sense of tranquility, as if nothing else exists in the softness of the night.