Recital: Joey Rosin '21 MM, Jazz Saxophone

Picture One | In Search of the Ox

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Picture One: In Search of the Ox

Beating about the endless wildgrass, you seek and search,
The rivers broaden, the mountains stretch on and the trails go ever deeper.
Your strength exhausted and spirit wearied, no place allows you refuge.
The only sound—evening cicadas shrill in the maples.

Searching
The deep hills,
No sight of the ox.
Just the empty
Shrilling of the cicadas.

--Yamada Mumon, Oxherding Pictures
Translated by Victor Sōgen Hori

Picture Two: Finding Tracks

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Picture Two: Finding Tracks

By the water and under the trees, tracks thick and fast.
In the sweet grasses thick with growth, did you see it or did you not?
But even in the depths of the deepest mountains,
How could it hide from others, its snout turned to the sky?

Determination deep
In the mountains
Your efforts bear fruit.
Tracks!
How gratifying to see a sign.

--Yamada Mumon, Oxherding Pictures
Translated by Victor Sōgen Hori

Picture Three: Seeing the Ox

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Picture Three: Seeing the Ox

In the trees nightingales sing and sing again,
Sun warms the soft wind, green willows line the bank,
Here, there’s nowhere left for it to hide,
Its majestic head and horns no artist could draw.

In spring sun in the green willow strands.
See its timeless form.

--Yamada Mumon, Oxherding Pictures
Translated by Victor Sōgen Hori

Who do you love?

---intermission

You are invited to visit my website for an intermission playlist  www.joeyrosin.com/recital

Letter from My Neighbors

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Letter From My Neighbors

Hey #1
Hey it’s #2 across the hall.
This was on the outside door and honestly it’s rude.
You never play at weird times and we enjoy the art.
Pulled it down but wanted to share.
Clearly this person doesn’t want to be productive or they would have left a unit number.

Please invest in a mute for your sax
You live in a very small, thin walled apartment building
I’m very tired of hearing you play the same note twenty times

You have to figure something out or I’m contacting Samia
Have a lovely day.
 

Reflecting on the Lost Year

Picture Six: Going Home

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Picture Six: Going Home

Riding high on your ox, leisurely you head for home.
Trilling on a nomad’s flute, you leave in the evening mist.
In each beat and verse, your boundless feeling,
To a close companion, what need to move your lips?

Lowing at mind

limpid and soaring
sky.
White clouds are coming back to the peaks.

--Yamada Mumon, Oxherding Pictures
Translated by Victor Sōgen Hori

Picture Eight: Lost in the Sky (Forget Both Ox and Self)

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Picture Eight: Lost in the Sky (Forget Both Ox and Self)

Whip and line and you and the ox, all gone to emptiness,
Into a blue sky for words too vast.
Can a snowflake survive the fire of a flamepit?
Attain this, truly be one with the masters of the past.

No clouds, or moon, or cassia tree,
Swept clean,
Lost in the sky.

--Yamada Mumon, Oxherding Pictures
Translated by Victor Sōgen Hori

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my many teachers, friends, family,
and all who have guided me in search of the ox.