“For jazz musicians, “woodshedding” refers to the taking of a kind of lunatic sabbatical—a retreat to some isolated idyll, wherein the artist disconnects from his community and plays relentlessly and with a pathological focus. The goal is not so much output as self-betterment. Though woodshedding is a particularly popular move in jazz—in 1937, Charlie Parker, after a fumbled gig in Kansas City in which the drummer Jo Jones may or may not have Frisbee’d a cymbal at him, decamped to the Ozarks with a pile of Count Basie 78s and memorized all of Lester Young’s saxophone solos—the practice can be employed by anyone looking to drop out and obsessively hone a craft. You go off to get good.”
– A Quest to Rename the Williamsburg Bridge for Sonny Rollins – The New Yorker (via deathbeard)
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