Free Nine Fingers by Thom August

time to get things set up. The Airport Marriott was
     about the most unlikely place you could think of for a Saturday-night jazz gig: a cavernous room where the sound disappeared
     like rain in the ocean; a location that was too far off the beaten path to attract anybody; a clientele that was just passing
     through. And of course the Marriott itself, that bastion of white male Mormon capitalism, was not the kind of chain that featured
     jazz.
    What the Airport Marriott had was Clarence, and Clarence was a capital-F Fan. The story I had heard, true or not, was that
     Clarence and Paul Powell had known each other at the U. of C., and Paul had turned him on to the music, and Clarence had turned
     him on to weed (Clarence could always be counted upon to have the best source of herb in the city—always moist, fresh, consistent,
     and, at least for us, free). Now, a few years later, Paul rarely smoked anymore—it was way too frivolous for his serious side—but
     Clarence was still jonesing on the music. Clarence also had some kind of pull with the hotel chain, unusual for a very short,
     very gay, very black dude, and was able to book us on a regular basis. (The other theory I had heard was that he had a thing
     for Paul. Sometimes, seeing the look of rapture on his face as he watched Paul play, I gave this hypothesis more credence.
     You never know: maybe he appreciated Paul’s chiseled ass more than his solid chops. But hey, different strokes, you know.
     Doesn’t bother me.)
    Whatever the reason, we had been booked there every other Saturday night for almost a year. The pay was solid, the sound system
     was top-shelf—Harmon-Karden/JBL studio components—the crowds were mid sized but respectful, as pleased to be hearing us as
     we were to be seeing them, and it was an easy gig, in at nine and out around midnight, three short sets.
    They have a pool there that’s both indoors and outdoors. You start inside, swim under a partition, and you’re out among the
     stars, the cold air on your face, the warm water cradling everything else. Even on a night like this, with the temperature
     dropping toward zero, you could still see people swimming outside, if only to be able to tell their friends back home that
     they had done it. I’ve done the pool thing—Clarence again—and it’s sweet.
    The pool was covered by a large dome that covered the pool and most of the lounge area that backed up against it, separated
     by a tall glass wall. The bandstand Clarence had constructed was just in front of that. This was acoustic hell, a place where
     beautiful notes came to die.
    The basic rule of thumb on setting up the acoustics of any room is “dead in the front, live everywhere else.” You don’t want
     too many flat hard surfaces right behind where the music is coming from; it muddies the sound and also puts you inside a dead
     envelope where you can’t hear a thing. On the sides and in the back, in contrast, you want a little bounce, to give the sound
     some warmth. It’s the thing they try to replicate with ambient speakers in home theater systems, a little something to take
     the hard clinical edge off, to make it more natural.
    This room was exactly the opposite. The glass wall at our backs was a virtual echo machine, and the high sloping ceilings
     and curved walls on the sides of the dome dispersed the sound every which way. We had convinced Clarence to put up some acoustic
     paneling behind us to soften the bounce so we could at least hear ourselves playing the notes we were actually playing, but
     for the rest of the room, we needed the sound system. Luckily enough, it was a powerful system, but a complicated one, and
     it needed to be both. I was glad to have some time to deal with it, because this space presented a challenging array of compromises.
    Before I started in on the system, I got out my star wrench and my tuning fork and tackled the piano. The combination of the
     humidity from the pool and the alternating