Three Wishes

The Jazz Baroness Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter in 1961 began to ask the hundreds of musicians she encountered to name their three pet wishes.

JOHN COLTRANE:

1. “To have an inexhaustible freshness in my music.
I’m stale right now”

2. “Immunity from sickness or ill health.”

3.“Three times the sexual power I have now. And
something else too: more natural love for people. You
can add that on to the other.”

LE SUN RA:

1. “A flexible instrument which could reflect every
mood of any being, even a cat’s or a bird’s.”

2. “A center where I would be free to present what I
am actually doing to the world in the proper manner.
Lights, shadows, colors, music would all be working
at the same time, and it would be a synopsis of
things so concentrated that, in an hour, you
could be enlightened about the entire universe!”

3. “The means to do things precisely, directly and
unhampered.”

STEVE LACY:

1. “The diversion of all war funds into an
exploration of the potentialities of the mind.”

2. “Universal comprehension of art.”

3. “The end of fear.”

50 years later, what do shakuhachi players wish for?