Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were groundbreaking jazz
musicians. Both had breathtaking skill on their respective
instruments, saxophone and trumpet. They were very different
players. A measure of a Parker tune would be filled with more notes
than you could count. By contrast, a measure of a Davis tune would
have a lot of space. With those differences in mind, the
similarities were that the tone of each note in a measure would be
exquisite.
As an English major in college, I was exposed to a lot of focus
on tone. I was required to take a full year of Shakespeare, which I
did as a sophomore. The professor was Theodore Baird. Baird was an
imposing individual, a "Paper Chase" Kingsfield type. As chairman
of the English Department, he was a powerful faculty member. Above
all, he was a gifted teacher. His approach in each class was the
same: some lad would be called on to engage in a dialogue with
Professor Baird about specific language in whatever play or sonnet
we were reading at the time. How long that dialogue would last
depended on many factors, but the less prepared you were, the more
likely you were to be engaged in a prolonged discussion. Allan
Albert, an outstanding student, was in that class with me. He later
became a highly regarded theatrical director and innovator, one of
his projects being the improvisation theater group he started in
Cambridge, which launched the career of Jane Curtin of "Saturday
Night Live" fame, among others. On one occasion, when Baird called
on Albert, the dialogue lasted no more than a few minutes, with
Baird intoning, "Mr. Albert, those were very insightful comments. I
think I shall have some fun with someone else now." Had I been the
object of Baird's "fun," I assure you my comments would have been
less insightful than Allan Albert's.