The Rehabilitation of a Vibraphonist

 It was the final rehearsal of the semester, five days before the winter concert at Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music in New Jersey, and Steve Nelson was coaching the undergraduates in his jazz ensemble. 

“Guitar,” Nelson said, “there’s a tremendous amount of weight on you to learn these changes.” 

“Don’t forget dynamics, drums.” 

“Alto, man, I don’t know what you’ve been doing but you’re tearing it up!” 

At the center of the classroom that afternoon in early December 2022, with his students forming a semicircle around him, Nelson, then 68, sat on a piano bench in a thick coat and a plain black baseball cap, tufts of graying hair sticking out like pom-poms over his ears. An N95 mask clung to his neck. He looked like a man with a plane to catch. 

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“Pierce, don’t play those chords along with the melody,” Nelson said. 

The only student Nelson addressed by name instead of instrument was Pierce Sparnroft, who goes by “Sparni” and uses they/them pronouns, but whom Nelson called Pierce. 

What made Sparni unique had nothing to do with appearance, though Sparni’s outfit certainly stood out. Sparni’s T-shirt was pink. Sparni’s pants, purchased at Hot Topic, had one black leg and one pink. Even Sparni’s hair, drooping over their forehead like the leaves of a weeping willow, had been dyed a pale shade of pink. 

Neither did it have to do with the way Sparni rattled off intricate melodies while improvising north of 200 beats per minute, nor the fact that by the end of the hour Sparni had become, in essence, a second bandleader—it was Sparni who made sure their fellow musicians knew the structure of every song on the set list, how many times they would play a given section, who would solo and when. 

Really, it had to do with the instrument Sparni stood behind. It was the instrument that Nelson plays in clubs throughout Manhattan and beyond, on tour as a world-renowned jazz musician, and the instrument his protégé, Sparni, had come within a phone call of abandoning after a period of profound crisis.

The instrument was the vibraphone. 

In anatomy, the vibraphone borrows from the piano. A typical set of vibes has 37 aluminum alloy bars laid out like the white and black keys of a baby grand. Left to right from where the vibraphonist stands, the bars become shorter and higher-pitched. Depressing the built-in foot pedal allows notes and chords to ring. 

In personality, however, the vibraphone borrows from the drums. Producing sound demands wielding mallets that resemble elongated lollipops—a ball of yarn on a stick—and striking the instrument with a light touch or with the ferocity of a Buddy Rich. 

A vibraphone in a jazz ensemble represents a niche instrument within a niche genre. In the 1970s, when Steve Nelson rose to prominence and started to collaborate with acclaimed jazz pianist Kenny Barron, there were only a handful of vibraphonists in the gigging scene. These days, there are more than a dozen, and Sparni, 22, aspires to join their ranks. 

But there were no guarantees Sparni would reach even as far as Nelson’s band in college. 

Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft was troubled from the start. As a child on Staten Island, Sparni showed signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Sparni had difficulty sitting still and focusing on tasks such as schoolwork. “[Sparni] was always talking,” said Claudia Sparnroft, Sparni’s mother, in an interview last summer. “[Sparni’s] still always talking,” she added with a chuckle. 

But at around first grade, something else began afflicting Sparni, something that made ADHD look rather tame by comparison. All of a sudden Sparni was short of breath, relentlessly anxious, plagued by insomnia and, whenever Sparni succeeded in sleeping, plagued by nightmares. Finally, after about two weeks of distress, Sparni fell into a depression. “[I was] inexplicably just unhappy all the time,” Sparni recalled during one in a series of interviews last year. 

Sparni’s emotions became like a pendulum swaying between two extremes. “I have really uncomfortable mood swings,” Sparni said. “I’ll go from being super happy or super energetic to being really sad and unmotivated.” Anybody who has seen Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook or Claire Danes in Homeland will recognize these symptoms and what they point to. But, somehow, a diagnosis eluded Sparni for years. 

In the meantime, Sparni was busy blossoming into a musician. By high school, Sparni was playing Mozart, Bernstein and Ellington on the clarinet and yearning to beat the skins in the jazz band. But there were already several other drummers on the roster—and there is nothing worse for a drummer than having to share the throne (except, perhaps, having to play quietly). So Sparni laid claim to another instrument, one that had attracted less of a crowd. From then on, Sparni was the resident vibraphonist. 

Sparni practiced “feverishly” to compensate and seemed to hit it off with the vibes. Unlike the clarinet, which requires the mouth to be in an extremely precise position for every note, Sparni could generate perfect pitch every time they struck the bars. Plus—and this is crucial—Sparni enjoyed the timbre of the vibraphone. “It’s a pretty-sounding instrument,” Sparni said. 

In fall 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, Sparni began studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. According to Oscar Perez, the head of jazz studies at Montclair’s Cali School of Music, rehearsals were being held in the parking garage and the big band was practicing in small sections. Perez said he saw something special in Sparni, the way Sparni maintained a positive attitude, checked on peers and approached the vibraphone not as a chore but a craft. By year’s end, Perez would present Sparni with the Excellence in Jazz Award—an honor traditionally reserved for graduating seniors.

“[Sparni] was such a trouper and really helped to galvanize the community we have here,” Perez said. “I wanted to acknowledge that.” 

Sophomore year would not be so kind to Sparni. Despite the ease of producing sound on the vibraphone, it’s a complex instrument demanding a high degree of coordination, and Sparni’s teacher at the time failed to equip Sparni with the necessary fundamentals. As a result, Sparni contemplated switching fully to the drums. Meanwhile, Sparni’s mind was under siege. There were the usual issues of concentration and compulsion—practicing the vibes, Sparni could lose focus after 10 minutes or hyperfixate for 10 hours—and also unbearable highs and lows. Sparni’s episodes were punctuated by destructive thoughts, and on the day the ball dropped in Times Square, ushering in 2022, Sparni checked into the emergency room. In follow-up visits, Sparni’s condition finally received a name: bipolar disorder. 

In general, diagnosis is the first step toward recovery. That’s good news if you’re suffering from a hernia. If you have a mental illness, though, finding the right treatment can be a bit like firing an arrow at a bull's-eye while blindfolded. Typically, a patient will try a medication and monitor whether it’s working, what side effects it’s causing, adjusting the dosage if necessary or switching to another medication, whereupon the troubleshooting begins again. At best, a trusted psychiatrist serves as a guide throughout this odyssey. But Sparni recounted seeing different doctors with every visit to Staten Island and being prescribed different drugs: Hydroxyzine, Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro. “I either felt really, really numb or completely emotionally overwhelmed,” Sparni said of the worst moments during this months-long slog. 

It was a bleak spring for Sparni—and Sparni has data to prove it. Sparni’s calendar doubles as a mental health diary: Every day Sparni jots down a number between one and 10, one for the worst possible state of mind and 10 for the best. There was a week in May 2022 when Sparni’s entries hovered around two. 

At that time, Sparni was coping by drinking heavily and experimenting with LSD, and the combination sent them into a spiral of self-harm and suicidal thoughts. With the school year coming to a close, Sparni resolved to seek help at a psychiatric ward on Staten Island. 

Sparni had reached bottom. 

Sparni spent a week and a half in the hospital—in other words, a week and a half without music. The first thing Sparni did upon returning home was to put on a record by Lionel Hampton, the man who had introduced the vibraphone to jazz and jazz to the vibraphone. As the bluesy melodies of Mr. PC tumbled out of the speakers, Sparni picked up a pair of mallets and played along—but not for long. 

Sparni remembered the thought verbatim: “I’m fucking done with this.” 

With Hampton’s solo swinging in the background, Sparni laid the mallets on the vibes and had a self-proclaimed existential crisis: “My technique wasn’t there, my concept wasn’t there, my ambition wasn’t there,” Sparni said later. “I was like, ‘Damn. What am I going to do?’” 

Sparni dialed up Oscar Perez. “I was like, ‘I’ve made the decision,’” Sparni recalled. “‘I want to change my instrument.‘” 

The very midpoint of Sparni’s college career turned out to be the inflection point as well. Perez asked Sparni to give the vibes one more chance, one more semester. “Remember when I said I might have a surprise for you?” Sparni recalled hearing from Perez. “Take some time to think about it, but if you still want to play the vibraphone, you’d be studying under Steve Nelson.” 

The professional jazz vibraphonist—à la Steve Nelson—must train three limbs to work in concert. Achieving clarity on the instrument requires hitting directly in the center of each bar. (The tops and bottoms, which rest on supporting cords, are dead spots.) Leaving the pedal up can make the notes sound brittle; leaving it down can make them muddy and muddled.

Nelson’s set list on any given night reveals the complexities of his instrument—and the depth of his skill. He grips as few as two mallets, holding them like drum sticks, and as many as four, sliding them between his fingers so they protrude like the claws of Wolverine. He employs ghost notes, grace notes, staccato notes, legato notes, single-stroke rolls, double-stroke sticking, and alternate sticking. He navigates chord changes, key changes, and turns of phrases. He knows when to tap the vibraphone, when to clobber the vibraphone, and when to silence the vibraphone, affording his fellow musicians their time and space. 

Nelson’s quest to master this multifaceted, melodic-percussive contraption began a half-century ago, when he was a high school dropout drifting around Pittsburgh. His buddy had a vibraphone in the basement; one day when they were hanging out, his friend’s father walked down the stairs, picked up a pair of mallets, and started to play. 

“And that was it,” Nelson recalled. “From the moment I heard that, I knew what I wanted to do.” 

In an interview with the website All About Jazz, Nelson recounted having total freedom to practice the vibes, jam with the local cats and, eventually, pass his GED exam. By the time he received his bachelor’s degree in music from Rutgers University, he was already a “seasoned” vibraphonist, according to Kenny Barron, the distinguished pianist who spotted Nelson in college and recruited him for a quartet.

Nelson continues to perform around New York City and across the globe, with his own group and with long-standing collaborators: jazz royalty such as Barron, bassist Dave Holland, and pianist Renee Rosnes. 

But opportunities are evaporating these days. The club scene has been drying up for the better part of five decades, and the pandemic dealt a coup de grâce to iconic venues around the country, such as Jazz Standard in midtown Manhattan.

Nelson supplements his income, as many artists do, by returning to the classroom and teaching. In 2022, he joined the faculty at Montclair’s Cali School of Music—at precisely the right moment to help a promising young vibraphonist in need of rehabilitation.

In the middle of February 2023, Nelson and Sparni returned to the classroom where their entire ensemble had convened in December, this time for a one-on-one lesson. Nelson had swapped the N95 mask around his neck for a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones, but otherwise he settled in the same spot—at the piano—wearing the same jacket and baseball cap, speaking in the same subdued, almost sibilant tone. 

“Keep practicing your alternate mallets,” Nelson said, referring to the technique of using one hand to hit the vibraphone, then the other, and so on in that order. “You’ve got to really keep on your eighth notes, man, and make sure they don’t get lazy.” 

Professor Nelson is nothing if not blunt—a lesson Sparni learned at the beginning. News that Steve Nelson would be coming to Montclair reawakened something in Sparni: They spent the summer of 2022 grooving to Nelson’s albums and practicing, tepidly at first, then warming to the instrument again, and finally training furiously, determined to arrive on campus and impress one of their all-time idols. “I played for him and I felt really good about it,” Sparni recalled with a wry smile. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, so your pedaling needs work and the way you hit the instrument needs work.’” 

This type of straight-shooting feedback didn’t deter Sparni—quite the opposite. Sparni needed it the way a boxer might need a medicine ball to the abs: The blows make you stronger, tougher. 

Fast-forward to February 2023: Nelson continued to drill Sparni in the fundamentals. Nelson was exercising Sparni’s hands, forcing them to lock into the beat while playing repeat-after-me phrases. He would count to four and suddenly pianist and vibraphonist would launch into an ascending scale, vibraphonist dragging just a millisecond behind. Nelson would tell Sparni to push the pace and maintain the intensity—and, with hardly a moment for recuperation, signal the start of the next measure. 

“It’s almost like there’s a line that keeps going,” Nelson said a few minutes later, “and you’re trying to catch it with your alternating mallets.” 

Nelson and Sparni have a good working relationship, and flashes of something deeper. For many artists, remaining stable is like walking a tightrope. Whenever Sparni falls off—whenever a manic episode makes their headspace loud enough to drown out the vibes, or whenever their emotional spigot has been turned off, leaving them feeling numb—Sparni will ask Nelson to ditch the lesson and just talk. Nelson obliges—and lets down his walls, ever so slightly. “I get it,” Sparni remembered Nelson saying on one occasion. “As a professional musician, I totally understand.” 

On this day in February, aside from a stifled yawn here and there (when Sparni is manic, sleep is hard to come by), there were no interruptions—only progress. Toward the end of the lesson, while practicing a ballad, Sparni played a phrase with as much direction and momentum as a ball rolling downhill. Nelson was exultant: “I wish all your eighth notes could sound that beautiful!” 

Two weeks later, Sparni sat in the audience at Smoke Jazz Club, head nodding to the beat. The vibraphonist on stage was in the middle of a blistering solo and Sparni’s expressions reflected it. During the busiest stretches, Sparni scrunched up their nose and furrowed their brow as if absorbing the tension in the music. When the melodies became orderly again, Sparni’s face softened into a grin. 

After years of listening to studio albums and other recordings, Sparni had made the pilgrimage to Manhattan to watch a live performance featuring Steve Nelson. 

Nelson did not disappoint. Despite having returned from a tour of Europe with Kenny Barron just days before, Nelson played intensely enough to produce a sheen of sweat on his forehead. On the ballads, his strokes were graceful and precise and his notes shimmered. On the bebop tunes, fast enough to fray a man’s mallets, he practically dented the vibraphone. 

In between sets, Nelson nestled into a booth with a salmon fillet and a glass of wine. When Sparni approached him, Nelson greeted his protégé in a rich and exuberant voice, the voice of jazz itself, and introduced him to the bandleader, Renee Rosnes. “One of my most outstanding students,” Nelson said. He embraced a beaming Sparni while clutching five of his mallets, holding them to his chest as if they were a bouquet of roses. 

The night of the concert was a prelude to a better stretch for Sparni. In Sparni’s calendar and mental health diary, the average entry in January had sunk to a miserable 2.5. In February, though, that figure had nearly doubled. And on this day in early March, Sparni recorded an eight—almost as good as it gets. 

There would be a nine in Sparni’s future. At the beginning of May, Sparni’s third year at Montclair culminated with an exam of sorts: a student-driven recital. Sparni served as the chief architect of the performance, assembling a band, coordinating rehearsals, and preparing a set list featuring three original compositions and six original arrangements of jazz standards. There was a dynamic mix of ballads, blues, and bebop, allowing Sparni plenty of room to showcase their chops—not only as a soloist, but also as a complementary piece within a group. Jazz is, after all, the great democratic art form. 

After the final chord, Sparni thanked everyone for coming, then sped over to Nelson and asked if he’d enjoyed the show. Nelson smiled. “You did a great job, man,” Nelson said, draping his arm around Sparni. “Great job, man. Keep it going.” 

Music to Sparni’s ears. 

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