Barney Kessel discusses his approach to leisure time.

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Barney Kessel discusses his progression as a musician.

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Barney Kessel discusses racial awareness and working with a black band in the '30s.

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Q: “What do you do in say, your off time? If you can concentrate and do the things you do as seriously as you do, everyone has or needs to have or wants to have off time, relaxation time. What sort of things do you do, and do you still work as hard on that?”

A: “Well, I don't work as hard on it, but I simply provide myself an atmosphere where I hang loose, where I allow things to come to my mind. I allow them to come. The thing about that is to be in a free state where you allow thoughts to come to you and imaginings to come to you, but that you can harness and that they don't run away with you. When these imaginations come to you and they take over, they can be very disastrous. But they can also be very creative. If you allow each thought to come to you as though it were several people knocking at your door gaining an audience and they each have something has something to sell you, but you reserve the right to buy. And so these things come to you as thoughts, but you decide through your choice whether you take an action on these things. And in that way, you can, without pressing for it, you can get in a very relaxed state and you can have many wonderful things come to your mind that you might act on later. Things that could not come if you pressed for it. I do things like read, I shoot pool, I swim, I walk a lot. I like to go to museums. I like to see art galleries. I love the ballet. I love to listen to Ravel and Debussy. I love to meet with friends. I love to walk in the park. And I like to pick sonnet bass and mainly to ... I don't watch a lot of television, but mainly to relax in that way. I love to go to museums because I get a great inspiration out of the, just a sense of the magnitude of the creative mind. I mean, it inspires me to see what some people have done with their lives. How prolific they've been, and how creative, and it just makes me feel that what is in them is also within me as a possibility if I can just let it out. And usually it's not so much what a person has to do to realize their potential. The first thing is just to get rid of the obstacles. It's just to get rid of the obstacles. It's like, for instance, darkness is really the absence of light. The minute you put in the light, the darkness leaves. You don't have to turn on the light and then get rid of the darkness. The very fact that you turned on the light, gets rid of the darkness. So I found it very helpful to, in a sense, it's funny, to schedule unscheduled time.”