hypercritical of himself

Music This Village Voice piece about Woody Allen acts as a kind of prose sequel to Wild Man Blues and demonstrates that his commitment to preserving the traditional jazz sound is undimmed, even if the dark clouds of extinction hang over the genre. He also continues to be hypercritical of himself:
"The problem is, not enough feeling comes out of my music. I mean, I play my heart out and I close my eyes and hunch my shoulders and do all the external motions that great players do to pump the feeling through their horn, but I can't get a lot of feeling through it. That's been one of the sad things in my life, that I hear a real great clarinet player and they'll just play two or three notes, and those notes are so beautiful and full of feeling. And I'm killing myself and trying so hard to squeeze that note out and get the feeling into it, but it's just not there. It has to be somewhere in your chromosomes or something."
[printable version]

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