Apology Series

Seems to me, from an evolutionary standpoint, it pays to look at things from as many different aspects as possible.
The Apologies mark a struggle to move the mind from a long-held concept to a fresh one; an ability unique to our species, far as I know.
ALL 2006 PASTEL/COLORED PENCIL ON PAPER

Film Review: Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story

For all its time spent dwelling in the lower depths, “Sound of Redemption” ultimately fulfills the promise implicit in its title by reporting how Morgan managed — despite a period of backsliding — to rebuild his life and career after leaving prison for the last time in 1985, with no little help from painter Rosalinda Kolb, his companion (and, for a while, his wife) of several years. Once again, however, the viewer is left with profoundly mixed emotions, haunted by questions of what might and should have been. The documentary doesn’t reference it, but the title of Kolb’s 2014 memoir — Leave ‘Em Hungry: A Love Story and Cautionary Tale — may be the definitive description of, to paraphrase Roberto Benigni in Jim Jarmusch’s “Down By Law,” a sad and beautiful life.
--Joe Leydon for Variety 12/18-2015

'Sound of Redemption': A documentary worthy of Frank Morgan's art

"I was a model prisoner," says Morgan in the film. "I seemed to function best when I was in prison." Exactly why Morgan fell so hard for this unfortunate way of life is open to debate, the film exploring an array of possibilities: periodic abandonment by his parents, the pervasive racism of the day and a kind of self-loathing.
"You have to care about yourself," Morgan says in the documentary, "and I didn't think that I was worth very much."
Others did, however. An artist named Rosalinda Kolb married him, suffered through his prison time and helped him launch a post-penitentiary career in the mid-1980s.
Morgan's sensational story and ever-deepening musical gifts made him national news and a late-blooming, emerging jazz star. "We were sitting at the top of the world at that point," Kolb says in the film. "I mean, fame-and-fortune was literally at the door."
I covered Morgan's multiple performances at the Jazz Showcase in the 1990s and thereafter, his work becoming more daring with each visit. But those closest to him knew he was using drugs again, they say in the film. Kolb divorced him, and Morgan suffered a stroke in 1998, then rebounded, soon performing once again to considerable plaudits. The last time I heard him, in 2005, he was at a creative pinnacle.
-Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, 8/18/2016