One Hip Cat

Jazz musicians are famously laid-back and, true to form, Danny Fox does not flinch when discussing the “t-word” (he’s not writing a thesis) or the “f-word” (plans for the future are comfortably vague and pretty much wide open at this point). “I’ll either be married with three kids. Or pursuing my life long dream of joining the circus or of becoming a male model…” he says, rattling off an extensive list of far-fetched hypotheticals for this time next year.

This kind of humor doesn’t even seem self-conscious or nervous when Fox says it because he is genuinely relaxed. He is a jazz pianist at the helm of the Danny Fox Quartet (Quintet or Trio, depending on the night) that plays local shows, including appearances at Club Passim, Loeb House receptions, Cabot housemaster birthday parties and other assorted events. So a foray into the jazz music world is a definite possibility if the whole joining the circus thing doesn’t work out. Instead of tickling the ivories professionally, however, Fox could also see himself chopping seven dozen onions a night at a culinary institute or working in a restaurant. He spends every Tuesday from 3 pm to midnight as a line cook at Casablanca, perfecting the art of crostini presentation. He explains that his current position on “cold apps” is a step up from where he started last March as a prep cook. “The worst part is cleaning up—It’s my job to clean the deep fryer at the end of the night.” He draws a diagram of the deep fryer and the “poker” instrument he uses to clean it. Cooking is actually not all that glamorous. But Danny’s not complaining. “I get to do fun stuff—using squeeze bottles to make squiggly lines to plate up stuff.”

He can make music and he can cook too, which is ideal, Fox says, because music at Harvard means necessarily not doing music all the time. “Harvard musicians have a similar mindset. They’re all really passionate about [music], but they try and think about getting involved in other things too,” he says. Other things in Fox’s schedule include volunteering with the PBHA program HARMONY where he teaches piano lessons to a devoted student, who, according to Fox’s roommate and HARMONY’s director, almost cried when Fox had to miss a lesson.

If he approaches a career in jazz with trepidation, it is mainly because he already knows how much fun working his way up the ranks while playing at various incarnations of Ida and Irving’s 50th Anniversary Party will be. Last year Danny got a gig through a friend to play at some convention having to do with malpractice. “I don’t know if they were for or against,” he says, but the conventioneers did commission three songs entitled Malpractice, Risk Management, and Loss Control.

“We just renamed some of my tunes. I think Crunch Time became Loss Control,” Fox says. He’s not feeling the pressure of job-search crunch time yet so the horizon seems clear for loss of control. But that risk will be managed when he comes to it. There is always the circus.