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Spring 2004

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Profile: Carl Vigeland '72
Golf, Jazz and the Meaning of Life

—Christopher O’Carroll ’97




	Author Carl Vigeland ’72 finds his best material in the jazz club and on the golf course. (photo by Ben Barnhart)

CARL VIGELAND '72G KEEPS A trumpet next to his computer when he writes. A golf club is never far from his hand. For this prolific jazz and golf author, the music and the game are more than just book topics. They are keys to the meaning of life, conduits for a higher consciousness. They are his means of grappling with age-old philosophical questions.

“Both activities are fun,” he explains, “and they involve a skill that is infinite. You can never be good enough.”

Vigeland (pronounced VEEG-land) graduated from Harvard in the tumultuous 1960s and went on to earn a master’s degree from the UMass School of Education. He has taught writing to journalism and sport studies students on this campus, and has worked as a writer and editor for regional and national magazines. Although he has written on a wide variety of topics, it is in the jazz club and on the golf course that he finds the best material.

He collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, a 2001 book about a band’s experience on the road. He’s currently at work on a solo project about the virtuoso trumpeter, Wynton’s Choice. His golf publishing credits include Letters to a Young Golfer, a 2002 advice volume co-authored with Bob Duval, and the 1996 Stalking the Shark: Pressure and Passion on the Pro Golf Tour, a book about Greg “The Great White Shark” Norman. He regularly publishes articles in Golf Week, Golf Journal and Golf Digest.

Jazz and golf are down-to-earth physical realities in Vigeland’s books, but they are also enterprises with a cosmic dimension. They offer a way of contemplating the human condition, of thinking about the individual in relation to the social group. “Whether you’re playing golf or playing the trumpet,” Vigeland says, “you’re constantly asking, ‘Who am I?’ The oldest question in the book.”

It’s easy to perceive jazz in that metaphysical light. Musicians respond to one another’s improvisations; they take turns soloing within an ensemble context. For a thoughtful writer, the metaphor is practically irresistible. But golf?

As Vigeland sees it, “Golf is not an art, but once you’ve learned the requisite skills, it’s really about dealing with whatever you bring to the game as a person, as a self.” In golf, there’s no goalie trying to block your shots, no pitcher trying to fool you with tricky breaking stuff. You’re competing first against the limitations of your own skill level, only secondarily against other players, who, in turn are striving to surpass themselves. A golf match is the sum of many private, internal competitions.

Vigeland discovered golf as an adult, but music filled the air he breathed from the very beginning. He grew up in Buffalo, where his father was a musician – church organist, conductor and for a time associate manager of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. “I grew up on Bach and Beethoven,” he recalls. “My mother was a singer and a teacher. My brother is a pianist and a composer.”

Early in his writing career, Vigeland did not have the luxury of writing exclusively about his favorite pastimes. His first book, published in 1986, was Great Good Fortune: How Harvard Makes Its Money. In 1989, he was able to move a step closer to his heart’s desire with his second book, In Concert: On Stage and Offstage with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That book was especially important to the author’s future career, because it was a BSO trumpeter who introduced him to the instrument maker who in turn introduced him to Wynton Marsalis. “Everything I’ve done since then,” Vigeland says contentedly, “has been music- or sports-related.”

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