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About On That Note: A Memoir of Jazz, Tics, and Survival (Unabridged)

From Tourette’s to triumph. From cancer to cure. From the segregated south to commanding stages around the world, jazz master, Michael Wolff’s journey begins with pure grit and ends in perfect victory. Award-winning jazz musician Michael Wolff’s journey nearly ended six years ago at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in lower Manhattan. After having been worked on by doctors and nurses for most of the night, Wolff, with the perfect timing only a world-class musician would have, regained consciousness just in time to hear one of the doctors ask his wife if he had a DNR. Before she could even ask what that was, Wolff used his last ounce of energy to gasp, “Resuscitate me!!” After Wolff had been treated for the wrong cancer for a year and a half, it was discovered that he had an ultrarare, untreatable cancer called histiocytic sarcoma and had three months to live. Fortunately, he was someone accustomed to overcoming the odds. Wolff had already survived a painful childhood overshadowed by Tourette’s Syndrome, during which his brilliance as a jazz pianist and passion for music saw him through. He went on the road at nineteen, not only performing with some of the great luminaries of jazz, but also conducting over twenty-five symphony orchestras worldwide. In 1989, Wolff was chosen to be the musical director of Arsenio Hall’s groundbreaking late-night talk show, which was extravagantly praised for its diversity of musical guests and brilliant house band. It was through the Arsenio Hall Show that Wolff became a household name. And it’s where he met the woman he would eventually marry, actress-writer-director Polly Draper, when she was a guest on the show. (Their two sons, Nat and Alex Wolff, are now highly successful actors and musicians in their own right, so it’s evident the talent was passed on to the next generation.) Wolff has released twenty-one albums to critical and popular acclaim, written award-winning scores to movies and television series.