'Old Dog, New Tricks' Jazz Musician Improvises at Caregiving

In the fall of 2022, jazz flugelhorn player Jeff Oster was looking forward to spending winter 2023 on Mexico's Pacific Riviera with his new beloved, Petra Kaufmann. A regular at the San Pancho Music Festival since 2007, he was thrilled to have her by his side. He had also just retired from his day job, a financial planning practice.

Life looked golden for the mid-life lovers, but it had something else in store. A stage 4 ovarian cancer diagnosis derailed everything they longed to do together. Instead of gazing at tropical sunsets, Oster found himself staring at blankets of snow and down the daunting path of caregiving for his partner. They hunkered down for medical treatment in her native Winnipeg.

Everything in their lives was put on hold. However, becoming Kaufmann's full-time caregiver eventually influenced his music in ways he never expected.

At 66 years old, the well-traveled tireless performer and recording artist had to shift gears. Best known for contemporary, ambient jazz and New Age music, Oster earned a GRAMMY® nomination in 2021 for his work on the Best New Age Album, "Brothers," a collaboration with GRAMMY® award-winning guitarist Will Ackerman and multi-instrumentalist Tom Eaton.

The chops he developed improvising on brass would serve him well. Settling into Canada, which felt insular to the former Californian, his days were fraught with a quiet terror around Kaufmann's illness.

"My whole life became about improvisation," he says. "I was living in a new country and watching this woman I had recently fallen in love with deal with ovarian cancer. I was emotionally raw and open. I'd never done this before. It was uncharted territory."

Throughout winter in Manitoba, Oster found himself a student all over again, doing exhaustive scientific research with Kaufmann. They were relentless, poring over clinical trials, meeting oncologists and learning how to manage medications. After her surgery, he slept for ten days in the hospital on a sofa next to her. Nine chemotherapy treatments followed.

Life became contained in ways unfamiliar to Oster. The pair lived in a three-bedroom apartment. Sometimes, Kaufmann's adult children would visit to provide additional support.

"There wasn't much to do while she was weak and immunocompromised," he recalls. "The sun rose at 10 and it got dark at 4. The darkness was womb-like."

For Oster, slowing down, staying indoors, and being in the dark was like revisiting the pandemic. But isolation during Canada's winter helped him see music – and life – in a new light. "I gained a heightened degree of appreciation for things," he says. "I had to let go of any control."

Concerned about caregiver burnout, Oster took some cues from the patient, a trained physician and practicing family therapist well-versed in holistic living. His first step toward self-care was eating healthier and joining a gym.

Reinventing himself as an artist wasn't precisely on Oster's mind when his distributor suggested he explore something new; lo-fi music. The former had rights to the Miles Davis catalog and had already worked on a lo-fi album based on the jazz legend's melodies. 

With an ethereal, deliberately unpolished quality, lo-fi appealed to that part of Oster that enjoyed New Age and Pink Floyd. "The sounds and people talking in the background were fascinating to me," he says. "It's all condensed in 3-minute tracks that sound glitchy and over trap beats. The overlay of vinyl crackle is intentional."

Around 3 a.m. one night, Oster woke up from a dream that prominently featured the words "howling loon." He immediately exited the room, registered the website name and returned to sleep.

Interestingly, Oster would not hear a loon's loud call until later that summer in Canada's famous Lake of the Woods. But he always carried Canadian loonies, or one-dollar coins, in his pocket, which he needed for releasing shopping carts every time he went to market.

"Everything's so orderly in Canada," he says. "I always marveled that people leave shopping carts all over the lot in the states. I always made sure I had loonies."

Before moving to Canada, Oster had packed some recording equipment on a hunch he might make music. Heeding his distributor's suggestion, he dusted it off. At night, in the doldrums of winter, he began recording simple melodic riffs over pre-recorded loops. Music became his refuge. Exploring something new helped Oster deal with being in a bubble.

He'd often take these musical respites at night while Kaufmann was sleeping. She didn't mind. "She knew how this was my therapy," he said. "She had empathy for me as a caregiver."

Neighbors were also generous. As a courtesy to them, he brought sheet music for "O Canada" and played the national anthem for his accidental audience.

Lo-fi music is rarely a solo effort. After working on his tracks, Oster contacted four lo-fi artists for collaborative remixing. They were much younger, ranging in age from 16 to 29. 

The result was Howling Loon, a nine-track album released by Oster in August, 2023. Since he needed a new identity for this unique style, he called himself Howling Loon in the credits.

Collaborating with a younger generation during Kaufman's healing and eventual remission helped him expand musically. "I was an old dog learning new tricks," he recalls. "I learned how to embrace whatever was in front of me. I was much more willing to listen as a musician. I had to let go of preconceived notions and take risks."

The multigenerational work also helped expose his audience, which skews over 50, to a genre that is much more popular with people under 30. Crossover is rare for older musicians. "We tend to stay in areas where we've had commercial success," Oster remarks. Lo-fi became an unexpected refuge in the middle of an intense caregiving path.

"A flugelhorn is full sound and this music asks for restraint, simplicity and quiet to fit in the dark winter vibe and the fear of not knowing if Petra would die," he explains. "It was like an unintentional unfolding of something unknown."

The experience brought the couple emotionally closer. "One of my friends told me: 'Hey, Jeff, that's your most intimate playing,'" he says.

Oster took a little break in February to fulfill his obligations with the music festival. But Mexico wasn't the same without his beloved. Life is golden again, however. Today, Oster and Kaufmann are back in Mexico, filled with gratitude and slowly adapting to life in remission. Looking back, Oster reflects on his newfound wisdom as a caregiver.

At first, he set aside his work to help his partner but then recognized that he needed music to help him help her.

"While you're in the middle of this new process, it's scary," he says. "You feel 100 percent helpless. But don't lose the thing you love doing while loving your loved one through illness. It might be sports. Or going to the theater. For me, that thing was my music."

Maria De Los Angelesde Los Angeles is an award-winning writer based in Washington, D.C. She is the author of a forthcoming memoir about starting life after caregiving for her parents. Read More