RB: I guess they say I did. I mean, it’s the way for years it’s been taught in Africa and Asia, and now there are ear courses at Berklee and all over, but I guess it was rather unique to have this at the college level of training.

JM: it seems like you have always deeply imbibed your experiences — like savoring and really enjoying everything. whether it’s music, a film, food and drink, or even an encounter with someone. Do you think it’s harder for people to experience things like that these days with the pace of everything?

RB: Well you just answered that question, the pace. I loved the LP age. the 10-inches were wonderful. you could really concentrate through four numbers; and then the LPs would either have eight or six numbers which would last five or six minutes. and you could really play an LP over and over again and know it. My recent CDs, even speaking of my own, I can’t tell you what the first five tracks are. DJs must get hundreds of things a week. and the listening public, John . . . are MP3-ing thousands of things, and it’s lucky if we can be polite and listen to everything once. I wonder how people will develop a memory of Billie Holiday, or what Monk does, or which version of Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw it Away’’ is better. I mean it’s really a challenge.

JM: through your 40-plus years of teaching, and I guess 50-plus years of recording and performing, what is it that keeps you so artistically consistent?

RB: Well I’m glad that you think that I am — and maybe I am, and maybe I’m not — but even if there is bragging in the answer, I still don’t know. I get tired and sometimes I’m not as consistent, but I guess that even though I want to hear new pieces that are coming out, I have so much to review of the music of the ’50s and the ’60s, and then how certain artists have grown, or not grown. So I think that just keeping up with seven or eight musicians — and hopefully three or four that are alive now — is a full-time job, and I think this acts as a stimulus. Of course, I do hear myself, but it’s really this interest in other people. I still feel guilty that there are so many blank spaces in what I’m listening to.

JM: At this point in your life, what do you feel are some of the foundations, the important points of your artistic development?

RB: I would say my love of singers — and Sara Serpa, Christine Correa, Dominique Eade. I’d say collaborations with people like David “Knife’’ Fabris, Aaron Hartley, Houston Person, and George Russell. I would say the world of film. I’d say study with Gunther Schuller, who could be very demanding but patient. and then I guess, really, teaching at the conservatory; the one-to-one, the ear classes, watching students grow, watching other faculty grow — listening to them, not just watching and observing. I think some of those are the main foundations. Study, reflection, collaboration, remembering these things, and living in three tenses: the past, the present, and the future — particularly the very distant past, the semi-recent past. and just spending a day in the different memories of your life is very intriguing to me.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Ran Blake, 75, reflects on life played by ear