“The music on this record was a spontaneous and spirited effort of the
three of us” (Sewelson, liner notes), and the three of them
are Dave Sewelson on Baritone saxophone and bass (“William was generous
enough to let me play his bass a bit when he was playing another
instrument” Sewelson – liner notes); William Parker on bass, fujara (a
large shepherd’s overtone fipple flute with origins in central Sovakia, which is usually plays in the contrabass range) and gralla (a traditional
Catalan double reed instrument in the Shawn family), and Steve Hirsh on
drums.
The use of such instruments of the folk European tradition as the gralla
and the fujara flute in a classic free jazz pianoless trio, gives it a
twist and creates sonic environments that at times bring us in the realm of
Don Cherry’s experiments.
The album opens with 'what’s left', a bowed bass, a
fujara flute and a background drum that duets with the flute; slowly the
three of them start a free but controlled flowing improvisation, then Hirsh
is left alone while Parker takes the gralla and Sewelson goes for an
energetic pizzicato and then leaves Parker and Hirsh alone. When he returns
playing the baritone we are immersed in a stream of energetic improvised
music that displays the trio ability to react to each other stimulus. The
only thing missing by now is Parker playing the upright and we have to wait
until the next piece to hear that. What’s left in the end is Parker alone
playing the gralla.
The title track 'The Gate' is a 22 minutes long classical
free jazz set with an inner smoothness that the three musician pursue in
their (almost) relaxed interplay. I found Steve Hirsh drumming particularly
stimulating and melodic: “There are times when I’m playing the drumset as
if it were a marimba – picking out tones, following the melodies and
harmonies that the other musicians are playing. Other times I might play in
a more traditional fashion to create a reference point, and then
deconstruct and rearrange the elements of that groove or feel” (from an interview on 15questions.net).
The dialogic quality of the record is confirmed by the third piece 'where we left it,' whose development shows us three
musician somehow used to play together listening to each other, reacting
and adjusting their output into a meaningful interaction.
The rest of the album follows the coordinates set: a single hint given by
one of the players is developed by the others and brings the trio to
explore new possibilities combining sound rhythm and melody. Just a final
note for 'Slipping,' which is a perfect example of the
freedom that a pianoless ensemble can offer: it opens with a drum solo,
which slips into an energetic “tutti” then a break around minute
five, introduces us into a groovy section led by Parker’s bass that here
and there is leaked in by free burst of the baritone. The final part leaves
Sewelson and Parker alone to slow down the piece into silence.
So the overall impression is that this album displays exactly what Sewelson
has promised: a spontaneous and spirited set which offers many hints for
sonic exploration and gives us the pleasure of listening to three inspired
musicians playing together.
In the last few years, the jazz scene in London has been exploding with new
young amazing artists. One of them is the duo Binker & Moses which
instantly catches not only the ear of someone who has just gotten into the UK jazz scene,
but also that of long-time jazz listeners.
The duo consisting of drums (Moses Boyd) and saxophone (Binker Golding),
has released a few albums, which are created so well that while listening
to them you won’t even notice that there are only two instruments playing. Known also for their solo albums and collaborations with other artists,
this time they created the project Village of the Sun, together with the
electronic sounds of Simon Ratcliffe, one half of the legendary electronic
duo Basement Jaxx. Their joint effort is a great example of one the directions in which modern jazz is developing.
As the name of the album implies, the sound of the first light is being
felt. It seems like if the sunrise could sound like jazz, this would be it.
The yellowness and freshness of the sunrise are being coloured during the
whole album. The energy that we, living beings get from the sun is widely
spread throughout the rhythmic harmonies of every track.
The collaboration of these musicians gives combined styles of music which
are seen very rarely. The beginning of every song in the album sounds like
a start of rave music, in which all of us know how the morning light has
always been long awaited and appreciated, but then instead of boggling
synthesizers and 'dancy' electronics, we get the sound of native drums and
amazingly played tenor saxophone, giving much more organic perspective of
the rising sun, and the day ahead.
As much as the jazz culture is connected to late night moods and
after-hours sessions, this album, continuing Sun Ra’s tradition of
appreciating the sun rays and the morning light, in just 30 minutes manages
to naturally produce high levels of serotonin, giving a different
perspective to the appreciation of the beginning of a new day.
When Matt Shipp and Ivo Perelman play together nothing unusual happens –
that is, nothing unusual for them. The synergy between the two performers
feels as natural as breathing. After many collaborations, this pair of
musicians lean into and interpret each other’s music in ways many can only
aspire to. Triptych I to III (SMP label) were meant to be released as a
cassette/LP/CD box with 150 drawings but plans changed so, while they
recorded with imagery in mind, those images are created by the music
itself.
Which poses no problem. Triptych 1 is a journey through musical ideas, the
pair swapping excerpts as they feel inspired, and pairing briefly from the
dichotomy of sound. And while the pair play with such individuality that
the listener might hear each instrument’s line as separate, in many senses
there pervades a sense of oneness as the pair bounce off and react to each
other. The tracks on Triptych 1 pose a problem in that dissecting them
individually is nigh on impossible because one musical idea flows into
another, the tracks feeling separated only by natural pauses and subtle
changes in approach. From the thunderous piano on the second track where
Shipp creates wave after wave of deep-noted gutsy piano, in contrast to
Shipp’s almost playful quips and nuanced overlays of melody – which often
dissolve into scale ascensions of staccato travels from one interval to
another, to places where there is gentleness and contemplative playing, as
musical thoughts seem to develop from the spaces and weave together to form
multi-layered landscapes. The third track on Triptych 1 is an example of
this, Perelman weaving delicate melody before rising to gutsy utterances
over Shipp’s continual accompaniment with hardly a pause. On track four,
Shipp’s classical style opening is counteracted by Perelman’s free-blowing,
powerful exploration, and development into fast, furious phrasing over
Shipp’s thunking piano.
Stand-out moments on Triptych I are number five where both players swap and
charge, lead and follow, Track six, where the playful to and fro is
escalated and becomes something extraordinary in terms of interpretation
and intuition and Track eight where both musicians show their gentler side,
Perelman making the tenor sing across the top of Shipp’s gorgeous
accompaniment.
There are moments of lyricism, and times when Perelman’s playing verges on
the deranged while Shipp maintains calm, his hypertension inserting a
control and hold on Perelman’s sax escapades. Yet, the deception is
complete. Perelman never loses the key of the root – well, hardly once.
Triptych II consists of two longer tracks, each allowing Perelman and Shipp
to explore deeper the suggestions introduced by one or the other. Side A is
a quite beautiful investigative journey into firstly, the extremes to which
a saxophone can be pushed and secondly, how an interpretive piano player
reacts and pushes back at times to what is placed, musically before them.
At times exquisite in its form, at others a musical argument as to which
musician leads, the side is 17 minutes of interesting music, including one
powerful section where Shipp slows things down, calms the space, and
Perelman follows, creating for a while a dream-like atmosphere, Perelman
creating breaks in the sax lines akin to breathing, with a couple of
familiar tunes breaking in now and again. The art of silence is subtly
shown here. Side B is almost straight jazz in some places, with a good dose
of free exploration thrown in but a contrast to Side A in terms of
harmonics and tonal development for the first section. Perelman then throws
everything, and Shipp gleefully follows as the sax slips into and maintains
holds altissimo phrases, dips down into lower register and, to put it
simply, on this track, Perelman virtually takes wing.
Triptych III is two tracks again and the artistic creativity continues as
Shipp and Perelman take ideas further, stretch concepts and create musical
pictures. Who needs drawings when you have two artists creating musical
landscapes in your mind?
Triptychs I, II, and III show the range of both Shipp and Perelman. There
is a chemistry between the players that is palpable even to those
unfamiliar with either. The danger of a musical pairing that has known so
many recordings is comfort and familiarity and there is some of this
because the playing of both is distinctive but Shipp and Perelman also show
that familiarity with another’s playing can lead to increased constructive
collaboration and trust. Perhaps this is the key to the music. From the
hypnotic sections of Triptych III to the gentle and melodic phrasing of
track number five on Triptych I, to the pared-back harmonies on Triptych II in places, or the complex layering of side A of Tryptic III, Shipp and
Perelman produce music which never ceases to create wonder in the listener
– and perhaps the musicians too.
It is enjoyable to hear Perelman out of his familiar altissimo and delving
into the depths of the tenor sax – proving a range of playing styles and
absolute understanding and mastery of his instrument. Side A of Tryptic III is a work of art in itself and I defy anyone to find a pair of improvising
musicians so tuned into each other as these.
A triptych is defined as a work of art divided into three sections, each
section can be folded shut or displayed open, or the entire work can be
viewed as one. This description suits this work because, whether you hear
each Triptych part singly or listen to it as a whole, it is art.
Xenofox is still Olaf Rupp on electric guitar and Rudi Fischerlehner
on drums. Sounds unspectacular, but it’s actually the exact opposite: we’re
talking about one of the best duos that the combination of these two
instruments currently has to offer if it comes to improvised music. The Garden Was Empty is their fifth album after
Hundred Beginnings(Farai, 2016),
Alarm (feat. Joke Lanz) (Oltramo Raw, 2018), Xenokustik (audiosemantics,
2019), and Cabbages and Kings (audiosemantics, 2022). In addition,
they also released an EP,
Maconda, in 2020 (also on audiosemantics). Our site has covered the work of the
two in detail from the beginning and we have never made a secret of how
much we appreciate their work.
Xenofox are best when they work at the interface of free improvisation,
experimental music and underground art rock - in other words, as if Derek
Bailey had jammed with Sunn :))). On The Garden Was Empty this can
be heard best in the tracks that bookend the album,“Kette Rechts“ and the
title track. Both pieces celebrate the idea of beautiful, albeit atonal,
noise consisting of feedback guitar attacks, drones and metallic percussion
rain. Xenofox use these characteristic elements in order to interlock
monstrous tectonic sound plates to create dark fascinating sonic eruptions.
The way Olaf Rupp lets it hum on these two tracks, the way his guitar
throbs like a huge heart of darkness, the way he alternates these sounds
with buzzing harmonics or rocking riffs, the way the music pulses and
buzzes, that is of a uniqueness which is currently unparalleled in this
kind of music. As a complement to this, Rudi Fischerlehner unleashes a
fireworks of cymbal sounds, tonewoods, rim shots and shaken rattles on
Rupp’s sombre sonority, that ricochets like a hail of bullets through the
depths of a huge stalactite cave. The sound garden that Xenofox create is
thus by no means empty, as the title of the album might suggest.
However, it’s not just the first and the last track on the album that are
phenomenal. The three pieces at the heart of The Garden Was Empty
present Xenofox as we’ve learned to love them as well. “Phantom Mirror“,
for example, is less organic than the two aforementioned pieces. It unfolds
an ambient-like restlessness over nearly 25 minutes with its unsettling
swirls transitioning into nervous clicks before it just flows along. The
music quivers and twitches and flickers all at once.
As usual, although Rupp and Fischerlehner had more time to record the
music, everything is freely improvised. “During the recordings, nothing was
really different than usual, if you ask me, everything just fit together
very well. You could already feel it while we were playing. What was
important and different is that this time we recorded two days in the
studio and could completely focus on the music, without having the whole
microphone and sound engineering stress. There are quite a few parts where
we dealt with forms and structures differently. That has something to do
with the quietness in the studio,“ Rupp says. “I try to steer the music
neither by will nor by chance; that’s what interests me“, he told the
German weekly DIE ZEIT in an interview in 2022. When the author asked him
if it was neither controlled by will nor by chance, what is was controlled
by then, Rupp answered that there was no word for it in German. However,
maybe there is one: magic.
The Garden Was Empty
is an early highlight of 2023.
It is available as a CD and as a download. You can oder the CD and listen
to “Kette Rechts“ here:
In my review of their last album
Shadowscores from 2016 I wrote that Ulrike Brand and Olaf Rupp hardly use their
instruments in a stereotypical way. Brand doesn’t play dignified classical
music on her cello and Rupp’s electric guitar is as far away from rock machismo as possible. For nine years now the two musicians have had their
duo and in this time of making music together they have developed “a rich
sound world oscillating between homogeneity and contrast, with micro- and
macro-structures that are partly transparent and partly concealed“ (as
their band camp site says). In fact, their musical philosophy is of a
certain airy complexity (which is not a contradiction here). Their
ingredients have remained the same over the years: overtone sounds,
arpeggios, clusters, numerous alienation effects like feedbacks, all kinds
of noises and differentiated volume modulation (here especially on the
electric guitar). And yet this album is quite different to the one before.
On the first three pieces there’s still the offensive confrontation of the
two instruments, the staccato attacks of the guitar and the sharp string
cuts of the cello, the back and forth, the abrupt changes of direction in
dynamics and rhythm. Especially in “Seggenried“ this becomes clear. But
then the music takes a turn towards ambient sounds. Tracks like
“Teichbinse“ and “Mondraute“, the longest ones on the album, consist of
floating single notes and harmonics and almost endless trills on the cello,
which are replaced by widely curved melodic arches and feedbacks. The
result are complex and nearly frightening textures which change to fragile
and sublime ones. However, it’s astonishing that the pieces always keep an
angular and raw touch. The second part of Myotis Myotis could work
as a soundtrack for a documentary on Germany’s native grasslands
(Teichbinsen, Mondrauten and Hainsimsen are the names of plant genera).
Every note seems to be very finely dabbed, the musicians take a lot of
time. This time, symbolized by longer pauses, takes away unnecessary
density from the music, Brand and Rupp rather decompose it. What is more,
they invite us to close our eyes and explore our own mind as well as the
nature around us. And if we get into it, the range of sensations,
observations, moods and ideas is surprisingly wide. In the end, the journey
really does seem to be the reward on Myotis Myotis. The music
oscillates between melancholic and feather-light states of consciousness,
in fact this is a strength of Brand’s and Rupp’s improvisations.
All in all, we might say that the duo explores the field of tension between
music, sound and noise, turning in an effort that’s more minimal and
therefore more effective than 2016’s Shadowscores. Maybe the fact
that the music was recorded within one day has made it more precise,
simpler and somehow even more subtle. The communication
between the two is simply excellent in a somnambulistic way, as if their
ideas creep into each other and cross-pollinate. The album is on heavy
rotation on my CD player, I wonder how I could have overlooked it so far.
Myotis Myotis
is available as a CD and as a download.
The Less You Sleep was recorded over three days in June 2020 and offers ten
concise and brutal pieces that push Dry Thrust to its extreme limits. Gräwe
sounds like a free jazz incarnation of the late Keith Emerson, extracting
weird and otherworldly sounds from the organ. Siewert is a mad scientist
who enhances the sonic spectrum of the electric guitar with his electronics
set-up, and Kern keeps all on their toes with his fractured but powerful
rhythmic patterns. But these idiosyncratic musicians are masters of the art
of the moment. Their vocabulary is infinite, and they know how to play with
abstract sounds and pulses, keep a positive tension and feed each other
with completely unpredictable but always intriguing ideas.
Some of the pieces like “Vagaries I“ and “Afterburner” even suggest
nightmarish, futurist cinematic visions. But “Wet Engine” and “Casimir
Dynamics” takes a turn to the past and sound like a joyful collision of
fusion with prog-rock, with generous doses of noisy distortion. It would be
interesting to see this experimental trio plays live as it develops its
powerful dynamics.
In the comments to our Top Ten lists, our reader Jeff said that two singles
were also among his favorites last year. Usually we don’t review 45s, our
focus is more on complete albums, but even in jazz singles were hip in the
past. Although LPs have increased in popularity at least since the 1950s,
singles were the most popular and lucrative way to release music, reaching
their commercial peak in 1974 when a reported 200 million were sold
(according to pro-ject.com).
However, even in jazz they were a popular medium, just think of Stan Getz
& Astrid Gilberto’s “Girl from Ipanema (1964) or Dave Brubeck’s “Take
Five“ (1961). Since the mid 1970s, the global demand has gone down. The
advent of the CD in the early 1980s was the main factor that caused sales
of the 45 to drop. Finally, as more and more people had access to the
Internet, this seemed to be the ultimate death for the good old 7 inch.
Yet, wherever there’s passion, there’s sure to be a revival and
lovers of the format held on in creative ways. Sub Pop, for example,
launched a “Singles Club”, where they mailed 7 inches to members,
especially introducing the world to grunge. Against all odds, their sales
have been growing steadily. After releasing stuff by many of the usual
suspects like Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion,
their program has become more diverse. Acts like Moor Mother and Keiji
Haino are part of their program today. And what is more, there are other
labels that keep on releasing 45s as well (at least now and then).
Irreversible Entanglements - Down to Earth (Sub Pop Records, 2022)
One of the latest Sup Pop releases is Irreversible Entanglements’s Down To Earth. The track is a spherical explosion, reminiscent of
Sun Ra at the beginning, since it’s aided by the strong reverb and
interlocking horns and lyrics that could allude to a spaceship landing back
on earth. However, Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) (voice, synth) does not
rage against social injustice as she usually does on former albums. She
simply repeats the words “Down to Earth“ over and over again. Against this
monotonous recitation the band, which has clearly taken command here, hurls
excellent free jazz in the listener’s face. “All you Can Do Is All you Can
Do“ then gives us the band in the way we’ve learned to love them. Against
grumbling, menacing electronic loops which remind me of helicopters, Ayewa
recites somber verses like “All you can do is all you can do / Nobody knows
trouble like I do“. Between her rant, Aquiles Navarro’s trumpet soars to
dizzying heights. “What else to be done?“ Ayewa finally asks. She doesn’t
seem to have an answer. There’s a lot of resignation here, after all. But
the music grooves in an unruly, somber way.
Down To Earth
is available on vinyl and as a download.
[ahmed] - [ahmed] (A Cheeseboard Production, 2022)
[ahmed], the outfit that recorded our album of the year 2021, has also
released a 45. Once again, the band unites free jazz and Arabic music
released by the bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Along with
Seymour Wright (alto sax), Joel Grip (bass) and Antonin Gerbal (drums), Pat
Thomas (piano)trims Abdul-Malik’s compositions to their
rhythmic and harmonic bones, stripping away everything unnecessary at
first. After the band has agreed on a groove - which can be a very weird
one - they happily dash off on it into the sunset. The two songs here are
called “Ahad“ and “Wahid“, both words meaning “one“ in English. However,
there is a difference between the two words in Arabic. The name al-Ahad for
Allah is more exclusive in its meaning than the name al-Wahid, referring
specifically to Allah’s essence, communicating that Allah is absolutely
singular and utterly unique in his attributes. As to the music, both of
these “ones“ are excerpts from two live sets. They are new versions or
arrangements of Abdul-Malik’s composition “El Haris (Anxious)“.
“Ahad“ puts the Arabic part of this project’s music in foreground. There’s
a very nice crescendo in the middle of the song, carried by swelling bass
and drums, before the piano takes over. From this moment on the band sounds
as if Cecil Taylor has incorporated influences of a long stay in the Middle
East into his music. While “Ahad“ follows in the vein of previous albums,
“Wahid“ is the more spectacular of the two tracks. It relies on a
monotonous, atonal piano chord in the high registers that hammers its way
through the piece. In counterpoint, the low registers of the piano and bass
move around this chord, which make it shine like a diamond.
Especially in “Wahid“ it seems as if you were constantly getting slapped in
the face and your head is a buzzing top that makes you stagger blindly
through the world. You are fully into the music and possibly want to jump
up and down like a madman, but you don’t want the thing to stop. It’s a
constant change, whenever you think you know what’s going on, the music
turns off in another direction. “Even though you might hear the repetition,
it’s not like systems music where everyone is doing the same thing,“ Thomas
said in an interview. Exceptional music, everything Pat Thomas touches
musically seems to turn to gold at the moment.
Last month, Nick Metzger reviewed several of saxophonist James Brandon Lewis'
latest releases. In fact, one of them, Eye of I, had not yet been
released. Nick wrote:
On the forthcoming 2023 release Eye of I, Lewis’ first for the Anti
label, he is joined by Chris Hoffman on electric cello and Max Jaffe on
percussion for a scorching trio set... Lewis explained that he loves the
give-and-take of this trio, stating “The first time we played, things just
lifted up right away. Everything that group does just feels fresh. (See review)
On the occasion of the album's release next week, Nick and I pooled some
questions for Lewis, which in practice were almost not needed as the
conversation seemed to flow with the slightest prompting. Lewis and I talk
about his career's trajectory over the past few years, his upcoming album Eye of I, and then thing
get really interesting.
This interview was conducted on January 23.
Paul Acquaro: So, it seems the past few years have been pretty busy for
you. Just thinking of your recorded music, you have had the three Molecular Systematic Music albums on Intakt. Unruly Manifesto on Relative
Pitch, Jesup Wagon on Tao Forms, and there are others I'm sure that I
haven't mentioned, but just considering those recordings, that's quite a
stretch. On the MSM Live album, which was recording mid-pandemic, there's a
little snippet that always catches my ear in which you're
saying how excited you are to be playing this music live for the first time... so, to kick things
off, my question is, how did you fare during the pandemic? What kept you busy?
James Brandon Lewis: Well, you know, it's interesting, I think at
the beginning of the Pandemic, my last gig was at Town Hall with
William Parker. He had put a band together to revisit his Curtis Mayfield
project ... like around March 5th, I want to say.
I was scheduled to go on tour. I had put together a band, it was me, John
Edwards, Mark Sanders and D.D. Jackson. We were scheduled to play like maybe
four or five gigs together. I was just an impromptu thing. I've worked with
Jackson before, and I've played twice with John Edwards, but only once with
Mark Sanders. Mark Sanders, John Edwards and I played at Cafe OTO, a few
years ago and that was pretty amazing (4.2.18, OTOROKU, 2019). So when that got
canceled, I was worried. Like anybody, I think during the first few weeks, I
was super stressed out, trying to figure out what I was gonna do for money.
Let's just keep it all the way real. I fortunately have always been pretty
frugal with my money, especially money I make on tour. So, I had some savings,
but after a while I knew that it was going to dry up. So I just
went into action mode.
But also, let me just stress that I know that my identity as a person was not
attached to the need to play for an audience. I enjoy playing for an audience,
but I've reached a point in my life where that aspect of music is a part of
it. But for me, I'm just enjoying as I get older -- I'm not 40 yet, but it's
barking -- that I've just learned via spending time with my family, my loved
ones, the people I care about, that my identity rests in who I am in general and not that I'm a musician. However, I've never taken any gigs or any
opportunities for granted. So, if it was gonna be over, I was okay with that.
What I was stressed out about was what was I going to do to survive? Because,
of course, I had worked other jobs when I was younger. It could have easily
been a possibility to go stock shelves or go work at a library.
So, I went into action mode and I purchased some electronic equipment, I got
an iPad, and I taught a few lessons online, which was very encouraging. I
haven't done a whole lot of teaching. I've been a guest lecturer, and I've
done master classes, but this was an opportunity for me to teach a lesson that I
would've wanted growing up, even though these people were my age and older. Pretty much every lesson would start off with a
quote, something for us to ponder, either related to music or not, but
something that we'd kick off the lesson with something
to think about. I would also assign a
documentary to watch a week. It didn't matter the length, it didn't matter to
the genre, just something that relates to creativity, what
it means to be creative. And then I would assign listenings, because
they were sax players. So the listenings would cover as much of the continuum
of the saxophone as possible. One week we might be going over Sonny Criss. The
next week we might be going over Frank Lowe or Frank Wright,
and the next week we might go over Teddy Edwards or Bill Baron. And so the
whole point was to assign listenings so that a person could hear the palette, it's like when someone's experiencing food or wine, you have
to develop a palette to understand all the different ways that saxophone can
sound. It wasn't really the kind of lesson where I would tell you
about two-five-ones or scales to practice. I'm not the guy for that. Not that
I haven't that information. I went to school for it, but this is not
an opportunity for me to regurgitate information. It was an
opportunity to give a lesson of where I'm at now mentally. I'm not opposed to
that information, but I think we covered different things to think about,
conceptually, sound, making your own scales, or as Nicolas Slominsky
calls it in his book The Road to Music, a tonal ladder.
Eventually, gigs picked up. I was very fortunate on Molecular Live,
in fact we were one of the first bands to leave the country when things
started to open up again. It was a lot of paperwork to make it to Switzerland, the Covid tests and all the proof you needed to be able to travel. That
record came out really well. We released the album Molecularin 2020 and we had only played that music once before the recording
session, and then the recording session happened. So this was the first time we
played that music live and those gentlemen are amazing.
Molecular
marks a few time periods. Number one, it marks the time period of me
understanding what I needed to grow. All the musicians in
the band are older than me, that's on purpose, and they can all kick my ass any
day of the week. There's definitely a systematic way in which I'm organizing
the material, without a doubt; however, what they add, bringing their
individual voices to the table and their skill-sets really pushes me to
another place of growth and understanding. So, that's a long answer for what I
was doing during Covid, but I wanted to put context around everything.
PA: So, I think you could you say that something positive that came out of
this time for you?
JBL: Well, sure. I think it was more of a realization of a few things. Number
one is that it gave me insight into the fact that I'm okay with life and I'm
okay with what I've done with my life. And that I can honestly say that I've
never taken any moment to play music with people for granted, because I had
accepted that it was okay if this was over. The living part of that stressed
me out, not the music part. The music is not the problem, it's
everything around music. That's always the problem. The music, as in creating,
is never the problem. So, there's a couple positives, but it's also like
positive slash not negative, things that happened during Covid that were weird
to me.
I'll give you an example. 2020, no one's playing and I win Rising Star
Saxophones in Downbeat Magazine. I start getting all these reviews
and awards during 2020 / 2021 when stuff isn't really happening. But the
positive in that, and what I think happened, is that people had an opportunity
to go through my catalog because everyone was home. So, when I won these
awards -- and by the way, I have a new philosophy on awards, and that is,
they're just merely markers of existence within this time period. They're not
validations of skillset. I'm appreciative of it, but they're markers, markers
of time, of space, no different than music. That's not to knock my
accomplishments, but it gives me peace of mind to put 'em in that category
because the horn is on zero. It has no memory. When I pick it up, it doesn't
remember anything, I'm on zero. Every time I pick it up, it's on zero. There's
no artificial intelligence in the bell. So
that's humbling too. Anyway, I think that when all of that stuff happened, and then
people became more aware of my work and they said, 'wow.'
There was a part during Covid when I said to myself, what purpose is this
music serving? My mom had a few cousins die from Covid, how can I still be
inspired to blow air through a tube while people are losing their lives? But
then, eventually, I got to a point where I realized you have to pull yourself
up and realize that your ship can't sink. You can't help other people if your
ship is sinking. So, I got to a point where I had decided, okay, I can't allow
myself to sink because music is what keeps me going … and that's when Whit
Dickie, from Tao Forms, called me.
He said something like, 'this is going to come off sounding odd, but I'm
starting a record label.' I'm like, oh, okay, you're starting a record label
in the middle of the pandemic. You know, matter of fact, at the beginning, I think this was March 2020 and he might have called me in May. I said,
'Oh, okay.' I had some ideas of what I wanted to record and had been pondering
and thinking about George Washington Carver for a long time and that's how
that came about (Jesup Wagon, Tao Forms, 2021). So, yeah, some
positives, people's awareness of my work and my efforts. I mean, that was kind
of odd. You know, we're in the middle of a crisis and my career is rising. It
felt weird to me. I didn't know whether to be happy or just like, okay,
well cool. <laugh>.
PA: I guess it's like you said, you need to keep on doing what you do. You
can't let everything weigh on you in that way that stops you. So
Jesup Wagon, I'd love to come back to that later, right now I'd like to skip to
what you're doing now ... coming out in a couple weeks is the Eye of I recording.
JBL: The week after next, February 3rd.
PA: Funny, I was so excited when I first heard the recording back in November that
I put it on my best of 2022 list not realizing it wasn't released yet! I'll
just have to postpone that sentiment until a year from now. Anyway, this album is a bit of different concept, I suppose. It's a
trio and I believe you might have mentioned elsewhere that you had been
thinking about this trio for a while. So how did it finally come together with
Chris Hoffman on cello and Max Jaffe on drums?
JBL: Well, I work with Chris in different capacities, with Rob Reddy. That's
how I met him. Then I ran into Max at the Vision Festival. But the trio
concept in and of itself, regardless of the instrumentation, really first
started when I met Matthew Shipp in 2011 at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
He asked me, 'James, have you ever play with just a bass and a
drum?' And I said 'no.' This was coming off the heels of having graduated from
California Institute of the Arts and working with Wadada Leo Smith and Charlie
Haden and Joe LeBarbera, all these amazing people. So, he brought in two
people who had with Sam Rivers in Florida, Michael Welch and Doug Matthews,
and they came to Atlantic Center for the Arts. For me, that was the first time
I had felt, I don't know, I felt liberated. I felt free, I felt uninhibited in
that the melodic line could travel where I wanted it to go. I could be the
guide, you know, the anchor. I had never experienced that before, and I had
never, quite frankly, thought about it. Obviously, I've heard the same
recordings that a lot of different people have heard. I've been a huge Sonny
Rollins fan, a John Coltrane fan, you know, a student of the game kind of
person, that’s me. But I had never thought about it in the context of myself
and writing for that instrumentation. Eventually, that led to me recording
with William Parker and Gerald Cleaver on Divine Travels and later on making Days of Freeman with Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Rudy
Royston, and then having another iteration of an ensemble with the bass and
the drum. So these concepts aren't new as far as how I'm hearing the
instrumentation. I think that for me, the concept in general is chasing
energy.
During the second year of the lockdown, I was tasked with a commission to
write a string quartet, and I really discovered that I have a very strong
melodic sense. I did not know that for myself until I had to make a 40-minute
string piece. And then I said, 'wow, okay. I think I do all right with writing
melodies.' Also, the summer before last, I had come back from Europe where I
was on tour with Giovanni Guidi, the Italian pianist. I made a tribute album
of original music to Gato Barbieri with him (Ojos De Gato, CAM Jazz, 2021) in which Giovanni arranged his own original versions
inspired by the recording Third World (Flying Dutchman, 1970) with Roswell Rudd
and so on. We had a really amazing trombone player, Gianluca Petrella, also
Brandon Lopez, Chad Taylor, and Francisco Mela. When I came back, I was on a
high from that, plus my last trio album was No Filter (self, 2017) and
that was 2016/17. So, there was a sense of renewal when I got back from
Europe, and I said, 'I think I need to bring some trio music to the table. I'm
feeling inspired again to bring that instrumentation back.' And the
cello was just a thing that I wanted to have.
When I wrote all that music, I was thinking about certain things that Henry
Threadgill had expressed to me during this time period in regard to sound,
which is how I came up with the interludes. I had never had a saxophone player
ever say to me, and I'm speaking about Henry Threadgill, 'are you into
movies?' I said, 'no, not really.' He says, 'I'm into movies and I use movies
as a way to think about sound as well as visual art." He says, 'have you ever
thought about a note as having a foreground, a middle ground and a background?' I was blown away by that because as I'm playing saxophone,
to think about a note, even spatially without the saxophone is, like my hands
are just moving up and down. I'm listening
for the note, I was never thinking about it from a spatial orientational
point of view. I was only thinking about it as the sound. So, to think about
it and then have a visual image of a note, having a middle, a front, a back,
it was just really fascinating to me. And so I was thinking about that and I
was also thinking about my ways of knowing and introspection, which is how I
came up with the title 'Within You Are Answers.'
I was also thinking about birth and how we're untainted by the world, and I
had played the Cecil Taylor piece, 'Womb Water,' which I've never found a
recording of, but I had played with William Parker. When I started
thinking about 'Eye of I,' I thought of the sense of enlightenment, of purpose, of how our
perspective is always outside of us, and never it is in the opposite. You
know, you're always, even when you're learning, they say, 'well, you should
learn this person and this person.' They never say, 'well, you should learn
you'. It's never that, it's never that for a while, until it's too late, and
then you're off the planet. So, you spent your whole life learning someone
else's ways of being rather than cultivating yourself. 'Eye of I' also
has the whole kind of biblical premise that the eye is the lamp of the body,
and when the body is filled with light, good things come from that. So, I'm
trying to create music that reflects these sentiments, or reflects these
feelings. I feel like titles really reflect, for me at least, exactly how I'm
feeling. During this time of uncertainty, of war, of the back and forth
between politicians, the mistreatment of minorities, mistreatment of women ...
and politics is not something I'm at my house shedding, you know, I'm at my
house playing music. I know my perspective on politics is very limited
compared to someone who's a politician because they are masters at being
mapped. People who want good for the world are working on it 24 hours a day,
and people who want bad for the world are also working on that 24 hours a day.
PA: Yeah. Maybe even more.
JBL: Yeah. I'm not at my house working on the bad. When I was thinking about
these titles, in all of that confusion and uncertainty, and all of the drama,
for me, it's always a matter of, you know, send the 'Seraphic Beings' (a title
of a track), send the things we need so we can get through this. And so
everything's very purposeful.
And of course, Donny Hathaway, I love Donny Hathaway. 'Someday We'll
All Be Free.' I love that. I've always loved that song. I've always felt like
it sounds great, and it has this great metaphor in it ... (sings) "hang onto
the world as it spins around. Don't let the spin get you down. Things are
moving fast." That's awesome. Hang onto the world as it spins around. Yep.
Don't let the spin get you down.
PA: You, you could hear that on several levels, right? Just take that word
"spin"...
JBL: Right. On several levels. I'm excited for people to hear the music and
I'll be on tour with that music, working with different musicians. I kind of
just went to a model of opening up the ensemble. Working with Chad Taylor on
some tours, and Josh Warner, and Bay Area based drummer Andy Niven. I decided
I want to open up the trio concept to just not necessarily have set people.
But I am definitely thankful for Chris and Max's participation in the record,
but in the spirit of collaboration, I would like at least one of my ensembles
to keep switching up.
PA: In, 'Someday We’ll All Be Free,' the second tune on the album, right after
one of those little incidental tracks...
JBL: The interludes.
PA: Yes, the interludes, which I want to talk about too ... the Donny Hathaway
song has a much different arrangement than the original tune. It's beautiful.
The word I had written down for it was 'cinematic,' that song has a cinematic
feel in the way you did it. What were your thoughts behind the arrangement?
JBL: Well, you know, it's interesting because I think I had been wanting to
cover a Donny Hathaway tune for a really long time, but never felt like I was
going give it a sincere JBL vibe <laughs>. What I mean by that
is, there is what I would say is artistic integrity, right? I could go
and make an arrangement and make it sound closest to how Donny Hathaway would
perform it, but then I wouldn't be necessarily happy with myself because the
me in it would be gone. So when I started thinking about this arrangement, --
another thing that I love doing, especially in the trio context is, after
music school and all that jazz school is going back to some basic stuff
like power chords, you know, just the one and the five and 1-5-1 or 1-4-1,
whatever it's gonna be. I really like that sound because I feel like it is more open harmonically for me to really be able to hear outside of the key
center. The beginning of that song kind of
reminds me of the Eighties in the sense of everything was big. I
heard that in my head, like if it was a stadium, and so compositionally I'm
thinking rock. I'm thinking -- I mean, I was born in the early eighties. I
remember certain things being big, and being like straight up rock vibes. And
so then you have that intro, and then it segues into the verses, you know?
I'm pretty sure my melody, the way I'm playing Donny Hathaway's melody is in
the same key except I changed the chords to power chords to make it loose, to
open it up. I would listen to his version and the way he was singing it, and
then I would sing it, and that's how I ended up composing it. I don't think
you could play that song without really knowing the words, because the words
are dictating so much of the rhythm of the melody.
There's so many Donny Hathaway-esque ways of phrasing. Something like when
(sings) 'hang on to the world as it spins around, ride, just don't let the spin get you down. Things are moving
fast.' This is exactly how we play it on the record. Then we rev up and then
you hear Kurt Knuffke, who's on cornet, play that verse. It's a nice tribute.
It's not exact, but I definitely felt like this is "Someday We'll All Be
Free". I'm giving props to Donny because we're definitely playing the
melodies. So that was that process of thinking about multiple
things, thinking about soul music, thinking about rock, thinking about the
Eighties. Then when we get to the blowing and it's all about freedom. Yeah.
But we are free.
PA: <laugh>. You are. That's definitely free. I think that's the
marker of a great song, right? You can take it, and you can change it, and you
can make it yours, but it still is that song.
JBL: Right. Exactly.
PA: But now it's yours too. Thinking about rock, you have the song ‘Fear Not’
on the album. This tune almost gets into, I don't know, like Crazy Horse
territory or something like that. How did that relationship or pairing come
about you and the group, the Messthetics?
JBL: Well, I have worked with for many years at this point with Anthony Pirog,
the guitarist. We first met at recording sessions with William Hooker and we
know people within (Washington) DC. He linked up with the Messthetics a while ago. My interaction
with them started before Covid. I think we played together at Winter Jazz, maybe
2018/19. They had me sitting in with them and we played a Miles Davis Tune and then we played something off Ask the Ages, the Sonny Sharrock album.
Then, over the summer, we all played at Union Pool together (performance space
in Brooklyn). I sat in on two or three tunes and the vibe was so amazing. I had
the opportunity to play with Joe Lally and Brenden Canty from the legendary Fugazi. It speaks volumes to their openness,
and mine too, to not limit myself to 'well, this is what I am and this is
what I'm not.' No, this is all about music in the spirit of music. And so
during the process, after I recorded the album, ANTI suggested that I record a
single, or some singles. It wasn't a requirement that I had to release a
single off of the album necessarily, but they were in town, and they had asked
me if I wanted to play at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. So we played, and
interestingly enough, it was the same night that Mark Ribot's Ceramic Dog was
playing. Mark had me sitting in with them, and so basically I played the whole
night, and it was a really great vibe. So, we're talking like three years at this point of collaborating.
I had written that song, 'Fear Not' years ago. Probably 2017/18, but I never had an opportunity to record it, though I played it in
different ensembles. So, when this came up and they were in town, we knocked out a great arrangement of it, and the rest is
history. Now we have these tours coming up. I have a tour coming up with them
in February and March. And it's gonna be great, man. Those are great people to
work with.
PA: Where is the tour? US?
JBL: Yes, on the West Coast. You know, we got some dates in LA, San Diego, the
Bay Area, then a few in Portland, then in Seattle. In March, it'll be
East Coast, New York, Philly, DC, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. It'll be pretty
excessive, you know and I'm excited about it. They're a great band. You know,
I actually have a gig coming up next Saturday with the Messthetics. We
recently actually made a whole album together, but that's as far as what I can say
about that.
PA: Okay. <laugh> a teaser. 'Eye of I' is being released by the label ANTI, which is kind of a rock label. I associate them with Tom Waits and Nick Cave
and stuff like that. How do you see yourself fitting in on the label?
JBL: Well, you know, this is a thing. I think that the music itself, the
entire album, is so many degrees away from ... it's like so close and yet so
not so far <laugh> ... they're just open, you know, I felt like it was the
perfect label for how energetic the recording is. I don't know if any other
label could have really fit. For me, it felt perfect, a perfect label to put
this stuff out with, and I think that when people hear the full album, they'll
completely understand why.
I play the saxophone, which is always gonna dictate, based on the history of
the instrument, jazz. That's what people think about, they don't necessarily
associate it with rock, even though there's been this flirting with punk rock
and avant-garde music as it relates to jazz avant-garde style or whatever you
wanna call it, for a while. In fact, Thurston Moore did the liner notes. I met
Thurston at a writer's institute at Naropa University, the Jack Kerouac
School of Disembodied Poetics. Also, I've been collaborating with Ribot over the
years. I'm on his Songs of Resistance album. So there's always this
crossover, there's always these vibes that happen if you're open to it. And so, I've been open and I think people will receive it well. I think that ANTI has been very supportive, they're definitely trying to push the album to
different people, different audiences, and I think it's already reaching
different audiences. So yeah, I think it's a good fit for what I'm trying to
do, I'm trying to chase energy. As far as dynamics is concerned, I don't know that I'm even thinking about dynamics too much when it comes to the trio music. I'm
thinking about, especially live, that energy. I want it to be energetic and
have that kind of punk rock vibe to it. It's not music for the faint of heart.
PA: The interludes, 'foreground,' 'middle
ground,' and 'background,' they're really ear catching, let's say. They're
different, there's a completely different aesthetic, and then they're gone.
They start and you're like, 'oh, interesting. Where did that go?'' Anyway, do
you hear a longer song in any of those?
JBL: Yeah, I do. But those were just kind of brief
collective improv ideas. Some of this is stuff aesthetically that I have already
done on previous albums. So, it's kind of like giving an audience a brief recap of
what I've explored. Not necessarily all of them. There's some that I think
could go anywhere, but those were definitely just kind of like little 30
second improvs.
PA: Since we're talking about how this album changes the
energy or direction a little bit, I'm curious, what are some new releases
or, or, or things that you've heard in the past few years that have caught
your attention? It doesn't have to be jazz, of course.
JBL: Yeah. That's a great question because there's one album in particular
that I've been telling everybody about that's been my unicorn, my fountain of
youth, you know, my golden ticket, which is Motivationby Bill
Barron, Kenny Baron's brother. That album has not been re-released, and
you can only hear it on YouTube. Now, Bill Baron -- John Coltrane's generation -- when I discovered this recording on YouTube, I flipped the lid because it
sounded so different. He sounds totally different than his generation. The way the tunes are structured intervallically, it's almost
like hearing Eric Dolphy on tenor sax. So that's one of the things I've been
listening to. Then the other day, I took a binge and revisited Ornette, which
I do often, but in chronological order.
PA: Okay. Starting at the beginning.
JBL: At the beginning, yeah, Something Else. I just went forward and that
was enjoyable. And then Teddy Edwards, I really got into him during Covid, a
West Coast player. It just depends - oh, there's Stone Alliance with Steve
Grossman. Chad Taylor hipped me to them. I don't think they ever made a bad
album.
Something not related to music that I've been interested in is this
philosopher, Henri Bergson. I've been reading Intro to Metaphysics. Bergson's philosophy centers around the fact that intuition is an absolute
truth. And that reason, he makes the argument that a person who reasons or is
operating in that vein is always outside of an object. They can give you the
dimensions of it, and he simply makes the argument that a person who is
operating with intuition is inside the object. They become the object, which I
thought that is a good, that is what I need in my life, the intuitive.
PA: Oh, well, thank you. Some stuff to explore. Well, I really appreciate
your time. I don't want to overstay my welcome here. So my absolute
last question is, is there something that I should have been asking you?
Something you'd like to talk about?
JBL: You know, the only thing I'm interested now in talking about is the fact
that I'm, over the years, relentlessly determined to be my most authentic self. I've been putting out these recordings at a high rate not for the sake of
doing it, but for the sake that I feel like I have a little bit to say, a
little bit, not a lot, a little bit to say, and that you can't be beholden to
the past forever. Eventually, you have to step out and say, 'I have something
I would like to say if it's okay.' So, I've been releasing these recordings, Molecular Systematic Music. Some thoughts on that is that there is a
recording that completes that series and will be released sometime in the fall, and then there's a
follow up to Jesup Wagon.
PA: Oh, great. So you're taking the concepts behind these albums and
exploring them a little further?
JBL: Yeah, they're already done.
PA: Okay. You've explored them further.
JBL: Yeah, they're done, they just haven't been released yet. I've
been releasing at such a high volume because the older I get, the more I
realize how fragile time is. I have something I would like to say and I have
to get that out there. In regards to Molecular Systematic Music, that is coming
along quite nicely. Basically for people who don't understand what it is,
it's a metaphorical system that draws a correlation between molecular biology and
music to then build artistic DNA for the purposes of improvisation and
creativity, of which I am currently working on my PhD at the University
of the Arts, a doctorate of philosophy in creativity. So I've been exploring the
system and studying metaphor.
Metaphor is a way to conceptualize and build new realities with preexisting
material, preexisting notions of how to think and it's how I've been working for the last 10 years. What has also increased my pace is that I discovered how I learn, and how I study, and
what I am interested in, it became less about being something that I'm not.
I've really kind of matured into being as opposed to proving.
PA: So would you say that you started the PhD program - and congrats on that, that's a big step – because you were you inspired by your own music
to do so? Or was it kind of a separate thing and now you're looking
back at your music and thinking about it in a new way?
JBL: Um, no, it's something that was already started in 2011. It went by a
different name prior to Molecular Systematic Music. Covid
also inspired me to start speaking and writing about my own approaches to
music. I have several published articles via Arrowmith Press talking about philosophy and ways of being related to metaphor and Molecular Systematic
Music. The PhD is something that I've had thought about for a while,
and this program really allows me the latitude and the expansiveness to work
on my own system, as opposed to other programs that foster something else.
I have a dissertation committee, I do a lot of independent research, and
Molecular Systematic Music is really extensive, the study of sign and symbol
via Roland Barths and Charles Pierce. And then I'm studying molecular biology,
and metaphysics as it relates to intuition, and have several books from
Buckminister Fuller and Rudolph Steiner, who also talks about intuition. I
think that it's ways of being and I'm just exploring something I've
always been interested in, and then it helps to get a PhD to do my
research. I think we live in a different age now, where the more documentation
you have, the better, because then people are less inclined to -- I mean,
they're gonna critique you regardless, but at least it's documented.
PA: Well, I'll be interested in reading the dissertation when it's done.
JBL: Ok, yeah. 2025.
PA: Okay. Very good. So, just a quick question to bring the music to a
more practical level. What do the musicians see and work with when
you present new music that you write using this system?
JBL: I have not charged them with the task of learning the symbols that I've
come up with. They're using western notation. I can put the information in
western notation or symbols. I recently got interested in lab notebooks, like
what lab notebooks look like and felt very inclined to buy a lab coat. Okay,
you know, not to wear on stage, 'cause I know that's already been done.
PA: Right.
JBL: I'm not interested in that at all. But for my own sake, wearing a lab
coat as I'm practicing and getting into that mode of understanding and DNA is
serving as a metaphor. When I say artistic DNA, it's basically just asking the
questions of what makes you who you are. And then systematically defining that
via whatever your metaphor is for life. We understand a
lot of concepts in life through the use of metaphor and so that's what I'm
deeply engaged in right now. It's been exciting, it has been exciting even
before I got this stamp from the school.
The idea of my work, my observations of seeing these two notes coalescing with each other, now I'm adding three notes, and I'm studying the
double helix, it's exciting. You know, in science they're using language like 'triplet' or 'double
time.' When we start talking about circadian rhythms and about the effect of
light on ourselves and what that means as far as time, it's fascinating. They use all these things and draw correlations. I'm always reminded about
Leonard Bernstein in The Unanswered Question. He says, the
best way to know a thing is in the context of another. That is what metaphor
is, basically trying to draw inferences between two separate entities.
So that's what I've been doing. I didn't call it Molecular Systematic Music
at first, rather there's a way I'm building the music, and there's a
reason why my skillset has changed through this system. If you listen to how I
play now, as opposed to when I made Divine Travels, that playing is light
years apart. Those are two different players. Same tone, but two different
players. Two different, valid conceptions. I don't even practice like that
anymore. I don't even remember how I was practicing then. But, so yeah, it's
an exciting time period right now for me. I feel very confident. I feel very
centered and not in an ego way, just in a very freeing way, like seeing
everything as one.
I see more stuff as being one now than I have before in my life. If I'm
sitting down and I'm reading, like I was reading the first chapter of the
Rule of Metaphor by Paul Ricoeur, and as I'm reading that, I'm saying to
myself, there's no anxiety about not picking up my saxophone. No, this too is a
part of the saxophone. So, that in itself has been so freeing. I mean, when
I was younger, if I wasn't on my horn, -- now, don't get me wrong, I'm on my
horn almost every day for hours, but I don't have any anxiety, because I
realize that everything is influencing everything. Basically, I got this from Charles Ives. I was reading
biography on Charles Ives and it's describing the fact that every day he's
going out and selling insurance -- he's actually one of the pioneers or founding
fathers of the way insurance is in America, and on top of funding New Music and the New Music Journal, one of those journals that still exists and
he barely got to hear his music in his whole lifetime. -- and every day he'd come
home, have dinner with his wife, and then he would compose for the rest of the
evening. They were asking him, 'Hey, do you ever feel like you're sacrificing something?,' to which he said, 'No, it's all one. When I'm spending time at
the office, I sometimes learn more about music from people who are business
people than from actual musicians.' Which is the same thing that Bill Evans
said in an interview. He said that the layperson is able to understand more
because they're not in it as much as the person who is in it. The person who's
a musicians is always in the thing, where someone outside of the thing can
appreciate it from a totally different perspective. So I think that that I'm
at a beautiful place in my life where I know how to use my time wisely.
I pick up my horn and I think, 'okay, I need to do some long tones,' or I gotta
do this other thing. Because I've created my own system, the onus of learning the
system and practicing it is on me. The pressure is from me, it's not outside
of me. This is where stuff used to get annoying, you know, I'm
practicing all this stuff that basically had nothing to do with my own thought
process or my own analytical abilities, but basically just copying and
learning how someone else is processing information. I spent a large part of
my life doing that and I retired from doing that a long time ago. When I discovered how I learned, which was basically in 2006 after I graduated
from undergrad, it took me all that time to realize that the way that I
learned, nobody taught me that in school.
Your first week of school, first your first three weeks of school, when you're
an undergrad, in my opinion, someone has to say, 'well, how would you
like to revamp education?' The first week, first three weeks, first month, you
know what we're doing? I'm having the kids analyze and figure out how they
study, how do they learn. How they are processing information. Then, once you
figure that out, then we'll get to all the other stuff. But if you don't know
how to study, you don't know how your brain processes information and you're
ultimately only getting spoon fed the same way of learning that -- I grew up
with an educator, my mom taught and I never once saw her teach a kid the same
way. She knew how to teach one topic five or six different ways. Now that's
how you educate. That's what I would do. So anyway, when I figured out how I
learned, which is basically fragments, smaller amounts of information, cells,
microlearning, then that's when I rocketed out of this realm.
PA: Well, probably a little bit of that groundwork is necessary in order for
you to be able to know how you learn. If you actually asked some students,
"how do you learn?" They'll probably say, "oh, I don't know." I don't think
that you necessarily have that insight as an undergrad and you probably need
to go through a little bit of what you don't like in order to figure out what
you do like.
JBL: You know what? I actually agree with you, but I think that the problem is
that when you're not exposed to two ways of learning, you don't even know it's
possible.
PA: Yeah, sure.
JBL: I've been in certain situations ... when I was in my early twenties,
where the only time an African American was mentioned as having contributed to avant garde music is when we were playing a traditional piece, what people
deem as a traditional jazz piece, and they said, "oh, you made a mistake." I
said, "no, I didn't make a mistake." "Oh well this isn't such and such band.
This is x, y, z." But see, this is the thing.
If you never know what is possible, because the people who are teaching you
are inept, then you spend your whole life being boxed into a situation because
no one ever shined the lamp on you and said, "Hey, here's another way." Your
brain is not even thinking about the possibility of another way.
PA: Sure.
JBL: So then you're, you're just in the nebulous land. You're in this nebulous
thing. I think the first time when I was in my early twenties, the first time
I heard an Ornette Coleman recording, I felt robbed. I said, "wow, this is
another way of thinking." This is somebody who no one ever talked about. They
weren't talking about Ornette Coleman when I was a kid in Buffalo. Not at
school, not at public school. They weren't talking about Ornette when I went
to Howard. I was fortunate, when I met Charlie Haden, when I went to CalArts,
I was blessed. I felt like, I felt like, "wow." That's how I felt. "Wow." This
is amazing, man.
PA: Do you, do you see yourself ever taking on that role? Teaching perhaps?
JBL: Indoctrinating people?
PA: No, un-doctrinating people. The Anti-doctrination.
JBL: Yeah. The anti-doctrination. You know what, I am not opposed to it. I
think I'm open to the possibility of that. However, I think it's the same
thing with when someone asks me about Molecular Systematic Music, would you
ever want to teach someone your system? No, I don't think I do. But I do in
the sense philosophically. I would love for someone to walk away and say,
"what is my version of this?" Not, "I should do this." Nobody needs that, and
that's Wadada used to teach me when I was at CalArts. He'd say, when you're
composing, what problem are you trying to solve? And then we'd study, we'd
listen to different examples. We'd study Tupac, we'd study Billy Holiday,
Thelonius Monk and Michael Jackson. Then he'd ask us what is the unique
moment? As he would call it. What is the thing that happens in the music that
doesn't happen anywhere else?
That's argument with 'Giant Steps.' That was Coltrane’s thing. Only John can
play it. No one has ever played 'Giant Steps' better than John Coltrane. No
one. Because he came up with it. So then, what is your version of that? What
is your - I'll never forget. When I was at the University of Denver for a
semester and um, this pianist Eric Gunnison -- who's from Buffalo. I think he
played with Carmen McRea -- he used to have us in class. We'd analyze for
example John Coltrane pieces and different people and he'd say, "now I want
you to go home and make whatever your version of what we just experienced is.
Don't copy that version. Figure out what is your, what is your equivalent to
this? What are you wrestling with? What progression are you wrestling with? Or
what formula can you create from these principles, from these guiding
principles."
And so I never forgot stuff like that in all my years of taking school and
learning. There's this one thing that I can do on sax and basically
was an etude. I wrote an etude for myself. Now I can play that way because I
wrote an etude, this real application to play this piece over and over again.
PA: You just spoke about studying with or studying the work of, important
musicians and composers. Are there any people, any musicians that you'd like
to perform with still?
JBL: It's not something I think about often, I think I get called by the
people that I want to work with. I work with William (Parker). When he calls
me, I'm there. I just was at the Stone recently with Ches Smith. I work with
Chad Taylor a lot. I work with the people that I want to work with. If
tomorrow Jason Moran called me ... or, let me tell you about a group that was
supposed to happen. I almost had the opportunity to play
with Han Bennink. It got canceled because of Covid, but it was going to be me, him, and Shabaka
(Hutchings). It would be nice to play with him. I'm up for working with
anybody as long as they allow me to be myself.
PA: So, thank you. I'm glad I asked you the question of what I didn't ask you
<laugh>. That went a whole other wonderful way, so I really appreciate
that.
JBL: For sure. Actually, hopefully we can print all that, that'd be good. Give
people something to think about, talk about.
PA: Oh, I think the Free Jazz Blog is a place to put something like this. Free
jazz, free talk. Again, thank you, it was a real pleasure to speak with you.
Reflejos IV-VII is the new release from the trio of Andrew Raffo Dewar on
soprano saxophone, John Hughes on double bass, and Chad Popple on drums,
percussion, and vibraphone (Waveform Alphabet February 9th,
2023). It is a follow-up to their 2018 trio CD Reflejos which showcased
Dewar’s first three compositions in the Reflejos series. The trio has
performed together since 2005 but this is only the second recording of
their work together.
Dewar explains, “The Reflejos (reflections) series of pieces are based on
mirror images and other reflection/refraction-based compositional forms
that use a limited set of musical materials to reorder and rearrange
rhythmically and melodically. The concepts are used as springboards for
improvisation.
Reflejos IV-V11 includes a new formal extension to the series, that of
‘trizas’ (shards) which in live performance are loops drawn from the longer
works that can be cued up for performance by anyone in the trio in
real-time, but on this album are presented as standalone miniatures that
function as interludes between the other pieces. This malleable approach
and decentralized organizing of compositional materials derive from my
long-term engagement with Anthony Braxton’s music system, whose work I have
been fortunate to perform as a member of his touring ensembles (primarily
the 12+1tet) since 2005. Another conceptual touchstone for this series of
pieces is Jimmy Giuffre’s 1960s trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow,
whose simultaneously angular and melodic approach accompanied by complex
asymmetrical counterpoint has fascinated me for decades.”
‘Reflejo IV’ is a gentle, atmospheric track with soprano sax musing around
melodic themes at the outset before the bass and vibraphone develop a
dialogue over which the sax improvises. In a multi-faceted track the trio
create nimble, blithe riffs and ambient sections where bass and vibraphone
explore concepts – especially in the middle section where beautifully
worked contrasts are explored and developed before the soprano enriches the
texture with its explorative parps and interludes – the trio expansively
interacting for the rest of the track before the ending phrases which
neatly bookend the track with a reflection of the opening.
‘Triza 111’ (trio) is a deft interlinking loop, while ‘Improvisation 11’ is
a definitive conversation between the deep, guttural sound of the bass,
ethereal percussion, and soprano sax, which drifts across the top in short,
stuttering, carefully placed lines, the drums working up a storm,
contrasting brilliantly with the sax.
‘Triza IV’ is trippy, fugue-like with the instruments entering one by one,
the bass setting up a rhythmic pattern over which the others react and
respond before ‘Improvisation 11’, which is a wonderful piece of music,
with the trio imploding and expanding as they react to each other, forming
crazy motifs, searing lines, and rolling percussive patterns. The heavy
interaction between the drum and double bass is offset by the soaring,
diverse soprano sax and the number holds a sense of the trio being a single
entity.
‘Triza 111’ is a duet between sax and double bass, each offsetting and
contrasting beautifully before ‘Triza V’ sees the vibraphones adding layers
of reflective echoey sounds under a repeated bass and sax line.
‘Reflejo V’ is introduced by singular reflected notes from the trio, each
repeating the rhythmic pattern set by the others and increasing the tempo
until the sax diverges into a flurry of improvisation, which the others
follow, the drums adding deep, rhythmic underlines and the bass sustaining
the rhythm patterns. This track builds and builds until it becomes
something of a beast, the gutsy riffles of the soprano sax being
underpinned by full-throttle drums and bass, in what is an exemplar of
improvisational exploration. Dewar’s playing becomes almost unhinged before
it is reined in and the drums solo, leading into a final third, with bass
warping in, followed by the percussion, sax, and finally the vibraphone.
Glorious listening.
‘Reflejo V1’ is introduced by the vibraphone, with bass and saxophone
joining, the saxophone gliding in to create a drifting melody. Atmospheric,
ethereal, and other-worldly, this track offers a contrast in both feel and
ambiance. There is one glorious section where the warbling sax counters the
ethereal vibraphone effect and the bass enters, full-throated and powerful,
deftly countering with its deep arco voice. It then sustains a note, on
which the sax enters, creating a seamless change where the sax carries the
momentum, developing and exploring the music from whence it picked it up.
Clever and immensely well-worked improvisation. ‘Reflejo V11’ completes the
album and is another beautifully worked trio dialogue and exploration with
different sections, interludes, and some quite wonderful work from the sax,
matched by the explorative nature of both the vibraphone and double bass.
This album is full of nuances, changes, and exploration and the
improvisational quality of the trio is undeniable. The recording shows the
dexterity of the underrated soprano saxophone. The echoey sound of the
vibraphone is used to exquisite effect, while the deep, guttural impact of
the double bass is also fully used, and the soprano sax creates contrast,
effect, and impact. The percussive elements are from not just the drums but
also the changing rhythms of the instruments. Impressive music.
There are somethings that that brilliant artists should never be
allowed to do. Going anywhere near an aircraft is one of them.
Scuba diving is another. Between the formation of trio, e.s.t., in
1993 and his death in 2008, Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson
produced a marvelous body of music. Much of it was recorded
posthumously, including several live albums. Apart from a few cuts
on a collaboration album (Solo Flights, with Bobo Stenson, Steve
Dobrogosz, Anders Widmark), I know of no solo recordings.
Until now. His widow, Eva recently discovered a set of solo pieces
composed by Svensson and recorded at his home. Each of the nine
tracks is designated by Greek letters going in order from Alpha to
Iota. They range in length from about two to seven minutes. I
listened to the album with no more information than that.
“Alpha” begins much like the recordings on Solo Flights: gentle and
dreamy. It is difficult to imagine a more intimate dialogue that
that between two hands in a solo piano work. You get a rich helping
of that here. It quickly builds speed, firmness, and clarity, while
intensifying the romantic flavor. “Beta” mostly preserves the soft,
wistful touch.
“Gamma” is the most striking piece. I get the distinct impression
by this point that the beginning of each number is like one or more
sketches, before the real painting begins. The full color this time
is decidedly blue. It is a slow walk down an empty street, hands in
your pockets, round about midnight. The notes are vivid and bright,
nonetheless.
“Delta” chases the quarry with a furious and virtuoso speed. It is
more abstract than most of the cuts. “Epsilon” shifts back toward
romance at the beginning, with an ambiance more reminiscent of the
e.s.t. albums. “Zeta” strikes me as the least realized, but it is
still fascinating to see this master tightly confining himself in
order to explore a simple theme.
“Eta”, the longest track, is a shift from two compositions. The
first is all storm and percussive notes, while the second winds out
of that into what is more mysterious but just as beautiful.
I’ll leave the remaining tracks for your consideration. Home.S is a
marvelous addition to the work of this wonderful artist. Just in
case you don’t know the trio albums, here are some suggestions.
From Gagarin’s Point of View is said to be his breakthrough album.
If you like that one, Winter in Venice will curl your toes. I think
my favorite, though, is The Esbjörn Svensson Trio Plays Monk. The
first cut, “I mean you,” is the kind of thing you want to hear
early in the morning, in a coffee shop a few minutes walk from The
Art Institute of Chicago. If they play Home.S instead, that will do
just fine.
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