Adrian Cunningham Interview by Monk Rowe - 3/31/2021 - Zoom

my name is monk rowe and i am in hamilton college in clinton new york and i'm talking to adrian cunningham in harlem welcome good to be here monk thanks for having me you're welcome and i i practiced an introduction so here we go adrian cunningham saxophonist flautist clarinetist composer bandleader writer humorist occasional vocalist and world traveler so did i leave anything out that's that's pretty damn good that's more thorough than my bio that i'd write for myself so i had to steal that that's good yeah well i wanted to start out i've been fascinated over the years talking to musicians many of them have related stories of things that happened to them when they were young sometimes really young or sometimes in their teenage years that help them go set them on this jazz path is there something that you remember in your youth that you might now think of as an aha moment or the like yes absolutely let's get deep really quickly then so my dad he was uh he was a big jazz fan he loved uh he loved all jazz but he especially loved the early stuff lewis armstrong uh fats while mills brothers you know he had it and he had a great uh 78 collection you know he didn't have a huge one was maybe 50 60 70 years but you know we had a grammar phone player an electric one um you know a 78 player and we loved my brother and i loved putting those records on listening to them and my dad yeah he was very passionate about music he loved music and he really loved jazz um and my dad and i like we were very close he died when i was 21. but he he also loved things like football australian football and he was very much he loved gambling love horse racing so he was he was a beautiful guy but there was a lot of things i didn't connect with him because i didn't like football and i wasn't particularly into horse racing you know but they were his big passions but the one thing i could connect with my father on was jazz so i think that's probably what led me down that path to kind of followed follow music because it was my way of connecting with my dad when i was young and it just and of course i loved it that helped too and it kind of went from there you know the aha moment i think was around i was about 16 17 my last year of high school we had a combined schools music camp from all the schools in the area it was was huge and at the time i'd kind of been playing a little bit of jazz with my buddies from school because my school was small and there wasn't a huge jazz department i mean i look at the kids today and i think wow like they're so lucky with all the resources they have i mean internet aside you know all of the mentorship i see here um i didn't have any that unfortunately i'd love to have but i didn't have that opportunity so me and my buddies got together we got a band together and at this school camp it was very classically orientated so i was in the orchestra playing clarinet and that was fine but me and my buddies we get together in the breaking on the lunch break and go off and play jazz together so for the final concert at the end of the school music camp at the end of the week we went on and we played two songs we played uh i think we played tin roof blues and i don't know what the other song a couple of lewis armstrong tunes and all the classical kids just went nuts like it was crazy the response you know here we are just a couple of ticks and teenagers getting together and just playing louis soundtrack and in my mind i was like am i allowed to swear on this how was this going yeah i was like holy this is amazing like we can like people just love this music this could be something i could do because at the time i hadn't really had a path for myself what i was going to do after school but this was an aha moment just like wow people really responded this music like it's powerful and that was a huge kind of light bulb going on moment for me and it just went from there it's interesting um that you chose maybe it's because your father but the era of jazz those two tunes that you played because i think nowadays or even at that same time in the states if teenagers got together to play a couple tunes they're more likely to be playing john coltrane or even more current michael brecker or something so my question is what was the attitude or thinking about jazz in australia at that time was there more interest in the classic early jazz if there are a few camps especially in sydney sydney and melbourne are quite different flavors i think melbourne is more artistically orientated cultural it has more european influence it's a little hipper dare i say sydney is a little more uh well it's just less culture in the same way like my father who loved football i i always say if i could figure out a way to play the saxophone and kick a football the same time i'd be a millionaire right so yeah so i think it was a uh something that i was in somewhat of a bubble that there weren't any jazz mentors or people playing jazz around me and i grew up with my father listening to the early stuff so that was the stuff that i connected with and one of my buddies at school he was a huge jazz fan too just not through parents or influence he just loved he loved bird and dizz you know he got he hit me to some old digital speaker sets and it was very cool you know but for me and he loved us armstrong as well so the two of us he was a trombone player the two of us had a real connection then we got other buddies who happened to be playing instruments at the school and kind of dragged them along you know an electric bass player we've got him playing one five one you know so we kind of worked it out from there and we just got it together so i think it was just a lack of other influences from the outside that we just kind of got together with our own thing and i do remember being about 16 or 17 with that same buddy the trombone player he uh he said oh man you've got to check out you've got to check out bebop you've got to check out he gave me kind of blue and at the time i was so stubborn i was like ah miles davis can't even play the trumpet you know what the hell's going on you know and of course you know in the next few years i started to mature a bit but at the time i was like no the trad the trade is where my heart is you know and it still is but it's just that i've expanded my palate somewhat since then i'm so glad you're keeping it alive you know i'm i'm trying to picture you and your your trombone friend the first time the first few times you try to improvise what was going through your head or what was your resources or were you just like winging it i think it was a bit of all of the above i think the first because i was very much self-taught when i first discovered jazz so i did probably what a lot of kids did there was a one record that i'm very grateful to hear because it's still one of my favorites it's called ambassador sach and it's uh the the louis armstrong all-stars 1955. it was a live concert they filmed i think it was in italy and it was just and i mean it was this was not a 78 this is a 33 this is a full full record so and it was just i loved the energy of it the band sounded amazing it was live you hear the audience so i remember very clearly coming home from school and i'd only just really started to play the clarinet because when i started piano when i was 11 saxophone's 16 and clarinet about 17. so but clarinet as soon as i as soon as i picked up clowning i was like this is it this i love this instrument but i remember coming home from school putting on that live record and playing along and just you know imitating edmond hall trying trying to get close to where he would play the melody or how he would solo and so you know i just kind of closed my eyes and pretend i was in the band and hear the audience you know so for me that was a really uh strong impression that was the way i started getting into it just by imitating you weren't annoyed by the the uh the clarinet like you know that called octave key after learning the saxophone it's awful it was awful isn't it it's still it still is hill yeah yeah you know i think i think like anything if you love the sound of it if if the sound just pulls you in you just you work through it and you just get over the frustrations you know yeah i'll never forget buddy defranco called the clarinet the agony stick oh yes i've heard worse than that [Laughter] indeed it is yes well was there a point that actually two points i'm going to ask about that you thought oh i'd like to do this for a living and then but i have to go somewhere else to do this for a living so the i i could see this uh doing it as a living the light bulb moment that was the end of high school and so then i went to uh i went to the i went to audition for the conservatorium of music which is the jazz v jazz course in sydney and the first year out of school i didn't get in because i didn't really know what i was doing you know i was kind of i think i yeah i think i kind of played a blues or something and i didn't pass the audition because it was a very small intake and i was very competitive and you know there's a lot of great musicians so i didn't get in the first year then i started psychology degree on the side i was started getting jazz lessons i studied from a very hip uh graduate from that school and he kind of you know got me into a lot more stuff we started playing coltrade and hank mobley and you know getting into transcriptions so he kind of got me on the right path and the next year i got into music school so that was kind of how i how i got into the conservatory my i suppose the next significant step coming to new york that happened in 2008 so i'd been out of college maybe 10 years i had a good career in australia did a lot of great uh great commercial work great jazz work but it was as you could probably imagine a very small market in the meantime i actually come here came over to the states a few times to study with eddie daniels you know because he's a big huge influence on me i mean i love eddie he's incredible um but a year before moving here i came to visit new york and i kind of checked it out and checked out all the clubs and got some lessons and i went home and i was so inspired it was just like it just filled me and then then i came to the real the awful realization that if i don't move over here i'll regret it so a couple of months after being home i thought okay i've just got to do this i don't know what i'm going to do but i just got to come over so i started to work on a visa that took a few months and pretty much 12 months after visiting i moved over here for well for good so i've been here 12 years now and that that was he didn't have a plan did you know um other australian musicians who had done the same thing like lis elisa and nikki peratt and did they have advice for you i knew of them i think i i met nikki maybe a year or so after moving here yeah and we've played together a lot since then a lot of festivals and nikki is one of the coolest she's great um but there's some musicians in new york because nikki doesn't live in new york she lives in connecticut so she wasn't really kind of hanging out but there were a couple of musicians here when i moved here jason campbell a guitar player he has subsequently moved back to australia since covert he kind of moved his family over but he'd been here maybe 15 years he was a big a big um support for me coming here and we'd hang out a lot uh i've been he used to play a lot in the harlem and i love the harlem scene so you know i come and hang him a lot nick hampton's the saxophone player has been here for for much longer than i have another another kind of good support to lean on but other than that no i kind of really just built my way up from the ground going to jam sessions every night you know i used to play in the park three four days a week with with guys that i met and you know i just just said all right here we go let's do this yeah trying trying to make the scene i guess yep make the scene yeah you know and i was 30 i was 31 at the time so you know i still felt like i'm just i'm starting again this is like rebirth here i am you know new york let's do this and of course it kicks your ass every day you know but but the desire and the inspiration being here it just overwhelms everything when you're trying to get you know known in the music scene did you play gigs that you might not have anticipated playing weddings and so forth and so on yeah i did the first couple of years um i did some club dates with some kind of party bands and which for me was fine because as i kind of touched upon earlier i did a lot of commercial work in australia so i was no stranger to playing in horn sections for like i used to play in the the uh the band for australian idol which is our equivalent of american idol so i'd done a lot of commercial work i knew a lot of the pop tunes so you know that was that was kind of a side of me um that i was you know had good experience doing i kind of shared that since coming to new york because it's not really what i wanted to do so i used to do a lot of club dates and things like that and just a little bit of a tangent what what inspired me about new york is that no matter what you're into there's the best here because you know i love r b i love uh traditional jazz i love bebop i love you know so i would go to all these sessions oh man there's an r b session here at the village underground and it's unbelievable these guys play with beyonce they play with alicia keys so i go down there on monday then i'd go to smalls because you know you'd have the bebop guys who knew all of the heads and chow choruses of all the bird tunes it was like mind blowing and here is the thing about um you know growing up in australia you have to be a jack of all trades to survive but in new york you can just be one thing and you can be the best at that thing and you can go really deep on one thing because you can make a living doing that you know it's amazing like that wow that's a strong statement so um what do you want to be the best at i'm still figuring that out mate i was still figuring it out it's it's i guess it's in a way it's a weakness from in terms of i guess career or you know marketing is that i there's so many things i love to do you know right now well right now i mean no one's working right now but i have a you know kind of new orleans traditional swing band professor cunningham is old school and that's a lot of fun to do but then i have more modern projects that recently i recorded with the fred hirsch trio doing lunar low stuff so and that was it's a completely different bag you know so i i love it all and i'm just trying to figure out how to you know i an uncle of mine always said he had a lot of freckles and he said one day my freckles are gonna join up i'm gonna have an amazing tan i think about that with my music one day i'm gonna figure out how to put it all together into one thing you know i i know exactly what you're saying because i've been listening to this and uh a couple of things about it i think you have a a wonderful way of playing in and out of styles like you know you sound like those high school experiences uh you know you could have been edmond hall in another life and then you can be michael brecker and you can do these uh you can nail these top tones on the saxophone and i almost pictured you like going back in time and you could have fit into a rhythm and blues organ trio so i can recognize that this can be an issue marketing like what is it that people are going to want to hire me for right right that's that's a that's a tough one isn't it i mean because as an artist you have to you know for compromising for me because what i really love is everything so to compromise that i'd have to give up a chunk of myself so as an artist if you really embrace who you are then that would be me doing everything because i really love it you know i'm not doing traditional because there's some guys in new york that they play traditional like old jazz gigs because they need to work and you can hear they don't really like it so it's it's hard because if i'm true to myself i love it all just as much i just don't know how to put it together into one thing but maybe that's not a bad thing no i don't know i i don't know did you make a decision um i mean forming a band is uh a whole other issue uh being a band leader now i've got to find work for the band i've got to coordinate but you made a decision to form um more of a traditional new orleans-based group as opposed to forming a group that might have played uh hard bop or post coltrane type music can you tell me about that your thinking at the time [Music] i think you know there probably wasn't much for thought behind it because i still do concurrent styles you know like i said you know there's the new orleans band and the modern stuff but i think looking back retrospectively i think at the time i was i was doing both i was playing uh 55 bar you know with my own band doing modern stuff doing kind of groove orientated stuff and at the same time i still had the traditional swing stuff and did this i don't know if i i guess the swing stuff just started to take on a life of its own it got to the point where that band would get um i would get emails and calls about doing gigs without having to work for it and i'd find if doing the 55 bar gigs it's a huge hustle like you have to you're always paying out of pocket to pay the guys in the bank because you never make enough money at the bar so there's only so many times you can do that without thinking oh god this is just so much work you know and i love doing it but you know i mean it's it just didn't it just didn't happen for whatever reason it became more work than reward you know and yeah i want to uh follow up on that just for a moment i'm not sure that a lot of young musicians realize what you just said in order to play this certain kind of music you had to pay the band i think that's that's a hard lesson when you're coming up because you don't you don't realize that you know i'm sure i'm sure you'll agree i think i think i don't know uh the current school climate but certainly when i was coming up and speaking to musicians of my age that you kind of get sold not overtly but you kind of get sold at music school about come through school and you'll be a jazz star that's kind of the underwriting message it's not come through jazz school and be a working musician doing wedding gigs you know it's come through jazz school we'll teach you the tools to be the next joshua redman or you know the next um you know whoever so i think i think there's a certain misconception culturally with kids coming through because they have the wrong idea about what they're going to be when they come out so and the reality is that yes you're going to have to do a lot of gigs where you pay out of pocket for your own projects without a doubt are there other things that you learned like on the bandstand or from older musicians that that you had not learned in music school oh yes i would say 90 of it 90 of what you learn is on the gig you know from the obvious things and this is such a cliche turning up on time looking good answering emails or texts when they come in about gigs and not just leaving your phone you know all of those obvious things is something that is kind of misplaced i think with with young kids coming up and i was probably like that too as a youngster a little bit complacent about calling back or being really professional and i think that's something that you can only learn doing the gig or losing the gig and asking yourself why didn't i get called again that's an important lesson but i think beyond that and a huge probably the most important thing about me being in new york is is what you learn from the energy of of a master when you're next to them on stage and i think hearing the masters of course is is is priceless but being next to i mean uh wycliffe gordon is is one of my biggest influences just in terms of a human being beyond the music you know so i've been in his quintet for what six seven years now and just to be next to that man and to feel his energy and to see how he handles situations dealing with musicians dealing with the business dealing with having a bad day and being up on stage like it that's that's sort of education for one of a better word is priceless and i don't even know how to put it into words it's the presence of someone like that thanks for saying that i i have this personal feeling about when people think of jazz musicians oftentimes they think they're playing anything they want they're playing how they feel and it seems that there's certain times when you're on a gig and you might feel crappy but you're playing for the audience you can't necessarily afford i'm not even sure how to put this into words to play how you're feeling you've got to play well right yeah absolutely there's something i think about a lot one of my australian teachers studied with becca you know back in the day and the great bit of advice he told me was that becca said to him well what you have to work on is having your bad day your worst day at a certain level you know your best day can be up here but your your worst day can't be a lot you know it has to still be up to a certain level your worst day that's what you've got to work on and i think about that a lot i think you know we have to you know we our standard has to be so good that our worst day is still great not we have to work on playing our best you know to work on our worst you know that's something i think about too i think that's really important back back to this uh this record for a moment i i was glad to see that um of course you were able to play with some really wonderful people here but also that you had at least half the tunes were your own compositions and from what i've learned a lot of times producers and so forth say well you know don't not too much of your own stuff right away you need to place people are going to read oh yeah i like that song i like that song i'll buy it so how did that happen well um that album was more a more the result of the musicians that i was working with so i think i mean that's going back five six years now so i can't remember the exact i think what happened was i played with jeff and john at vale jazz festival i think we did a set together and i was so uh i mean i've grown up loving them but you know it was such an amazing experience so that the record that you're showing um the camera is is arbor's records and harbors that the album jazz speak the one we're talking about that was my second one so the first one i recorded for them was uh was an album of um neil hefty tunes it was a new hampshire the first thing i did for them so that was more of an entry entryway into having a project having a name that was a little under represent underrepresented in terms of you know the jazz canon so that was kind of a foray into it and i think this being the second project i could kind of introduce more of my own tunes and rachel domba who is the head of arbors she's really supportive she's she's been an amazing uh you know patron not just to me but to to music in general so she's always been like i trust you you do your own thing make it happen so i think i wanted this album to be a little bit of a mixture between tunes that people might know perhaps you know kind of reinterpreted and then writing songs that i know would be great for this rhythm section you know jeff john and rose i just wanted to write stuff that i could hear them sounding great on and hopefully they didn't complain too much so i think you know it's pretty good i had a wonderful experience with the with the cd because i put it on before i read anything like your liner notes or anything and when it started out with that sort of roboto intro on the first song i had this feeling like oh adrian's paying tribute to people that came before him and then i looked and it's called the source and i looked at your things like man he got me that was really very uh i don't even have a word for it but i i i enjoyed the way that happened thank you not not knowing the title and no titles can be tricky right like what do i call this yes yeah they can for me for me to write there's always to be some sort of emotional connection the best stuff that i write is somehow connected and it's always been like like that for me like to an experience or a person you know all the writing i've ever done has been about something that makes me feel a certain way you know i've never or i've taken a simple melody and then turned it you know and then kind of brought that together into something but it's you know i've never been someone to sit down and say well this is a nice progression i want to do something with that for me the stuff that i really liked for my own stuff has started with a feeling or and for the source it was like i love being in harlem and i love the the gospel this the beast scene here and all the organ players up at choma's on 125th or or the legion post is one of my favorite places to hang out on 135th and so i wanted to pay tribute to you know not only the place but the culture that's why i'm in new york yeah okay let's suppose this question i'm gonna ask was uh asked like 14 months ago uh what is the work scene like generally in new york now you're asking this for 14 months ago yes like i'm pretending that that the pandemic did not happen um well it it's the new york scene is great what could possibly ever go wrong [Laughter] it's gonna be like this forever monk um well the new york scene is is is really vibrant it's it's it's a place that even after 12 years continues to inspire me there's just so much music here there's so many so many opportunities to hear music and to play you know there's so many jam sessions you can go to all you told up till two three in the morning you know and it's it just never ceases to be inspiring you know and it makes me it makes me uh competitive in a good way it makes me think okay i can't relax because there's so many great players here like oh yeah this guy played this tune i need to learn that better and there's no other other place in the world that i felt like that i really felt like i got to get my act together you know because these guys are serious players you know and that's the great thing about this scene it's just it's overwhelming the amount of great players here but that's what keeps the level so high yeah okay so since then since uh you know a year has passed now have you had to find ways to do other things now that gigs are almost non-existent it's been it's been pretty brutal i mean i've been actually dividing my time uh between new york and spain so my girlfriend lives in barcelona and i've met her three years ago because i've been doing so much touring in my band we've been on the road so much we we ended up spending a lot of time in spain we had a good following in spain so i mean i met lovely girl in barcelona and we thought where's this going to go but then we continued to see each other and it developed into something really good so in the last since last summer i'd kind of been dividing my time 50 50 between here and there essentially uh i need my time in america to keep my green card so my my days here you know to keep my residency because there's there's still very little work um and there's not there's even less in barcelona actually but i think there has been opportunities to do a lot of online stuff you know i've been doing uh putting together videos for festivals you know you've probably been involved in some of that yourself you know we have to put videos together online concerts things like that so that's that's at least something and my new orleans band professor cunningham we released an album through arbor's um well it came out last december that we recorded all in lockdown from our own private rooms you know and we put it all together that was that was quite a project yeah wow yeah a lot of work and you probably haven't had a chance to actually recreate those tunes in a live setting well we actually live uh we live streamed a cd release on last friday just the other night just the other night the full seven piece band and that's the first time the band has played live like that since what february last year so that was really nice to hear the music actual in a room together you know and it works thank god you know but but yeah i mean it's you know to play with a full band was we were all just saying to each other we're like oh my god it's so loud all these musicians together we've forgotten you know we forgot how loud it is it's like holy this is like it's a lot of noise in this room you ever look out in clubs and uh i do this myself if i'm playing in a band and if i look out and i see people leaning over to each other and yelling at each other that maybe we need to adjust our volume but that leads me to another sort of inquiry about the role of entertainment in this music and how it can differ from one setting to another and are you comfortable with being an entertainer yes and no i think uh i think it's i think it's necessary i i certainly feel a great deal of relief often being a side man in someone else's band because then i can just be okay now i can just play i don't have to think about anything else you know being a badly just really juggling you have to do all these things while you're playing you have to be thinking about the next tune or you have to be thinking about you know okay who are we going to feature has everyone been featured you know there's just so many things to put together um beyond the entertaining thing you know but i think it's it's r it's really important to connect with your audience and i think that's something that a lot of musicians perhaps don't emphasize enough because we tend to idolize the great players you know like brexit for example i mean he's his musicianship is so otherworldly that there's there's not even a need to talk you know but however we're not all brekker we're not all you know but you also look at you know i'm i'm hugely influenced obviously by the history when you look at bands like dizzy or luca duke ellington and they were entertainers like they brought something beyond the music you know duke ellington's sets were incredible you know and his musicianship and even the choreography with the horn sections on those early bands i mean try and get a modern modern horn section to dance around they'll murder you you kidding quit on the spot people breaking their embouchures clack the trumpets together yeah you want me to what yeah you want me to smile [Laughter] have you got enmeshed in um the tread jazz controversy like what does trad jazz actually mean um no i didn't didn't even realize there was a controversy please me well if you hear about it you know if you hear about it don't go there oh is it it's a dixieland reference yes it's partly that um it's partly like what is the chicago school the whole thing and oh yeah um it it's a little hard to you trad jazz i don't think gets the respect that other forms do um for whatever reasons but i sometimes think it's because it's too upbeat like people don't think it's serious because it's so darn happy went in a direction that that i think removed some of the the foundations of what it was about i mean louis armstrong was such an ambassador for the new orleans style and then i think you know it kind of they tend to have lost their dare i say the black influence and it tended to be just a kind of a bunch of white dudes you know and certainly growing up for me well well i was australian wrong everyone's white australian players jazz but you know you go to the festivals and it's kind of a lot a lot of kind of corny old guys playing you know this kind of ricky ticky stuff um without a real connection to to you know what you'd hear on the records it kind of became you know um yeah a little less hip dare i say i don't know yeah but yeah i'm not sure i'm not sure how to answer that i think it's a complicated question isn't it it is um rosano's portiello said something once to me that really made an impression on me when he was you know in his late teens learning to play much like you were i think in clubs and stuff and if they had a particularly good night he said they would say to one another you were wonderful tonight you sounded american and i wonder if in australia is that a goal or is it not really an issue to sound american and what would that mean anyway that that's that's a whole that's a whole other topic of discussion that's that's very complex i think it because it's tricky isn't it because fundamentally this is american music and it will always jazz will always be american i mean it's such a huge cultural gift to the world you know this music but of course jazz at the same time it's it's um it's malleable you know you can you can bring other influences into it it can be you know fused with cuban or you know whatever i mean you know you know jazz is jazz is something that is welcoming to other styles and it turns into something new but i think it will always be fundamentally american there are some improv there are some jazz organizations in australia kind of contemporary jazz organizations and rather than use the word jazz they say improvised music so they're kind of politically they're kind of detaching themselves a little bit from the tradition of american music is saying hey we're making this our own you know so it becomes more improvisation based more original music based it certainly a lot of the stuff that people compose in australia is is less swing orientated and more straight earth orientated or you know will world music influence there's a big you know movement for that so there's a movement for contemporary music to be away from jazz in australia like let's not call this jazz this is not american music now it's improvised music so you know there's a lot of factors to it i think there's the traditionalists that really love american music and the history of it and there's there's cats in australia that that study really all the recordings and they know their business and they play american i don't know what that means but i think you know yeah it's yeah it's com i don't know it's complicated what do you think i'm fascinated by the i second your thoughts about jazz and i think that america's most important export has been its music starting with blues and jazz and rock and roll and hip hop and this the spread of it around the country is amazing you know you can listen to music uh from from south korea that sounds like hip-hop it's just that they're singing in in korean so i guess popular music has been uh extremely influenced by american music around the world and i guess that's the best i can think i'm fascinated by some of those stories way back in the late 20s when they're recording and they couldn't record the drums because that made the stylus fall off the wax so they used a wood block instead and then the the french musicians were copying that and they so they used a wood block because that's what they heard i think that stuff is just so fascinating yeah yeah there's a touch of folklore to that isn't it indeed yeah all right here's a tough one um what makes something swing [Laughter] don't read don't reach you're the one with all the books in the background you tell me [Laughter] they try but you know i i i actually i actually like it when certain things are are just undefinable yeah because if you can define everything then nothing is magic anymore that that's sort of my attitude about it that's true it is it's it's so complex i i really it's probably a common analogy but but liking jazz and improvising to to language you know and you can tell uh having spent some time in spain and hearing the spanish vocalist sing american tunes you know in one bar that they can't speak they don't speak english well because the way they sing it's just it's it's like you can tell the vowels are terrible you know it's really uh not terrible but you know what i mean they're not you can tell that they're not they're not uh they just don't have it and i think it's perhaps it's as complex as that it's it's it's not just about imitation you really have to internalize so much of it and i think that's certainly one of the reasons why i moved here because i wanted to speak the language and i knew that if i really wanted to get it i'd have to be immersed in it you know and it's something you can't get just listening to record you know i think it's it's a cultural aspect to it um jazz makes sense in new york you know walk down the streets go to the clubs field the the the pulse of harlem going to the bars and like it just makes sense here in australia it doesn't make sense jazz you know it's great music and it makes you feel good but it doesn't fit and you know it fits here and so i think the cultural aspect is really important and i i don't know how to put it together in terms of a swing feel but i know it's an important aspect of being able to swing and understanding you know okay what kind of music fits in australia that's that's interesting because we australia culturally speaking doesn't really have an identity and i think that's it's kind of fascinating it's something you don't realize until you're out of it but australia's music australia's uh cuisine australia's culture it's all based on something else so if we just look at australian music nothing we have is original other than aboriginal music which is very much it's beautiful as deep and it's tribal but it's it's got no relevance to to modern culture you know it's very separate so that's probably the most australian music we have but all of the stuff that's come out in the last 200 years has either been european influenced all of our famous folk songs have been melodies ripped off from old english english songs so we have no original folk songs they're all like oh you just took this melody and put new words on even the waltzing matilda which is our most famous australian song that was a melody based on an old tune too so and all the modern pop and rock it's all rock it's all pop it's all american we've just kind of you know fitted in so that makes more sense to australia aussie rock we call it aussie rock you know australia um but there's not really a strong identity of its own and i think it's just too young we're 200 years old we spend the first 100 years you know dying with starvation and trying to make make our way through a desert continent you know so i think we're just too young to really have any you know identity of our own well and by the way waltzing matilda is not a waltz well the term is actually vault thing which is a german term meaning to wander oh thank you and matilda um is is like the knapsack that you know because he wander around with his with his knapsack over his back you know so that was that's the matilda so waltzing matilda is a guy vaulting through the countryside with his matilda why it's a german word i do not know i can't tell you that i'm so happy to learn that there you go if you could get in a time machine and go to a specific oh i'll say a musical event a recording event is there something that you would just really like to be at and witness wow you know i think being not particularly specific but i'd love to see new york in the 70s i'd love to have been here when there's just so much happening you know when you had um i'm a big brekker fan so you hang out at 7th avenue south and seeing jaco playing all those geniuses and just seeing that it just seemed like new york had such an incredible cultural life it was probably the city must have been so shitty in the 70s i don't know i don't know um you must have you were you old enough to go out in the 70s no oh yes but i didn't uh not in new york and i but yes new york from my recollection did have rough years during that death decade as far as how the city was doing but i find it interesting that you s you say that because um maybe older musicians might say yeah i'd love to go to new york but they might have said you know during the 52nd street heyday so i think it's very interesting that you say the 70s for some reason that's that's always appealed to me i know it just sounds like such a fun time and because so many of so many the musicians that i i grew up well that's the thing my palette is pretty wide you know i think alive in the 50s and hearing hearing bird play must have been extraordinary you know but you know and being mintons and but it's funny you look at those old photos and you see pictures of burton he's playing like five people and there's lots of photos where he's you know he's just doing a game it's like yeah he's crazy you know i know as many as many times as you hear the real story it's like nah i'd rather have my fantasy right right i know that's that's it isn't it you kind of we romanticize these legends and rightfully so because obviously he's a genius and even more so a genius to be playing at that level to five people if that was me i'd be like i don't give a i'm just but here he is doing his genius thing to five people it doesn't matter you know he's just it that that's extraordinary but yeah we tend to romanticize the times you know [Music] did you hear in your formative years um a particular tenor player that you became enamored of for some time i think i've gone through a lot of phases i think my first probably my first was sunny rollins and i think the bridge from me from traditional to to bebop or you know post trad i don't know what you want to call the early sunny stuff but it was his sense of melody really uh hit me hard you know his um [Music] what's the word just his sense of melody and melodic development you know it's that that was a huge influence on me and also i think um who else um lester young was was huge i think at those times those two guys were really big for me really important for me and stan gets once again melodically getting a lot of stan gets i think those three um and then from there kind of got more on to to brecker and bob berg bob burt was a big thing i love i still love bob berg's sound it's so complex and it's just so raw you know it's it's extraordinary i i really love yeah i think bob bergson is incredible and he's someone i'd love to have heard live i'm glad you said that when you said um his sound is is so complex when you're playing uh let's say you're you're playing don't get around much anymore and then you play a breaker tune or one of your own tunes that's more contemporary do you purposely adjust your tenor sound i i think you know i think the best way yes to a point i i think that the best way for me to kind of think about it is to and this is the way i i approach all this music that it's it's the same language but it's a different accent so certainly when i'm playing the early stuff don't get around much anymore i'm going to be playing with much more relaxed embouchure and you know i'm not going to be playing as hard but if i'm playing yeah you know a breaker tune or something that's really high energy i'm going to be putting a lot more air through the horn um i'll be certainly approaching with less vibrato you know i think than i would be you know no subtone obviously you know so i think it's yeah it's still me but it's you know i'm kind of adjusting the accent i think you know um yeah unfortunately i'm not blessed with one of those sounds that people hear would go that's you know that's breaker well that's very well let's get you know i don't have that maybe i will maybe it's just not my path for the saxophone well do you feel of your your three wind instruments do does one of them have how do i phrase this which is your most personal sound from your own opinion of your three wind instruments clarinet yeah clarinet without without thought clarinet is uh for me it's just it's just an it very strong connection i think it's something that probably because i fell in love with it so quickly you know when i was 16 17 hearing evan hall and then eddie they were two sounds two very different sounds that just just completely built me over you know inspired me and i think yeah clarinet just for whatever reason it's it's i don't know it's my you know if i have to choose a favorite kid that would be the one for sure yeah not that i love not that i love the saxophone less but there's just something about the clarinet that i pick it up and there it is you know yeah there's a little less competition on the clarinet also which could be a good thing true that certainly helped in new york especially with the trad scene coming coming into town it was something that um yeah that's something that gave me uh kind of some instant work with some of the young there was a big revival of young tread bands here so like 30 year olds discovering the early stuff and that was mind-blowing to me because i wasn't expecting that to come to new york and to see all these young kids you know like and really checking out the early stuff too which was great so that was a surprising uh foray into kind of you know a branch of work that i wasn't expecting to get so yeah it's an advantage for sure for sure okay this is sort of a personal question but have you ever been fired from a gig and have you ever had to fire anybody from a gig hmm yes um can you hold two seconds the first okay sure you write that yeah so i've never i think i've ever outrightly fired anybody just not called them back for the i think you know being being freelance we're all freelance musicians it's kind of easy just to especially in new york to say okay that guy or girl wasn't the right fit let's move down the list you know let's find someone more appropriate or for whatever reason they didn't work so from that reason i've probably been fired without realizing i just haven't been called back you know but you know you get so busy you do other gigs i mean i tell you something that happened a few years ago which is extremely embarrassing i was doing this recording session uh out in new jersey and it was for this um for this uh kind of like a classical contemporary uh recording that this composer was putting together and they hired me on bass clarinet so i kind of my black planet was pretty bad i had to take it to the shop you know and i kind of looked at the music briefly and i thought it'll be fine it'll be fine but i get there and the musicians are like amazing musicians and i was not prepared and i didn't really check out the material and it was so embarrassing it was so embarrassing like you know i was like so they were kind of saying well we'll over double climb the base coat a bit later you know we'll do that but then it got to the point where i just i just said okay i just packed up an instrument i said yeah this is i think uh i'm the wrong guy for this job i'm really sorry you know it was so embarrassing it was a great lesson for me but it was just like i was so embarrassed you know and the worst part was it was a sunday and goddamn jersey transit didn't have any trains coming back to the city that was like 80 bucks i was like that's the cherry on the cake wow that was not a good day yeah that helped you to remember that lesson exactly exactly i went through that again yeah man you just gave me a memory because i had a similar thing with a bass clarinet you know like a summer concert band and i i agreed to play bass clarinet and at the rehearsal i couldn't play the part and the guy said all right we just won't play this song it's like oh that's not so bad oh i guess yeah that's and you just feel everyone around you you just feel their energy i'll tell you another funny story um i was playing i was one of my i was doing the theater show in sydney years ago like you know i kind of subbing on some of these theater gigs and it was um it was the the wizard of oz you know which is a amazing score like it was beautifully written and that was the right the very most the penultimate scene you know dorothy's going to come back to um uh to where's she from she's from kansas coming to kansas so you know and underneath the dialogues dialogue somewhere over you know so it was me and a flute nothing else in unison somewhere over there right and so is the key of e flat so i'm playing my f to my high f you know on the clarinet and she's doing the same thing on any flat unison and i and i had i got some some sort of moisture or whatever happened that wasn't venting properly and so some and she was in perfect pitch and i was like a semitone under just this squawking gargling sound it was humiliating oh my god and at the end of it it was like you know five minutes towards the end at the end of the show nobody says anything we all just pack up and i'm just like oh that's so bad and then i had to of course then you've got to do it the next day you know yeah and it was fine thank god it never happened again but it was enough to you know you never forget those moments do you i could just picture someone honey how was the theater well the show was great but there was this really odd sound at the end i don't know what it was oh man it's i would like to think that these things are always exaggerated in your mind and nobody noticed but i don't think that's true i don't think that's true oh man this has been a fascinating conversation and i i'll just wrap up with um a young musician sees you on a gig and comes up after you and uh mr cunningham i want to do what you do what should i do wow um well i would i would tell them you know practice every day practice is such an important aspect of it you have to you have to put the work in there's no great musicians that didn't put the time in so it's really important to to to prep to play every day if you want to be great you have to spend the time that was something eddie daniels really worked me up to when i was about 20. you know he said like what are you doing if you if you're not putting in the work and you don't understand your scales you don't understand how everything fits together so you have to know all that stuff you have to listen so much to the great players constantly listening transcribe you have to transcribe and like we're talking about what is swing the only way you can really get it is by transcribing and learning the solos you're learning those minute inflections that you can't teach someone that you just have to learn by imitation and you know absorb that way and yeah and just keep at it keep at it every day i guess do you think it's true that uh jazz musicians should be so compelled to play that they have no choice wow well it's been said to me by a number of the veterans like if you have something else that you like as much then you better go do that instead so you know i think as as you get older as a musician and you you realize that it is not an easy path and i certainly look at my my friends in australia that i grew up with that didn't end up being musicians and doing other things and they've all got really nice houses and they've all got cars and they've all got you know grown-up jobs that i think it does if if you choose this path it's not an easy one it's certainly not there's certainly financial i mean if you look at if you compare the best musician the best jazz musician to the best brain surgeon you know who's earning you know who's are they even in the same ballpark financially there's no correlation between skill and time invested to financial rewards so it that aspect of it is certainly not easy for anybody even the best musicians you know financially or not in the same ballpark as other professionals so i can understand how giving that advice but then i look at my life especially i've had a lot of time to think the last year you know i i look at my life and i think what it what music has given me the chance to travel the world and the people i've connected with the experiences i've had and that's the joy i get from playing you know i it's it's really hard to equate that to to anything else i don't know how i don't know how any other job could be could be as amazing you know i'm sure other careers have extremely fulfilling you know um aspects of it but there's when i look at the gifts that i've been given you know when i go through tough times especially the last year and i think about you know do i want to do something else because i can see how tough it is right now you know the path that i've chosen is not rewarding me but i look back and i think there's been you know what i have received has been pretty amazing yeah all right well that sounds like a happy note to end on and uh i enjoyed our conversation thank you for joining me i appreciate that thank you so much all right i'm going to pause our recording and then we'll say official device right

Channel: Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College

Views: 183

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Professor Cunningham and his Old School, trad jazz, jazz in Australia, Edmond Hall, Eddie Daniels, Waltzing Matilda, pay to play jazz clubs, Wycliffe Gordon, Arbors Records, Rachel Domber, Jazz Speak

Id: nh5V8bHQo8s

Length: 59min 5sec (3545 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021