Bill Kirchner Interview by Monk Rowe - 6/4/2021 - Zoom

my name is monk rowe for the phillies jazz archive at hamilton college and i'm very pleased to have bill kirschner with me today and i had the little stumbling block of how to start with you because i've been reading some of the interview views done and most people say a similar thing and that's you've worn so many hats which hat should i concentrate on i couldn't begin to tell you that well the worst person to ask yes exactly but i did want i had a thought um i do some arranging and i have over the years in fact our career paths have some similarities and i'm currently working on an arrangement and on the way up today in the car it was going through my head sort of what to do next where am i how am i going to end it and i wonder if it's something similar for you when when you're working on a piece of music is it constantly in your head until you finish it interesting question yes short answer yeah i i think it becomes something almost like an obsession yeah you know i did it uh and sometimes i i i don't have a car anymore but i remember when i did have a car so i remember some of the best ideas i got were when i was in in the car yeah or you know or or other bizarre places like in the shower or whatever you know they the ideas come when they come and there's no predicting that isn't that that's so interesting you don't have to be sitting at the piano or score paper or finale or whatever right there they just seem to have this way of presenting themselves and i know i've lost some ideas you know walking the dog and i get this idea yeah by the time i get home it may be gone well you know duke ellington used to carry a little notebook on him at all times so he could write down ideas when they came to him no matter when they came or where he was when they came which i think is a good idea especially if you're you were duke ellington yeah when you um let's suppose i commissioned you to write a chart on a song that's been done to death let's say all of me for some reason i want an arrangement of all of me for a full-size jazz ensemble can you describe and maybe you say what about something else no i'm insistent i want all of me can you tell me how you might approach this trying to get something different out of this tune well i should point out as part of this are you familiar with with fred sturm's book composing arranging book somewhat yes he he did that very thing he commissioned a bunch of greater rangers to do charts on all of the including uh manny album and bob brookmeier and bill holman and others and and they all came up with different slants on it some of them outrageously out outside like brookmeier so that it's interesting that you should mention that and pick that particular tune because indeed it's been done for precisely the reason that you're talking about anyway uh to try to answer your question uh i guess i would begin by asking about the band that i was writing for about the the people who are playing what their strengths and weaknesses are what their interests are what they do best uh that would give me a clue about how to approach it and and you know the more personal that you can get the better off you are and the more distinctive uh your your end product is going to be i think so that's where i would start is just asking you know who are your best soloists what do they do best yeah you know uh and then take it from there i remember about 20 some years ago i got a commission from the u.s air force airman of note uh to you know they said pete berenbrecht who was the uh leader of the band at the time uh you know just gave me a commission and said write whatever you want and so i mean we're talking about a band in this case that's been in existence since 1950 that has a book of thousands of charts and i said well what don't you have a lot of and he said shuffles so i ended up doing a kind of a jazz rock shuffle uh you know so i mean that that's an example of just trying finding something that that worked for them that that they would have used for that hadn't been done to death uh and it came out it came out pretty well at least i was happy with it i don't know if they ever play it but but i've had several performances of it otherwise with with various college bands um here and in europe since then so um and they played it well so i know it worked i would have been so happy if that had been me because i dearly love a shuffle yeah sure it's it's it's kind of an infectious groove that you know it's it's it's it's it's very rhythmic i mean the whole the whole point of the thing is rhythm of course well that anticipated uh anticipated a question because uh you were assigned a groove so to speak what comes next does the melody come next or the the chord sequence or the form uh well you know what i did uh in 1989 and 91 i spent two years studying with bob brookmeier and manny album in the bmi jazz composers workshop and they they taught us a technique called pitch modules where you take three note pitch cells and and use it to develop raw material uh from which to write music and i i teach it to all my composing arranging students and i tell them tongue-in-cheekily that uh using this technique is much better than waiting to break up with your significant other for an inspiration uh so so in in this case when i wrote this chart for the irman a note and often when i'm writing uh you know original music uh i'll use this pitch module technique just to develop raw material uh and then and it can it can from that can arise melodies uh the or or harmonies uh you know uh it you can you can use use these rows of of notes that come from the pitch module to uh to derive whatever you want in essence uh and so that so so in essence what happened with that chart for the air on a note is i came up with the melody and i came up with some counter melodies and i came up with some um some harmonies as a result so you never you you know you just go through after you do the the the the work you go through and just find stuff that you like and and let nature take its course can i assume that somewhere along the line you moved when writing scores from a score paper pad to finale or sibelius or something like i that i can't write on a computer i still have to i still have to write on score paper and then i have a i i have a a copyist quote unquote who's adept on you know finale and sibelius who then i'll just give the score to and he can load it in for me i mean i know a number of composers and arrangers who are like me who have just never made the transition yeah i don't know if you know uh dave revello at eastman oh dave and i are both from youngstown ohio i'll be darned we had the our first arranging teacher was sam d'angelo who was my high school band director yeah uh rest his soul he died a couple of years ago but but but dave and i had sam for our first arranging teacher i went to his house to interview him and i was so pleased to see had this whole setup with you know a big like draftsman table and he had the score paper and so i asked him about that he said well there's something about the physical act of choosing a note with a pencil and putting it on the paper it's like it you're much more committed than just putting on something with a with a mouse that you can easily go back and take away i guess well in my case i'm a techno putts so i i just can't deal with the idea of having some mechanical thing be between me and the act of putting the the notes on on on on the score you know if i lose an idea because i'm fumbling with trying to to do the mechanics then i've lost something and i don't want to take that chance i i'm you know i don't know i i i have i have a low frustration threshold with with with stuff like that you know and i tr i tried i tried to lose to learn finale and i tried to learn sibelius and it's just drove me nuts okay i just i just couldn't handle it well as as we go along we have more and more in common i want to take you back uh you mentioned mr d'angelo and can you recall the feeling or your reaction to the first time you heard one of your early arrangements played oh yeah uh the i wrote my first big man chart for for sam when i was in high school we we had a quote stage band uh and he was a piano player and an arranger and and he wrote he wrote charts for the band on things like uh coming home baby uh and so what you know i mean this was this was uh late 60s early 70s uh and this was i mean for the time that was very hip for for uh for any kind of school band college or high school i mean this is a high school band so the fact that he was writing charts for us was uh this was so cool so so i got interested in writing and he encouraged me to write and i wrote this chart on uh a taste of honey you know the bobby scott tune sure uh so that was my first chart for a big band and we played it and uh and it wasn't bad i mean i didn't know a lot about voicing for horns and stuff like that but but i knew enough to come up with with something that sounded halfway decent uh and it was uh it was a it was a great thrill you know you can imagine i mean you come up with something like that that's your own it's a whole new part of you that you didn't know you had and like bam there it is did any of the players in the uh in the band provide some some feedback like i can't play that i can't uh that's really awkward oh no no nothing ever everything seemed to lay okay uh nobody said anything to the contrary to me anyway okay was there something um i read an anecdote about you hearing the the ellington band and how much an impression i'm also wondering if there was something in your household lps or radio or something that helped uh set you on your eventual path well do you want me to tell the story about the ellington band etcetera etcetera i'll start you one shall i start there well yeah i'm i'm more curious because i've been interested in the how every generation has their high-tech things that they entertainment is delivered through and when we think back to you you and i are close in age and if we think back to our formative years the high tech at that time so what was in your household that might have that that you might have heard music from well i mean aside from television in in the late 50s uh if you recall there was a sudden surge of jazz oriented scores for tv cop shows like uh like peter gunn mr lucky uh johnny staccato checkmate all these forgotten tv shows that people like henry mancini and john williams and pete rugelow and uh johnny mandel and others were writing scores for so i heard this music beginning with peter gunn when i was about five years old and this is some of the first music i can remember hearing and some of the first jazz i can remember hearing and it all just hit me remarkably hard it was you know just the harmony uh the all these hip harmonies uh and then the rhythms of course and of course all these scores were played by some of the hippest jazz musicians in la at the time so um you know so that was my a big exposure to jazz into music and and also my parents were were very low tech i mean that they had a they didn't even have lps uh until i got seriously interested in music and they finally bought a a a a stereo you know to play lps but for much of my childhood all we had was the 45 rpm record player to play and so they had a handful of 45s uh glenn miller things tex benneke uh you know uh actually there was a do you remember a piano player named mustaine i do not he was a really good jazz piano player who was active uh in the 40s 50s until a couple maybe 20 years ago uh in active in new york played with a lot of people and one of the 45s that my mother had was a thing that lou had is this kind of fluke kit called soft sands and so you know i i remember playing that a lot of times and i memorized the melody and could play it on on my horns on on clarinet to begin with so fast forward oh god until it took the the late 1980s and i end up on this club date you know by club date i'm using the the musician's term you know weddings bar mitzvahs private parties that's so i ended up in a club date in connecticut with lou stein so so so i we're in the middle of this gig and we're just playing dinner music or something and i said could we play soft sands and i i i thought his jaw was going to hit the floor you know you know uh it was it was it was great fun so we played soft sand you know i mean i'm i'm sure he'd never gotten a request for that i'll be darned in his life that's a great moment what about um what about radio that have any impact on you yeah well my parents would listen to the radio every morning when we were getting ready for school and all that stuff and and you know it was am radio at the time was i mean the stations they listened to that my parents were very non-rock and roll they listen to mainstream adult pop music so i mean they they would have on the radio what the the the records of the time were you know maybe sinatra things or tony bennett or barbara streisand or or whatever what whatever was in the air at the time uh so i i got exposed to a lot of that and and you know i mean i you know i i had good years and in a good retentive memory so i could end up playing these things on on my horn and uh kind of absorbing stuff that was in the air and then eventually i guess that's what generated my interest in arranging was was just hearing all this stuff on the radio a lot of which was backed by big bands yeah yeah um can i guess that your parents looked askance at a music career good guess oh oh yeah i mean no no they didn't want me to have a career as a musician although i mean they they did encourage my interest in music i mean they they paid for music lessons from me for years they they you know uh and and i should tell this story going back to the ellington bay in in 1965 i was just short of my 12th birthday and i had this neophytes interest in jazz so there was a three-day jazz festival in pittsburgh at the civic arena that george wein was producing um and uh pittsburgh is about an hour or so his drive from from youngstown so i might for my upcoming 12th birthday my parents gave me an early birthday present and said well we'll take you to this festival on a saturday night so we went to pittsburgh to the civic arena and the bill for the one night this is saturday night uh the opening act was this local guy a piano player named walt harper with his group and then uh earl hines with a trio carmen mcrae with norman simmons's trio stan gets his quartet with gary burton steve swallow and roy haynes john coltrane's quartet with mccoy tyner jimmy garrison and elvin jones and the ellington band with billy strayhorn as a guest because strayhorn was from pittsburgh as was earl heinz so this was kind of a homecoming for both of them so this is a bill for one night and you know i mean i think that that was the night that basically set me on my career path even though uh my parents didn't realize it at the time nor would they have approved if they'd known it but uh i mean that that really set me on my career career path i mean as far as solidifying a serious interest in jazz up to that point i've been doing my best to listen to top 40 radio to conform to the interests of my schoolmates but after that top 40 radio just went down the toilet i couldn't care less after that you know i started uh using whatever allowance money i had to buy lp's my parents bought a stereo that i could play the lps on and um other than that uh you know there were some syndicated jazz radio shows uh like sid mark in philadelphia had a syndicated jazz radio show that i i would listen to on saturday nights and there was um a 50 000 watt clear channel station in rochester new york wham that had a five-hour jazz show from midnight to five in the morning that i would listen to on my transistor radio especially when i was on on holidays from school i would just lying in bed with my transistor this is late 60s early 70s and then i heard some i mean there was there were two different djs the first guy was a guy named bill artists and then his successor was a guy named harry abraham and they played really hip stuff uh you know whatever the new lp releases were i mean uh i heard i i heard uh i never i remember one night i was listening to the radio and this kind of funk type thing came on and i was wondering what is this is this cannonball laterally or something and it turned out to be miles davis from miles in the sky doing that that tune called stuff which was the first time herbie hancock recorded on offender rhodes yeah so that i heard that on harry abraham's show yeah so i heard i mean so i guess at that point i was i had found outlets that were even in youngstown ohio i could um i i could hear what was going on in retrospect um at the risk of sounding you know oh back in my day there was something magical about finding these things and um you know your little transistor radio and saving up money to get lps and then reading the liner notes as you listen to the record it was like a whole experience oh yeah yeah for sure well the the i mean including the liner notes i mean written by people like uh well well also you know i i started reading downbeat you know uh and then you know i was reading all this stuff by people like dan morgenstern and ira gitler and martin williams uh all of whom later became friends and colleagues of mine so uh that that was a that was a big part of my education was was reading the stuff that these people and others were writing at the time it's interesting that you heard john coltrane at at that point in your life i believe i read something where you were talking about early on you were trying to do the john coltrane thing but you had no direction to it i'm not sure that's the exact quote but it's close enough no i was just i was just playing i was just trying to play as many notes as i could with with no real sense of you know i mean i i certainly didn't understand coltrane's harmonic concept at the time uh you know i was just trying to play a lot of notes so when i got to new york in 1971 and i started studying with lee konitz um the very first lesson uh i went to lee for and i studied with him for two years i mean he he handed me a frank sinatra album songs for swinging lovers and and he said uh okay take this home and and learn to sing along with sinatra you know exactly the way he sings on one of these tunes with all the the the inflections and the uh rhythmic feel and whatever and it's a great exercise uh for anybody i mean all his life and i knew we were friends for the red you know until he died basically for his practice routine for the rest of his life i mean he would sing along with sinatra records that was an important part of his practice routine uh and it's a great exercise it gets you away from the horn and just puts you kind of in direct contact with with the music without any instrument between you and the music um for me it begs the question sometimes you read uh comments about jazz and i think they're usually written not the musician writers the non-musician writers who say jazz musicians play what they feel and i've had this debate with myself about how much emotion is connected to improvisation is it um is it driven by emotion and feeling or is it driven by more theoretical knowledge i know a chord i'm playing here and i know that this will sound out this will sound in i'm not sure that's a question but it's i'll let you try to deal with it yeah i probably my answer would be it's all of the above i mean certainly emotion should have a an important bearing on it because if it isn't then why are we doing it uh but also i mean you have to have a solid either theoretical knowledge or some kind of instinctual thing about about the music i mean somebody there are there are some great players like for example chet baker knew nothing about harmony in a theoretical sense but he had great ears so uh you know i mean he he had his own kind of knowledge uh you know it was it was an instinctual thing and it wasn't based on music theory but it was knowledge nonetheless uh so you know if you have the the instinctual knowledge or the theoretical knowledge of some sort uh combined with uh combine combined with the emotional thing that that that's where substantial music comes from i would think that's been my experience anyway in the years um let's say the early 70s i think you had returned to new york um i went for the first time i went to college in new york i went from 71 to 75. okay did did you um go to clubs as often as you could afford let's say and do you recall hearing any particular group or individual that just sort of blew you away everything man i mean look look i got i i arrived in new york in the fall of 1971. and in the first six months i was in new york i'll i can tell you who i heard uh and and you have to remember that i mean i went to clubs as much as i could on my limited college kids budget but there was also a lot of free stuff going on free meaning no charge but the the first six months i heard uh i heard lee konitz playing with a minimalist named lamont young in the museum of uh the metropolitan museum actually uh then i heard elvin jones's quartet in a little auditorium on the upper west side uh with joe farrell and dave liebman and gene perla uh i heard the thad jones mel lewis band at the village vanguard this was the first of a number of times i've heard them at the vanguard um i heard chick corea and returned to forever their first gig at the village vanguard this is the return to forever with joe farrell and flora purim and stanley clark and i and i here joe herrera this is their first gig ever and it was one of the greatest nights of live music i have ever heard uh as as good as the records were that they made in in person they were just stunning um i heard charles mingus's all-star big band at philharmonic call with lee konitz jerry mulligan gene ammons mill hinton joe chambers john faddis uh i heard sonny rollins at the vanguard with albert galey larry ridley and david lee this is the first six months you know and and then after that while i was in school there was a lot of as i said there were a lot of free concerts going on there was this place on 55th street called the new york jazz museum that opened up while i was in college they would have sunny afternoon concerts for free and i heard a bunch of people there i heard uh howard mcgee and joe carroll i heard hank mobley i heard that and mel with a quintet with billy harper and george marazz and walter norris uh jimmy jewfrey i you know this was all for free you know you could just go on a sunday afternoon were you uh were you ever tempted at that at that time to call up mom and dad and say listen i i'm not gonna be i'm not gonna major anymore in what i'm doing i i have to be a musician no no i i didn't have a gut plus i i was you know this was this was my excuse for being in new york so i mean as long as i was studying with conants for a couple years and then i started studying for a couple years with harold anko who by the way is also from youngstown ohio i mean although i i used to play outdoor concerts with his older brothers who were both saxophone players we would play concert band gigs in youngstown but i didn't meet harold until 1973 when we were both in new york he had just gotten off of woody herman's band and and uh so i i got his number and i called him and we hooked up and [Music] had an instant friendship with really good friends till this day and i started studying with him and it was perfect because i had stopped studying with lee because basically without saying so i think lee had come to the point where he couldn't there was nothing more he could teach me or felt that he could teach me and i felt like i i still had so much to learn and luckily i met harold just at that moment and it was perfect because i desperately needed some basic piano chops you know how to how to how to voice chords two five ones and things like that and harold was perfect because he's a great teacher and he he would go anywhere you wanted to go he had no preconceived notions of anything so he was the perfect teacher for me that i needed at precisely that moment so i studied with him for two years and it was it was great it seems uh that your career has been a series of opportunities that came up that you managed to step into and succeed if if if you want to um a gathering a cocktail party or something and it was just a brief conversation with someone you didn't really know and they said what do you do do you have like a a a brief answer my my el my elevator moment yeah thank you thank you first yes that would do it did they say that something you can tell people in in the course of of an elevator ride yeah yeah well i like my stock response is i'm a saxophone player a composer arranger a band leader a jazz historian a radio producer a record producer and an educator okay that's that's that's all of which i've done uh and i'd like to think that i've done all those things on a world-class level uh i mean which is not to i'm not making myself into some kind of uber ubermensch i mean i could i could point to any one of those things and tell you oodles of people who do any one of those things better than i can uh but nonetheless i've managed to do stuff in all of those categories that that is on a a world-class level so that's something i'm proud of as you should be and that would have been uh that would have gotten you to the fourth floor and that person would have learned a lot i think also yeah what is the um what stands out in your mind this is sort of a two-part question um and people have asked me this question and i have a hard time answering but do you recall both the worst musical situation or a gig you've ever been in and the best oh man uh well the worst there are so many that they're beyond enumerating i mean really especially well well you know i mean uh in the 80s i used to you know i used to do a lot of commercial gigs club dates you know where you would just get hired and you would just be sent out to to play with some kind of ad hoc pickup band doing a wedding or a bar mitzvah or a private party and so many of those things were just so dreadful you know the in in terms of the i mean the the the the music sucked it was frightfully loud uh you know just everything about it was yeah so i mean it's a yeah so there were so many of those that uh beyond recall you know i mean i i think i i remember some of the worst of them but the rest i've just kind of blanked out i guess just out of self-defense uh as you're the i'm gonna can i ask you one thing about that um do you recall the pay scale for those are you talking about um maybe in the in the 80s yeah when i when i when i came back to i went to after i caught went to college i went to dc for five years and it was there for five years and then i came back to new york in 1980 uh and i started just because it was work i you know i made some phone calls and i started doing these club dates in addition to whatever jazz playing i was doing you know rehearsing with bands or playing little jazz gigs or i started putting together my own non-ad but i remember the the in 1980 for a four-hour saturday night club date was the scale was 96 dollars uh by the time i quit doing those gigs about in the early 90s the scale was up to about 200 for a saturday night and that's a union scale yeah that's local 802 club day scale for four hours saturday night four hour continuous as they say now if if a person if if a young woman calls you and say i'm getting married i got your name can you play and all the details is this something that you were required to go through the union to do no i mean i worked at the time i there there was these different club date offices that would just hire you and send you out to play with these ad hoc bands some of them were people that i worked with on a fairly steady basis and some of them were just one-nighters people i'd never seen before but i would just go where i was told to go but anyway to answer the other part of your question that the best gigs i've ever done i i'm i'm lucky in that uh several of them were re but serendipitously were recorded and have come out on cd i mean one of them is the doing the chicago jazz festival in 1987 with my nanette and sheila jordan as a guest vocalist i mean i that's that's on cd now i sent you a link to that on youtube um another one is a concert that mynet did at the smithsonian in 1990 that's on a two cd set called trance dance yet another is a concert that the non-f did in at the new school in 2001 that's on cd that's called lifeline still another is a duo concert that i did with mark copeland at the new school in 2008 that's on a cd called old friends and then the last one is a concert at the new school in 2014 with uh carlson holmes on piano and jim ferguson is a great singer and bass player from nashville and the late holly ross who was a wonderful singer who died a year or so ago of cancer far too young by the way um so that's on cd that's on a thing called an evening of indigos so so i've been very lucky in some of the best nights of my career have been recorded well and are and and and they came out great performance wise and they're available on cd so i've been exceptionally lucky in that re in that respect well i'm happy to hear that all the best gigs you mentioned were with your own arrangements and you know like sort of you being in charge and i think that that speaks well of your career also um a while back i watched um a documentary on quincy jones and you know i've been a fan like most people of of the majority of his work and i saw that yeah and yeah i may have missed it but he never was asked where do your ideas come from and this is sort of a follow-up of the the all of me question that we did you know half an hour ago but [Music] when you go to write an original work or or even arrangements can you maybe it's an unanswerable question but can you tell me where your ideas come from well in part from that pitch module process that i told you about where i just generate some raw material uh uh you know to to come up with ideas uh other times i i've written a couple of pieces that were just uh from a person's name you know you know that you know that you could play play the the notes on the piano and come up with the melody from the person's name from that generated normality i just i just use these you know these kind of artificial devices and at other times they've just been just sheer inspiration uh it it it varies you know i've learned i've learned to embrace inspiration when it presents itself but when it doesn't i've come up with i i've learned to use these kind of artificial devices uh that enable me to come up with raw material so that uh i'm not sitting there staring at the um staring staring at the keyboard hoping for inspiration to to strike have you ever written something then you're like excited about it only to find out that someone else wrote it already that that you're you're unconsciously channeling some other melody no well that's good because i have okay you know i guess i i i don't mean to sound egocentric about this but i know a hell of a lot of recorded music so the chances of something coming up that that i haven't heard or at this point in my life are pretty slim you know i i've been listening i've been listening to recorded music since i was five years four or five years old and i've checked out a lot of stuff uh a huge amount of stuff okay so i mean i i i have a very keen sense of what's out there and what's been done uh i mean one of the things when i when i'm teaching when i'm teaching jazz courses whether it's jazz history or composing arranging or ensembles or whatever is that i try to give students an idea of what's been done i i play them recordings of great whatever great soloing of great writing of you know whatever just so that they get a sense of what's been done so that they're not reinventing the wheel do you ever get do you ever give them assignments to purposely reinvent the wheel no no i always encourage them to do their own thing as best they can yeah i think you mentioned uh something i read that the current generation of aspiring young jazz artists not only have to be good improvisers with their instruments they have to improvise their career how do we how do we make up for the fact that you know the jam sessions and the the small club gigs and the touring bands uh are mostly a thing of the past well i wouldn't say the the the small club gigs and i mean there's still session i mean i my students here in new york i mean well prior to the pandemic of course but you know there there's still these clubs like smalls uh in new york where where students get together and and and do their little gigs and and then play and and there's still plenty of sessions i mean a lot of it is still is now uh through the veneer of education i guess uh you know i mean it used to be i mean the the the jazz apprenticeship system for decades and decades was a really important thing where you had you know great established musicians who would hire young guys and and now young women is you know we can say uh to play with to play with them and then give them seasoning uh but now that the jazz apprenticeship apprenticeship system is almost entirely defunct uh a lot of it now is is mentorship that's done through the schools uh i i know i i've taken some students kind of under my wing and done stuff with them and for them and i know lots of my colleagues have done the same thing uh so now it's it's done it's done through the schools but it's still done i mean there's x amount of work that's got to be done there's x amount of experience that that these kids have to have somehow or other because i mean very few people uh you know when they're very young are totally mature in season you know i mean that's that's extremely rare uh they've got to get experience and uh chops and maturity uh through whatever means possible and and so you however you do it you've got to do it okay when you put your nanette together was there a consideration perhaps you're thinking to yourself how many wind instruments do i need to do the kinds of voicings that i want to do and then from a practical sense balance it with the idea that it's going to be hard to get nine people 10 12 people together consistently okay so your question is what specifically how did you arrive at nine uh well sam d'angelo and i had done a a band of that size when we were in youngstown we did uh well i used to go back home during the summer uh to to to work you know work in factories and whatever making some money for college and also so summer of 1974 which is just before my senior year in college we decided to put this band together which was basically a non-net plus a vibes player it was 10 pieces so we came up with a similar instrumentation it was trumpet french horn valve trombone three reeds uh one of whom was was ralph lama by the way he was in college at the time at youngstown state university that's where i first met him and another was harold danko's older brother joe playing baritone so anyway we did a few park concerts you know music performance trust fund concerts so we did a cup a couple of those and um so i had that book so when i came to new york i had that book and i decided to get together a rehearsal and just play some of those charts so i rewrote i rewrote the the a few of the charts with with slightly different instrumentation so it ended up being two trumpets doubling flugelhorns uh bass trombone three reeds with a lot of doubles and three rhythm and uh that just six horns for me was it was a was a good size it gave you enough enough horns to to basically duplicate any just about any voicing you wanted to do and also with the sec having two trumpets having the second trumpet uh underneath the lead trumpet makes a big difference with with writing ensemble 2ds it gives a lot of additional support that you don't have when you only have one trumpet so uh that that that ended up being my my instrumentation of choice and and also it you know i mean it was the best of all possible worlds for me it was uh you could you could have enough firepower to come up with like a big band punch if you wanted it but at the same time it gave you the the advantage of of of having a being a hip small group when you wanted that as well and there were a lot of different colors with all the doubles and everything that that was really important having all those doubles if i looked at a a nonet score and i looked at beat one of measure four like everybody's playing maybe like two or three beats could i discern what the chord is for the most part in your writing [Music] i think what i'm trying to do i i suppose i mean if if you're an educated musician like you are yeah i would imagine you could uh not all the time i mean sometimes sometimes we just write things that are as herby hancock said we just it's hard to put names on these things they're just sounds they're sounds you know uh but i bet i think for the most part you could come up with some kind of nomenclature uh that that would describe what the what the chord was but but but with some of the more outside things perhaps not what constitutes outside for you i i had a this is sort of a similar question i was going to bring up about the thought process in your head when you're improvising um bill watrus said yeah you can play outside but you better know what you're outside of and you ought to be able to bring it back inside or something like that yeah that's that's a that's a great comment uh yeah well the the people who know what they're doing you know you know like coltrane would would go outside say coltrane we're playing a tune like impressions you know like like which is d d minor and then e flat e flat minor for the bridge i mean he would go outside of the modes outside of d minor for for x amount of time but he would all but his voice leading was so good that he would you know he would play outside of those basic modes but come back in after a certain point just to reestablish that he knew what he was doing and he knew you know uh he he knew how to create dissonance but he knew how to come back in to to to just obey the the laws of good voice leading let's put it that way you know i mean there are some people who i've heard play quote outside who really don't know what they're doing they're just playing uh they're just playing notes that that that are deliberately dissonant just for the create the the sense of creating dissonance but they they really don't they they they don't understand the theory behind it uh like for example there's a great book by dave liebman called a chromatic approach to jazz harmony and melody where he it's a book basically about how to play outside but but but with theoretical knowledge and and you know i mean he talks about things like that he and richie byrac were were pioneers in that kind of uh uh outside kind of playing but but with really good theoretical knowledge uh and and that those are people who who know how to play outside but but do so with with that it makes musical sense and then and then there's a lot there's a logic to it that it's not just haphazard or half-assed or you know you know there's a there's a musicality to it okay let me run a couple names by you um uh see if you have anything to [Music] opine about uh cannonball adderley oh one of my favorite players what what wonderful player you know i i heard him i heard that his band with nat live at a at a festival in cleveland in the late 60s you know the band with the with joe's avenue and uh victor gaskin and roy mccurdy i mean i mean part of the fun of cannonball was i mean he was so good with audiences i mean when you listen to live cannonball records they usually kept his audience wraps on there yeah you know and you could hear how how good he was he was a former school teacher so he really connected with audiences on a not just a musical level but on a very personal level as well and and he was such a great player i mean i i think it's only been in the past couple of decades that people had really been giving him his due for how good he really was he was he was a staggeringly good player he surely was and i had just last week i was playing some of his last recordings and he could he could go he could go fairly out himself when when he wanted to he didn't do it he spent two years he spent two years standing next to coltrane with miles i mean when you listen to hit records of his that he made after he played with coltrane for a couple years there's a you know there's a real coltrane influence in his playing like if you know you know the album called mercy mercy mercy oh yes there's there's an out there's a tune on there called fun yeah right after games just before games right yeah yeah but on fun i mean there's there's a real coltrane influence on some of the the lines that he plays and some of the harmonies that he uses that's uh you know he learned a lot from cold stream he was a very smart guy so i mean it was impossible for you not to uh pick up a lot when he was playing with with miles in coal train yeah what about gil evans one of my favorite writers uh i had one experience with him by the way about a year before he died this is summer of 87 uh uh it was a monday morning uh and i was just lying in bed the phone rings and i hear this voice on the other end of the phone this is gil evans wow yeah who i'd never met before he said he said maria schneider gave me your number i'm doing a rehearsal this afternoon and i need to sub for howard johnson on baritone and base clarinet can can you do it uh i'll pay you and and i resisted the temptation to say no it's okay i'll pay you so so i grab my baritone bass clarinet and i go downtown to the west 20s and i walk into this studio and guys are just standing around warming up whatever and i look around and i see this tall good-looking guy who looked vaguely familiar and i looked at him for about a minute and i really i realized this was this was sting and and and what this was this was a rehearsal of gills band plus sting is a guest soloist they were going to go to the ubria jazz festival so um what we rehearsed was uh maria and tom malone had written some charts on police tunes like synchronicity and roxanne and they had a few charts in gill's book from that jimi hendrix album that he had done in the 70s those charts were not written by gill by the way they were anybody else and they were really not much frankly that that album is not one of gil's great records but anyway i so i did the rehearsal and and um he gave me 40 bucks two twenty dollar bills i i should have kept them but i didn't i spent them like an idiot um but that was my that was my one experience with gill and and sting was great he was sweet guy i'm totally there for the music no ego no rock star pretentions no nothing he was just one of the guys he was there for the music so it was a nice little nice little experience nice i don't think i would anyway aside from that i mean gil is one of my big influences as a writer you know i mean just uh and i i know i'm far from alone in that respect um but i mean from the time when i when i was still in high school when i first heard uh miles ahead and i mean from then on i would and i became a huge gil evans fan um yeah thank you for those those answers has your uh melody conception changed over the years you you lost the use of your your right arm and the fact that you managed to keep playing but in a different way did it affect the way you think about melodies uh yeah and from well i had my soprano after i had my i had surgery in 1993 that left my you know to remove a spinal tumor that was life-threatening and so that left my right hand uh basically crippled i mean i have only a very limited use of my right hand uh so i the only horn i could still play of the of the nine saxophones and flutes and clarinets i played at one point the only one i could still play was soprano saxophone so i had a repairman named perry ritter who was a great repairman he rebuilt the horn with alternate keys so i could still play uh but i guess as a result you know i mean uh lee cohn it's one afternoon if eight or ten years ago lee and i got together for lunch and we just went over his apartment and just played improvised duets just calling tunes for hours who and and he said something that i'll never forget he said you can always simplify and that's one of the the hippest bits of advice i've ever heard from an improvising musician you can always simplify and and it's true i mean i mean i don't i only have a fraction of the facility on the horn that i used to so you know as an improviser uh i've just learned to play simpler because i have to but that for example that that record i did the duo record the concert i did with mark copeland in 2008 uh called old friends i mean that's just the two of us playing tunes that we like to play and the track i sent that to you the the tracks on are are long man i mean they're anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes long for a duo so i mean playing simpler doesn't mean that you can't play for a long period of time you just you just learn to pace yourself in a different way but but but um i mean we just did that concert and you know just with as much spontaneity as possible and after it was done i was staggered at how long the tracks were and and i i'd like to think that they're not boring or not going on past their bedtime but but but they're they're they're you know i mean they're really extended and it's just the two of us uh so so i mean you just you learn to pace yourself in a different way yeah thank you for that um we've been at this for over an hour so i have i have two more questions um i saw you perform at uh joe wilder's memorial service oh yeah 2014. yeah and i'm wondering pardon with bill charlotte yes it was very touching and lovely and i wonder um in being friends or associating with gentlemen like joe from his generation i've had this most marvelous uh fortunate experience to have a few associations i wonder what you learned from those guys oh man well in joe's case i mean joe was the the quintessential gentleman in in every in every respect just this the the sweetest man and and and an extraordinary player but i mean just the way he carried himself always had a suit and tie eyes you know you know i mean just the the just the the epitome of class uh as as with somebody else who i was fortunate to be able to call a friend and that was benny carter you know who i got to be friends with for 25 years uh and i mean and guys like that were i mean they were just so cool and so such great musicians and such great classy people uh you know i mean they you know i mean they just lived their lives uh in in in such a remarkable way i mean that you couldn't help if you had any kind of radar at all you couldn't help learning stuff from them just because they were great natural teachers and and they set such a great example for so many people and and and you know i mean with guys like that when when they came up i mean that was you know at the the height of segregated racist america i mean the the some of the stuff that they experienced was frightening i'm sure but but but they but they never they never let it get them down they always managed to overcome whatever obstacles that that they faced and and and triumphed uh and had great careers and and uh made an enormous difference in the lives of so many of us i mean for example benny carter helped to integrate the the two afm locals in los angeles in the early 50s you know they they combined the the black and white locals into one local i mean benny was one of the uh green leaders in making that come about so i mean that's just an example of the impact that he had that went beyond just purely musical yeah but but joe was i mean he was such a nice man he always had his camera too yes you know he was a great photographer i i have a photo of jackie kane that he took oh jackie it's a wonderful photo i'll see if i can email it to you i'd love that thank you yeah he i was honored one time because he took a picture of me and i just felt so um made me feel wonderful oh sure yeah so so lastly um this is a sort of an odd question but musically or politically or in any regard is there something that could come up in a conversation that would really get i guess the phrase is get your dander up that would make you respond emphatically and be angry well in part i feel like my generation has been kind of overlooked the generation that came up in the 70s you know uh you know uh and i i won't go into naming names but i think you understand what i'm talking about uh you know i i feel like i had there was a whole generation of people who came up when i did in the 70s and our contributions have largely been overlooked you know uh and we didn't get a lot of the opportunities we should have you know uh so that you know when or or for example i told you earlier about all the stuff that i heard in new york in the 70s in the early 70s you know and and often you you hear it written and said by various people who don't know who weren't there who say that oh there was nothing happening in jazz in the 70s you know uh you know it was this period of doldrums and that is total crap i mean i i mentioned all the things that i heard in new york and this and that was a fraction of what was going on you know but there was so much happening at that point but you had to be there to know about it and all these people who weren't there are going around saying that it never happened it's being erased in almost an orwellian fashion uh you know and that as a jazz historian pisses me off you know i mean whenever i get a chance to correct that you know i'm very vocal about that because i think it's it it's important that people get recognition for what they've done uh you know [Music] which which and i'm for example i'm glad that you you've been doing all these interviews for uh 25 30 years i mean you've interviewed a lot of people who otherwise would not have gotten that recognition and or got the chance to tell their stories and it's important that that gets done well it's been a great gig for me and um i appreciate your time today and there's a lot more we could touch on and maybe we'll do so again and um i thank you for your time and uh oh my pleasure are you kidding thank you for doing this yeah it's an honor well great um i hope we can cross paths you know i usually do these things face to face but obviously we deal with the times we're in yeah yeah well you know i mean zoom is uh been uh a lifesaver in so many ways i mean it's it's it's basically enabled us to keep our education system going during this past year or so when otherwise things would have come to a screeching halt yes so i mean that's that's been important uh and you know it also i mean it enables you you've done a number of these interviews lately on zoom that you wouldn't have had a chance to do face to face so i mean i think that's that was a good move on your part just to to switch to that medium yeah well i'm gonna pause our recording and um i hope whatever arrangement is bouncing around in your head after we're done reaches a fine conclusion okay thank you if you if you get to new york for whatever reason please let me know and let's look up okay thanks a lot bill thank you take good care

Channel: Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College

Views: 512

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: jazz history, jazz interviews, jazz video, Monk Rowe, jazz conversations, Lee Konitz, Harold Danko, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Cannonball Adderley, AF of M pay scale, Benny Carter, Joe Wilder, jazz on the radio

Id: qZgwt5ITB0A

Length: 76min 23sec (4583 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021