Conversations with Mark Turner

you welcome to the NYU jazz interview series from the Steinhardt school and today we'd like to welcome saxophonist Mark Turner thank you mark I'd just like to read something that I've pulled off the internet get your comment on this saxophonist mark Turner has steadily built a career as one of the lesser ballyhooed if no less talented jazz saxophonists of his generation indebted to such icons of musical intellectualism as Wayne Shorter John Coltrane and Warren Marsh Turner has a fluid egoless style grounded in motivic harmony based improvisation that's always understated yet never fails to grab the audience's attention have you heard that before um yeah I think I've heard maybe that one before so yeah Oh today I think about it what do I agree with it or do I not agree with well let's position is now using your terms let's unpack that a little bit that was something I learned from you last week the the you know understatement less ballyhooed I don't know how often you use that word I don't know yeah but but you know most people the reason we do this interview series is kind of get and try to get inside the head of the artist yeah so that's my mission today is to figure out where you coming from musically yeah and how do you envision saxophone playing and the harmonic aspects of it as well as melodic aspects and how do you how do you envision you is uh is that musician within this milieu of other modern musicians and in the in the direction of music that you're pursuing so the first thing is maybe your understated miss I know that a lot of your musical influences come from that may be the Tristano school in Warren Marsh certainly and Coltrane and Wayne Shorter maybe so can you talk about maybe what were your first influences um and we'll move on from there okay um I would say maybe from the very beginning um probably R&B for my parents they dad some jazz records - my first jazz records that I've listened to were their records and actually my my stepfather and my biological father both had records my biological father actually loves Sonny Stitt so he had quite a few Sonny stooging Emmons records so those are the first ones I heard but basically my parents I grew up in LA so my parents they're pretty social and they had a lot of pool parties and stuff in the 70s and they'd be playing you know the Ohio Players Stevie Wonder you notice reading The O'Jays you know so on and so forth Al Green so that's kind of what I heard mostly so I'm not to make us my music doesn't sound anything like that but but that's why I heard mostly you know and then terms of jazz again of Sonny Stitt Sonny Rollins John Coltrane those the records my parents had and they had some some singers records too I remember exactly but so I was the beginning when I was a kid and as a kid it seemed like you pursued what other kids did you were in high school band you started with clarinet and then altona interfer yeah all the same when was it that you really latched on to something that's it this is of great interest to me um oh that the point where I did that you know it's kind of funny because I don't know if I really I did in the sense that I really liked music and I at some point you know you get to the point where you decide you want to practice a lot and so on and so forth maybe that was latter part of high school but I hadn't decided that I wanted to be a musician I just I loved as in music and I just wanted to I just put myself in it but I wasn't it wasn't until maybe third year of college where I thought maybe I should try and be a musician and before that I was basically in the art world I wanted to be an artist I'm going to be an illustrator I was in school for that and the point where I decided to try music was when I was in I was in San Francisco my parents moved to San Cisco and I was at an art school there which I really loved and I was with this art teacher that was fantastic and at that point I don't know why I decided her in a way it was crazy because I was happy I was doing well and I decided I transcribed and John Coltrane solos at first when I transcribed and I did it without the horn I didn't know anything about it I said no let me just write this solo down it felt really great let me try and go to Berkeley because some of my friends went there and then I went to Berkeley and my parents were supportive somehow I don't know why and then so that's what happened and so that's what I kind of decided to try and be a musician what do you mean he just wrote the solo down I mean I didn't use my horn I listened to it and I just I wrote it down and tried to play it you know like you would normally do transcribe so listen so that's what I meant by that but there wasn't till later I'd you know I guess I spoke to some other musicians and they were surprised that I wrote it down I didn't know anything about transcribing at all I didn't even know there was such thing as transcribing I'm just well I'm surprised that you just wrote it down because most people would listen to something and then try to play along with it all right so did you write it down using a piano or do you have good pitch I guess I had good pitch I didn't know anything about it so I I just I had some music paper I listened to the solo and I wrote it down and then I tried to play afterwards on the horn so this story was conveyed to me by one of your friends that went to Berkeley with okay I says that when he first met you you came in sounding like Michael Brecker I'm very influenced by that and he would be a jam sessions and you'd be there the longest and he'd leave and come back two hours later and you're still playing and he said the next summer you came back and you sounded like Coltrane and he said you had gone home over the next summer and transcribed a stack of Coltrane recordings and he came back and you did the same thing you were at the same sessions playing for hours and hours hmm so what is it in your process is it are you a very inquisitive person that you have to understand the process by transcription and analysis and then working it out on your horn and do it doing it maybe obsessively I don't know uh yeah I don't know about it obsessively I think I think I think they're definitely people that are way more into that than I am but I definitely I think that um I think that I enjoy the process of learning and I that alone is interesting to me even even more than the as much or more than the end product so once you get there you've done it and then all right then what's next you know in a way so part of it was just that I was just so curious about how come I guess that I maybe put this way shortly is that the you know you find something that you really enjoy you love it for example at one point I really liked Michael Brecker John Coltrane or Marsh a bunch of other musicians and a lot of it is just figuring out why is it that I like this person what is it that I enjoy about them what's the connection between myself and this musician and one way to do it partially is to actually figure out what did they actually play and feel what it feels like to play like them let's say you really get a taste of taking the master taking you by the hand and saying this is how you play music and if you do enough of them you get more of a taste of it really and so for me a lot of it is just a biz trying to figure out how to play music figure out what's my connection with this person what am i what do I want from them what do they have to to give me and feeling it physically in your hands writing it down contemplating it trying to assimilate it into yourself so that it feels natural that process is very I found very satisfying but it just it helped me and still helps me to learn how to play I think other people learn more by osmosis or just actively playing I definitely need to you know learn every single tree in the forest and put them all together over time a very long long time in order to play I realized that about myself early on so there wasn't much of an issue about how come I'm not learning so fat fast enough how come you know other people in just play and it works out I knew that wasn't going to happen so as I figure I'm going to do what I need to do to make music satisfying so maybe that's what what it was if you had to pull these artists apart and assess them for what made them unique or interesting to you because you've assimilated and really did an analysis if you took like Warren March for instance what was it what would you say the essence of his music in his process that you've taken for your own I think one part is that initially I was attracted to him because at that time when I started trying to transcribe him and others like him I was trying to figure out what I still I'm still trying to figure out but at that point I was maybe a little bit more in the for is that I was trying to figure out how to improvise you know okay you have some vocabulary language what are you going to do with it so I'm trying to figure out you know who what musicians felt like they were basically using what they had and and kind of flying on the seat of their pants trying to make things happen without actually falling over you know maybe like riding on the crest of the wave or whatever it is you know so where Marshall is one of those and I was attracted to mostly because he did it without a whole lot of drama you know it's basically content and I was interested in how's he how was he able to use content placement sound and content meaning melodies the way he plays the harmony where he places the notes how he the hell plays with the rhythm section to create a sense of the grade the sense that he's he's always on the edge you know were you to me of listening to him I feel my hair is standing on end because he sounds like he's always almost about to fall over but it never quite happens so I wanted to know what that was and so that's the main thing you know about how he processes information you know and I was able to he almost is very he almost never repeats himself if you transcribe Memphis's you'll see everyone has something that they do certain language that they have and some musicians you can find more repetition in their language which is not a bad thing I think that's a good thing but with him very very little so I was looking for that I was he able to take language how it still sound familiar and not repeat himself and still keep it interesting rational forward moving and so on it's over a few weeks ago I had bassist Richard Bona here and he had made the statement that nobody truly improvises that they've worked out their process and then continued to work out and perfect that process and he says the only time that anyone really improvises would be like if you're in the jungle and there's a there's a tiger facing you well that's probably my group so now your process of improvisation I know it's it's very specific because of the classes you've been offering our students at NYU what do you think of that idea is is is your music improvised or as it worked out I think they're I think that that's how will another discussion what is improvising you know what's improvisation what does it mean I think I agree to that just to what Richard Bona was saying to some extent I would say my music is a combination of both that's probably true for everyone you know you have to work out something you know if you play a major scale that's worked out yeah I mean it's major scale that's it you know we're all doing things that you know you play certain chord progressions you're playing certain it's been worked out before you so you know you play western music I mean just you're already stepping into something that's worked out if you were to improvise you'd have to start from the ground up completely you have to right make your own instrument you know work with another tonal system so on and so forth so nobody really does that that I know of I think the improvisation that we're talking about that I involve myself in and tried to engage in as much as possible is working with the information that working with the music into my own culture that that I'm steeped in that I'm representative of and trying to use that and then speak like now we're speaking on a subject I'm improvising I'm talking I'm using language and in my own culture in my own language and in a context so I think that's what improvisation is if I weren't improvising that I'd have a speech written out and I'd know what questions you're going to ask me and then I'd read that speech that's not improvising so I'm talking about this kind of improv improvising that's all so I think that's a problem improvising I also think that that's relevant you know now let's speak in Russian okay I can't do that you got it okay okay so but we're speaking within a framework of exactly yeah now the other night when you gave your lecture I had asked you about playing modally because your whole lecture was talking about Cadence's and resolution and when we came up to modal you you had mentioned the word well we have to unpack this now but you made this analogy was playing in a modal key maybe one key D minor it's like envisioning a desert and you're slowly building cities with it within this desert could you talk about what that means yeah I think what that means is that you're you're one you're building a storyline but harmonically speaking you're building reference points you know corners so to speak in which to you're building a room or house or cities or places in which to go in which you can tell your story otherwise it's kind of a complete when I say a desert I mean and completely open absolute yeah clean slate which is that's not what we're dealing with we're always dealing in the relative world you know their thoughts the people places that were making reference to and that's how we relate to each other a clean slate an absolute vacuum is nothing that we actually deal with so a one one chord just sitting there in absolute desert is kind of we need to build something so that we can say something over this desert so that's kind of what I mean by that you know and you can do it you know musically speaking you would do it in a number of bars certain chords you know kind of create reference points for yourself the band in the audience to feel tension release because that's both Mason that's mainly what we're dealing with most of the time you know tell the story based on the influences that you've you've uncovered with marsh and shorter and Coltrane how much of that is informed or how much of that is is within your process but how much new material have you uncovered for yourself uh I don't know that's a hard question what do you mean by new material well you think you know what it's just like for instance Coltrane was very studious once lanham skis thesaurus of melodic scales for instance in messy and scales and then you talked about the other day and studying with people like Dennis and Olli in the Granick school he was always looking for different ways to find theoretical approaches if it's a major thirds etc of extracting all those elements from the various people that you've studied if you have you uncovered anything for yourself that's offered you a new direction yeah definitely I mean new in the sense of I feel that it's a maybe it's a individual to some extent I can say that I think new is something that other people decide I can't make that decision but I definitely feel that you know over time I found my own process there's vocabulary harmony so on and so forth that I feel is a personal individual intimate to some extent so if that means new than it is I don't know what that the rest means but well I think part of this is your interest in classical music as well because if we look at the the jazz process modal music in the 60s was similar to modal music from the turn of the century or free jazz might be attributed to maybe some form of serial music so in that sense you're still uncovering things in by listening to classical music and analyzing that so is there anything that you've been covered that way um that's a difficult one you know to some extent I'm still I'm still I mean I'm still working on all of it I don't know and that's great it's pretty it's a lot of music to understand but yeah the the classical / European tradition has definitely helped me quite a bit one in terms of harmony voice leading and ways to access to voice access and understand it that I maybe would not have encountered if I only listened to music from the Americans last jazz world some of it may be vocabulary for sure you know just looking at scores etudes and making learning how to make patterns or lines out of them yeah those things I've uncovered most of it's been basically melodic and harmonic language vocabulary for the most part well something that I've been thinking about since I attended your class the other day was if we look at chord structures is vertical and we take the chord structures and move them horizontally and then fill in the gaps between the root third fifth etc we come up with scales so we have to decide which scales based on those triad or dominant seven or whatever harmony so the process of improvisation has been taught and almost probably formalized by the use of chord scales whereas the what you're talking about in your class is you're actually going back to vertical process in in your improvisation looking at chord progressions you're really outlining the root the third seventh then making a 9th or something to outline the chords rather than consider oh I can just use a blanket scale sir and realize this and I think this is something that's really unique to you can you discuss that yeah I started trying to access it partially in the beginning started by just listening to Coltrane actually and then I started playing with Kurt Russell uncle's band and I he trying to play his tunes I realized his tunes are very specific into vocabularies very specific and I started writing down voicings on all the chords you know and voice leading them just to figure out how to get chord sound and how to make the chord sound so for example I might have been playing the right notes but they weren't the right notes right notes in the sense that you know okay you know you're playing the fifths on a minor chord but for some reason it doesn't sound right why not so I've started trying to figure out what that was about how come some notes sound better than others and what does that mean so that's when I started started to voice leading on the saxophone and then going back and reading a classical harmony books from various composers I'm still doing it trying to figure out most of most of that is what I found was taught basically in voice leanings there are even the composition books most of them there is always voice lines rare that you'll just see a chord symbol you know the court simply usually written in numbers which everyone's probably seen which usually denotes you know the positions of the notes in a chord whether there in root position or inversions or whatever but I found that intriguing is usually in jazz we just see chord symbols there you you have to actually look at the voice leading before you figure out what the court is and won't say you know C major you have to look and see what what it is so I was intrigued by that and the more I started getting into that and trying to figure out how to play for example kurtz tunes and other people's tunes and other bands that I was playing in it was easier for me gradually I'm not saying it's easy but it became more facile to be able to play the harmony and get it to sound the way it should sound given the person's - and given the melody given the chord progression so on and so forth so that's kind of what prompted me to do that so I just felt like I really loved harmony and I felt like just playing based on the scale alone is not enough for me personally you know it reminded me when years ago when I used to play in these old dance bands and they'd have the stock arrangements and when it came to the solo it wouldn't have the chords written out it would just have the chord voicing yeah and it was difficult for me because it's like you're so used to assimilating the scale rather than the voicing mm so in a sense it's it's kind of a new process and I know a lot of your students are here today and you fill them up with this other approach that they may not have accessed before and they always come back to me and I said well what did mark teach you he says you know years of practice of things before I'm ready to play this style so your your your a a fountain of knowledge young man okay but let's talk about that for a minute it's like obviously you've worked long and hard many hours of trying to figure out this voice leading process because the other day after class he revealed he said you know I'm a very slow learner mm that's sure so if you're a slow learner how long did it take you to assimilate this process that you've discussed with your students and in this class a very long time um yeah I I don't know it's been do you mean the beginning of starting to voice lead and all that or well exactly I think in general do you know when people hear idling all that or right but I think in this class you were sitting at the piano saying well you could do this so you could do this you could do this or this leads to this and this leads to this and nothing was written out and and all the students are saying yes I get it and then I asked him later while there was a lot of information so it says to me that you've spent a lot of time just totally assimilating this so that it is part of your your speaking voice how long did that take and how much how much practice and thought on the horn and off the horner at the piano was involved I I would say I would say just for me but that's probably similar for most of my friends too but at least um when did I start trying to do that yeah and that I may be in the late 80s 90s I just yeah right around then I just started trying to figure out voice leading and things and so what how long is that twenty five years or something did you you were the only person doing this at the time oh I think no well I don't know I'm not about saxophone players I don't know but definitely no I guess I know I mean other you know guitar players piano players I knew for sure and bass players and stuff I wasn't know I mean they were doing - maybe it's more natural for their instruments they're playing string instruments so that's what they do all the time but they you know I'll go back again to Curt's band so you know myself Kurt and Ben and other people we were spending time on harmony but always trying to if you want to use the word unpack it you know trying to figure out what sounds best and why it sounds good and making sure that for lack of a better word that the voice leading was precise trying to figure out what that means you know because for example if you're playing a dominant chord that can mean all kinds of things even in two bars if someone's voice leading it can go through all kinds of versions it depends you know so I'd say you know a lot of us discussions with friends writing things down for myself musically and verbally you know the written word and um writing notes down having notes by them this means that this means that this works here oh I played a gig here this is what that means this tune is such-and-such for example so you know just daily hours of practicing during the day practicing meaning playing some of the piano playing the saxophone thinking about it going back and doing it again ruminating you know so on and so forth so I think a lot of it is a lot of that and particulars just having a gradually clarifying your aesthetic and trying to figure out what you need to do to reach that aesthetic if you know what I mean you know otherwise you know there you can be practicing for millennia I mean you can practice one or two things for hours and hours and hours 24 hours a day until you die you know you have to decide on something alright to focus what you're going to do when you're going to do it how you're going to do it so I don't know if that answers your question but yes I had Chris Potter on stage here a while back and I had brought up the conversation he called me once and said he kind of get into the school actus yeah and it was over the summer I wasn't right I said what are you talking about your Chris Potter you don't need to practice and I says because I I not only want to practice but I need to practice I need in it was this a you know as aggressive as he gets there's this need to play the horn yeah do you have that same need absolutely I do yeah so what happens if you don't practice um if I don't practice I feel terrible I feel like a bad boy no I just feel you know I feel which is funny because now I you know I don't get to spend as much time as I used to before before my wife and I had children but uh anytime chance I get 15 minutes 20 minutes ten minutes there an hour there it usually adds up but uh it's just a need of discovery for me I'm sure Chris feels the same way for music to be satisfying I'm sure he feels and I feel you need to be on the horn to be able to you know have an intimate connection with it so you can speak on it if you don't get enough time on it then you you lose it you know it's not just thinking about it it's it's all about and you get on the horn you it's so satisfying even just to just to play long tones you know it just feels fantastic I love it you know just the I just feel like I feel highly unsatisfied with I don't know I just I feel like I just need to be on it I don't know what else to tell you so can you talk about your meditation practice or your Eastern interests and how that applies to you as a as a person and to musically maybe I'm sure I'm not sure to say about that but I would say that to meditation practice and Gentiles for me it kind of helps to put all life matters in perspective you know as I definitely find the older you got at least the older I get the more crazy you can get you know especially if you don't practice definitely mmm-hmm even that needs to be you know or looked at in a rational way or at least you know why is it that you feel or I feel this need to practice there might be reasons that are not helpful to my mental state you know wanting to practice maybe deficiencies and other aspects of my life so I need to take a look at them you know and that doesn't mean I can't go ahead and practice but anyway it just helps to put things in perspective calm the mind in particular make it helps to make you mindful definitely helps you to pay attention to what you're doing while you're there and not be in a sense daydreaming wondering thinking desiring being upset with the past or the future and it definitely helps in terms of music at least for me one in your practice time it helps to be just pay attention and do what you're doing at any pace that you need to do it and then when you're playing you're playing not thinking and this was terrible that was great I should be doing this I shouldn't be doing that just play nothing else so meditation practice is definitely helped with that you try to use this meditative practice to get in a zone when you're performing yeah I mean I wouldn't say it's literally that I go back in a room and I meditate but it just influences the rest of your life and you find ways to put yourself and not stay more often even if you're talking to somebody or you're washing the dishes or you're playing music or anything else well I'd like to talk about your your path that music and and why you've chosen music we've had discussions about this is your passion and this is what you do artistically because I know you've you've had odd jobs early on did you work at Tower Records for a lot more guitar records okay done West fourth here yes that's right so sometimes developing a career ISM as a musician as an artist doesn't happen overnight yeah Western and the fact that odd jobs are available and in finding out times to eke out a musical presence is difficult but yeah but what is it that's important to you or satisfying in that process about trying to to pursue your career pursue something that's you're passionate about because we've had this conversation about sometimes students don't know why they're going to music school or they're are they they're not mindful of what the teachers are saying I think so I'd say for myself I when I was in music school I I didn't know if I was going to become a musician in fact I assumed that it'd be very likely that I was not going to be able to make a living at it but I loved doing it so I was I kind of went for broke I just need to do it and while I'm in school this is the only time in my mind was the only time where I'm not going to have a job to a day gig no children no significant other this is where you know where I need to spend that time outside of music this is the only time where I'm going to have me time 24 hours a day I better use this stuff now so that's kind of what my attitude was so that's all I did I just practice as much as possible engage much as possible music whatever the she just told me I use what I could at the time and I had little notebooks and things for later when I got out of school to be able to access later because you know it's 200 information I couldn't do it all together and I felt like you know I I love music and I was just going to try and do the best I could and if I didn't get to be a musician I'd still have music in my life you know maybe I would you know do something else but I'd still play saxophone and I'd still be involved so that was kind of my attitude I I had no I didn't feel entitled at all to become a musician I still don't it's still kind of an adventure like I'm still trying to keep it going I'm glad it's still going it could end at any moment could be done next year you know so that's kind of been my attitude about it I'm just keeping it going keeping music in my life being involved in musical jazz art culture and I think that's an important thing to continue so I'm and I'm happy to do jobs so I had other jobs you know I was I worked at our for a year and a half I was a bike messenger I painted houses I played on the street I made a pretty good amount of money for that while I was working at Tower to pay for paid for dinner and stuff a lot of times because I didn't quite make enough him money at our table so I was willing to keep doing that as long as I made it to like if I need to do an extra job now and I don't have enough gigs I'll do it yeah so I don't know if that answers the question yes but but there was you were excited about the opportunity that this is a school as a place to grow oh man to immerse herself absolutely I felt like I felt like that and I felt like I didn't want to waste my my parents and ancestors resources you know my parents work their asses I'll excuse me so I can go to school my grandparents did too so you know I shouldn't waste my time here you know so yeah now that opening statement I made about there's less ballyhoo about you and maybe part of that is because you don't seem like a very aggressive person you're very passive except maybe in your playing how was it was there a point where you had to be aggressive to get into professional situations or did people find you um I would say I definitely have never been aggressive in that sense I wouldn't know how to do it I think there are other people that can do it well and it's part of their personality and I think all the power to anyone who needs to do what they need to do to get where they're going I would say that I what I did and I do is I just put myself in situations where I'm available and visible it's probably better to say like that in other words when I was younger and still maybe less now but I just put myself in situations where I could be seen where I you know I might go to sessions I may not like the session but I'd go where I'd play some gigs was in situations right me not necessarily the gig but I'd get experienced meet other musicians and other musicians might be in that situation play oh that's great you know oh you sound good Bob LA why don't we play this other gig over here and then that other gig would happen and someone else sees you and you play that other gig oh it gets a little better so on and so forth so that's kind of how things have worked out for me more or less it's like that word of mouth being as many situations at least early on that would lead to something else you know so you just didn't sit in your basement and practice yes I did not either practiced where I was out playing somewhere else session or gig or whatever yeah so in our last few minutes I I always asked our guests if they have any words of wisdom or advice for those people that follow you and you've helped shape their careers and maybe other people that aren't familiar with you and maybe they will be now words of advice I don't know I would say one thing maybe is um hmm maybe you know to stay involved and active and mindful of what you're doing without expression expectation of results I think that help is helpful I guess the short of it is you know be present in the process but I don't think that really exemplifies what I'm saying you know just be involved work do be mindful of it what it what's what its effect is on yourself and others without expecting it to be without expectations for what the results might be whether they're great or whether they're terrible or whether you turn into getting exactly what you want you don't know what's going to happen in the future you don't know where things are going to lead you least that's the case with me you know as long as you engage involved and kind of taking control of your effect on the universe because you are part of the universe you know it's kind of magical if you believe and take that belief and put it into action something's going to happen you know I don't know why but something will happen for sure mark thanks so much for joining us today we've learned a lot thanks mark Turner events ah Oh Oh Hey Hey Oh Oh

Channel: NYU Steinhardt Jazz Studies

Views: 60,891

Rating: 4.9219766 out of 5

Keywords: Jazz (Musical Genre), Mark Turner (Musical Artist), NYU, New York University (College/University), Steinhardt School Of Culture Education And Human Development (College/University), NYC, New York City (City/Town/Village), Musician (Profession), Music, Improvisation

Id: 6utuBXxlz5s

Length: 62min 43sec (3763 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2015