Hi everybody. My name is Monk Rowe for the Fillius Jazz
Archive. I'm pleased to re-visit with Denis DiBlasio
who is a performer, educator, and fellow Zoomer, not by choice. DD: Who isn't? MR: As a matter of fact, isn't there an Aretha
Franklin song called "Who's Zooming Who?" There is. I want you to Google that when we're done. DD: Oh, when we're done. Okay. MR: So before we started recording you were
talking about the plethora of meetings that you've been part of, just to kick off this
unique semester. DD: Well it's been - well we've been doing
it since when, March, the middle of March. And there was that whole, I don't know, a
month of everybody trying to figure Zoom out, who was freezing, who would be talking and
their mic's off, they'd be like [mimes] and you're on the other end going like this [gestures]
and there was everything but teaching. It was like a juggling act. And I think people eventually learned just
by continuing, like by constantly screwing it up, you know? And you eventually figure it out. But it's such a clumsy, I'm sure you went
through the same thing, it's such a clumsy transition. And I was telling you I guess you could do
it - a student I had who had a whole lesson and when I told him to move he went back and
forth like that, all I saw was his forehead for an hour. He didn't quite get what I was seeing so I
guess he didn't have the screen up. Ahh, it's great. MR: That's not the adjective that I was expecting. But now that we sort of have it down, I found
that I was using it as an excuse like well the system's not working and it's not my fault,
and now we supposedly at least know how to make it work so I don't have that excuse anymore
and it's time to like figure out how to teach through it. DD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well there's actually some good things about
it. Is that where we're going? Is that where you want to go? MR: I could use some good things. DD: Well one of the things that I've discovered
that actually works, I don't think that trying to ram in how we're used to teaching, try
to ram that into Zoom I think is a recipe for just disaster because a lot of things
just don't fit. But if you look at it like it's a completely
new thing, everything's new. Everything. The whole set-up, then I'm able to be a little
bit more open to, I guess, the possibilities of it. And at the time there wasn't really a template. We're all just trying to figure it out. The choir people, you know, they're trying
to figure it out. The orchestra guys, they're trying to figure
it out. But in an improvisation lesson I would accompany. I would play the voicings and slow it down
and not slow it down. But now I can't do that because of the latency. So I would tell everybody to get this. I don't get anything for it, it's not a big
deal for me, but it's called I Real Pro. And what that is - are you familiar with it? What you do is you get let's say we were going
to play "A Felicidade" and what comes up is the chord changes, not the melody, the chord
changes. And it has a track to it which is, - okay? It's garage bandy, but it's there. So I tell all my students get that app. Then they can find their tune and at least
they have something they can play along to and change the sounds, and you can change
the tempo, and you can change the key, and it actually has some advantages if I aimed
a lesson towards using that app, if you know what I mean. So that came up as a good thing. And once the kids learned how to work with
it, because one of the problems I find when they learn a tune is they always learn it
too fast. Because they hear it played fast, but they
don't realize - you know, they just get it in their own way. So I always tell them learn a tune like it's
a ballad so you can see what's coming up. Like you have your high beams on, you can
see the chords that are coming. But the more you speed it up there eventually
becomes a tempo where you're just hanging on, you're just trying to agree with the chords,
not supposed to get yourself set for them, and approach them and all that. So speed has a direct link with how far ahead
you can see. And with this app it's very easy to just slow
it down, and I find out that mostly all of them - is that, can I say that, mostly all
- yeah, mostly all of them do better when it's slower. Because they can process it. I think it's just that the more you know the
information the more confident you get, it's easier to speed it up. But then they'll hear "Cherokee" and they'll
go try and learn it real fast and they don't wind up very well. So that's one thing. The other thing that I found that was nice
is you could have people come in and do clinics. You know? If I were to have like Jeff Coffin come in
and talk, or I'm thinking of all my friends that I know, Wayne Bergeron plays the trumpet
out in L.A., he's on all those "Family Guy" sessions, practically every high note trumpet
thing that you've heard in the last ten years is Wayne. I can have him do a clinic, it's just as easy
as this. So if I kind of use it for what it is good
for it becomes something different. Now are the kids playing next to each other? No. Are you [inaudible] your lead alto, no. And I mean all that stuff that you really
signed up for isn't happening. But I use a lot of YouTube clips of bands. If we do a Thad and Mel chart I'll put up
a great clip of Thad and Mel, I'll use your interview of like Snooky and Jerry Dodgion
and Jerome and tell the kids these are the people that are in it and I'll use your clips,
you know, so we can get a historical thing like that. So there are all these - I may send them links
to listen to and then we'll talk about it over Zoom, or you can sort of attach it to
like this meeting like we're having now. But I tend to just use these to talk and I
may send something out and give them a week to listen to it then we'll get together and
talk. But you know we're just coming up with things
that are different. I may teach them how to write a little riff
chart and then we'll try. Some of the kids know how to do the virtual
editing so they want to do it, which is fine. God bless them. Let them do it. Because I don't want to figure it out. It's editing. You know. There's too much to do. So it's going to be different. It's nothing that any of us signed on for,
including the kids. But it's what it is and I'm getting phone
calls and kids aren't coming back. They don't feel safe. Are we going to go in - and the actual - will
we go and meet, and rehearse in the building, that's a whole different discussion that we're
having. And that comes with six feet apart, twelve
feet apart, you wearing a mask, you have to sit over here, how many people in a room. The flutes are the worst with the aerosol,
singing is worse. Do you put a pantyhose around the trombone
bell and the trumpet players - anyone with a spit valve has a doggie pee pad. That's like the next thing that everyone's
supposed - so once we go into teaching like that, even though we're separate, it's a whole
list of things. So when I meet these guys, the first meeting
is going to be on the first - first I have to see what the instrumentation is. And then I have to see who's willing to show
up if they are. So I'm not even sure if we're going to meet
in person or not. And if the kids don't feel safe they don't
have to, you can't penalize them. Some of them don't feel safe. So it's going to be - we're going to have
a whole 'nother conversation once this thing gets started. MR: You're reading my mind because we can
only predict how we're going to feel in October, even if we'll still be here, even if we'll
still have students in October. It's a bit ironic, in our first interview
I was asking you what kind of advice you'd give to your graduating jazz majors and you
were saying how that they have to have an on-line presence, they have a create an audience,
they have to create a following. And here we are where our only option is pretty
much online. DD: Yeah. And when I was finishing up the semester and
right when you were doing it also, I started to notice like all these - like Chick Corea
is putting something on, you know, and you're looking at - I think Ron Carter has a book
out or something. I'm just watching who's putting things out
and I was thinking boy it's such a - I mean in a way it's such a great time if you want
to sign up and hang with Chick for an hour, or talk to Kenny Barron for 40 minutes. But everybody, that market for that is really
crowded and if you're looking to put your own thing out maybe it's too crowded. If you're looking to surf and find good things
to check out it's really rich. MR: Yeah. Do you have an opinion - sorry - do you have
an opinion about why this happened in 2020 worldwide? DD: You mean why and how this virus started? Is that what you mean? Or you're talking about music? MR: No I'm talking about the virus. I'm wondering if you have had any thoughts
about why is the world being subjected to this at this point in our history. DD: Oh yeah, that's a good question. I'm not, you know I remember seeing the clips
with the wet market in Wuhan, you know, just how it could have come from there. But I'm actually more just concerned with
the fact that you know in December people knew about it and then we didn't really even
start hearing about it until the end of February. And that was - that's not good. And my daughter lives right out there, she
lives out in California in Los Gatos where it started. And we were out there in December. And in retrospect you're looking back and
I was thinking man, I didn't feel too good in January. I wonder if I even had the thing. And I actually went and got tested and it
came back negative but my doctor said look, that's just for the antibodies, you know? Because I felt sick and then I felt better. And then I was okay. But the sick - it was pretty rough. But it was like a real bad flu but nothing
was working and it just sort of ran its course I guess. But I didn't know anything about it. No one was talking about it, it wasn't anywhere
on the news. And my doctor said, "Well you know if you
get tested for the antibodies don't get excited about the result because the test isn't foolproof,
in fact it's pretty flawed." And then he was telling me about these guys
that were on that Navy ship, remember, so they tested those guys, I'm going to have
- the numbers are going to be wrong - be he said something like they tested like 600 sailors
who had it. Okay. And then they tested them for the antibodies,
so all of the 600 that had it, 40% showed antibodies, which means either the antibodies
don't last long or not everybody makes the antibodies. So he says, "You're going to get tested now"
and it was July, "you're going to get tested to see if maybe you had it in December or
January," he goes, "it's probably going to come up negative. So it's not going to tell you anything." So you know and that just makes going back
even trickier. So, but as far as how it started it's almost
like it already started then you found out about it. MR: Yes. DD: It's like a race that was being run before
anybody knew it was running you know. We hopped on it in the 10-mile mark and we
were like well wait a minute, when did this start? MR: How do you feel about your state and how
they've approached handling the covid? DD: Well in New Jersey, you know the governor,
you know he's trying. We have the seashore you know and there's,
we keep seeing these examples of people getting together down at the shore and there's a lot
of people, and, "Don't tell me what to do." Not everybody, but all you need is a few. And he, you know he's putting the word out,
you know, "I don't want to close down but we all have to play this. This is not a thing that we can do with only
some people doing it." And he winds up we're at level two then we're
at level three, then we're at level two. He's trying to get us to level three but he
can't because our numbers are spiking here and, you know, he had a Memorial Day thing
and then two weeks afterwards there was an outbreak. And the thing about New Jersey is when people
are at the shore in New Jersey it's not just people who live down there, it's people from
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and so you come down, you spend the weekend and everybody goes back,
and now you're - plus we're in the middle of New York and Delaware, they have that turnpike
that goes straight through it like a spine. So we have, I think he's doing the best he
can. He certainly is wearing a mask, he's that
type of governor, not the one that says don't worry about it. But I think, you know once it's politicized
then it's a whole other animal. You know, then the conversation is almost
not about health anymore and how to prevent it, it becomes about rights. You know what I mean? These conversations get hijacked and they
become like something else. And the something else isn't what it is. You know? Does that make sense? MR: It does. Thank you. How was your motivation to practice your saxophone? DD: You mean do I have covid chops? Because that's what they're calling it now,
some friends - I have a friend I talked to the other day, he says, I haven't cracked
a case since Easter. So when this started I had a bunch of things
I had to write. I have a really good friend who plays violin
and he wanted a violin rhythm section thing that was kind of jazzy that he could play,
and a little five movement thing I wrote up and I had all the time in the world. I went right through it. I wrote some etudes for saxophone that are
going to be out soon through Kendor Publishing, and then I wrote a piece for this new classical
saxophone teacher we have coming in. So I was revved up and with all the time I
just sat and I was knocking this stuff out. And I thought wow, this would take me six
months of finding time, and boom, like in six weeks everything was done and no one was
working. And I mailed everybody all the stuff and nothing
was happening. And what happened was I'm practicing and I
need a little project or if I know something is coming up it was good, and I was sticking
with it. And I thought let me find out, because I know
how I am, let me, I'm always fascinated with solo playing, like Sonny, when Sonny would
do his thing. There's a version of Sonny Rollins doing "Body
and Soul." It's just perfect, just perfect, everything
- and it's not that there are licks, and no cliches, and when I listen to it, someone
who just maybe knows the tune a little bit could drop into any four seconds of it and
you'd know exactly where you're at in the form, because Sonny is just - I think it was
on his "Africa Brass" album. He just did this unaccompanied thing. So I always thought that was great, then he
did that solo, Soloscope, where he just did the art museum at the modern art museum in
New York where he just plays for an hour. So I always thought that was interesting. So I gave a concert - not a concert - from
my basement, you know our university's trying to keep a face of some type up while no one's
working or doing anything. So only a solo violin player, blah blah blah
- she asked me can you do something. I said yeah, there'll be a solo concert. I tried to do it with play-along records but
the mix wasn't right. I figured let me just bone up on it. So it was kind of fun to play. So it gave me a goal, because when you play
unaccompanied you can just play and you know it will fit, but if the ear hears it then
I wanted it to be strong enough so you knew exactly where I was which meant you're honoring
the given harmony a little bit more than superimposing other things on top. Like we talked in the last interview if I
play something a half step up when you play unaccompanied it just sounds like you changed
key. You know there's no dissonance because you're
not playing against anything. So I would take myself and listen and think
hmm, that would work with a rhythm section but not unaccompanied. And I just sort of started to sense how to
play so it kind of felt like I - and I figured, you know, I'm not going for anything real
fast or high, just a mood, just to say something, nothing to prove. The Blue Note "Nothing to Prove" sessions. You know? Just play something that has a - it's a mood
and it works and it's mellow and you're not trying to do anything. You're trying to get the ego out of it. It's almost like a Zen practice I guess. And it was kind of fun. And I enjoyed going after that because I was
clear with it. So now what I'm doing is kind of eyeballing
just a couple of tunes and thinking I'll put it up unaccompanied, put up a couple, I think
four different clips of unaccompanied tunes. I did "Bernie's Tune" and "Tenderly" because
my dad liked that, "Jitterbug Waltz" and a couple of different things, just to put them
up. Short. Three minutes, four minutes, blank - and everybody's
doing it. Everybody's putting up something. But it's sort of a project - well it's sort
of gives me a beacon sort of, as opposed to just practice. Just practice and practice and practice you
know. You can't even practice for a gig. You know. MR: Some reason to crack the case. DD: Yeah, yeah, to crack open the case. And it's okay. But I know what it is. I don't know how, you know, I always thought
it would be interesting to do unaccompanied but now that's the only thing going on. I did do one jam session where we did the
distance thing and the guys had the mask, we were out back and everybody was spread
out 25 feet and all that, or 25 people. And I thought it would be great. But you know what? It was good to see people but to me it was
like another reminder that this isn't it. MR: Right. DD: You work really hard trying to pretend
you don't notice that stuff. It's exhausting trying to pretend that it
doesn't bother you. "This is great. Where's the drummer?" "I'm going to do fours." "What's your area code?" You know. MR: I find it interesting that you said when
you were playing a cappella that your instincts were to stay more, to stay closer to the chords
and not meander somewhere because there's nothing to bump up against, when actually
you might think it would go the other way. Like I'm playing by myself I can go anywhere
I want. But I think you're being kind to the listener
by - DD: Well thank you, Monk. But I think when I heard Sonny's thing, what
impressed me about that is just how tight it was. It's not like - he didn't compromise, he didn't
compromise. If you check out "Body and Soul" unaccompanied
Sonny, it's just great, and he's doing whatever he wants, and sticking to the basic harmony
doesn't mean, to me it doesn't mean you're doing less, it's what you do in anything. You could pick some kind of technique that's
going to create dissonance and still play basically nothing with it, it's just a technique. But I think it was actually a deeper way of
playing with a given harmony, and maybe it that's what was happening back at that time,
but I just thought it was great to know where he was at so strongly. It was just something I just wanted to aim
for, that's all. I mean it could have been, I could have just
said I'll do whatever, and I've heard people do that, and that's fine too, but I just thought
you know I need to be creative. It's funny, did I talk about it in the last
interview? No. There was this, it's almost like when actors
start to act and these people, they use this Meisner technique of acting, or if somebody's
going to start a composition, how do you start? What's my intent? You know we talked about intent last time
but there's this book called Poetics of Music. It's a little paperback. And it's a book where Stravinsky went to Harvard
and there are all these, it's like a question and answer period, a little Q&A. And in it, of course Stravinsky could write
in different styles. Something could be tonal, then the next thing
is atonal, then one thing is real rhythmic and another thing's lyrical, then one thing
is all pointillistic. So someone asked Stravinsky, "How do you start,
all your pieces are so different, how do you start when you play," I mean, "when you compose." And he said, you know, "That's the hardest
time because I can go anywhere." So he noodles around until he finds an idea
then he freezes it and he says I'm only going to be in that. And once you have your framework then you
can create within it. So if I'm going to go unaccompanied, if I
don't have some kind of framework, I mean I could just drift all over the place. I'm playing out, I'm playing in, I'm playing
out - who knows, who cares? Fine. But if I make the decision to hang with the
chords basically because I love what Sonny did, so I mean Sonny is sort of the muse for
me on that. I'm just going to - and then I taped it and
listened to it, and I know a lot of these things would work with a rhythm section, but
I just figured let me try it. It's a good discipline. Because when you can control it like that
then you really have the tune down. And then when you play out or do whatever
it's almost like you can't mess it up if you really know it - if you can hold it together
every measure, and not even play it in time, you know? Like [scats] In other words if you looked
at like this is the tune and I'm looking at my frame, and this is the cursor going by,
it doesn't go like this, that's a steady tempo. And if you could stop it anywhere and keep
playing, then you're really owning the harmony and it feels natural if you say something
musical in it. So that's what I noticed with Sonny, I thought
man, the tune was just like putty in his hands. He's forming whatever he wants with it. And that's how it is I guess, the effect of
what I wanted to try and do with it. So Monk, if we're trying to figure out stuff
to do to stay interested. MR: Yeah. And along those lines I'm wondering if things
miraculously return to normal in fairly short order, are there things you were doing before
that you might not go back to because you found that it would be easier not to? DD: What are you talking about, teaching or
playing or anything? MR: I guess I'm talking about like in my case
I found that, you know most of the gigs I play are as a keyboard player. So I've got all this gear. And you know sometimes I have to bring my
own PA system and carry it up out of the basement and put it in the car, and that part I'm not
missing. So I guess it's almost like I'm asking this
question of myself. DD: You want a sound system?
MR: How much does it weigh, man? That's the thing. You know our gear keeps getting heavier. I don't know about you but that's what I find. DD: Yeah, no I know what you're talking about. No I see what you mean. Well it's interesting because I'm not sure
how it's going to come back. In this area, like Philadelphia and New York,
you know, everything is so, everybody's trying, you see it's sort of struggling to come back,
we're going to [inaudible] we're wearing our masks, we're separated, you know. And before this happened I was actually doing
quite a lot of duo playing with a guitar player who was a former student, now he's a good
friend, I'm Godfather to two of his children, and he plays real great guitar. And we've been doing a lot of duo gigs. And I love that. I love playing with - because you can back
up so close to silence and make so much work, like all the technique works when you're soft. Like all that [scats] one thing is getting
loud it all flattens out. It becomes [scats] and all the articulation
- you know I remember when James Moody came to our school and he was playing flute. He had a big band chart on "Cherokee." And you know when you play flute in front
of a big band you're thinking oh my God here we go the sound's going to kill me. And when I would play I'm playing a high F,
a G, and I'm trying to like play through it. And Moody was just [scats] - Moody was playing
at the volume that you would speak at in a normal conversation like this. So I'm in front of the band conducting and
I point to Moody on the solo, he didn't even have parts. I said, "Moody, I'll point to you, you solo,
it'll be background and I'll wave you out. I don't even want to give you parts to worry
about." Then you think, you know Moody. So he winds up, he's the best. My God, the kids just loved him, they loved
him - Moody - so anyway [scats]. And I'm listening to it. I'm here and Moody's here, the rhythm section
is back there. The guys are playing pretty loud. Electric bass. Moody never gets loud. Moody's just playing. It's almost as if the volume didn't affect
him in the least. And I'm going like this to the guys and they
think they're playing soft, they can't hear a thing Moody's doing, but I'm right in front
of him and he just sounded great. Because once you start playing hard, your
technique goes out the window. You're playing in a different way you know. You're squeezing, your tension, all that business. But I was just checking it out and I was thinking
look at that, Moody's not even giving into the volume. What a lesson. So afterwards we all go out to eat and I said,
"Moody, you got to tell me," you know Moody, oh man. I said, "You really taught me a lesson, man." I said it was loud and you never gave into
the volume. And I don't know if he misunderstood me or
what but I didn't mean, but I said, "You didn't even get loud." He goes, "Well loud's good. Loud is good." I said, "I know it's good but you didn't give
in, your technique didn't suffer because you're trying to play over everybody. He goes, "Loud's good, if Sonny Rollins can
play loud." Now I know, but what I'm saying is, "You didn't
play loud which showed me something." "Well loud is good." I said, "All right, all right, all right." But he's such a sweet guy - so to play in
a duo situation is, you know volume-wise, all that stuff is available, and it could
be available in a group situation but - in fact it was your interview with Jerry Dodgion
I think, where he was talking about rehearsing, I think maybe "Tiptoe" with some college band
and they said, "We can't get the sound out of the saxes like you guys." And Jerry was listening and he said, "Stop." And he went over and unplugged the bass amp. And then they played it again and it was perfect. And they looked at each other. And he goes, "The bass with Richard was never
that loud." Richard Davis. And so volume kind of you don't even realize
it, bass is so far away sonically that you don't even know if it's loud. You know the bass can really trick you. The bass can be loud and it's so away from
the voicing that you kind of don't hear it, but if you trim it back all of a sudden voicings
will call. Because Thad's band was never loud. Thad's band was never loud, all those great
voicings with two sopranos and that real wide wispy sax thing that he used to write. That came through because, you know, Mel had
that low sounding cymbal and the rhythm section wasn't that loud. Roland Hanna half the time wouldn't even play. But once again, I don't remember what you
asked me. MR: Let me get back to you on that. Well let me just wrap up and put you on the
spot - you have any predictions for your semester? DD: Yeah. I think by maybe the third week I feel, in
looking at how everything is happening around the country it's nothing that makes me feel
like anyone has a grip on this. You know, that camp in Missouri they did everything,
they socially distanced, they changed the water filters, they wore masks, they cleaned
their hands. They did all of it and they had to close down. And there's nothing that makes me think that
we're going to be okay with this. I think like in two or three weeks we'll all
be home. As soon as we get the first spike in the dorms,
I mean what are we going to do? And that's really where it is. We could teach in a class where everyone's
like 15 feet apart, but what are you going to do about the bathrooms? You want to be the fifth, sixth or tenth person
to use a rest room in between classes? You know. So I think as far as that, I'm pretty much
in my head set to do the whole thing remote. You know that's what we call it, remote, and
come up with different ideas. I teach the jazz band and we're not going
to be playing. I mean maybe we'll see if we can make something
work but if enough students don't want to come in then it's not going to happen. We're actually not really cleared to do that
at this level we're at anyway. But it's going to be different. I just don't - you know the flu season is
coming up. You know, so that's a whole different thing
too. So I don't - I'm sort of like going for the
ride but everybody is saying the same thing, Monk, everybody. Every teacher. All my friends that I call, everybody is all
in the same boat. Now you're doing the same thing I'm doing,
right? MR: Exactly, yeah. Well I appreciate your input and your advice
on online teaching, and your attitude. And so I'm going to stop recording and then
you can tell me the secret of life, which you promised to do. DD: Okay. Yeah, that's right, let's get to that. MR: All right, over and out. DD: All right.
