more Strindberg and Helium

Kurt Rosenwinkel interview at Camp Studio

Thanks to Ethan Iverson's blog,Do the Math, I found this interview with Kurt Rosenwinkel that was more revealing than any interview with him I've read. To read the entire thing, go here. I've put some highlights below.



Interviewer: you must be so happy sometimes?

KR: the sweetness of a certain friction- it's bliss. those are moments of dissolution, among the few happiest of my life, if you can say "happy"; a word i have never related to. i don't think trees are happy. but i believe they feel the bliss of a certain friction.

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i just want to say one thing about my relationship to these kinds of things [different scales he is discussing]. this area is on a high intellectual level, which is fine. but i just want people to know that i am not interested in these things because i enjoy contemplating them intellectually. i'm not a braniac. for me discussions like this one usually come from the need to learn how to play my own music; that my music has this stuff in it naturally and it moves me to learn about it on an intellectual and practical level. my music is not intellectual. that's my most hated comment from writers, etc. they really don't get it at all if they think that. i try to make my music as simple as it can be, always.
there are some moments in my songs that have a chord that one needs to use octave specific scales to play over. that "chord tones" only sound good in the bottom register and a completely different scale emerges at the top like a flower.

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Interviewer: What "unofficial" session stands out for you as a great and deep moment in your life?

KR: i love what this question points to: that there are moments of music so profound and that can happen anywhere. there are two deeply affecting moments i would like to share. the first is when i was at a friends house and i heard a beautiful modern classical orchestral piece being played over the radio. i went into the room where it was and listened to the most incredible music i had ever heard, it went on for about 20-30 minutes. only afterwards did i realize that two radios were playing different music at the same time, and i was hearing it as one piece of pure genius.
there have been many amazing moments in private jam sessions and parties through my life, but the other time i'd like to relate i was alone playing the piano. i was playing and at a certain point i felt something take over and begin to play its own music. i stopped actively doing anything and i just watched and listened as this music was unfolding in front of my eyes. i saw spirits running back and forth across the keys, using my hands to make an impression in the material world through music. the music that came out was like a symphony. that's how i remember it. but all the while it was happening i knew i would never remember any of it because it was going by so fast and there was so much detail and what i recognized as perfect form. when it was finished i just sat there for a long time, feeling this heart-yearning mix of rapture and sadness, and what i guess would be called humility- that music of far greater power was possible when your self can dissolve and not think that it's you that makes music.
one of the ways i see music is as this comet that flies around the universe. sometimes it swoops down, other times it is nearer or farther. and on rare occasions it picks you up and takes you up and you fly with it on a journey only it knows how to make; showing you things. and we humans? only passengers, or mediums- like we are the magic pill that music takes- it digests us and we dissolve like an alka-seltzer. that is what music needs to become real, to manifest- a human dissolution pill. to feel music from the inside out and feel myself dissolve into nothingness was i think the deepest thing i have ever experienced. i can count the times this has happened on two hands in my life- being possessed like this. and i think that is very lucky.

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i am certain that there is a real spirit realm. it has been the revelations and literal signs from this realm that have given my life its coherency and made clear the lessons i need to learn to move forward. there is really nothing of value in my life that hasn't come in some recognizable way from this world. so my prayers and aspirations are to the universe and the organization of forces within it. that there is a universal intelligence is a matter of experience for me, and can always be demonstrated when the meditation is true. answers come in startlingly literal ways. i know that separation is an illusion and we are all part of a net sum. analogy and visualization are the best ways to describe and apprehend esoteric reality. one thing i used to do and still do sometimes is to imagine that the vibrations of music are changing the spiritual or vibrational (same thing) reality of the space i am in. i would see a sea of pluses and minuses in the room and go about changing the minuses to pluses. negativity to positivity. i understand the role of the drummer who cleanses the space before a shamanistic ritual. it makes sense from an energetic point of view.

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It was good to be able to experience being on a major label. it provided valuable windows into how it all works (and doesn't work). it was a good way to build an audience too...yes we both did eventually get dropped. i am happy to be on my own now making records. i can do what i want and i can make some money from it too, unlike being on a label. there was an adjustment period trying to figure out how to release records again, but now i think we have figured out how to do it, at least one way to do it, and i am looking forward to putting out more than one record every 2-3 years....

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sometimes all i have are the goblin doors. i realized today while riding my bike that if i could make something good, music, that would be really meaningful beyond my life, that i would run my bike into an oncoming car and obliterate myself if that's what it took. i would do that for it.

i think that fact might make it difficult for me to find stability or happiness but i know it's true.

in outer space it's either lasers or free float. guidance. thrusters are so byzantine; crude. they won't ever get you where you need to go. ok maybe in a spacecraft but that's just a very crude analogy for the space travel we do as human beings. in our minds. who hasn't been afraid of the dimensions there? humanity seeks comfort but also gets used to wider circles of knowledge, little by little over eons. i feel like i have lived eons. what else would you call it when some of the lives you have lived are like postcards or dreams. sometimes i can't tell the difference between dream and memory. time seems ancient even in my own memory. just as ancient as anything. egypt. my own personal fictions. my lived life is a personal fiction. ancient egypt is just as close or far, really to my thoughts, to my dreams, to my memories. past life experiences? hell yes! even within my living brain!!
i haven't really got a fucking clue who i am. anyway, knowing is over. starting is learning. i don't want to be someone who knows.

about knowing:
to go from a person who doesn't know to a person who knows is a test. when you are young you are in a position of not knowing relative to everything in life. the natural orientation is towards the unknown as someone who doesn't know. in order to grow in any art form you have to adopt this position. later when you become the one who knows, relative to a younger generation, there is the risk of thinking that you know relative to your own art. orienting yourself towards your art as someone who knows will disable your ability to grow. music has no questions that we can answer. it is we who ask the questions and music which answers.

My Kid Could Paint That

One of the most lingering, poignant, and thought-provoking documentaries I've seen in the past year was a small film called My Kid Could Paint That. The subject centers around a then four-year-old named Marla Olmstead, an adorable little girl from upstate New York who became a superstar in the art world in 2005 when her abstract paintings began to sell for tens of thousands of dollars. When Sixty Minutes came to do a piece about her, suspicion arose that perhaps she was not wholly responsible for production of her work, that her father, himself an amateur painter was either guiding her or doctoring the paintings himself. However, in the same piece, a curator for MOMA, without being told who the artist is, says that the paintings are worthy of the work that appears in any top museum. Much of the movie centers around the resulting controversy, and Marla's parents go on to defend her work against this suspicion by producing several videos which chronicle one of Marla's paintings from start to finish. Personally, I had a gut feeling watching the movie that there is some unhealthy and unacknowledged parental involvement going on in Marla's painting (something about the father's defensiveness and shifty eyes that lead me to feel this way), however, on a much deeper level the movie raises some of the most profound questions about art, and ends up being much more about the world of adults and the definition of art than a gifted child.

First of all, the movie shows just how important the story behind any work of art is. People are so drawn to the fact that these paintings were done by a child, and once this is known the paintings take on qualities that they might not have otherwise. It is impossible to experience these paintings purely for what they are intrinsically once you know they were painted by a four-year-old. This goes for so much of art... how often are we moved by something because of the story that surrounds it? Does Nick Drake's music take on an other-worldly beauty because I know about his tragic end? Is the last movement of Mahler 9 so haunting because I know it was one of the last things he completed before dying? Am I more drawn to Billie Holliday because I know what she was living through? How about that experience we've all had of being in a modern art museum and giving special attention to a work simply because it is by an iconic figure in the art world? Can we ever experience art purely for what it is and judge it solely on its own merits? In the end, except for the purpose of honesty and authenticity (nobody should be lied to in order so that art sells), why should it matter whether Marla's work was done by her father or not? If the paintings are as haunting, dramatic, and beautiful as people say they are, shouldn't they be just as valuable and worthy of our attentions, regardless of their origin?

The idea of a four-year-old producing a profound piece of contemporary art that is then compared to work by Pollack or Kandinsky also challenges the notion of contemporary art being something worth taking seriously. Mia Fineman, in an article for Slate (go here to read it), writes:

Ten years ago, I traveled around Thailand with Russian conceptual artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, teaching domesticated elephants to hold brushes in their trunks and apply paint to canvas. The project was cheerfully satirical, but the elephants really did learn to paint, and their bold, gestural abstractions were strikingly similar to Marla's—and raised many of the same questions. Like Marla, elephants approach a blank canvas with a blithe lack of inhibition and no preconceived idea of what a painting is supposed to look like. What matters to them is the process: the friction of the brush against the surface of the canvas, the creamy viscosity of the paint, and the fine-motor activity involved in making different kinds of marks, from long sweeping strokes to quick rhythmic dabs and slithery caresses.

Where does the notion of skill come into play when a four-year-old (or an elephant) can produce something that is compared to the masterworks? Is skill still important in art, or is it the intention or the idea behind the work that transforms it into great art? If is is the intention or idea that makes a work into art, again, isn't it troubling that a precocious but otherwise normal four-year-old can produce abstract art that is taken so seriously? Skeptics of modern art could easily conclude that the entire Marla Olmstead affair is proof that abstract expressionism is a giant hoax. Fineman ends her article refuting this notion and writes:

Yes, anyone can pick up a brush and slather paint on canvas in a drippy style that evokes Jackson Pollock. But it took an artist like Pollock to step back from his own work, which at the time looked unlike anything that had come before, and say, with bold conviction: "This is it. This is what modern painting looks like." In other words, Pollock taught us how to see art in a new way.

The Prince of Darkness

Strangely, I actually remember seeing this when it originally aired. There are some priceless moments... Miles owns this interview.

Folklore Urbano at the Brooklyn Public Library this Saturday

For those of you in Brooklyn this weekend, I'm performing a free concert with Pablo Mayor's Folklore Urbano on the steps of the Brooklyn Library at 2 PM this Saturday. Folklore Urbano is one of the boldest bands in the city, thirteen members strong and a combination of Colombian rhythms and traditional instrumentation with elements of modern jazz. Pablo writes all the arrangements and most of the compositions, and it has been a thrill to be part of this group as it has evolved. If you're in Brooklyn this weekend (is there a better place to be?) come check it out. For more information, click here.

mastering Words Project II

Last week I took the final step in preparing the musical content of Words Project II for release on New Amsterdam Records later this year. Thanks to a recommendation from Eivind Opsvik, who not only plays bass and theremin (!) on the record but also mixed two tracks on it, I did it with Steven Berson, who runs an operation called Total Sonic Media, located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Unlike many mastering engineers, Steve likes to work with the client in attendance for the session, and offers a rate affordable enough to make the extra time it takes to explain what he's doing during the process part of the experience. As a musician himself, Steve brings a great set of ears and understanding to his work, as well as twenty years of mastering experience with many types of music.

I can't claim to be an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination... My general technophobia extends to the record world, and as soon as people start talking about microphones, preamps and plug-ins I am quickly lost. I've always known that mastering is important to the sound of any record but never understood much of what goes on in the process of it. As more and more music is purchased as single tracks, many aspects of mastering are becoming less important, and I've always been quite confused what direction to take when it has come to this stage in the process. (Mastering starts at about $500 typically and quickly goes into the thousands for many productions).

Mastering is always the last thing done to the music before a CD is printed, the final sheen put on most records before they come out. Besides putting the songs in the right order and spacing them accordingly, the most crucial and interesting work is done by manipulating frequencies, pannings, and adjusting the volume of the record so that it sounds even and unified. In other words, a CD that is mastered well keeps you from having to adjust the volume of it while you are listening to it. By adjusting frequencies, the mastering engineer finds the right balance of frequency that assures that the CD sounds clear regardless of the stereo system that it's played on. I had never realized how much the mix of the music can be manipulated by this frequency adjustment. By being given their own sonic space and processed with what's called a DeEsser, a tool that decreases sibilance (“ess” and “shh” sounds), many of the vocals on the record were made clearer and more direct. Some more basic tracks were widened sonically and some denser ones compacted (or compressed) to make them fit together and sound optimal. Without opening up any mixes, Steve was even able to lessen the reverb on one track that I wanted to sound more intimate than was achieved in the studio (the reverb was coming from the room, not a reverb unit). As it turns out, reverb tends to appear at a very particular frequency which was lessened to create the desired effect. Some subtle things were doctored, including a bit of uneveness in a solo soprano saxophone portion due to the microphone picking up parts of the instrument more directly than others.

What a great experience to sit there and watch all this happen... and a great feeling to know that what's done is done musically and I can now devote myself more to the other aspects of the record release.

Jazz and the amateur

One of the great opportunities of the past six months was the chance to teach an improvisation clinic at Hunter College in Manhattan recently. Thanks to Ryan Keberle, a professor at the school and one of the most fantastic trombonists on the planet, I was invited to go there and do a ninety-minute class on improvisation. Never having met or heard the students there, it was very difficult to know where to begin and what level to teach at. Improvisation is a difficult subject to address in any setting and demands that the teacher have a deep understanding of the student's strengths, weaknesses, and background.

One of the things that I emphasize with anybody who I teach is that there is no one path to becoming an improviser. If one was to ask a hundred jazz musicians how they learned to play, one would get a hundred different answers. Most people worth listening to are on a consistently evolving path, one that constantly reexamines itself and revises any stable notions or ideas. Though there are many tangible aspects to the traditional jazz vocabulary, one can arrive at them in so many different ways and everybody has to find what works best for them. In the end, the teacher only teaches one to teach themselves.

Thus, coming in to teach a group of strangers for ninety minutes and leave them with something valuable was a daunting notion. However, the attitudes and hunger for guidance and knowledge that I found there was so warm, humble, and open that my fears and concerns were quickly set aside. The students at Hunter are not people looking to pursue careers as performers. Many are education majors or are studying something completely different and simply taking music classes for the joy of it. There are also several older students in the class who have taken up music as a hobby.

So much of my musical existence is spent around people seeking a career as artists and performers. How refreshing to get out of this world and work with people playing without this immense weight upon their shoulders. I remember reading some essays by Paul Hindemith that talked about so much of the classical music before the mid-20th century being written so amateurs could play it, thus keeping it accessible and blurring the distinction between professional and amateur. As contemporary music became more and more difficult (and the television replaced the piano as the center of many households), the rift between professional and amateur widened, and many lost touch with it as it grew increasingly insular, unaccessible, and unpopular. Hindemith believes that the resurgence of classical music is largely contingent upon this being addressed.

I feel very similarly about where jazz is right now. We have to make the learning process of it accessible to people who take it up later in life. How fortunate we professionals were to immerse ourselves in this elusive process so early in our lives, before our lives became so crunched for time and paralyzed by the adult mind so easily overwhelmed by the massive amount of information that one feels must be absorbed in order to learn this language. The most valuable thing that I thought I could give the students was to encourage them to search for their own paths, never to let themselves become overwhelmed, and most of all, to continue enjoying the process. Of course there were some technical tidbits - leading tones, rhythmic development, etc.- but I tried to always come back to these main ideas. Over the course of the clinic, so many of them opened up to me with their questions and frustrations that forced me to question my own process and practice, which is what teaching should be about and why it's an important activity for every musician to engage in. The amateur musician is one of the most crucial parts of the music community, and I think it is the job of every musician to become involved with them and make sure that there are practitioners of jazz beyond the increasingly insular world of professionals.