Q: You recently completed recording your first album, "Salmon Up!", to be released this Winter on Point14 Records. The album features eight original compositions and one cleverly reworked standard, Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On?" Can you describe your concept for the music, the duality of your role as composer and performer, and your choice to include this one standard?
A: I think most improvising musicians reject the distinction between composer and performer, at least as that distinction is traditionally made in the context of European art music, and it was certainly in thisspirit that I approached this record. I composed the music knowing that ultimately the recordings and performances would be the artistic artifacts rather than the scores. This, however, is nothing more than a description of how improvised music functions; it is not a description of my concept personally. If we are talking about my personal style, I think it is safest to let the music speak for itself, but I can say that I hoped the music would be unpredictable and would not sound like it takes itself too seriously. As for How Long Has This Been Going On? I thought that I'd take the liberty at the midpoint of the album of giving voice to the question that most listeners were probably asking by then. That's a joke, but I did intend it to be sort of a palate cleanser in between the first half of the album and the second, which actually comprises a suite of three pieces (Wheesh, Swarmoosh, and Kapoosh).
Q: You say that you aspire on this album to create music that doesn't take itself too seriously, and yet you are engaged in the pursuit of a graduate degree in music composition. And the music itself is meticulously crafted and rehearsed. This is a prominent feature in your music, the tension between 'serious' musicianship and an ardent awareness of the silliness inherent in the entire enterprise of playing music. In a genre where albums are often given nauseatingly earnest titles, yours is entitled "Salmon Up". Can you elaborate on this fondness for the whimsical and the role of irony in your music?
A: I'm not sure that the world of academic music necessarily must be the world of music that takes itself too seriously. And I do believe that some music is rightfully taken very seriously. But your question is really about the silliness of the titles in contrast with the meticulousness of the music. I think that today's jazz music is a little confused, generally, about titles; how programmatic to make them, how literal, etc. My approach (and it's not mine alone) is just one reaction to that confusion, with earnestness and sentimentality representing the opposite approach.
Q: Along the lines of program music, yours spans a range on this album - from Vashti, a song about the character from the Jewish Book of Esther to Salmon Up and the Suite, songs which seem to clearly emanate from purely musical ideas with names coming later. Do you notice any differences between the music you write with a specific context in mind and those ideas that are purely visceral?
A: I wouldn't call Vashti program music; it's just a song (it does have lyrics) written for Vashti, the largely ignored (non-Jewish) heroine of the Esther narrative. So, yes, it does have non-musical origins in a way that the rest of the music on the record does not. And the music itself is also different from what is found on the rest of the record, but I think this is more a function of its having been written for voice than its underlying concept. Also, I wouldn't parse the music on this album in terms of what is 'visceral' and what is not - I think that's the wrong word. A more accurate distinction is that seven pieces were written for piano trio, and one for voice.
Q: A lot of musicians record an album with the idea that they'll use it to book a tour, or that they'll tour to promote the album. You, however, decided to record just before heading off to Santa Cruz to begin work on a graduate degree in composition. What motivated you to record now and what are your future plans for live performance?
A: The fact that I knew I was going to have to leave new york for my graduate degree hastened the process of putting the record together, but other than that Salmon Up has nothing to do with my geographic location. Like any musician, I want my music to have as large an audience as possible - both as a recording and in live performance. Even though I'm in school for composition, I'm trying to keep performance as large a part of my life as I can. A large scale tour will probably have to wait until I'm done here, but there are plenty of excellent venues all over California that I'm hoping will have me before I leave.
