Category: Interviews

Source: burning ambulance. Last month, the jazz world was shocked at the unexpected and tragic news that trumpeter Jaimie Branch had died, at home, at just 39. I only met her once, at a trio gig she played with bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Mike Pride in September 2019, and that was only because I…

Source: Modulisme. Ken Moore is a multi-instrumentalist who comes from Baltimore, Maryland, and very early decided to incorporate synthesis into his art. Moore started to explore electronic music in the mid ’70s and in 1980 he established his own label, Anvil Creations, and in the following four years released approximately 20 tapes of solo and…

Source: burning ambulance. Vernon Reid is a guitarist who was born in England but grew up in New York. He’s best known as the leader of Living Colour, and one of the co-founders of the Black Rock Coalition along with the late writer Greg Tate, but he’s got a long and varied discography that encompasses…

Source: 15 questions. No Pussyfooting was made in 72. For me, this phase from the late 60s and early 70s, up to the early 80s, marked a revolution in terms of what people created with sound. It is a period particularly rich in albums which were significant for musical history. But amongst them, No Pussyfooting…

Source: 15 questions. Over the course of his career, Nate Wooley has collaborated, performed the music of and appeared on recordings with a wide range of artists, including Trevor Dunn, Bruno Duplant, Gerald Cleaver, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Mark Sanders, Mette Rasmussen, Mats Gustafsson, Ches Smith, Tomas Fujiwara, Michael Pisaro, and Wadada Leo Smith.

Source: Echoes. We ride a Hellbound Train with Steve Tibbetts. Among my friends and many musicians, Steve Tibbetts has been a legend since his second album, YR came out in 1980. And his first release was really good too. He’s released twelve albums in the last 40 years, eight of them on ECM Records. Each…

Source: The Non-Writer. The tour was great, but intense (12 concerts in 14 days in 9 countries, so a lot of travel) and Jordan tested positive for Covid on entry into Tel Aviv, so he ended up having to stay there for a week while we carried on without him which was pretty frustrating. He…

Source: Osiris. Adam Rudolph is a fusion artist in about as broad a sense as you can imagine. He’s been a percussionist for close to 50 years, and should be much better known than he is. He’s been around since the early ’70s and has worked with everyone: Yusef Lateef, Fred Anderson, Don Cherry, Roscoe…

Source: Interviews with Terry Riley. A handful of old interviews. Charles Amirkhanian talks with composer Terry Riley as well as Robert Ashley and William Maraldo, co-directors of the Mills Center for Contemporary Music, about a concert of Riley’s and other’s music that was to be held at Mills College, on Nov. 16, 1969. Riley describes…

Source: 15 questions. I am a natural collaborator, probably due to me being a middle child, and/or a libra. I’ve always felt like myself when in a group setting. In fact, when I started doing solo shows regularly with my Congs For Brums project in 2006, it took me a long time to not hate…

Source: 15 questions. Strangely, I feel more sincere with electronic instruments. Electricity is an energy, it’s like fire. It’s kind of magical, dangerous. And you know, the last couple of weeks, I worked on a remix. It was the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine. Personally, I was in an insulated and safe place…

Source: 15 questions. I find that my compositional practice, and often with instrumental music that does not involve percussion at all, informs my playing more and more, consciously and subconsciously. I treat composition as a tool to teach myself something about the intimacies of sound and the interpersonal relationships that instruments, the performer and the…

Source: 15 questions. You could say that Equal Temperament was the alternative when I grew up in Turkey, and that’s perhaps why I was drawn to Western classical and pop music at first. Early on in my education in the U.S. I was blown away by La Monte Young’s Well Tuned Piano, as something unique…

Source: Which Sinfonia. Bassist, composer, improviser, radio player, conductor, space maker, and question asker Nick Dunston’s music defies categorization and genre as swiftly as he toggles between roles onstage. His new record “Spider Season” (Out Of Your Head Records), featuring Kalia Vandever on trombone/fx and DoYeon Kim on gayageum, is coming out next Friday July…

Source: Straight No Chaser. Tim Berne doesn’t rest on his laurels, and he doesn’t look back. After coming to prominence playing on projects like John Zorn’s Spy vs. Spy, he has utilized his talented saxophone playing and writing with a number of groups over the past thirty years. Whether it was Bloodcount in the 1990’s…

Source: The Wire. Interviewing AMM pianist John Tilbury for The Wire in his house in Deal, Kent, I arrive with my list of questions scribbled in a notebook. I have an agenda, but it becomes clear that Tilbury has one, too. After submitting graciously to my questions for over an hour, Tilbury lunges towards a…