Zinman Unbound.

(Eric Zinman)

1.What brought you to music?

"One is never sure about these things but I know I was singing as early as I could. My parents fought alot when I was young and playing the piano was a kind of solace for me. My mother was my first piano teacher. I began formal studies on the piano at age 7 with Angel Ramon Rivera. Whenever there was music, I couldn't focus on anything else. There are the stereotypic attractions that famous musicians talk about like Ellington saying that his initial interest was in attracting women and I was certainly drawn by the attention and the emotional import of music.

My initial studies were in singing, choir, piano, composition, rock band. I sang boys soprano in opera choir from age 9-11. I always wanted to get closer to this music called "jazz" where you really express yourself on the instrument as opposed to interpreting music. Gradually I began to understand the difference between art and culture.

When I discovered "black music" , I mean all of it, there was no turning back. I'm not sure one can be brought to music through recordings though they are important, so its important to tell you what I saw and the effect it had on me.I was fortunate that although my education was extremely conservative...I was able to see good pianists (mostly prodigies) play the piano. Most of it was, of course, solo.

The jazz that I had seen was mostly lounge music. I didn't hear the real thing until my time at Bennington College with Bill Dixon. He brought a number of musicians from NYC and other places who completely altered my sense of musical reality forever: 1983: William Parker, Marco Eneidi, Dennis Charles, David Ware, Ya Ya (Washington DC), Peter Kowald, John Voigt, Laurence Cook, Mario Pavone etc.

Later in the late 80's when I was going for an MM at NEC I met Marc Liebowitz who organized a series of the music at the Brandeis Winer Wing where the radio station was. I saw Jamil Moondoc, Karen Borca, Beaver Harris, Rashid Bakr, Zane Massey, and many others. I first saw Cecil Taylor at Nightstage in 1987.

I also remember John Voigt brought Sabir Mateen to Boston in the 90's. It is difficult for people to come to the instruments today because there are very few visible role models.When you ask people their favorite athletes they usually have a name for you. But when you ask them who their favorite pianist is, they don't know what to answer, they just play the instrument."

2.Describe your role models, muses and mentors.

"I had jazz teachers in Boston. Most of them did not believe the avant-garde was music. I was inspired by Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley, Lowell Davidson, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Lyons, George Russell, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk Horace Silver to name my favorites. I met Bill Dixon in 1981.

It completely changed my life. Its impossible to sum up what you learn from someone but these points are key. "If you play one note for 20 years, no one will be able to play that note the way you do and from that will emerge a technique, method, and a philosophy". " There is no technique. There are techniques".

The idea that the most authentic expression is the most spontaneous, that everything you do on an instrument has structure, form and content if you do your homework. So I have spent the last 29 years since 1982 finding out what I could do on the piano. There are of course many other influences. From Laurence Cook I continued a concept of sound placement that began with Bill Dixon.

I was very influenced by Nadi Qamar (formerly Spalding Gibbons, Mingus's first piano player)who taught me many dark secrets about the music, the way he would spring into the piano with that dry punchy sound and make the left hand sound like a bass switching strings, minimal use of the pedal.

Like the old timers, Nadi played with the outer and inner locked voicings that would express the melody with that "shout" sound, like Errol Garner, keeping the melody on top and even voicing over the melody, the way Art Tatum would, but he voiced like George Shearing. Most important though, he swang more than any pianist I have ever known personally in terms of metrical time.

After that there were many influences, roommates, friends. Glen Spearman lived with me for a while and I picked up many ideas from him about how to hit the piano in relation to the horn and percussion. I loved his sound and the way he played effortlessly into the altissimo on the tenor making it sound like an alto at times and then doing these chords and shakes in the low register like his mentor Frank Wright. Glen turned me on to Frank Wright, and I may also have received some misinformation about Frank Wright as well as Glen loved to brag. But when it came to the horn he was sincere.

Earlier and for many years I knew Raphe Malik and we did some large ensemble projects which taught me a lot. Raphe was always very generous and we would share the piano and trade chords. I wasn't so interested in playing standards but I learned more about that music from Raphe, ideas that I could use creatively, I mean in terms of how to phrase and how to shift the weight in the phrasing.

My beginnings were with Craig Schildhauer on bass and Laurence Cook on drums. We learned together but Craig and I always looked to Laurence to find the way, like Laurence said: its like running around the block looking for an address; most of the time you don't find it. But when you do, ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!....

We tried every way we could to create compositions, from conventional notation to attacking the situation instantly and all methods, chords, melodies, rhythms, themes like Laurence's famous Sabrina or channeling the founding fathers or Hotel Germain with the telephone on the floor tom. You always expected it to ring and and unexpectedly Laurence would pick up the phone and answer it.

To my eyes and ears it was pure surrealist magic in music, Laurence playing under a white sheet with red splotches on it,a Webern row. Craig tuning his bass to a shortwave radio.

I discussed with Laurence the difference between human speechlike gestures and mechanical structures, different types of endings, a sudden spatter or dissolution. Laurence also talked to me about Lowell Davidson saying that in the end Lowell had reduced himself to playing small intervals no greater than a tritone in each hand.

Laurence was always a romantic and continuously said ," play the pretty chords" "like Bill Evans" which used to annoy me especially since I thought Laurence was more inventive than Paul Motian. But of course in all the good music we try to appreciate the subtleties versus the niceties.

Bill Dixon had told me about Lowell and had asked me to seek him out.It was just a coincidence I guess but everybody I knew, knew Lowell and had worked with him, painter Linda Clave , cellist Glynis Lomon, Laurence Cook, John Voigt, Craig Schildhauer.

I mean it felt like I was surrounded by Lowell though I had never heard him especially when Linda Clave showed me a painting called 'Cities' which was based on a Lowell piece called 'Cities' and Dixon told me I had some of his sound which of course made me very nervous since I had no idea what he was talking about.

I got to meet Lowell and talk to him about Boston musicians and music.To me in a certain context Lowell was extremely lucid though I would not say linear. Lowell answered all my questions and even laughed with me about my awkward encounters in academia learning certain techniques like Madame Chaloff. Lowell clearly had an infamous reputation in academic circles which is what Boston is about musically and that made me feel better and also gave me courage in knowing I was right about certain things especially in regard to pedagogy.

One musician who will remain nameless said that Lowell always tried to get Madame Challoff's sound but never could. I knew this was horseshit but I wanted to hear what Lowell had to say and he said exactly the right thing because studying with someone and learning from them is not the same as imitating them. So Lowell said "They played scales, I studied with her" and Lowell was very proud.To me that encounter was a miracle, in such a cold academic/insurance town like Boston.

I liked Lowell's way of combining triads in different inversions.He was also extremely lyrical with a great balance of tension and release.John Voigt gave me a number of recordings on cassette of him with Laurence and Lowell.The spacing and interaction was something I had never heard in any ensemble. My first recording called the Eric Zinman Trio had no acceptance or distribution.

Later John Voigt joined the group and I called it Eric Zinman Ensemble. I had been a fan of John Voigt's music since 1983 when I first saw him play with Bill Dixon. I loved his speechlike side stepping swinging way ,extremely sensitive to every dynamic, nuance, inflection and when I found out he was a poet, it made even more sense to me, plus John is full of ideas to create music.

Though obviously I've been inspired by musicians, over the years I have not been inspired by the music scene so much. My biggest influences in my life have been poetry and painting and more recently theater because of my work with Ian MacKinnon. My second recording was accepted by Cadence and it seems well distributed.I have continued to learn from everybody I play with, however I am a pianist and that limits me in many ways. That's why I took up the euphonium.

Whats important about the euphonium is that my thinking in music is always orchestral so the euphonium is a very useful instrument with a less common but strong supportive color. I like doing these very simple orchestral sketches with this horn.

Music is the only thing I have in my life. I worked at many jobs, like you have said, one where you focus on a task you don't care about, I mean like cab or dishwashing where you can still think about music.

When I look back most of my life has been spent alone, thinking. I'm an only child and not so social an animal though in recent years I've gotten better at being social and my work in business certainly helped socialize me.

I realized if I was going to be taken seriously as a musician I would have to leave Boston/Cambridge and travel, something that is very difficult to do with the piano. My first trip to Europe was in 2006. I was very well received in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna and I got to play with (in my opinion) some of the best players in Europe, Ernst Petrowsky, Jan Roder, Thomas Rehnert,Michael Griener, Benjamin Duboc, Didier Lasserre, Mario Rechtern, Fritz Novotny, Sepp Mitterbauer and more.However that did not get me plane tickets right away.

My teacher Bill Dixon exposed me to the European school. I first met some of these players in 1983 and through the 80's. Certain American players have shown their disinterest and even disdain for the European school but I feel it is the future.Perhaps my thinking is more political than just aesthetic. Right now nationalism is very strong all over the world. Music has the power to cut through that and change the way people interact.

So (it is) as Coltrane said "a force for good", because though it may be an American music, it is increasingly an international music.Perhaps it is the contrast of US foreign policy. Art and music are emotionally believable in a way that media and culture are not.

I learned many interesting things about art and politics in Europe. Culture is political influence through the feelings of the people. So it is said that Art speaks to you and I, but "culture" speaks to us. Most of the money for the arts in the US goes to culture meaning the Symphony Orchestra, museums, ballet etc.

When I read the interview you did with John Voigt he made the point that the widows of the robber barons gave their gelt to the symphony orchestra's, museums, ballet etc because they wanted their influence to continue. The BFA gave approx. 96 million dollars in MA in 2007. So contrary to what people say, there is a lot of money in the arts but artists receive very little of it."

3. Describe your community of colleagues and audiences.

"You have to be grateful for what audience you get. The problem in one art is the same in all the arts. I think Lola makes the right point. We must take joy in keeping this music alive. And she's right that there is a devoted audience.

So far my favorite audience has been Paris, each time they are completely silent and when the music is over they make more noise than anybody.

Though there is a devoted audience, in a transient city like Cambridge that is always changing. The audiences we've had have been extremely kind. For me they were larger in 1995 than now. Recently a number of musicians in Boston have really tried hard to get things going again and I am grateful for that. Its an honor to have really fine musicians in the audience. There seems to be a whole new line of fine musicians who take to this music with fire and that makes living here a lot more fun and exciting.

I described some of my colleagues in other questions but I left out Glynis Lomon and Syd Smart. I have known Syd since 1983 but did not play regularly with him until 2005. There were two drummers I had always wanted to play with, Laurence Cook and Syd Smart.So I feel I have lived my dream.I built my work around Laurence Cook.That was my beginning.

Raqib Hassan was the only musician ever to hire me for a band in the US. He hired me three times and fired me three times. Raqib's sound on the tenor was always a thrill for me, a unique sound and I used to love the way he would play whole solos in chords.I agree with Forbes (Graham) that Raqib's music is about peace on Earth as he so often says and that also attracted me.

I met Glynis in 1989 when I lived in JP. Bill Dixon had asked me to contact her and I did.The first time I didn't relate to her playing at all. I mean I was still under the spell of culture.I had done music since I was a kid and I didn't believe that the cello could or should sound like that.

Glynis is an anomaly (check out the astronomy definition of anomaly: the angular distance of a planet or satellite from its last perihelion or perigree) .She is known as the cellist who stands, as with bassists who sit on stools and play in symphony orchestras.

When you stand and play you get a different sound. Everyone knows she studied with Bill Dixon in the 70's and has recently been a part of his orchestra in several concerts and at least one recording but what people may not know is that Bill Dixon played the cello at one time and even recorded a film score entirely with him overdubbing all his own cello playing. I think the film is called the 'Wealth of a Nation' done in the 60's.

Bill Dixon knows what he wants from the cello and Glynis learned to play with all the instruments in Bill Dixon's ensemble equally, whether its playing fourths with the piano which you know is not easy for an instrument tuned in fifths or duets with percussion.

She has a dry sound more akin to a wind instrument, so she can play long tones with any wind instrument so it sounds like a section. no french romantic stuff and no prisoner to culture.She doesn't overdo the vibrato so she can blend more easily if she wants to.

She is equally at home with percussion and no one I know gets a sound like Glynis in the high register on any instrument.Glynis also is completely contemporary and uses the whole instrument with an enormous variety of color, rhythm,register, line, pizzicato long/short and wonderful bounce bowing.

She told me (and I happen to agree), that in formal concert music there is often a tendency to go for A SOUND or THE SOUND especially with string instruments which is a pristine rounded vibrato sound even as a soloist, though Glynis thought that Rostropovich was the exception and I once saw Rostropovich play and was surprised by the variety of colors that he could make within a phrase.

I think Syd Smart was one of Milford Graves longest standing students but I might need to verify that.Some may know that he played, toured and recorded with Sam Rivers in the 70's and performed with Bill Dixon in Vienna in the 80's, Jimmy Lyon's Box set and the recently released recording with Raphe Malik and Frank Wright which is really an incredible document of his playing from that period.

I think I covered the releases that are currently available.Syd understands where I'm coming from so he is very easy for me to play with. I like the impulse he creates with each sound, the way he uses his hands also on the trap set, the sense of surprise with sudden compounding rhythms, a dynamic subtlety that's very intense but rarely loud.

I worked for Clair Mallardie at Harvard in their dance program as an accompanist. I learned many things from Clair about performing and art. She said an artist has only two strengths, their humility, and their vulnerability.

I have come to believe that the best way to reach an audience is not the way of the entertainer by giving people what they want or trying to impress you but through your humanity which includes your humility and vulnerability and one concert that struck me where I think we felt that maybe there were some people in the audience who were not digging what we were playing (call me psychic for knowing this) and Syd suddenly left the drumset and continued to play the drums just by walking into the audience and using his feet , hands and voice and you felt this warm feeling because he wasn't trying to impress you.

He was just sharing deeply and intensely his feelings and as he got close to certain people in the audience I saw several of them smile like they felt it.Another time in Pittsfield recently he just stopped us and said "this is too serious" and began to tell this story about an entertainer named Penis Van Lesbos and had the audience laughing ridiculously. Glynis was not too happy.

Initially I was laughing because I needed to laugh that night (I'm also trying to practice nonserious therapy )and I guess I was impressed because it worked, though they all left after 30 minutes.They must have thought of us like some traveling circus act. So of course you can't win all the time ( at least we weren't singing Raw Hide while people threw bottles, like in the Blues Brothers movie). One more story of this nature deserves to be told.

As you may know when you start out in music, you invite friends and family, later on you know better because unless you play for people you don't know, you're not really a performer. One evening at the Willow Jazz Club, I had invited my relatives to see what I was doing.

They all started to talk while Laurence was playing. Laurence's approach to this was not so humble. He put on a boom box of an ailing distorted recording of Elvin Jones with Coltrane on cassette and proceeded to eat a sandwich on stage by the boom box while my family and relatives talked.Laurence finished the sandwich turned off the boom box and proceeded quite suddenly to imitate the sound of the drums on the boom box.

I've already said a lot about Mario Rechtern online he is gradually being recognized for his contribution, though its a bit late as always.

I should also say something about a record that I'm fond of that I made with Glynis Lomon and Blaise Siwula and two drummers: William Buchanan and Hugo Manuschevich.

Blaise is among the few people that called me and wanted to work with me and we did a number of sessions and concerts that led to a CD I called the THE GREAT DIVIDE which I was very happy with.The piano is a bit ambient sounding but it doesn't bother me.I tried to be like glue in that recording feeding the dialogue between Glynis and Blaise.

I don't think there were any solos of mine on that. I really liked the density, fleetness and fire in Blaise's playing and he was easy to work with and is a very sensitive ensemble player. Blaise also introduced me to Mario Rechtern. COMA, directed by Blaise Siwula is also a very positive force in NYC."

4.What are the important elements you apply to your personal approach to performance, repertoire and composition?

"What you practice has to come out of your ensemble experiences. I think of myself as an ensemble player. Initially I am not a fan of solo playing unless it encompasses these experiences. I use Bill Dixon's definition for composition: "The assembling of materials generally accessible to everyone into a new order." I like this definition because it crosses disciplines.

It is not acceptable to academic composers. I am not a fan of repertoire though I give in a little. I was asked by Laurence and John to create compositions and provide guidelines and so I tried my best to comply. I have always kept sketch books. I also listen back to many sessions and often create pieces from those selections.

But each piece is supposed to help you get to the next thing or idea you are working toward. This involves understanding and contemplating what the musicians in your ensemble do and what you can do as a composer to make them sound their best i.e getting the most from them and imposing the least on them. I can't explain beyond that."

5.What role does teaching have in your work?

"Because I only teach at an elementary level, its role is to reinforce fundamental materials that all musicians use. Everybody knows what a major scale is so we're all classically trained. The question is more ' How can the instrument function in the contemporary (present) ensemble, based on what's been accomplished in 100 years?

As you know every new work of art changes the way we perceive the old, so in my opinion history is only useful in relation to this question. Rhythm is still the unexplored territory in music. So then I say that's how music should be taught, in relation to the present ensemble. I think most creative musicians would agree with me."

6. How have changes in the economy impacted your work?

"Because so little is offered, I'm not sure yet."

7. If you perform beyond your region or overseas, how has that changed over time?

"It has improved for me since 2006 as people get to know who I am and what I do. I was able to get more opportunities and money but I think that is mostly through musicians and not promoters. There are some but not many reviews in their languages. Several times people have asked for information about me and I send it out and hear nothing back so now I don't do that."

8.How has technology and changes in the way music circulates impacted your work?

"The internet seems to have made my career in some ways, but that can be deceptive as internet presence does not always translate into high paying gigs. Ayler records in Sweden has been good to me and has brought some reviews. As you know the-improvisor has been online for over 10 years now."

9. Describe your current and potential future projects and collaborations along with things you would like to do.

"I have no special plans other than the projects I am currently working. I have generally led my own groups. Its only recently that people have asked me to do things. When I return from Europe I would like to perform an electric concept that I've been working on with Laurence.

It seems to stem back to 1992 when I was doing some electronic music with Laurence Cook and Marc Leibowitz. We were using a casio sampler and also an old patch analog moog snythesizer with amplified acoustic guitar and piano. One other project I want to finally get to is solo piano. I'm creating sketches for this and I am using several drawing/paintings by Linda Clave."
(Eric Zinman and Ernst Ludwig Petrowsky)

John Voigt. Outsider Bass.

John Voigt.
Outsider Bass.
Moonfood Records.
MF 0010.

This is unique on a number of levels beginning with the hand painted covers and John's own liner notes that are like snippets of his literary aspect.  The cover painting is its own layer as it effaces the background of John performing in front of Pollack paintings exhibited at the old ICA location

There is an aspect of Musique Concrete, not in the sense that any of the sounds have been tape manipulated but in the very astute use of multi-track and emerging digital recording to convey ideas in times and places of slender resources. It is, on the whole, a studio project and serves as a vivid exposition of John's thinking as a composer in some oscillation between composition and improvisation.

Then we have his capacity to make a drum kit of the thing and the appearance of one of his cartoon voices which rival the potentials of Mel Blanc.
John gave me a summary of its aspects in an aside at a recent gallery show with Matt Lavelle and Syd Smart. It consists of a set of core metaphors that loom large in his method evolution. The pieces are metaphors for defining moments and music phenomena that draws his ear. They have elements of love-hate tensions.

Overall, the structure is like a suite within a suite that circles back. In the beginning and end there is Charles Parker. The pendulum swings back and forth between the plucked and the bowed, between the percussive and harmonic with visits to melodic deftly dispersed.

It is likely to be a valuable reference for all string players seeking promptings for invention and for the rest of us who keep our ears fully engaged, it repays visits very well.

1. First Intimation of the Death of Charles Parker.
"..for solo bass with bow, (hair & nut). Extrapolated from King Pleasure's lyrics to Parker's Mood wherein the lyricist foresaw the demise of the father-creator of modern jazz."

This is one of the few pieces that might be part of Johns performance array. He made it from metaphor memories of hearing King Pleasure early in life. Laying in a crib with King Pleasure on the radio puts vocals and lyrics in focus and the instruments might seem to be an alien churning.


2. In Homage of Krupa: In Which A Traveling Band of Basses Plays the Music of Old Jazz Cats...
"..the string bass can be the most handsome of percussion instruments. The full subtitle of the piece is: In which a traveling band of 6 bass playing mantises jam on the music of the Old Jazz Cats to a non-existent audience of fertile (yet non-orgasmic) Black Widow Spiders in preparation for an engagement at Carnegie Hall. The music is meant to be a vehicle for jitterbugging."
"Swing, Swing Swing" is said to be the all time best selling jazz song at the peak of its popularity as a national craze. John spent months listening to it to apprehend its core and then made a multi track percussion suite of bass sounds as it played through studio headphones.

3. Contemplation of A Blue Egyptian Goddess.
"The piece explores the bases (sorry) of all music: Harmonics. The string length of the instrument enables the production of a full range of such overtones. Harmonics form the theoretical and practical foundation of scales, chords and timbres Second, and in a more metaphysical vein, the goddess referred to is, as John Anthony West writes,"a personification of universal principles, functions and processes. The Egyptians viewed the world as an entirely conscious creation, an aspect of divine consciousness>" However goddess need not be the word used in the title. Guardian Angel, Higher Self, or (the Hebrew) Maggid all cover the same ground (of being)."
This intends to upend new age trends by actually embedding substance found in the real properties of sound and the mystery attending it all. It is a very lush and wide ranging merge of bass sound properties and recording potential at that time. It is a regular thicket of partials and other lurkings in the overtone biome. The total bow focus and elongated tone voicings convey this stillness of a nocturne from which rises subtle flutterings of seabirds distantly heard. There's many a twitter here.

4.Biker Bass: In Search of Heavy Metal.
"How far can the string bass go? This is head bashing heavy metal rock music, or a parody of it. All sounds [noises] are made by five acoustic basses with their pickups, naturally occurring feedbacks and distortion button amplifiers. The bass player in front sings. The essence of this music is the excitement ecstasy of riding a motorcycle full out down a highway. Here the bass becomes a Harley Davidson Hog. (Could such a tune become the anthem of the Hell's Angels?) As the song says  Do it!-Do It!-Do It!."
This dense layered mass readily sums up the world of edgy noise rock things with sonic age and the land of Branca. John worked the controls and listened to headphones as Peter the engineer has an aversion to this sort of thing. As a sequencing trick, it explodes like a seal bomb after the contemplative harmonic wash before it but sets things up well for what follows. It has this deliberately stupid plodding beat to distill the essence of jackboot thug stomp as Johnenvisions it.

It could be mistaken for a lost out take from a Big Black record save for that voice, one of many used by John for word pieces he does with bass to support his literary element. As a straight narrator/reader he has few peers and probably could have made a whole other career of voice overs.

Quartet:
"Based on Bartok's 5th String Quartet (but none could tell). Another concept: the inner child. First alone, unattended, in a crib (at times we all were). Then playing stick ball. Then a plaintively singing duet. Then a reprise of crying, now for four basses. The form for the second and fourth movement is an arch.

4---------------

3-----------------------------

2-----------------------------------------

1-------------------------------------------------------------

which creates a unison harmonic-rhythm (as in choirs of primitives, madmen and geniuses). Listen, then you'll understand what I mean."
I should mention that I'm utterly unfamiliar with the Bartok as my set of the quartets was something I gave to WMFO in the 80s and I need to get another version. So I'll just run with dumb janitorial asides on what the parts conjure.

5. Cry.

These are some long sobs. It would be perfect dinner music for the segment in The Tin Drum where the characters go to Schmoo's Onion Parlor, a bistro where patrons immerse themselves in onion fumes to engage in cathartic sobs. The bowed melancholia is nonetheless larded with a low end sonic fullness and wealth.

6. Ball.

Plucky pluckage package of improvised bats and balls in alleys forlorn but brightened by the game engagement.The percussive rises again.

7. Sad.

This also plucks well and broods a bit. Tones are bent every which way. Fat strum clusters dart this way and that before shifting to rolling plucks. He has a hammering thing going on with the fret hand that must be a handful for thick bass strings.

8. Cry-Reprise.

Jeeze, the opening bow sweep jars well if such a thing can be conveyed. Startle comes to mind. There is a melodic motif that hints at Amazing Grace. It seems to involve a couple of basses.

9. Second Intimation of the Death of Charles Parker.
"...for pizzicato solo, formed from the material of the First Intimation."

The first and last form bookends of capabilities in miniatures with this pluckiness to answer the bowing whereby it began.

Lola Danza Weighs In.

Lola Danza is a force of nature. In addition to the hallmark quality of restless seeking and growing in stature, she is also a godsend to her colleagues due to effort she applies to non musical things like producing concerts and evangelizing for the music on public radio and elsewhere. And she is quite modest about this aspect of her life.

This is the first of what I hope will be many survey replies for a project I dreamed up to gather the words of actual artists. The inspiration comes from the old WPA writers project that was part of the FDR stimulus work during the first great Depression. With another one bearing down, I wanted to revisit the concept and share what I gather.

1.What brought you to music?

I come from a long line of musicians. My father is a jazz guitarist. My grandfather was a jazz pianist and had his own big band in the 40's. So I grew up with music.

2.Describe your role models, muses and mentors.

I have many mentors. Locally in Boston: Nat Mugavero, John Voigt, John Lockwood, Bob Gullotti, Bob Moses, Mili Bermejo. Generally: Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Meredith Monk, Bjork, Jeanne Lee, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Maria Callas, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Lowell Davidson, Charles Gayle, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Anita O'Day, and many many more.

3. Describe your community of colleagues and audiences.

I am proud and grateful to be involved with such a beautiful community of artists. And I am glad that we're keeping this music alive and that there is a devoted audience who loves and supports this music.

4.What are the important elements you apply to your personal approach to performance, repertoire and composition?

When playing Free Jazz there is an important element of listening that is required. It's a different type of hearing. Its almost a meditative hearing. In my approach to free jazz I am always serving the music and not myself. I believe that this music is sacred and that the most important element is to make your bandmates sound better than you do. Giving is better than receiving and that's what this music is about. Its about healing and giving.

5.What role does teaching have in your work?

I believe that this music has a lot to offer to people. And so by passing this information along we keep this creative music alive. We're all searching for more information and new information. As artists we are always trying to grow and get better. So by teaching others we share information. And I believe in sharing. And as we teach we also learn. I believe strongly in education.

6. How have changes in the economy impacted your work?

Its a known fact that when the economy isn't going well art thrives. I think in the art community we can definitely put this time to good use. Unfortunately as a society we've become greedy and fake. Its times like these that shake us and test us. As artists we can remind society that creativity is just as important as anything material. "Creativity is more important than knowledge"- Albert Einstein. So when we keep this in mind, we as humans can accomplish anything. We have forgotten about our imagination. We, as a people have forgotten about creativity. Words create. We constantly create our environment. And as artists we can remind people that self expression through art can heal us. Creativity can open doors that we didn't see before or realize.

I believe in the power of positive thinking. When looking at the economy we can either see only the bad or we can see the good and how this is the time when artists can really make a difference. Its called an "Artistic Revolution". A revolution of the minds. We need to question our intentions and ourselves and not judge ourselves. But question. It seems as though people have lost their sense of curiosity. Now is the time to question things. To get excited about things. To dream the impossible and know that nothing is impossible. That as a people we can change things. That as a people we do have power. That as a people we can create the life that we want to live.

7. If you perform beyond your region or overseas, how has that changed over time?

Singing abroad is wonderful. There are amazing musicians everywhere and that's wonderful to experience. And its amazing to see how many people outside of the US love this type of creative music.


8.How has technology and changes in the way music circulates impacted your work?

Technology has made getting your work out there easier. Music business has turned into another animal altogether because of the internet. Its a work in progress. There are pros and cons with everything. Right now its a great time to be a little guy. Because its a fair and free market. And anything is possible.

9. Describe your current and potential future projects and collaborations along with things you would like to do.

I just released another CD "Live Free" on my label Evolver. There personnel is Rakalam Bob Moses- Drums, Wes Brown- Bass, Matt Langley- Tenor and Soprano Sax, and me- voice. All About Jazz did a 5,000 word article on me. Its a review on my CD and also a great interview. I am teaching master classes on improvisation at universities around the country. I will be going on tour to Korea and Japan this summer. I just recorded another CD to be released next year.

John Voigt Dialogues: Part 1.

John Voigt is a dear old pal going back to 1972 and one of the very best musical minds still stuck living in Boston. I made a vague stab at writing a jazz book in Seattle but the money sucked and it was a chore and I had rent to pay. That aside, I got an amazing chapter out of Mr. Voigts correspondence and it is too noteworthy to just leave in a hard drive. Thus I give you, Mr Voigt.

Describe the circumstances that brought you to the bass.

First a mechanistic answer: I was like a ball in a pin ball machine: born dirt poor in the South End of Boston, a multi-ethnic, multi-racial slum of bow front tenements made up of cold water flats. My freedom loving parents had been economically crushed by their dreams of sharing spiritual realities through art in life--mom was a dancer, dad her percussionist. By the 1950'sthe only gigs Mom got was stripping for bachelor parties and in carnivals.

I needed to keep the inner-truths of my parents, but not by growing up to be on welfare. So I began that which I continue to this day: searching for a personal freedom within a self-imposed order of formal constructs.

In Boston in the 1950's one could listen to great jazz on AM radio, there was Symphony Sid, fresh from the New York City scene, and my favorite jazz disc-jockey: Bob "The Robin" Martin. Both played Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton, Stan Getz and Miles Davis. As I listened I slowly began to hear what I was looking for, a freedom (improvisation) within an abstract series of formal patterns. I got a trumpet and began playing it. But I was horrible; I have the worst embouchure possible. But my sweat along with Divine help got me into the U.S. Navy as a musician. And that was a cool time, the late 1950's. No wars, no killing people. The roughest duty was deciding which whores to bed down with in foreign ports of call.

I had bought some Gerry Mulligan charts, and was sitting with a trumpeter, saxophonist and drummer friend in a military base drinking beer and said let's play the arrangements. I just grabbed a bass that was in the band room. I had a good time feel on it. It seemed that this was the way to move to continue reaching my goal of being an innovative jazz player. So at twenty-one years of age I was out of the service with a ten-year-old car and a plywood bass and a couple of thousand bucks in the bank. In 1960 I returned to Boston and began living and jamming with musicians who were going to Berklee School of Music.

But that is positing facts on the mechanistic level. One could also say that on an Emotional Level I prefer being the foundation element of an ensemble--as in the name of the instrument "Bass" as in Basis of what is

Taking place. Also it was a practical economic choice since a bass player had more of a chance to get work than did a trumpet player.

Describe the evolution of your personal performance and composition aesthetic and the role of ensembles, such as Music of The Spheres, and of compositions, such as Bingo, in the expression of your aesthetic and method.

As a kid I wanted to play like Miles Davis. In the Navy I dug the East Coast sound of the black players, Blakey's bands, Monk, Clifford Brown. In 1959 I heard the Atlantic Ornette Coleman records. That blew me away. I didn't know what they were doing but that is what I wanted to do.

Later during a psychedelic drug high I figured it out. It was as if the notes played of the previous African-Americans were etched onto plates of glass and Coleman and his quartet were taking the glass and breaking it into cubist-like constructions and then played these shards. With that the door opened for my search.

I had to make money so during the 1960's I played a commercial form of jazz music, trios behind singers doing American popular music standards. Then there was a period of playing what is now called Salsa music. From this I learned how Hispanic music families did it: the family would sing every evening; the youngest would begin that way--by hearing first, no chords, no scales, no method books. But singing in the tradition. In jazz of course the corollary was spirituals and is Gospel. Then the Latino child might go to the Afro-Cuban percussion. If you were going to become a bass player you first played the large conga drum, the Tumba. Then you'd get some piano, now playing the European classics as best you could so that you'd learn music theory, how to read music, not the scales as such but in the context of great music, Bach, Chopin, etc. Then you'd play the Latin popular standards, say, Besume Mucho -- the songs with a lot of dripping emotions to them. Then the Cuban Sons called Mambos in Mexico. Jamming on one or two dominant chords. This is a direct contact to the religious music of West Africa, Afro-percussion, and voices. Then the Latin band members hipped me to Cuban bassist Chachao. Now the notes didn't matter, but how YOU played them mattered: Be a bull on the instrument. Believe in what you played and in what you felt.

I have played with thousands of musicians. Obviously from the good and great ones things were learned. But I learned also from the not so good players, as in what NOT TO DO. There is a constant learning process here of social psychology and life styles. As in Tony Williams telling me about how his musician father who had the great drummers who came to Boston--Roach, Jones, Blakey, etc. stay at his home for free and play all week with Tony. And told him what to Not Do. The big one was stay away from hard drugs. The society was set up then so that young intellectual creative blacks wound up socially and physically destroyed by heroin. But the same thing also happens to poor whites. The moral of that J. Edgar Hoover story being that by using the Mafia bringing in drugs to the ghettos, the economic power structure could keep the power for their children.

All the time I was playing the commercial jazz gigs, at places like the Playboy Club. I was also playing a freedom jazz with Lowell Davidson. Michael Mantler was a roommate. We played each morning before breakfast.

By the 1970's I began leading more radical ensembles. A Sun Ra like band I called Music of The Spheres. I did an LP in 1976 of bass overdubs to a prose piece that had been published by Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press fame. I was not finding players in Boston then who could do what I was hearing so I had to be the whole ensemble myself. By the 1980's I was playing with more New York City Downtown masters: Andrew Cyrille, Jemeel Moondoc, Oliver Lake. I played the precursor to the Visions Festivals, the Sound Unity Festival in New York City with Bill Dixon. You learn a lot when you are playing with Dixon and Mario Pavone--a killer bassist--and in the audience is William Parker, Cecil Taylor and Don Cherry.

Being put in that kind of pressure cooker will quickly anneal you. There were the two great gigs that Chris Rich set up, one week with Butch Morris and another with Joseph Jarman. Here I saw and heard what ensembles could do through conduction, physically dictating what is to be played, and through interpreting the written page very loosely.

In the 1990's I began doing gigs at the Knitting Factory, then at various Vision festivals, most often with Jemeel Moondoc or Thurston Moore. I was learning about ensembles and how to create music for them. Moondoc was especially influential by saying things such as "I don't write out the harmonies for bass, guitar, piano. You know chords better than I do. Play what you hear." One of Moondoc's compositions was built on the note F, period. That was it: play 4/4 time and be aware of the note, F. With the right players this can really work. That band had Tyrone Hill and Steve Swell on trombones, Bern Nix on guitar, Roy Campbell and Nathan Breedlove on trumpets and Cody Moffitt on drums. With such musicians you can do such things.

In the last ten years my compositions and improvisations have melted together, I love Butch Morris' phrase com-provisation. Or Moondoc saying that we are not musicians (they are technicians) but that we are instantaneous-composers. The phrase "motivic development" has some bearing on this, but usually when that is said people lock into a European style of music that can be notated, that is not really what I am doing. Maybe a better way to understand it begins with how Sonny Rollins' uses phrase development. But for me the loose drive of black music is by itself not enough. So I have experimented with Noise Music timbre effects, and using the voice as in acting. I have a persona I call Beat-Bop who does "Let's Get High" sing alongs. Although I love Black music best and I think that I can play it rather well there is the bald faced truth that I am white. A head aching producing paradox if I think about it too much.

So I always am searching for timbre extensions, things that began in Black music but I want to move them in the direction of people such as string players Malcolm Goldstein, or Burt Turetsky. But Burt for me is always coming out from his Euro music headspace and training. For me, so many other things can be done on such a massive instrument as the bass. So many never-played-before sounds may be found and worked with. And I have an electric-upright bass made for me by a Luthier master, John Carruthers in Venice California. With that curious instrument the stomp boxes (a la Thurston Moore) have possibilities.

Come the new millennium there are now great improvisers living in and around Boston. I've formed Workshop ensembles--The Hotel Rooftop Improv. Workshop, and Strings with Things--and we are preparing for gigs and recordings. I expect names of such that I am now playing with as Katt Hernandez-violin, Marc Bisson-prepared guitar, William Buchanan-percussion will be known by the musical intelligentsia in the years to come. This certainly will take place as long as they can hang on through the pains and trials of trying to be uniquely creative in our current society.

And there are other great musicians around Boston and Providence RI: Lawrence Cook on drums, James Coleman on Theramin, Greg Kelley on trumpet, Paul Flaherty on saxophone, Tom Plsek on trombone, John Damian on prepared guitar; in Bennington Vermont, studying with Milford Graves is Ben Hall on drums. I am leaving many names out just because of space. But for my music the wealth of great players outside of New York City allows for creation to take place in Boston.

Today from my spiritual/psychological studies I believe that it is not about the notes we play but the ENERGY with which we play them and about the personality that we project through what we are playing. That is what the audience (the non-music student part of the audience, that is) is interested in and that is what they want to participate in.

Pianist Stephanie Stone, in her eighties and still doing gigs in New York, and still hanging out most every night at the Knitting Factory or at Tonic told me what it is I am searching for. She says that what I want to do musically is FLY. That is it; that is totally correct.

Snippet of Dialogue with John Voigt.

A few years ago, I researched and worked on a book about Jazz Biz, how the artists made money and a living over the 20th century. But it was for an academic press and the money sucked and it was a handful.

There were to be two volumes, one of the story and one of oral histories of various artists. including John Voigt. So I share this fun segment about melodic context gyrations over time and one of the eternal questions...is it 'art' or entertainment or what?

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"The big bugbear question is the art/pop designation koan. Why not apply a bit of Whitehead or Russell to the problem and work out a basis like this: Pre-Renaissance views of music in Europe organized form into the secular and the sacred. The Modern era saw this redefined as Folk music and Art music, Casual or Formal?"

"Now, if one is willing to work with this model as a sorting tool it gets more useful examine the relations between the two areas. For example there have long been migrations of context in musical forms. Something that was a sacred melody in a work by Dufay wanders over the centuries into its ghost in a Cajun folk song."

"Sometimes a shepherd's melody wanders into Mozart or Bartok runs around the Backwaters with an Edison cylinder recorder to find melodies that four centuries prior belonged to the kings court and were reworked by the peasants after they fell out of court fashion".

"The point is that this sorting demon is just that and not intended to decide whether casual or formal is good or bad. The advantage of a folk music is the wealth of invention and discovery in contexts less hidebound by orthodoxy".

"The advantage of an art music it that it is often accompanied by systems of thought that assists the evaluation and configuration of these discoveries in the folk area through the provision of notation systems, music theories and analytical tools. It gives the helpful elements of orthodoxy".

"What's weirder is we're stuck with this because the church once threatened to burn you at the stake if you used whole tone melodies. The bastards sweated poor Palastrina and probably helped drive Gesualdo crazy".

John Voigt: "The tri-tone as well--same as bop's flatted fifth."

Me: "So the precious rationality of western music is built on the most preposterous swamp of irrationality, of superstition. But the consequences for a decent human world were even worse outside of music."

John Voigt: "It exists as a cultural elitist racist religion of keeping the power with the current power-holders. That is why the widows give their robber baron dead husband's gelt to the conservatories and symphony orchestras."

Eric Zinman Ensemble.

Eric visited my holdfast not long ago and left me with two striking discs that typify the small subset of real jazz here in music school land. Charlie Kohlhase also left me five examples of what he's been up to for the past seven years so there will be a number of descriptions of this body of work as I have time to give it the hearing it deserves.

The Eric Zinman Ensemble release is out on Cadence, CJR:1187 and available at http://www.cadencebuilding.com

It features two of Boston's great and locally neglected masters, Bassist John Voigt and Drummer Laurence Cook. Both get lost in a milieu shuffle of careerism that rewards shameless self aggrandizement over music merit.

But both go way back in the annals of exemplary participation. John has done journeyman work since the days of Boston's old Playboy Club and worked with everyone from Jan Hammer to Thurston Moore.

He is a keen musical thinker and put out a self produced lp in 1976 of an overdubbed bass quintet blended with ambient sounds of a bingo tournament at a time when his contemporaries were avidly hopping on the bombastic and forgettable fusion bandwagon. He also did a puckish offshoot of the music minus one practice records for improvisers and a fine solo bass cd with hand painted covers.

Laurence was an early graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and made a recording in the 60's with the relentless noise band, the Godz on ESP in addition to work with Bobby Naughton, Bill Dixon, Lowell Davidson and Joe Morris.

He is joined by John on a Thurston Moore release, "Fuzz against Junk".

Eric studied with Bill Dixon at Bennington College, spent some time at NEC and has worked with Raphe Malik, Sabir Mateen, Blaise Siwula,Glenn Spearman,Tatsuya Nakatani, Luther Grey, Glynis Lomon, Mike Lopez, Greg Kelley, Christoph Irmer, Libba Villavechia and Mario Rechtern and continues to keep an eye to fruitful collaborations with musicians, visual artists and dancers.

The recording opens with a Zinman composition, "Mystery" that offers groups of melody phrases rising and receding amid an environ of drum and cymbal brush strokes and interwoven bass pluck at a serene tempo that throws the considered piano phrases into vivid relief to contemplate and absorb.

The confident rendition of Ornette Coleman's piece, "Eventually" follows with a flight like briskness to the initial exposition followed by solo highlighting from Laurence with his signature array of sonic allegory phasing flawlessly into John's pointed cluster plucks all over the fret ran range to meet a Zinman enthusiasm for the fun of the melody potential fulfilled.

A slightly subdued restatement closes as if to thank Mr. Coleman for his years of contribution to musical imagination everywhere.

The beautiful Lowell Davidson melody of "Small Begger" is expressed as a ballad vector with Eric's bright cluster punctuations and sinuous bow motion from Mr. Voigt enveloped in Mr. Cook's percussive atmosphere of evocation to recall a lost friend to them all.

"Respective Duets" and "Short Story for Bill Dixon" are two more Zinman compositions.

The former is one of his more intricate works and demonstrates his ongoing interest in composition/improvisation union. Cook and Voigt begin with Laurence's array of 'little instrument" sound colors matched by vigorous register ranging bow work from John with Eric's ringing block chords, melody clusters and glisses close at hand. It is a sequence of deft textures from duet sub units of the trio with a full ensemble finish.

"Short Story..." is a ballad shaped miniature thanking Eric's majestic mentor and teacher, Bill Dixon, still full of vigor in his eighth decade of stunning trumpet science with a huge heart.

"Swing, Swang, Swung" from Mr. Voigt has interesting echoes of Gil Evan's "La Nevada" without the mass of horns and filtered through a more austere economy of means and a newer way of framing sound. John begins with the essence of a walking bass line with crisp Zinman voicings close at hand while the indomitable Cook briskly taps the tempo with hi hat and snare.

"Straight Up, Straight Out" is a work of the departed and utterly under recognized Glenn Spearman. It is a running ball with Zinman pianistics as the launch pad for a tight group sprint.

"Channeling Paris, 1870" is offered by Laurence Cook and is a great facet of his allegorical approach. When Cook is your drummer, you never waste time rehearsing with technical drummerspeak. You come up with some metaphor to fire his imagination like "Laurence, channel Paris" and the reverie of ensuing associations is the resulting shape of the piece.

He carries over his background with pigment, other brushes and canvas to make sound paintings in the moment, in real time. I'm not sure if music schools will ever figure out how to impart that method. It is also balladish and deft.

"Little Jimmy K.,(the White Hipster)" is an example of John Voigt's literary side and a piece of spoken word micro music theater.

He improvises stories as well as sounds and they tend toward wry commentary on human foolishness in a voice redolent of Bob Dorough on the old Miles piece "Blue Christmas" wedded to Hanna-Barbara cartoon characters like 'Baba Louie', the burro sidekick of 'QuickDraw McGraw'.

John has a growing number of these and they would easily make a stunning album in their own right, another facet of real jazz that may not work well with music school orthodoxy.

"Elephant Paws" is the final contribution of Eric's wide ranging array of composition invention. It opens with a rumbling ringing sing of the keyboard soon joined by John's plucky jog to a Cook march time metaphor followed by expansive alternations between cluster densities and rippled long tones enhanced by a Cook texture marked by wood block and cymbal wash leading to a duet world of bass and drums and a Zinman flourish as a close.

"War and Peace" ends the disc as a group improvisation of striking density as Laurence Cook channels these extremes for Eric and John to enhance. It is an up tempo weave of laced piano melody duels with upper atmosphere bow flow from Mr. Voigt.

All in all this the epitome of what music can be in the Boston area when not preoccupied with career fears and the dead weight of orthodoxy and I'm thrilled it somehow saw the light of day. Would there were more of it.