From the Hip
December 2002

From the Hip
Archive <& /articles/asim_archive.tmp &>

"It's surprising how people really know about the musicians in this city [Philadelphia]. It continues to produce young musicians that are going for something."

By Asim Memon

“One time I remember we were playing in a park in North Philadelphia somewhere and Philly Joe and Jaco Pastorius came driving up and came in and sat in with us,” pianist Uri Caine recalls with nostalgia. “We were stunned. Here we were playing, like, ‘Stella by Starlight’ with Philly Joe and Jaco.”

Today, Philadelphia-born and raised Caine calls New York home and maintains a world-wide touring schedule. You have a better chance of catching the pianist at the Village Vanguard with Dave Douglas’ New Quintet, the Knitting Factory with trio-mates Tim Lefebvre and Zach Danziger or at a concert in Europe, interpreting the music of classical composer Mahler through a jazz lens, than at his infrequent appearances at Chris’ or Ortlieb’s (much less a pickup gig in a Philadelphia park).

Caine, 46, finds musical inspiration in virtually any source. Three recent simultaneous releases on his long-time label, Winter & Winter, reflect his broad interests. Rio places Caine’s keys amidst a backdrop of Carnivale rhythms. On Solitaire, Caine offers his interpretation of the solo piano tradition from Art Tatum to Keith Jarrett. Bedrock illustrates where DJs, hip hop and computer editing and looping share common ground with jazz improvisation. And a forthcoming release of Beethoven’s Diabelli variations evinces Caine’s penchant for classical fodder.

The international jazz career that Caine enjoys and kaleidoscopic musical style he has developed find their roots in some part in his formative experiences growing up in Philadelphia.

AAJ: Would you describe your childhood in Philly?

UC: I moved around. I was born and lived when I was really young in Center City, Philadelphia. Then my parents moved out to Elkins Park and then they moved to Bala Cynwyd when I was about twelve.

I went to mostly Hebrew day schools. There’s this one called Solomon Schecter and one called Akiba, for high school. My parents were really into that whole thing of—it wasn’t religious. It was more like a secular Hebrew philosophy. My parents were very into speaking Hebrew. Even though they were Americans, they spoke Hebrew to my brothers and sisters and probably were contemplating moving to Israel. This is a while back. But it never worked out that way. My father became involved a lot during the ’60s in the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement. He was also the head of the ACLU in Philadelphia. So a lot of our childhood was based around that politics in the background and this consciousness of activism—hearing the police bug our phones, dealing a lot with people that were really opposing the war in Vietnam. A lot of the counter cultural movements that were going on were very strong in our house.

AAJ: How did your interest in music develop? I guess, the music thing started for me—I was taking piano lessons like a lot of little kids but wasn’t really that into it. But when I was about twelve or thirteen some other friends of mine knew about Bernard Peiffer, a French pianist who ended up coming to Philadelphia in the ’50s. His style was more coming out of an Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner type of thing. I started to study with him around 1970.

In high school I started to get the chance to play around in clubs in Philadelphia. You could actually sit in with people like Philly Joe Jones, Hank Mobley. When I first moved out of my house I was already playing in downtown places like Le Wine Bar, Periwinkles. I went to University of Pennsylvania and I got a gig at La Terrasse—that was much more like a cocktail gig, but it was still experience playing. Once I started hooking up more with musicians around town like Bootsie Barnes we were playing places like Trey’s, the Jaybird Lounge, a lot of places in North Philly and South Philadelphia.

All these types of experiences had a later impact on what I was doing. I was also really digging a lot of different types of music in Philadelphia—not just straightahead jazz. I was trying to play with some Brazilian musicians, listening to a lot of classical music: I would go to the Philadelphia Orchestra Friday afternoons and wait in line for the two-dollar admission just to hear a lot of that. But of course I was totally immersed in other institutions like 3rd Street Jazz, where I was such a familiar face. This was in the hey day: You would go in there on a Saturday afternoon and a lot of musicians were there. Of course we were young guys so in a way for us it was just—we were swimming in it. We loved it.

AAJ: What years were you at Penn?

UC: I went to Penn between, around ’75 and I was done around ’80. I got into a very good program at Penn because I had already been studying with a composer in Philadelphia named George Rochberg who taught at Penn. In a way for me during those college times it was a conflict for me between what my future was going to be maybe as an academic—maybe that was more what the people at Penn sort of expected—or just basically being a jazz musician.

AAJ: Doing what you wanted?

UC: Yeah, in a way, but of course it had its own dynamic to it: There were a lot of different scenes. What do you do at that point? Should I move to New York? Should I stay in Philly?

AAJ: When did things crystallize for you?

UC: I don’t know that they. . . they really didn’t. I guess after I got out of school I stayed in Philadelphia. Then I traveled. I went to Israel to see if I could live there. I decided at that point if I was going to live anywhere I should really try to move to New York.

AAJ: Was your decision made from a career-standpoint?

UC: I guess it was partially that, although I never really had such a clear idea of what my career path was. I knew that I wanted to be playing. I started to realize at some point that there was different scene going on in New York that maybe would offer some other opportunities. It wasn’t really so much a conscious thing of rejecting Philadelphia or saying, “I really have to move here and get discovered by Blue Note Records.” Although, of course I was fantasizing about that. I would have been totally happy if that would have happened. But I think for me it was more the typical transition because in Philly I was working. I could work every night. I thought I was doing really well: I had an apartment downtown and then I had a nice apartment in West Philly. I was working, playing every night, enjoying myself. When I moved to New York it became more of a scuffling thing. When I got really desperate I would have to come back to Philly to do gigs. It was a transition point. And even when I actually started to work a lot in New York, the gigs paid so little. I was in a different situation there. Because in order to survive there I was doing gigs that I would not have done in Philadelphia just to make money.

AAJ: With the variety of music that you play and compose, do you think of yourself still strictly as a jazz musician?

UC: Absolutely. After awhile those become words because if you’re keeping on moving. Just as if Charlie Parker is taking an Irving Berlin song and playing the shit out of it and therefore making it in a way another composition, transforming it through improvisation, you can do that, assuming that you get the music together, with a Mahler symphony or a Serbian folksong or an Ornette Coleman line or drum and bass grooves. Whatever it is that you’re using as your jumping off point that inspires a type of improvisation, or a group improvisation, or an interaction, to me is coming out of that same thing. I would consider myself coming from the jazz thing.

AAJ: At what point do you think that you exhausted straightahead jazz?

UC: I never felt like I exhausted it. I’m still really conscious of trying to be a better straightahead player. I don’t look at it that way like it’s something that’s boring and so, “let’s move on to something else.” I think it’s a question of a couple of things. One is that as you move on and you see that there are other things that you can do—it becomes more things that you want to do. It’s like wanting not just to eat spaghetti all the time and eat something else.

AAJ: At this juncture in your musical development, what informed your decision to cut your first solo album, Solitaire?

UC: There’s a place called Schloss Elmau in southern Germany. It’s this retreat with this incredible piano in this castle. They have people that stay there sort of like as a hotel, but they also have a music series there where a lot of people go and play there. I was invited to play there. As soon as I played the piano in this place, I thought, “This would be a cool place to make a record especially because it’s not in the studio.” I would say that that was really the thought. But I had also been hearing from many people, “Like, man, you should make a record that really features piano playing instead of submerging yourself so much in these groups.” Somehow that was a criticism—like you have to prove yourself. I didn’t look at it that way, but I thought to myself, “I have a lot of music that I could use for this CD and it would be a good challenge.”

AAJ: When you reflect back on your childhood in Philadelphia, what images come to mind?

UC: I guess like a lot of young people that got obsessed with music, there was the period when I was much younger where it was just a question of school and hanging out with friends and stuff. But once the music thing took over I started to see Philly as a different place because there were so many different musicians, different neighborhoods and different scenes and it became a really interesting place. In a way I started to see it in memory through the music that was happening. I remember a lot of wherever Philly Joe was or Mickey Roker or Hank Mobley. There was a mystique about those guys when we were young, going to hear their gigs. And maybe at the end of the gig we could sit in or play. It was very thrilling for us. I’m trying in a way to maintain that feeling of open ended wonder and enthusiasm.

It helps to remember where that is especially when you’re traveling a lot and dealing with a lot of people who have their own personal issues. You got to keep your head together a lot of times, I find—learning how to pace yourself and how to work on the road.

AAJ: Work on your composition?

UC: Exactly. The last couple of years I’ve really got into my laptop. I wasn’t really a computer person, but my hands were killing me from copying parts. Now in a way, a lot of my music is done on computer. I use Pro Tools, that’s more for sound stuff. But for actual notation, like to work on the Diabelli piece . . . I work with Sibelius, which is a notation program and it’ll print the parts out. It’s an interesting way to work with your music because you can hear things, but it takes it away from the piano, which is the way a lot of people compose. This means that if you’re on a long plane ride or you’re on the train for eight hours or you’re stuck in the hotel room after the gig and there’s really nothing happening, you can work. I really like that feeling—every day working on it because that’s how you develop your shit. The computer really gives you a chance to edit—almost like a word processor—try different combinations and switch things around. I would say that’s changed the way I’m dealing with music.

AAJ: Any last thoughts?

UC: It’s surprising how people really know about the musicians in this city. It continues to produce young musicians that are going for something. I’ve wondered why that is that it produces so many people. It’s something we took for granted as we were growing up. And especially when I moved to New York and met people, you could tell from the way they grew up they didn’t have the same type of opportunities to play. It was much more in an academic environment that they were learning about music rather than hanging out in clubs and playing with older musicians. Of course that’s going on all the time everywhere, but Philadelphia’s a very rich environment for that I thought.

This article first appeared in the Nov-Dec 2002 issue of All About Jazz: Philadelphia.