JASON WEST: Talk about your history. What got you into jazz?
MARIUS NORDAL: Although I’m originally from NY, my parents moved to Seattle in 1949, when I was
six. I took piano and violin lessons from a local teacher at age eight. I
was growing up in that unfortunate era in pop music in the early 1950’s where
swing had died and rock ‘n’ roll hadn’t taken hold yet. It was totally bland
city...all Doris Day, Mitch Miller and Frankie Lane. Then I heard Chuck
Miller play Boogie Woogie on his recording of “The House of Blue Lights.” I
was thirteen and immediately quit piano lessons and pursued jazz. That record
became a number one hit and soon after, there was Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and
Little Richard in pop music and, around the same time in jazz, there was early
Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball and Bill Evans, and five years later, Herbie,
Tony, Wayne and Chick Corea too. An astounding musical era in which to be a
teen-ager!”
JW: How did your CD, Notoriety, evolve?
MN: “Notoriety evolved, indirectly, because of Thad Jones. I discovered his big
band writing in the early 1970’s and was so overwhelmed by the power of his
harmonies and rhythmic concept, that I started to imitate him. It seemed
there was simply nothing else that could be so intelligent, earthy, shouting,
modern and swinging at the same time. The result was that I started to lose
my identity as a band writer, so I quit after fifteen years of being a pretty
successful arranger/composer. I reverted to being a piano player and decided
a couple of years ago that it was time to record, blending my organizational
skills with the freedom to improvisation. By the way, today most writers
sound like a watered down Thad Jones, and, after all these years, I still
find him to be the greatest of all band writers.
JW: How is thinking as a composer similar/different from the mindset of a player?
MN: I can’t separate the composing from the improvising. I spent so many intense
years writing that all those painfully “discovered” ideas act as material I
never would have discovered improvising from the fingertips. Conversely, when
I’m engrossed in writing and get stuck for an idea, I would put down the
pencil and just improvise a lot lick or something and it would work better
than anything I could have “thought” of.
JW: Anything in mind for your next CD?
MN: On my next recording, I’ll probably include a couple of Art Tatum
transcriptions because, while many people seem to automatically acknowledge
his greatness, few seem to actually have heard any of his music. I plan also
to include some things appropriate for airplay on NPR jazz stations but then
counter them with screaming tracks of “I Got Rhythm,” “All the Things You
Are,” and some blues.
JW: How would you like to improve?
MN: I would like to learn to think more rhythmically and not just in strings of
notes which just happen to have rhythm. Also, I’m about ready to write
another jazz symphony. It would probably feature piano or sax and speak the
jazz language but have a strong structure so it wouldn’t just sound like movie
music or a pop ditty with Muzak strings.
For more information about Marius Nordal's "Notoriety", contact Origin Records at 206-781-2589.
