Donny McCaslin: Close to the Spirit

AAJ: Well, it feels like a very smart way to begin this album. Because it begins with you and a percussionist—so, okay, there's percussion on this record. Then your sax is doubled—okay, there's overdubbing on this record. Then there's Luciana and Ben and that extra percussion—it's as if the musicians are walking onto the stage.

DM: Exactly. It's also nice because it's short. It's not an eight-minute epic piece. It's still a lot of information to take in, but like you say, it's kind of an appetizer. It introduces everything; it introduces the individual characters just as you describe. So it's a nice first tune.

AAJ: It's also a good song.

DM: Yeah. Good song, good vibe. It's funny—from the feedback I've gotten, people do mention that song and how they like it. And that was the tune that almost didn't make it.

AAJ: "Be Love is really elegant and swaying—Scott Colley is particularly great here, but so are Antonio and Pernell, and those two play together remarkably here. Neither is in the other's way, and they work together almost telepathically. The song is built around that five-note vamp phrase, which comes back prominently in the tag against the drum breakdown Your solo is tremendous, with nice comping from Ben, and his solo is equally wonderful. Tell me about this one, please.

DM: Like a lot of my songs, this one was kind of borne out of just practicing. That initial figure of the melody [singing it] was all I had. And I had that for a while—written on a piece of paper. It just sat there for awhile and then one day I happened to play it, and then I started hearing the groove, and one thing led to another.

When I perform live, it seems like it's one of the most appreciated tunes; people seem to respond to that tune a lot. I feel blessed that it happened to come! It's really fun to play on. What I especially love about the recorded version is the fact that there's so much going on—a lot of layers to the story. I love Luciana's countermelody. She's essentially just doubling what Ben does but she comes in a little later and the voice really adds something and she just sounds great on it.

Then there's that whole thing at the end with Antonio soloing. He plays a great solo and he's playing this great stuff, but there's also so much space so you can also hear what Luciana's doing—which is also due to Mike Marciano's great mixing. There are so many elements in there and it's all clear and you can hear it all—I'm just really happy with how it came out.

AAJ: Monder's solo really gives it this release as well. I very much enjoy that moment that he begins soloing with that liquid electric tone of his.

DM: That's another tune where I solo over the whole form of the song. Then we lay on that five-note theme that you mentioned for Ben's solo, and he can take it to that other place where he puts on that distortion and just gets all the way down. It's another example of using these different sections to create different environments to improvise in.

AAJ: That's smart. These are long songs and they would get monotonous if you didn't mix it up a bit.

DM: Totally. I'm really conscious of that. Binney and I talked about that, and we really tried to make that a priority—to try to make the record interesting in a lot of ways. That was another great thing about having Luciana as another instrument in this recording—like on "Hero as a Boy, the way she doubles the melody. It's beautiful, and it's subtle, but it adds a lot and makes it more interesting to listen to, maybe even for people who aren't such jazz fans. I think they can listen to something like that and say, "wow, that's kind of cool.

AAJ: Speaking of "Hero as a Boy —this one is a bit spookier than some of the other pieces. It's got a darker mood. It's got just Antonio on kit—no extra percussionist. It starts with Ben on that acoustic arpeggio you mentioned, which is doubled by Orrin Evans' piano, and you're right: it is beautiful. But it's also kind of scary before you come in with the melody which is, characteristically, doubled by Luciana Souza's vocal. There's a constricted feeling in this one, almost a claustrophobia, that dissipates with your solo. Then the song opens up, or so it feels to me.

I think this one and "Grafton are really important to the album; without them, it's all the big, optimistic, epic ones and the mood would be a little too undiluted.

DM: This is one of the tunes that I wrote around the time when I was playing with Danilo, and I think this is a good example of what I was talking about earlier in terms of the concept of the record. The arpeggio that Ben plays and the melody that I come with are very, let's say, ECM-ish. It reminds me of ECM stuff. But what Scott plays on that is a timbale; his bass line is coming from a chacarera groove. Chacarera is this Argentinian folk rhythm in three. Now if a drummer is playing a chacarera, it sounds weird, so Antonio is playing kind of loose—but Scott is providing that folkloric element that ties it to the earth while we're playing this floating thing on top. So that's how the tune came to be.

And the vibe is kind of intense. That's just a reflection [laughing] of how I feel. I sort of had, in some ways, a troubled childhood. So it's a reflection of that emotional angst and suffering that happened along the way. That's where that's coming from. You know, some friends of mine say, "oh Donny, you're the nicest guy. You're always in a good mood; you're always happy. And I always say to that, "thank you for saying that, but you don't really know me that well. Because that's something I exude on the outside. Inside, I'm pretty intense, my childhood was rough, and I carry a lot of that pain inside me. I've been working on it, but it's intense.

Now, the song isn't trying to say that I'm the hero. It's more of that archetypical hero of a boy who suffers and goes through abusive situations but comes out on the other side okay—or at least doing the best he can with what he has [laughing].

AAJ: There's something about your solo on "O Campeão —I hear some quality in it that reminds me of your solo on your song "Outlaw. In each cases you're fuelled by the structures, forms and musicians, but at same time I feel I can sense you trying to break free of them, to elbow your way towards space. Tell me about this song.

DM: Well, the first section is inspired by [Brazilian jazz legend] Hermeto Pascoal. The feel of the tune—well, I was initially thinking of this Brazilian groove that somebody had shown me at some point. I basically perceived the A section as having a lot of forward motion, a lot of energy: a feeling of being on top and moving ahead. The B section is a total contrast: a half-time feel and the harmony opens up. The A section has a lot of quick harmonic movement, but the B section becomes just one tonality with just some different bass notes and it really opens up there. That's the tension and release of the tune.

I mentioned Hermeto being the inspiration of the song, and Luciana happens to be Hermeto's goddaughter. So I was discussing song titles with her, and she said that Hermeto has a few different nicknames in Brazil: "the magician, "the wizard, and "the champion. "O campeão is "the champion in Portuguese, so that's where the song's title comes from.

AAJ: "Push Up the Sky really embodies the dramatic hopefulness of this album. It's hopeful, but not cloying or sugary. This song's quite grooving, but there's also a calm centeredness to it—it's in no hurry to make its point. This one has some fantastic piano playing from Orrin, which made me interested in your decision on these songs to use piano or exclude it from the arrangements.

DM: Well, I knew this one would be great with piano. And given the way Orrin plays, I thought this would be a good vehicle for him to improvise on because even though there's a form that's being followed, it's still got a pretty open feel. In terms of when to use piano and when not to use it, it seemed pretty clear to me. The tunes that needed piano have piano. Except for one, maybe: in retrospect, I might have added piano to "Soar.

But in lieu of that, we had Ben add some extra guitar tracks, and those sound fantastic, so I'm happy with how it came out. But it pretty obvious on this one that it was needed—I could just hear piano filling out the sonic spectrum. Just the language he plays would, I thought, really fit that kind of tune. When I initially composed this song, it was based around the opening chord and the bass line that responds to that chord.

AAJ: Right—and then your flute responds to that.

DM: Exactly. The flute was there to double the bass, to bring that line out and give it more prominence. Now, that whole last section where the melody repeats over and over—that melody wasn't part of the original composition. Originally, that section was just open; it was the same chords and the same number of bars, but there wasn't any melody there. I used to always just improvise the melody. But when I was considering it for the recording, I realized that I needed something stronger there, so I eventually arrived at the melody that ended up on the recording.

AAJ: "Grafton may be the darkest piece on this album. This song's actually got a pretty minimal arrangement. There's just cymbals, bass, and Ben is doing some volume swells, I think. You could almost perform this one by yourself—it's such a saxophone statement. This one feels like an elegy to me.

DM: I was playing with Danilo at the time that 9/11 happened. We'd had a big tour in Europe planned for that October and he decided to cancel it. So I ended up getting called to do a record date up in Vermont and I was staying in Grafton—the recording wasn't in Grafton, but we were staying there. So I was staying in this large house. The first night I shared it with the trumpet player, but then he split and I had it all to myself the second day. There was this organ in the living room, so I was down there and it was just Vermont in October—you're looking out over this back yard with this huge lawn and these beautiful leaves. It was completely quiet and serene, and I sat down at the organ. Basically, this tune came out.

That isn't usually the process for me; it usually takes a long time. But most of this tune came in that first sitting at the organ. Hence the title: that's where the tune was composed. As for the vibe—I can't say whether it was influenced by September 11th or not. It was just what I was feeling at the moment.

AAJ: Finally, we have the title track, "Soar, which is my favorite, and perhaps the archetypal song on this album. It's a dense one—it has that glorious stereo percussion intro and that triplety theme that you play with Luis. The rhythm section is particularly good here, especially under Ben's solo. Then there's that remarkable tag of you, Shane and Luis in three-way counterpoint—very Bach-like. This one makes me glad to be alive.

DM: Well, thank you. The inception of this tune came when I was preparing for a Maria Schneider gig. I was working on this song of hers called "Hang Gliding, which is this piece all about her experience hang-gliding in Brazil. It's a tricky tune to improvise on because it's mixed-meter and there's a lot of background figures that come in at odd places. So I was practicing it. The harmony of her piece has that sort of hopeful, soaring quality, and while I was practicing it I just started playing that triplet figure you were talking about that Luis and I play at the beginning when the melody of the song comes in. So that figure came out, and I just kept working that out, and the tune came from that.

So it was very influenced by Maria's piece. And the beginning was just Pernell improvising. I said, "man, play an intro. Just solo. So that was his thing. The ending was another thing that came as I was preparing for the recording. The idea just came, and I just wrote out that section.

AAJ: You solo a lot. It's a big part of what you're good at, and your solos are quite meaningful. But on these two albums, your solos are generally the longest. Do you ever feel self-conscious about that, ever worry about it?

DM: No, not really. When we were at the sessions, I think I was lucky enough to be really caught up in the moment. I didn't really think about length or whatever; I just played what felt right. I just wanted to make sure that it was even for everyone else—even in the sense that you get a chance to hear Pernell, you get a chance to hear Orrin, you get a chance to hear Ben. So it's not sax solo after sax solo. At the same time, the sax solos are there, because that's what I'm hearing. I mean, in other situations I might feel self-conscious about it, but here I just felt like I was in the moment and that's what needed to happen.

AAJ: In a similar vein—you are a remarkable soloist, although I hope people are also aware of your composing skills as well. In any case, you solo as well on other people's material as your own—your solo on "Culture Wars on the new Dave Douglas CD is as good as anything you've done, and of course many people first discovered you in 2004 through your solo on Maria Schneider's "Buleria, Soleá y Rumba.

What's your approach to soloing on a tune, if you have a conscious one? You seem to be able to tap into the emotion of a piece as well as its harmonic content.

DM: I guess I just try to prepare by getting as inside the composition as I can before the recording or before a gig. For example, with Dave's music, I try to practice before we get together to try to learn the tune—not just the harmony that I'm going to play on, but the whole tune. I learn the bass line and both horn parts; I try to get inside the voicings that he's written for piano; I try to get a sense of the whole composition. I try to have all that inform what I play when I'm improvising. With each composition, I try to play that composition—to bring forth elements of that composition in the solo, as opposed to just playing whatever my thing is on whatever tune it is.

I do try to get into the tune and internalize it as much as possible. I find that the more I have the songs internalized, the freer I can be when it gets to the moment of improvising—harmonically, melodically, rhythmically and just vibe-wise: I'm looser and I can just react and not worry about the form because I've already got a sense of what that form is. At least that's the goal for me: when I'm improvising, to be as free as possible, free to tap into that emotional source that you mentioned. I'd like to try to always access that, you know, and be close to the spirit.

AAJ: In addition to playing in Maria Schneider's Orchestra, you've now joined the Dave Douglas Quintet, as evidenced by his great new Meaning and Mystery CD. Tell me about how you got the call to join this band and how it's working out for you.

DM: Dave called me initially to do a fundraiser for John Kerry. Or was it? It might have been for MoveOn.org. It was this gig at Cornelia Street Café with Jim Black and Brad Jones. We had no rehearsal; we went in and just played, and it was really fun. That led to Dave calling about the quintet. Our first gig was in January of last year at the Knitting Factory Festival. There was no rehearsal—all the other guys knew the music so he just sent me charts. I had the CDs already. So I just tried to learn the music as well as I could and we got there and hit. No sound check—we just jumped up and played [laughing].

And the gig went well. So after the gig, he was very complimentary and said he was looking forward to doing a lot more playing and recording. I figured that that meant that we'd do more, and last year we did end up doing maybe a half-dozen gigs. Just one-offs—we played the St. Louis Jazz Festival, a gig at Lincoln Center opening for Wynton, and a couple other things. So we did the record earlier this year and a couple nights in the south.

We're just about to depart for ten days in the States and a week in New York, so we're going to have a good stretch to play. I'm really looking forward to it; it'll be my first time with the band playing consecutive nights, multiple gigs back to back. That's exciting.

AAJ: Maria Schneider's and Dave's bands are pretty special bands to be in for the reason that they actually do tour—meaning the United States, not just Europe. Do you have a personality that deals well with touring?

DM: Yeah. I do enjoy it. I like being out there playing. For me, the enjoyment is often linked to the aesthetic stimulation of the gig. I do enjoy touring in the States. The only drawback for me is not seeing my wife when I'm on the road. That's the tough part—being away from her. She was able to go with me recently when I did a week in Rome, so that was wonderful.

AAJ: You recently got a grant from Chamber Music America to do a composition for them. Tell me about it.

DM: I made my proposal to Chamber Music America around the time I was making Soar, so I talked about taking elements of folk music from Africa, Central and South America, and combining that with my musical language, which is jazz-based but also includes classical, pop and rock—and trying to bring it together. Basically, the concept of Soar, but I'm not doing the exact same thing. So I'm writing stuff based on Afro-Peruvian rhythms and a lot of other things.

I'm happy with what I've written; I'm over halfway done in terms of the compositional process. I would say the concept is similar to Soar, sort of an extension of that, but adding some different elements, folklorically [laughing] speaking. The concerts are August 11 and 12 at the Jazz Gallery, but the songs need to be completed by the end of June.

AAJ: Well, you'd better bring some work with you on the road.

DM: That's the hard part, man—finding time to write when I'm travelling a lot. That's hard.

AAJ: You're a particularly hard-working musician. I looked at your gigs on your website, and the days are pretty filled. There's even one day where you've got two separate gigs with two different bands in one night. It's great to work, but how do you balance the need to work and the need to write, rehearse, and perform your own music?

DM: It's hard. I just try to do the best I can. But it's definitely a challenge. If I work less as a sideman, I'd probably be putting more energy into getting gigs as a leader. And I am trying to get more gigs as a leader—but it is hard to balance everything. But I enjoy playing. Sometimes I feel like I play too much, and I need to say no to certain things more often. But at the same time, I feel like I kind of thrive on playing a lot—I'm interacting with different musicians, I'm playing other people's music. I feel that's a way for me to grow as a musician. I enjoy that.

AAJ: Well, you are a saxophonist, after all.

DM: [laughing] That's right!

AAJ: This is a busy year for you. You've got these two records out now, you're touring with Dave Douglas. Outside of this Chamber Music America project, are you writing anything else?

DM: No, no. Basically all the material I'm writing right now is for that. I am starting to get excited about the possibility of recording the CMA music, so that's on my mind. I'd also like to start writing some swing—well, jazz—well, I don't know how to describe it. Something more like swing tunes, less like Soar. So this summer I'm hoping to get some writing done and be prepared to make a record or two in the next year or so.

Selected Discography

Donny McCaslin, Soar (Sunnyside, 2006)
Dave Douglas, Meaning and Mystery (Greenleaf, 2006)
Matthias Lupri Group, Metalix (Summit, 2006)
Donny McCaslin, Give and Go (Criss Cross, 2006)
Gene Ess, Sandbox and Sanctum (SIMP, 2005)
Deanna Witkowski, Length of Days (ArtistShare, 2005)
Greg August, Late August (Self Published, 2005)
Maria Schneider Orchestra, Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare, 2004)
Donny McCaslin, The Way Through (Arabesque, 2003)
Danilo Pérez, ...Till Then (Verve, 2003)
Luciana Souza, North and South (Sunnyside, 2003)
Alex Sipiagin, Mirrors (Criss Cross, 2003)
Hans Glawischnig, Common Ground (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2003)
Deanna Witkowski, Wide Open Window (Khaeon, 2003)
Mary Ann McSweeney, Swept Away (Sparky 1 Productions, 2003)
Dave Binney, Balance (ACT, 2002)
Bruno Råberg, Chrysalis (Orbis, 2002)
Tony Monaco, Master Chops T (Summit, 2002)
Mary Ann McSweeney, Thoughts of You (Sparky 1 Productions, 2001)
Lan Xang, Hidden Gardens (Naxos, 2000)
Donny McCaslin, Seen From Above (Arabesque, 2000)
Eric Mingus, Um— Er— Uh— (Some Records, 1999)
Ron Kaplan, Lounging Around (Kapland, 1999)
Dave Binney, Free to Dream (Mythology, 1998)
Reuben Wilson, Organ Donor (Jazzateria, 1998)
Lan Xang, Lan Xang (Mythology, 1998)
Donny McCaslin, Exile and Discovery (Naxos, 1998)
Scott Colley, Portable Universe (Freelance, 1998)
Roberta Piket, Unbroken Line (Criss Cross, 1997)
Ken Schaphorst, Purple (Naxos, 1996)
Steps Ahead, Vibe (NYC, 1996)

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