By Luigi Santosuosso

Since the MacArthur foundation started in 1981 to award what are known as "genius grants," this honor has been bestowed only on a very small group of jazz musicians. Max Roach, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman are among the few that belong to this selected club. All of them, however, have received the prize at the height of long careers informed to an uncompromised desire of experimenting and expanding music’s boundaries.

When last June the list of the recipients of the award for 1999 became public, Ken Vandermark was the only jazz musician on it. Many may have been taken by surprise. Vandermark is a young musician (he was born in 1964), and has not yet a career comparable - for length and fame - to the likes of Lacy, Braxton or Roach. However, in the few years he has been active, the Chicago resident has built up a discography remarkable for its dimensions and, even more so, for its artistic integrity.

A musician of encyclopedic knowledge and voracious curiosity, Vandermark has played in the most varied contexts and with the who’s who of the international jazz and improvised music scene. After having moved from Boston to Chicago in 1989, the native of Rhode Island has been one of the driving forces behind the jazz renaissance of this city. Active in a myriad of groups and projects, Vandermark’s main focus is now on the Vandermark 5, the DKV Trio and the AALY Trio. Luigi Santosuosso has chatted with him about the beginnings, Chicago, the recent award and cross-pollination between U.S. and European jazz.

Let’s start talking about your beginnings. What is the first memory of you and music in your childhood?

I don't have a specific "first" memory, I was basically hearing music all the time and going to concerts with my parents since the time I was born, So I can't remember the "start".

I just remember that my father was playing jazz and classical records all the time. He had, and has, a huge record collection. My parents have told me that when I was still very small I got into his collection of '78s and broke a few... I never did that again! And I guess that I warned my younger brother to avoid them because he never made the same mistake.

What is the first album that you have a clear memory of, or what is the first album you remember to have purchased?

I remember being into big band stuff: Ellington, Basie, Woody Herman, the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall concert... The first LP I remember buying was a Woody Herman compilation album called "Woodchopper's Ball."

You come from a very musical family (your father Stu, for instance, is the Boston’s correspondent for "Cadence" Magazine) how important has that been for your involvement in music?

Without question, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now the way that I'm doing it if I had grown up in a different environment. I was always encouraged to pursue what I wanted to do and to realize that I was responsible to live my life in a way that made me excited to be alive.

Great music is limited by categories or closed minded perspectives. My father, on the contrary, would play something by Stravinsky and then something by Duke Ellington without ever saying to me, "Stravinsky is a great white European classical composer and Duke Ellington is a great black American jazz composer." It was just great music without boundaries based on differences in tradition, race, or culture. Anything was possible.

Another important element is that my folks would always take me out to jazz clubs in Boston so I got to see great players all the time (Johnny Griffin, Alan Dawson, Sammy Price, Art Blakey, etc.) And I got to see how much fun they had and how the music could be different each night, even if they were playing the same tunes! The music could always be reinterpreted and that really excited me.

You started on trumpet as a kid and then moved on to saxophone during high school. What did attract you to those instruments? Do you still play trumpet?

I think that I was originally attracted to trumpet because in stage bands and big bands the trumpet tended to play the lead lines and I liked the thought of covering that area. When it became clear that I was going to be a lousy trumpet player due to embouchure problems, I switched to the tenor because technically the embouchure is completely different and by that time I was really getting more into jazz combos and tenor players like Sonny Rollins. I switched to tenor when I was 15 and I never picked up a trumpet again.

What was your musical education like (are you self-taught? What were your mentors? And your inspirations?)

I took trumpet lessons as a kid, but when I switched to tenor I only took lessons for a short while to learn fingerings, since I could already read music. During college I took some private lessons with the great George Garzone who was crucial to helping me correct another embouchure problem that my first sax instructor had instigated.

Aside from these basic technical considerations I've been self-taught. My approach to improvisation and composition has been based on learning through experience and observation.

As for my list of musical inspirations, I have to say that it is too long to go into here, but I can say that Eric Dolphy, Coleman Hawkins, Cecil Taylor, Duke Ellington, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Charlie Parker, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, Don Cherry, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Paul Lovens, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Fred Anderson have permanently changed my life.

Then there is all the creative inspiration that comes from genres other than improvised music and other art forms all together: painting, film, photography, prose. There's a lot out there to help me continue even when things are very frustrating!

Speaking of other artistic expressions: you were also attracted by the movie world and went over to Montreal to study cinema. When did this inner "competition’ between cinema and music end in favor of music?

In montreal I basically studied "film as text" at the university of Montreal, I wasn't pursuing film making. I just loved the cinema and still do; it was fascinating to get a chance to watch dozens and dozens of pictures, to be exposed to avant-garde directors like Michael Snow and Bruce Conner. It was very inspiring. My interest in music just kept growing and pushing my interest in other things to be of less and less primary importance. The process wasn't methodical, I just slowly found myself spending more and more of my time thinking and working with music.

Have you maintained your interest for cinema alive, through things like composing for a soundtrack or the like?

I've done a few projects involving film. A couple of years ago I did a series in Chicago called "Chicago Ear and Eye Control" where I organized three different screenings: narrative film (with films by the likes of Kurosawa or Yojimbo), animated film (a slew of different short films, everything from "Felix the Cat" to abstract imagery), and experimental films (where I got to use films by directors like Michael Snow and Bruce Conner), where we would show the films silently and have different collections of improvisers play beside the films. I'm planning on tackling another series like that this fall or spring.

There have also been some smaller soundtrack projects, like the Dutch Harbor concerts and recording that I was involved in. I would like to do more because I think that there are some beautiful overlaps between film and music; both occur and are an expression of chronological time.

Do you think your interest in the visual world - cinema in particular - consciously influences your playing (for instance, do you try to play music that conjures up images?)

I don't find that I think in a visual way when I'm improvising. Music sets up its own systems of language and architecture - it works on its own terms. Occasionally, when I'm composing, I'll think of an image that has, for me, some kind of abstract emotional content. Someone sits alone at a bar looking at their drink, and that feels like...

In 1989 you moved from Boston to Chicago. What did lead you there?

It was time for me to leave Boston and there aren't too many cities in the United States where you can pursue the kind of music I want to play - New York, San Francisco, Chicago... that's about it! I had a few friends here from college so I thought I’d at least have people to hang out with as I tried to figure out my way around.

How was Chicago different from Boston back then?

Well, in Boston I had been playing and performing with musicians of my age; here it took me about two years to find people who had similar ideas about playing improvised music. I did a few things, but nothing lasted until the Vandermark Quartet with Kent Kessler and Michael Zerang came together in January of 1992.

Those first two years (I moved to chicago in the fall of 1989) were maybe the most frustrating and depressing years of my life.

How has Chicago changed in these 10 years? You have been a major factor in re-vamping the local scene.

Well, there's definitely been a huge increase in the level of activity here, both on the local scene and with the influx of visiting musicians from elsewhere in the United States, Europe and Japan. For me, stuff started in '92, but things have really escalated in the last three and a half years due in part to the empty bottle jazz series that John Corbett and I have been booking on Wednesday nights, but also because of the other series that have been going on like the one at Myopic Books on Mondays and the Vandermark 5 Tuesday nights at the Bottle, the shows at the Velvet Lounge, concerts at the cultural center connected to improvised music. The list goes on and on.

There are a lot of different kinds of musicians working on different ideas and playing together, checking each other out and supporting all these different perspectives. On top of that, there are record labels centered here documenting some of the music that is happening, like Okka Disk and Atavistic. College radio also plays the music all the time and audiences are extremely supportive (over one thousand people attended the last Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music). When I moved here there was maybe a couple concerts of improvised music from out of town a month; now it's about two a week, a major positive change that's continued for many years and continues to grow.

In a way, you represent the epitome of the post-modern musician, digesting the most diverse musical roots and playing in the most different settings, ranging from Gastr del Sol to Freddy Anderson. What is the common denominator among all your musical interests?

Well, I don't like to think of myself as a post-modern musician because to me post-modernism is a non-organic way to assimilate the past: "I like these six things, so I cut these six things up and stick them together." I'm not interested in that at all.

I am interested in a very wide range of musical territories and I'm passionate about seriously pursuing the possibilities inherent in those styles, but not to cut and paste them together. I'm trying to do what I think Duke Ellington accomplished. He heard things from other composers and styles that he liked and he used them in his music where and when they made musical sense.

If there is a common denominator in all the music I play and all the music that I love to listen to it's that I get a physical rush when I play it or hear it. Something in it makes my heart pound or break, an indecipherable truth is contained in the organization of sounds that can only be expressed with musical means.

It's the thing that ties Stravinsky to Charlie Parker to Sly and the Family Stone, how do you explain that? But it's definitely there!

There are countless projects that you are involved in: the Vandermark 5, FJF, DKV Trio, Cinghiale, the Standards Project, Witches & Devils, AALY Trio, Caffeine etc. What are the projects that in this moment are at the center of your interest? What kind of ideas do you pursue with each of them?

Right now the three main projects that I'm working on: The Vandermark 5 (my main compositional outlet), the DKY Trio (which focuses on total improvisation), and the AALY Trio (which is connected to the free jazz tradition of using "head" compositions as a spring board into open playing).

The range of territories that these three groups cover is pretty fantastic; through them I get to work on what I feel are some of the most essential elements in contemporary improvisation and composition. I'm also working on a regular basis with the Sound in Action Trio (which will have a record out on Delmark in october), a group that features Tim Mulvenna and Robert Barry on drums and me on reeds; the "Signal to Noise Unit", a trio with Kevin Drumm on table top guitar and Steve Butters on percussion (this group has recorded and is in the process of finding a label to release the music), and a trio with Liz Payne on bass and Adam Vida on drums. The last two groups are free improvisation ensembles (though quite different from each other), whereas Sound in Action does some of my tunes and classics by Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, etc.

I also play regularly with a trio comprised by the core of the Vandermark 5 called "The Chicago Bridge Unit" that includes Kent Kessler and Tim Mulvenna; this group also does "free jazz" oriented material and some of my "head tunes."

Obviously, working with The Brötzmann Chicago Tentet is crucial, what an incredible band! And then there are many "projects" that occur that aren't regularly performing ensembles, but that fascinate me.

Thanks to all of the above projects you have built up in a few years a very impressive discography. Don’t you fear over-exposure?

My biggest concern is to document music that excites me and that I think warrants release because of the quality of the work. There have been many recordings that I have refused to release because I didn't think the playing was strong enough. Looking back at recordings I've done, there are things now that I don't want to listen to because I cringe when I hear my playing, but I'm glad that they are out because I totally believed in them at the time and they are true examples of what I was doing, say, five years ago.

I think that there may be some value to the fact that much of the development of the players that I work with has been documented; you can literally hear the directions we've taken evolve over the last several years. I think over-exposure is a real issue, but as long as I believe in the work and the work is changing and different I think there is merit to releasing it.

Do you listen to your own CDs after you have released them, or do you rather tend to focus on the next projects?

I tend to focus on the next projects because the number of times I must review a tape from the time it's recorded to the time it's released is staggering: picking the cuts to use, mixing them, sequencing them, reviewing the master... By the time it's out I've heard it enough! Also, by the time a recording is released it's about a year after we went into the studio or did the concert and at that point I've moved to someplace different or past the place we were when we made the recording.

In your career you have had the privilege to play with many of your musical inspirations, Evan Parker, Joe McPhee etc. I have always wondered how does that feel? How do you manage to remain yourself when you are side by side with your musical heroes?

On the first occasion I had to play with Joe McPhee and when I first played with Evan Parker I was very nervous. As you said, they are heroes of mine. But, once the music starts, it's about playing and dealing with what's happening with the sounds and where they're leading to.

I benefited quite severely from the fact that both Joe McPhee and Evan Parker actually played with me, not just saying the musical equivalent of "This is what I'm going to do, you deal with it." I could hear and feel them interacting with me which is the highest musical compliment, an act of respect for what I might bring to the playing situation. When I saw that they were going to work with me it made it a lot easier to open up and focus on playing rather than being intimidated by their greatness.

What do you consider the most amazing musical experience or collaboration to date?

In all honesty, I've been blessed with experiencing many, many examples of standing next to greatness. One of my favorite experiences was working with Fred Anderson, trying to learn his compositions for the Fred Anderson/DKV record we did on Okka Disk. It was just the two of us sitting in the club during the afternoon, playing the heads over and over while he pointed out what i needed to do to fix the phrasing to play the pieces correctly. I'll never forget that, sitting next to him and just listening to his sound fill that room. It was beautiful!

The concerts with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet have all been mind blowing. That group is just so good! Each player in it is a master and when you're on stage it's like you are an audience member, just stunned with the level of music that is going on around you each and every second. That band is one of the most powerful groups that I've ever heard.

You have a deep knowledge of the European experimental scene. In what way do you think it differs from the US one?

I think generalizations can be dangerous because they tend to simplify things, but it does seem that one of the major differences between the European scenes and the US scene is that Europeans tend to focus on "sound" and American players tend to focus on "rhythm."

Obviously, there are a thousand exceptions to this because clearly there are many players from Europe who have really expanded the rhythmic possibilities in improvisation (Paul Lovens and Paul Lytton, for example) and there are American improvisers like Kevin Drumm and Jim O’Rourke who are pushing the boundaries in the use of sound, but it seems that Americans are more interested in rhythmic grooves as opposed to completely "open" playing and I don't hear too many sax players who are pursuing extended techniques on the level of someone like Mats Gustafsson.

Do the various European "schools" (Dutch, British, Italian one) differ evidently to the ears of American audiences or do they share some common denominator?

I think there are clear differences between each country’s approach to the music, just as each individual has a unique approach. I can't speak for all the audiences in this country, but I think that anyone who is at all familiar with improvised music can hear the differences in approach from someone like Han Bennink to Paul Lytton, even though there are some overlapping similarities: interests in pushing the limits of what their instruments can do, concerns of different approaches to time and to sound.

Obviously there is some truth to the cliches about the "humor" of the Dutch players and the "extended techniques" of the British players, etc., and I think that American listeners can hear these differences as well as the European fans.

What of these schools do you tend to relate to most easily?

I would say that I relate best to the current Swedish scene which, to over-simplify, has made a beautiful amalgam between the British expanded sound/rhythm approach and the German "expressionistic" stance. A wonderful combination of brains and heart.

What are your upcoming releases?

In October, the "Joe Harriott Project" is going to be released on Atavistic (me, Tim Mulvenna, Kent Kessler and Jeb Bishop doing the music of Joe Harriott), and the "Sound in Action Trio" record I mentioned will also come out.

In November, two "DKV Trio" records will be put out on Okka Disk: a double live CD from our concert at the Wels Festival last November and a recording we did with Joe Morris last April.

How does it feel to be in the company of other jazz recipients of the MacArthur Foundation’s prize like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor etc, all of which are among your idols?

To be honest, I'm trying not to think of myself as "belonging" to that company. They are all idols of mine, major inspirations that have permanently changed the face and course of improvised music. I can't say that I'm on the road to doing that, I'm planning on spending my life trying to accomplish something on the level of what they have done for music and art.

I am in awe of the other recipients. I'm trying to think of this as an amazing opportunity to find out what I can do over the next five years with a lot more economic freedom, a chance to pursue projects, tours, and recordings that would have been impossible without the grant (i.e., a tour with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet in the United States, a large group recording project to feature Fred Anderson, a tour with Paul Lovens, etc.).

This interview is published courtesy of Musicboom http://www.musicboom.net