continued...

So, although the argument is full of holes, it stands to reason that this new discipline has a huge growth potential because these new combinations should produce highly unexpected results – in the best moments. But there is a real need for the improvisers to understand what they are doing in a compositional way, I think. The more everyone is working from structures of their own group’s understanding, the stronger the discipline gets.

I want to emphasize: I’m not advocating structured improvisation over unstructured or spontaneous (usually called free) improvisation. Both have their place. I just heard a beautiful set the other night of spontaneous improvisation by winds player Frank Gratkowski and percussionist Gino Robair. Completely clear at all times. A real breath of fresh air.

But ultimately the exciting developments in "creative music" or our music will come from a merging of advanced listening abilities with developments in the reaction by improvisers in real time, that combined with an understanding of how compositional form can help to bring music to life and/or to reach and move the listener. Ultimately, it all has to work together. But the element with the most untapped potential is improvisation. There’s power in that ability, and if a composer understands how to harness it and use it to send the music "out", then – for me – that composer has a long unexplored road in front of him(her). Thus the feeling for more possibility down that road. I just think that there’s less surprise left on the road of through-composition, but – like I said – you could argue otherwise, and I wouldn’t be able to "disprove" it.

I also have long-held political feelings that lead me to trumpet the art of improvisation in that any composition realized by an improvising group is truly accomplished by the entire group’s cooperating and working together, rather than strictly following one person’s orders. There’s more thinking going on by everyone involved. No one can just show up, follow orders mechanically, pick up the check and go home. You’ve got to be awake; you’ve got to want to be there. Or the outcome will suffer...

AAJ: The webpage for Maybe Monday quotes Piet Schaap as follows: "the trio enables these strong and instantly recognizable voices to reinvent themselves, finding quite other solutions in each others' company to those they might arrive at in other contexts." In other interviews you've mentioned free improvisation as being the "laboratory for discovery". Earlier in this interview you state that "Improvising is about learning as we go." What is it that you have learned from working with Mr. Frith and Ms. Masaoka that you could not have learned from anyone else? How have these discoveries been carried forward into your current work in "other contexts" ? Are these discoveries carried forward consciously ?

LO: Fred taught me that the most important thing about making it as a group -– something we spent a lot of time plotting out -– is that the group must come up with a great name for the band. When I asked him if we should come up with the name now or later, he said: "Not now or later. But Maybe Monday."

Miya taught me that in some groups I can sit out the whole set and the music might sound even better that way.

Now for some indirect answers: What makes the art of improvisation exciting, and what makes the "possibilities" unending is that every practitioner has his/her own take on the process, and every player has his/her own specific sound. I’ve never spoken to other musicians about this particularly, but I think everyone worth listening to realizes at some point that he/she has "a sound," a characteristic expressiveness, and also a way of approaching making music...If they weren’t looking for that sound intentionally, they still eventually recognize it just from being around it all the time. Once the sound is heard and accepted, then it’s a matter of honing that sound forevermore. The basic sound will always be there, but the honing of the sound and the many ways of phrasing, which is a big part of one’s sound – we work on that forever. And the challenge is: how do I get that to work in Rova, in What We Live, in Maybe Monday, in Invisible? What can I use of it in one context that I really can’t in another? What does playing in Maybe Monday free me up to do that I can’t do with What We Live, even though they are both trios? What does playing John Lindberg’s music free me up to do? So – I don’t want to duck the specific questions exactly – but I’d say that the general answer is a lot easier to speak to because, in an odd reversal, I can be more specific about the general answer than I would be if I answered specifically about what I learn playing with Fred or with Miya. And I think the general answer is something other people can imagine more easily. But to be honest, I’m still at the beginning stages of improvising with that trio. Our first concert was in 1997, but because of some busy schedules, etc., we’ve only found time to perform together 6 to eight times; thus the process is just beginning (while at the same time being extremely satisfying even now.) But certainly playing along side Fred or Miya, I get a much more intimate idea of how they think as improvisers in the moment of creation – much more intimate than I think one would get just as a listener offstage is what I mean. And I take in all the information, their sound-choices, marvel at some of it, steal other parts of it, agree with other parts (I already do) and reject others, usually because the specific sounds or method of response isn’t relevant to my own instrument or my voice... (Am I making any sense at all here? If not, ask more questions...)

AAJ: Could you please tell AAJ about the upcoming What We Live cd?

LO: Okay: WHAT WE LIVE is essentially an improvising trio of myself on saxes, Lisle Ellis on bass, and Donald Robinson on drums. The music I think is very distinctive – the group has its own group-sound (which is what I mean by "distinctive") – but, as it’s also improvised, it allows for the addition of guest artists without rehearsal. What We Live has two cds out as a trio (on DIW and Black Saint), another (great) cd as an augmented quintet with Dave Douglas and Wadada Leo Smith called “Quintet for a Day” (New World). Before we recorded as a quintet, the trio invited each of the trumpeters individually to perform with the group as a quartet. The CD being released in early February, called “Trumpets”, documents the live concerts. Half the CD is two long tracks with Wadada recorded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Outpost Productions in March 1998. Three tracks with Dave D come from a date in Vancouver, B.C. in, I think, November 1997, but it might have been ’96. We’ve played several times with Dave as a quartet (and toured as a quartet with Wadada in Europe). We enjoy adding guests and offer it to most concert presenters. And I think we’ll be playing at The Knitting Factory in NYC on February 7, 2000, with several added guests during a week-long tour back East. (I live in Berkeley, CA). This means that the most recent available trio recording is from June 1996 (even though the CD of that recording – “Never Was” - only was released in 1999). The group music has really evolved since then, and we hope to get a live trio-tape recorded on our April 2000 tour in Europe.

AAJ: What did you learn from working with Glenn Spearman?

LO: This is easier to speak about than the question above about Fred and Miya, one: because it went on for 6 years (not only with The Double Trio, but also in the context of our duo concerts and many, many duo rehearsals, and in performing in and rehearsing for Figure 8 and for Ascension, which Rova performed and recorded with Glenn for Black Saint in 95 and 96) and two: because it is history now.

Spearman was a true believer in the power and the passion of free jazz in the classic sense of that term. He wrote compositions that, on the face of the writing, seemed to me on first introduction to them in 1991 to be rather simplistic. I was looking forward to the energy of the music and to hooking up the two tenors, but I had no idea – nor did Chris Brown, because we’ve talked about it since – that there was such depth and complexity to the thematic compositions, that these very basic lines and harmonies opened up wide vistas of musical possibility that, in the end, seemed limitless, and never became boring or seemed anything but wonderful to play on and to be inspired by. So I think the main thing I learned playing with Glenn was that complexity does not in and of itself signify anything at all. Or maybe a better way to put it is that what seems elemental can germinate into the most complex and deeply felt areas of exploration. Certainly, this was re-emphasized for me when we performed Ascension as well, and it didn’t get by me that Ascension was one of the earliest pieces of the so-called ‘free jazz" genre. A true predecessor to Glenn’s own writing and approach to making music. My favorite CD of the Double Trio is still “The Fields” from Black Saint. But for what I’m talking about here, you could get the Tzadik CD; dig the written material and then realize that those few cells are the basis for a very moving 45 minute piece. It’s very cool.

AAJ: The webpage for Invisible states that "the group works with verbally denoted structures and musical frameworks. So all the forms are invisible and the music laid on the forms is improvised." How specific or unspecific are these verbal denotations? How much preparation is involved with these verbal denotations? Are they pre-conceived, spontaneous, negotiated, other? (my intent for these question is to determine why it is important that these forms are not written down) As follow up, are there any plans for a release by Invisible?

LO: It’s not "important" that the forms are not written down. It’s just a fact (...and it’s subject to change as the group evolves...) The group operates with verbal instructions, and some pre-conceived forms or ways of relating that need to be rehearsed to be truly understood. If you’ve ever tried to play improvised music using a pre-conceived form such as chord changes in jazz, then you know that you need to practice the form in order to be comfortable with it; to get loose and forget it. It’s hard to make music if you have to look at the page to follow the changes. The more familiar the changes, the more possible it is for a musician to do something beautiful or exciting "over" them. The ultimate goal is to hear them without thinking so that you can play "music." The same with my verbal instructions. The ultimate goal of these games, etc. is to push the players; to make them look at what they are doing in a fresh way so as to free up "possibility."

It’s possible to do a very short rehearsal on these ideas and be out performing, working within the concept, in short order. But the challenge is to do something "more" with them. The challenge is to take your improvisation chops and make music with the other members of the group while working within the structure or limitations set up by the pre-conceived form, but then stretching the form yourself or responding in the moment to other people’s interpretation of the form.

AAJ: Who are your musical (or artistic) heroes? Why? (note: I ask this quite distinctly from "influences" or "inspirations"...but conceivably these could be equivalent)

LO: A lot of my influences in this music used to be heroes, but heroes are usually people you don’t know at all. Once I become acquainted with someone and know them to some degree as a human being, the aura that might once have been there is usually gone. That doesn’t mean I don’t love them, but that’s a different story. So leaving aside all the living musicians, I’d still point to artists: Orson Welles, Jean-Pierre Melville, Stan Brakhage, Monk (pre-Thelonious Monk Institute), Hendrix, Janis Joplin, many 20th century painters, and just for the hell of it: Jesse Jackson.

AAJ: What musicians that you have never worked with before would you most like to work with?

LO: I can only answer this after saying that I’ve been fortunate to get a chance to play with so many amazing players; I wish there was time and opportunity to play AGAIN with most of them... I really don’t have a burning desire to work with the following, but it might be a lot of fun (and in some cases, I’d want to work with them without getting involved in the head-trips that history has reported them laying on their band-members): The Baobob Orchestra, Bembaya Jazz International, Thelonious Monk, James Brown, Miles Davis in the electric period (which I’m kind of checking out now as part of the Yo Miles Project: next gig on March 4 at Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco); Morton Feldman, Tony Williams; Merce Cunningham (probably with Rova, but I’d let him call the shot); Albert Ayler, and Hendrix...although we’d have to come up with a new form ...together.) I’d like to work with vocalists. That’s one thing I’ve never done that I think would be great: Marta Sebestyen, Sainkho, Diamanda. But it’s up to me to think of a reason to ask them to do it, and I haven’t found the time yet I guess.

AAJ: Which (if any) recordings have you heard lately that you would like to recommend to the AAJ readers? Why?

LO:

Goldberg/Schott/Sarin: What Comes Before (Tzadik)

Ruins Symphonica (Tzadik)

John Zorn Godard/Spillane (Tzadik)

Shibusashirazu Shibusamighi (Chitei Records)

Satoku Fujii Indication (Libra Records)

Art Ensemble of Chicago Bap-tizum (Koch jazz)

Xenakis Works for Piano (Mode)

Feldman Untitled for Cello and Piano (Attaca Babel)

Discotheque 70-73 Guinee (Syllart Productions)

Zorn is my man; he sends me a lot of the CDs he produces – and he produces a lot of music for his label. Like 3 CDs a month. So 1 and 2 on the list are 2 of the best I’ve heard from Tzadik “recently”. Number 1 is a beautiful meditation on sound and silence, the use of space in music. The Ruins CD is not about that; it’s intense and really a great composition. I also include the Zorn CD because there are still people out there who either don’t know his work or came to it late. This is a reissue of 2 pieces long out of print – seminal works – and, needless to say, the production values on this CD are outstanding.

Rova went to Japan for the first time in October. This is going to be hard for some of you to believe, but there’s actually a band on the planet that can only be described as “Sun Ra on acid.” I know: you thought that that was how you’d describe Sun Ra himself in relation to jazz. Shibusashirazu is one amazing indescribable orchestra. There’s no way to describe the energy or the feeling of their live show, but this CD does retain some of the energy on its best tracks. Worth a trip to Japan just to see the band. Safe to say they will never play the USA (band ranges from 23 to 50 artists) …Satoku was someone we met and hung with. She’s a fine player and composer and has CDs on Japanese labels as well as on Leo Records and (in fact) Tzadik.

Lester Bowie died the week I was to travel four hours by car to Cal Arts and teach classes run by Wadada Leo Smith. I played live-concert Art Ensemble CDs all the way down there. “Baptizum” is still the best, recorded in Ann Arbor over 25 years ago. If you haven’t heard it, get it.

I’m trying to write pieces for Rova now inspired by and dealing with the musical spaces informed by the piano music of Monk, Xenakis, Feldman and Scelsi. This Xenakis CD with Aki Takahashi on piano is the best piano CD of his music; I just bought it myself. The Feldman piece is great (and also exists on Hat Hut under a different title).

The last CD listed is actually 4 separate CDs (70,71,72,73) released by Sylliphone as a compilation series of their old recordings. Great dance bands from Guinea. (The website listed on the back of the CD is www.melodie.fr)

Finally, if the readers are interested in some good - listening lists, go to www.Rova.org and click on Favorite Street. There’s a list made by each of us in Rova of favorite recordings. There’s a lot to chew on in these lists. (Eventually, there will be lots of other art up there under Favorite Street, but we can’t get to everything at once, even though we’d really like to. In fact, if there’s anyone reading this out there with experience with websites that would like to help input stuff to our website, they should let us know at rovasax@aol.com. We could use the help.)

AAJ: The "Angelica 95" CD includes three brief portions of ROVA performing Fred Frith's "Freedom In Fragments". Are there any plans to record and/or release this work in its entirety? For those readers who are unfamiliar with this work, would you please briefly elaborate on it?

LO: That Angelica CD is a drag – my opinion only – the sound is lousy. If I could do it again, I wouldn’t let them include those fragments. The entire 75 minutes piece is now being edited and mastered for release on Black Saint sometime in 2000. "Freedom In Fragments" is 23 sections of music ranging in length from 11 seconds to about 10 minutes. We commissioned Fred to write the piece in 1994, but, for various reasons, we’ve never ever performed it in it’s entirety, so it was very rewarding recording the piece over the first 8 months of 1999, bit by bit, and then – after I mixed it and Steve Adams edited it - finally hearing the piece. A lot of surprises. In fact, the final order of the fragments was changed quite a bit after Fred and I heard it back in order for the first time. But I’m at a loss as to how to describe the work, because it goes to so many musical places over the course of the 75 minutes. Let’s see: beautiful melodies, interesting rhythmic figures, improvised solos over vamps, lush harmonic passages, wry humor, passionate anthems, uptempo marches, free jazz blows, California dreaming…it’s all there. Frith spent 6 months with his family on the coast of California near Big Sur. He wrote the piece during that stay, and some of that environment rubbed off on the piece too.

AAJ: Are there any plans to release the soundtrack to Letters Not About Love? For those readers who are unfamiliar with this work, would you please briefly elaborate on it?

LO:This is a one-hour film shot and directed by my sister Jacki Ochs. I could try and describe the film, but maybe the press release information will do a better job. It follows:

”Ochs builds visual bridges out of words by combining home movie clips, archival images, and stunning new footage. LETTERS NOT ABOUT LOVE reads like a documentary and flows like rivers of paint on an expressionist canvas. The director combines narrative, travelogue, and memoir in a fusion of image, sound and word that is a total sensual experience. Shot in and around the poets' homes in Northern California and the former Soviet Union, the camera focuses on farmers markets, park benches, beauty contests and demolition derbies; zooms into the food on the table at a typical family dinner and finds a bug sipping nectar off a flower. What Ochs discovers in these ordinary events is precisely what makes them extraordinary.

”LETTERS NOT ABOUT LOVE presents a challenging meditation on the meaning of language and culture. The filmmaker initiated the correspondence by giving both poets a list of ordinary words (e.g., "home," "book," "violence," "neighbor") and asking them, in each letter, to reflect on one of the words -- its conventional meaning, as well as what it means to them. As an unfolding examination of their lives, the film becomes a dynamic expression of cultural differences and the art of mutual understanding.”

That’s really not a bad description of the film. I think it’s a beautiful piece, and I was happy to lend music to it. Jacki had “no” budget for the film; as it was, it took years to raise what she could for it to happen, which is typical of independent film with no commercial potential. So I couldn’t go into the studio and create totally new music. So I watched a video of the film a ton of times and imagined parts of pieces already recorded that would work with the images. It came out really well. But because all the music is parts of already released pieces, there will not be an independent release of the movie’s music. Those pieces collected together would make a nice compilation of my work, but that’s another story.

The movie just showed at Museum of Modern Art in New York. The next known general public showing is May 2 and 3 in San Francisco. But it is available to universities, museums, theaters and perhaps general public. Best thing to do is contact Human Arts Association (54 Greene St. #4A, NYC, NY 10013; fax 212-226-2441; e-mail: jackio@mindspring.com)

AAJ: are there any plans to reissue the Metalanguage lps by ROVA?

LO: No. I don’t have time to think about it. I’m waiting for a producer to call.

AAJ: As conclusion, what other projects can we expect from Larry Ochs in 2000-2001?

LO: I’m spending a lot of time on the business side right now. Rova has been more than a performing group for some time – over 15 years. And I’ve been the point man for most of the producing we’ve done here in the Bay Area. I can’t do it anymore – or want out – so I have more time for music, especially composing and thinking. But I’d like to see the music events continue, which means we need to find money to pay someone to do all the shit I’ve been doing for free. More work. We’re looking for foundations, art patrons, board members who want to help. That’ll be a big part of the first half of 2000.

Then there’s keeping in touch with all the groups I’m trying to associate myself with through live performances:

Maybe Monday plays the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on January 19.

What We Live will tour briefly on the east Coast USA in February.

Feb 4 Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art Theater, 8 pm, 955 Boylston St., Boston, Mass. For more information, call the Boston Creative Music Alliance at (617) 868-3172.

Saturday Feb 5 Philadelphia: Highwire Gallery on North Second Street, sponsored by Sweetniter, info call Craig Baylor at 215-925-3150, email = jazsound@earthlink.net

Sunday Feb 6, Washington, DC: venue TBA, $10 at the door, contact Vince Kargatis at 703-243-3787, email = vkargatis@blackboard.com

Feb 7 NYC Knitting Factory 8 pm What We Live Four with Dave Douglas // 10 pm What Four with bassist Trevor Dunn and cellist Erik Friedlander

On February 14, The Glenn Spearman Double Trio will perform a memorial concert for Glenn at Mills College as part of a week dedicated to his music. We’ll perform an extended work of Glenn’s that was to be our next CD, but was never even rehearsed before he died. I’ll be arranging that for an extended ensemble.

Maybe Monday plays Santa Cruz at Kuumbwa Center on March 3…

March 4: Yo Miles Project with Rova, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser, the lead guitarist for Grateful Dead whose name I’m forgetting, Tom Coster and others at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco

March 16 to April 2 I’m on tour in Europe with the John Lindberg Ensemble. By the way, a CD recording from the 1999 tour will be out in Europe in January from Black Saint. For US release date and tour info, check www.JohnLindberg.com

April 4 or 5 until it’s over, What We Live will be in Europe.

Confirmed dates are:

April 5 – Montreuil (Paris): Les Instants Chavires

April 6 Nantes: Pannonica

April 7 and 8 – Tours: Le Petit Faucheux

April 12 and 13 – Metz: Les Trinitaires

In May Rova hits a few places in Southern California:

May 12: San Diego State University

May 13: Los Angeles – the new Knitting Factory. The rumor is we’ll play 2 shows with special guest John French, the drummer for Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. (I’m not sure of the exact location of the new Knitting: LA? Santa Monica? No real idea…)

On May 19 and 20, Rova produces it’s 3rd annual Rovate event. This year the featured event will be a Rova collaboration with Gerry Hemingway, performing a set of pieces by Steve Adams, Jon Raskin and Hemingway. The first set each night will consist of compositions by me and Bruce Ackley for a special creative orchestra of local San Francisco musicians.

So I have composing to do for that. I’m also planning to write a long work for Rova this year which focuses on the piano music of Monk, Feldman, Scelsi and Xenakis (or C. Taylor). I’ve been thinking about this piece for years and suspect it will end up leading to more than one piece. I also plan to look over the results of the sax quartet piece and write a piece off the same materials for an extended ensemble. I’d like eventually to perform that and then do a CD with that work and one I wrote for Orkestrova in ’97 called Pleistocene (The Ice Age)

I also want to do some writing – or composing – for Invisible and for a trio I’m working on slowly with the former cellist of Kronos, Joan Jeanrenaud. It’s all this writing I want to get to that has forced me to get out of the day to day local Rova business. You can’t do everything, unfortunately. I also plan to continue writing more on the science of structured improvisation. The beginnings of the coverage of these topics can be found at the Rova website under the hot button: Food for Thought. I might also mention that Mr. Zorn is starting to release a string of books from many genres. In March 2000, a book of writings on/about/meditating music, entitled Arcana, will be published by Granary Press, New York, featuring articles by many, many improviser/composers including Zorn, E Sharp, Frith, Masaoka, Crispell, George Lewis, Ikue Mori, and myself. (My article is at the Rova website now under Food for Thought.)

Recordings will also happen this year: On tour with Lindberg and What We Live, and (I hope) in studio with Rova, Maybe Monday and perhaps Invisible…I also need some time to breathe and enjoy all the new members of my family…

AAJ: Thanks, Larry Ochs, for spending time with All About Jazz !

more information about Larry Ochs and his music can be found at the following:

http://rova.org/ (Rova Saxophone Quartet home page)

http://rova.org/artifacts/discography.html (Rova Saxophone Quartet discography)

http://rova.org/aboutrova/players.html (Rova Saxophone Quartet bios)

http://rova.org/aboutrova/larry_side_projects.html (links to Larry Ochs non-Rova projects)

http://rova.org/aboutrova/larry_discography.html (Larry Ochs non-Rova discography)

http://rova.org/favoritestreet/larry-favorite-recordings.html (Larry Ochs favorite recordings)