By Mike Brannon
"Without Some Discomfort There is No Growth."
Witness an album like "Wide Open Spaces" and you'll know what this means.
There's certainly no discomfort in listening to it. Its an anthem...to the
restlessness that drives improvisational music. To those unquantifiable,
unexpected qualities which make it unique and alive, often surprising even
its purveyors as they create it.
Michael Formanek is a musician/composer first and bassist by choice (or as he
says: it chose him) and has had the fortune to express the distant fringes of
collaboratively produced music with the likes of tenor icons Joe Henderson,
Dave Liebman and Stan Getz , Freddie Hubbard, Tony Williams, the Mingus Big
Band, Gunther Schuller, Peter Erskine, Gary Thomas and Greg Osby to name
just a few.
He continues to write from the edge with an open mind and perform with some
of the most creative neo-improvisational artists and now also brings his
knowledge base to students at the Peabody Conservatory. Currently working in
ongoing contexts with Tim Berne, Marty Erlich and others, Formanek tours this
Spring with these and other groups. Check out the website below for all the
latest.
AAJ: When and why did you choose bass and what were your original influences
both on bass and music in general?
MF: It sounds kind of corny, but I think the bass chose me. My first
encounter with the double bass was in fifth grade. I think I picked it off a
list of instruments and barely knew what it was. That ended up being a pretty
miserable experience both because of the music teacher, and the fact that I
only brought it home one time all year to practice. A couple of years later I
was playing electric guitar and I guess I lost the coin flip, so the other
guys made me play bass. At first on the low strings of the guitar with the
bass turned all the way up on the guitar and amp, then on an electric bass. I
stuck with it for a while and actually got into my high school big band and
played rock and roll and blues. My real interest in bass in a jazz context
started at around fifteen. I went to a concert in which Ron McClure was
playing with the Australian pianist Mike Nock. It was the first time I'd ever
heard someone doing anything other than walking on the bass and I really
liked it. Ron was playing really long solos over changes, and they were
playing some free piece, acoustic and electric. That was it. I found a
teacher a couple of weeks later and I was off and running. Early bass and
music influences were (and still are) Mingus, Charlie Haden, Ornette Coleman,
Miroslav Vitous, Miles Davis, ColtraneÃÂ
AAJ: Most players have events they can point to that they feel are turning
points for them regarding direction etc. What do you think are yours?
MF: The first was definitely the one I spoke about before, hearing McClure
play. The next was a reaction to what most people would consider a great
opportunity. When I was 18 or 19 I was hired to play in Tony Williams
Lifetime band. At that point Tony was being heavily influenced by heavy
metal, and punk. All he wanted from me was big, simple, loud bottom. It was
obviously exciting playing with Tony, but I already knew that the acoustic
bass was my "thing". We went on tour on the west coast and the southwest, and
it was the first time I'd been away from my upright since I started playing
it. I would go into these little clubs and hotel lounges that had "jazz" so I
could sit in. I never considered myself a very good electric bass player
anyway. I moved to New York from California in 1978 which was a major event
in and of itself. I was playing with Dave Liebman's band, and also playing a
lot of Brazilian music. I was starting to work quite a bit after a couple of
years, but once again the acoustic vs. electric thing was bugging me. I'd do
these jazz gigs on acoustic and pretty much be left alone to play, and then
I'd do electric gigs that maybe were a bit more "pop-y" or "fusion-y" and
people were always asking for certain kinds of stylistic things, or thinly
disguised requests for something more like Jaco, or Marcus Miller, or Will
Lee. I'd end up on these studio sessions that would be like Equadorian
Christmas Disco albums and have to play some disco thumb popping bolero, and
be so uncomfortable that I couldn't handle it. In 1983 I put the electric
bass back in the case, forever. The next few years were pretty cool because I
started getting a lot of fairly high profile jazz gigs. That continued pretty
much until the end of the 1980's. I had played with many big name leaders,
and continued to work in that scene, but I wasn't happy just doing the gig
and making someone else's band work. I started listening to a lot of
different kinds of music, and I'd been writing more and more music as time
went on. The only problem was that most of the music I wrote didn't really
fit into the format that I was mostly involved with. That led me to the
reality of composing and recording my own music.
AAJ: "Wide Open Spaces" is a great record. And very unique in its intensity
and type of expression. How did you go about the writing, arranging, choosing
players and recording process? Was there rehearsal or just gigs preceding
its recording?
MF: Wide Open Spaces was a very intense project for me. It pretty much went
like this: I had written a couple of tunes and arranged one Bernhard Herrmann
piece for Violin, Guitar, Bass and Drums. I got together with Wayne Krantz,
Mark Feldman, and Jeff Hirshfield to play. I really liked what I heard. I
nailed down the record date with ENJA using those guys, plus Greg Osby on
about half the record. We rehearsed a couple of times as a band, then the
night before the recording we did one gig. We recorded for two days, live to
2-track. We recorded all of the tunes, and a lot of the shorter pieces, or
segments as well. After that I assembled it into what I considered to be a
logical, cohesive musical statement meant to be listened to as a continuous
piece of music.
AAJ: Its very convincing in that respect. Krantz and Feldman were
interesting choices for that CD (violin being a rare jazz instrument). Was
this a working band at all?
MF: They we're the absolute perfect choices for this project, incredible
ensemble players, tons of personality, snappy dressers. It actually was a
working band, but not with Greg Osby. By the time the record came out Greg
was really busy, and unable to make a lot of these little gigs that I was
booking around New York at the time. I tried it with a few different
saxophone players, and then we played with Tim Berne whose playing and
composing I really liked already. It immediately felt like a band, and that
became my "Wide Open Spaces" band. We did it for a couple of more years, one
CD, a couple of European Festivals, and one little west coast tour. For me,
that is a working band.
AAJ: In the liners to that CD you'd mentioned being inspired by everything
from a film score ("L. of Arabia") to a Far Side cartoon; metaphorical
thinking transferred to music. What's your process for writing music from
conceptual ideas like this?
MF: Often it's just a starting place. A template that falls away when the
music begins to flow. Sometimes is just gives me a mood or attitude that I'd
like to convey through music.
AAJ: Counterpoint and an orchestral sensibility seem to often be present in
your work. Did you study composition formally? How much does classical music
play a role in your work?
MF: I always find this difficult to discuss without sounding pretentious,
but I'll try and give it a shot. Yes, I am very interested in counterpoint
and orchestral sensibility are very important to me. Yes, I studied
composition, but not very formally. I studied for a period of time with a
great American composer Robert Aldridge. He mainly got me to feel comfortable
writing down my ideas, developing them, and organizing them. I learned a lot
from him, but I wouldn't consider myself a trained composer.
AAJ: Along with Greg Osby, Ingrid Jensen and Gary Thomas, you're teaching in
the Peabody Conservatory's new Jazz studies program now. What do you find are
the most important things you want to impart to your students?
MF: I'm really excited about the Peabody program. It's so new that it
really feels like it has lots of potential. What I'd really like to impart to
my students is that they have to develop the ability to teach themselves. I
try to get them to think like improvisers, and to use all that they have
learned and experienced to help them through every new musical situation that
they encounter.
AAJ: Your own background was at Cal State. What did you learn there that
you felt was most valuable to your development?
MF: At Cal State, Hayward I got the foundation of a really good general
music education. It was foundation because I only went there for one year. I
was already playing a lot of pretty "high level" gigs in San Francisco, and I
could never figure out what I would get from the school that I couldn't get
in real life. I had two great teachers there though, Dr. Dennis DeCoteau who
recently passed away from Cancer. He was a brilliant musician, and conductor.
He was the musical director of the San Francisco Ballet for many years. And
the other was Jeff Neighbor, my bass teacher. A really great working bass
player with an extremely broad background, and continues to freelance in the
Bay Area. He basically recommended that I drop out, and I agreed. He saw that
all I wanted to do was play, and I was doing that. I did get a lot of
exposure to different music there, too.
AAJ: You've worked with a very wide range of musicians. Can you discuss the
contexts in which you've worked with Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dave
Liebman, Stan Getz, Tony Williams, Mingus Big Band, Gunther Schuller, Peter
Erskine and Gary Thomas?
MF: I think that the range goes a lot further than that, but this is the
deal with these guys: Joe Henderson was primarily with his quartet on the
west coast in 1977-78. I did one or two other gigs with him much later,
shortly before he stopped playing. Freddie Hubbard hired me for a 4 night gig
in Boston in 1986 after he'd fired his whole band on the way up there. I
ended up playing in his band for four years! I met Dave Liebman in San
Francisco while he was living there around 1976-77. I played with him quite a
bit out there, and then joined his band with John Scofield, Adam Nussbaum,
and Terumasa Hino after I moved to New York in 1978. I played in Stan Getz
quartet off and on during 1982-84. He kind of used me when George Mraz wasn't
around or available but I got a lot out of it musically. I got a call to
audition with Tony Williams on the basis of a very non-typical recording that
I made in the mid-1970's. It was kind of a heavy metal meets serialism
project. He evidently like my sloppy ass electric bass playing enough to hire
me for his Lifetime band. I played in the Mingus Big Band from it's inception
in 1981 to around the middle of 1994. I've always loved his music, and his
approach to playing his music, so it was a great challenge which I really
appreciated having the opportunity to have. I met Gunther Schuller doing the
Mingus Epitaph European tour in 1991. Shortly after that he came up with the
idea for a recording project involving the other members of the Epitaph
Rhythm Section. I've known Peter Erskine since the early 80's. I used to run
into him on tour with Steps and others. I've done a number of projects with
him as sidemen including Bob Mintzer records, Eddie Daniels records, and Mike
Maineri's American Diary. I've played gigs with Peter's trio, and with an
English "jazz orchestra" playing Peter's compositions. We also have a
cooperative trio with Marty Ehrlich, Relativity, which has one CD out on
ENJA. I've known Gary Thomas for a few years. We'd done a couple of recording
and touring projects together before he'd asked me to play on his 1998 Winter
and Winter release, Pariah's Pariah. It's a quartet CD with Gary, Greg Osby,
John Arnold on Drums, and myself. Gary also is the head of the Jazz Dept. at
the Peabody conservatory where I'm also on faculty.
AAJ: Do you find that the audiences at festivals overseas appreciate
different aspects of what you (and other jazz artists) do more than domestic
audiences?
MF: I believe that's been the case in the past. I'm not so sure that it is
as much right now. It's starting to seem pretty conservative and retro over
there too.
AAJ: What, for you, signifies a successful performance or recorded
statement?
MF: The faith that it is/was an honest musical statement. If it's
primarily improvisational it's important that no one takes the easy way out
and goes for the obvious, or falls back into their comfort zones too much.
Without some discomfort there is no growth.
AAJ: That's a really good point. Can you discuss the latest CD?
MF: Guess whatÃÂ
there isn't one. I have all kinds of musical projects ready
to go, but at this point I have no one interested in recording any of them.
AAJ: That's hard to believe. I'm sure its just a matter of time. Are there
any current gigs, projects, tours or recordings you'd like to mention?
MF: My ongoing projects include my Northern Exposure Quartet with Henrik
Frisk, Dave Ballou, Jim Black and I, the Tim Berne/Michael Formanek Duo, a
March tour with Marty Ehrlich's Quartet, April tour with the Jacob Anderskov
trio in Scandanavia, and a really nice CD with Angelica Sanchez, Tony Malaby
and Tom Rainey and I on Omnitone. Due out in the Spring of 2002, right
Frank!!!
AAJ: Sounds good. We'll be on the lookout for those. Thanks for your
thoughts.
For more info and audio clips visit www.amibotheringyou.com.
