By Craig Jolley
Opera to jazz
We used to go the Met every Friday and Saturday. I was studying opera singing and classical piano at the time. After a while it seemed sort of limited. I got into a band that played Steely Dan material. The guitar player could solo over changes and play just like Larry Carlton. I couldn't figure out how he did it. They kept talking about Miles Davis. I found some Miles records (Workin' and Steamin') in my dad's collection. I decided I better go to Berklee summer school to find out about jazz. I studied with Dean Earle, a great bebop piano player who played with Charlie Parker. He opened up everything. Because I could sight-read I got into all these high-placement ensembles. I couldn't really solo so I had to practice a lot that summer just to get started. When I got back home I got Miles Smiles which kind of did it for me because it combined classical and jazz. I stopped singing then which was a mistake, but I wanted to focus on learning jazz which took me about ten years. I took piano lessons with Jerry Kowarski-he works in Korg marketing now. I still talk with him. He showed me Bill Evans' voicings. Then I went to New England Conservatory where I studied with Fred Hersch, JoAnn Brackeen, and Charlie Banacos, the key teacher because he makes you sound like you. Everybody studied with Charlie.
Early jazz experience
When I got back to New York I was broke. I took a tape to (vibist) Mike Mainieri from Steps Ahead, and he hired me. I got yelled at for five years. It was pretty terrifying. Victor Bailey and Steve Smith were in the band. One thing--I learned to set up monitors on big stages like the North Sea Jazz Festival. Otherwise you can't hear yourself. You hear a lot of echo. I met Wayne (Shorter) at North Sea. I sent him a tape, and he hired me to work on High Life.
High Life
Wayne had it all in his head. I helped him build a computer system to simulate the orchestra and get what he wanted to hear. I had a synth orchestra-flutes, oboes, clarinets. I'd play each line in separately to the computer. We'd listen back and change things or add "synthie" sounds. We took the finished synth orchestrations to the studio and had piano, bass, and drums play over them. After that we replaced the synth orchestra with a wind orchestra. Finally Wayne overdubbed his saxophone solos over everything.
On the Milky Way Express - A Tribute to Wayne Shorter
My CD was the opposite of High Life-it was all live. After we finished we went over to Wayne's house and played him the record. He was excited. We played this difficult song On the Milky Way Express that has one of the hippest bass lines. Miriam (Sullivan) only learned electric bass a few months before we started this project--she normally plays acoustic bass. She had to work really hard to play that part and also to play The Three Marias. Wayne says people can relate to the struggle of playing this music. The title On the Milky Way Express can suggest a past universe, a path to universal wisdom, or an intuitive way to live your life. Life has a mystical force, and you can create value when you're on the Milky Way Express. The bass line sort of signifies that because it's so difficult, but it's so beautiful when it's played right.
Z Trio
This band is going to be a long-term project. We're incorporated, and we're very good friends. Allison (Miller) and Miriam helped create the arrangements for The Milky Way Express. We rehearsed four times a week in my apartment (in Soho) which my neighbors seemed to like. We were lucky because there are no places in New York where you can play four times a week. Miriam has a background in dance, and she's planning to write orchestral music for Judith Jamison at Alvin Ailey. She's been with me five years. She sings, too. I've known Allison since she was twenty-one. She's been playing with everybody-Mike Stern, Natalie Merchant. She's destined to become a virtuostic drummer. Her father runs a recording studio, and he's behind her 100%. It's cool to have your family behind you. We're going on tour in October with On the Milky Way Express. Our tour dates are posted on the web site (http://rachelz.com). We're going to Europe in November, playing Ronnie Scott's in London. We're really happy about that. We're doing the jazz festivals this summer.
Repertoire
Right now we're focusing on all these Wayne songs. But we also know A Room of One's Own, a record I did a couple of years ago. It's a tribute to women artists. The three of us played it with a wind ensemble at the Kennedy Center. Maria Schneider and I wrote the arrangements, and she orchestrated them.
The blues
I hate the blues! I play weird blues because of where I come from-sort of a dysfunctional, artistic family. So I play dysfunctional blues. It's something like Chick Corea's The Brain or the way Herbie (Hancock) plays. You feel bluesy, but it's not a down-home feel. New York City blues are different-something like LA blues. A traffic jam in Hell or people who live in mansions with tons of money from the Dot Com stuff, but they don't have any friends, and they don't have time to buy furniture. Dot Com blues.
Composition
I go from the chord up. I've been talking with a lot of rock people like Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins. He really likes my harmonic approach. He suggested when I play rock to keep the harmony in there. I play with people who write from the loop (the drums) up or from the vocals, and that's interesting, too, but I definitely tend to go from the chord. Wayne does too, I think. That's why I'm so attracted to Wayne's and Herbie's music-it's so harmonically complex.
Back into singing
When I was sixteen I was supposed to audition for Nicolai Gedda, a great opera singer, but I just chickened out. When I started taking lessons again three years ago it turned out my teacher Joel Ewing had studied with Gedda three years in Sweden. Joel is a tenor, and he lives in LA. He's amazing. My singing now is alternative rock-sort of like Smashing Pumpkins. But I sing opera, too. I sang at the Kennedy Center with my wind ensemble.
Rock band Peacebox
Miriam plays electric bass and sings in my rock band. My drummer is Bobby Ray. He sings too. I have two guitarists, Stacia and Sarah, who are like seventeen and eighteen years old. They play these crazy, punkish, heavy guitars. I write the music and lyrics for the band. It's about creating peace and happiness for humanity. The cool thing is it incorporates these Wayne Shorter kinds of chords into a rock element. We have a CD out. We would never mix the formats in a live performance. Rock is rock--it's another world. A jazz trio is a delicate, internal thing. Peacebox is more tribal.
Other projects
The big focus right now is the trio, but I'm going to do a solo piano record available only on the web site, probably with my own tunes. There's a possibility when we do another Z Trio recording saxophonist Annette Cohen will play with us. I'm doing a record with the guitarist from Porno for Pyros. It's dangerous when I start talking about these rock projects because most jazz people can't fathom you'd be serious about two kinds of music. I hate that prejudice. I'm trying to expand my life, not make it tiny. Wayne says the hippest way to open up jazz is to have people know about it. If I have a rock band and sixteen-year-olds like it they're going to go back and check out A Room of One's Own and On the Milky Way Express.
Career longevity
Right now there's a tendency to focus on Brittany Spears. The whole record industry is in this youth culture frenzy. I feel like a lot of musicians are becoming discouraged and losing their focus. I want to talk about the idea of a long career. I've been playing since I was seven. Herbie has a forty-five year career, and Wayne's career is forty years. Andre Previn's is fifty years. Rock can have a long life span--Smashing Pumpkins is twelve years, but in rock generally these bands are making it three years. Since we're doing this for the web the thing that's exciting is developing the stand-alone spirit while utilizing the expansiveness of the web. I have a partnership with a company http://2think.com that's helping me build web presence. There are so many things artists can do to reach people now. You don't really need a huge company behind you. I have a great little company Tone Center. The guys Tim, Mike, and Mike are amazing. On my website I'm going to have streaming video of sound checks on the road. We're going to have free downloads of this record in MP3 so everyone can check it out. We're going to have previews of my rock band, photos, animation music videos, clinics, and music instruction by video--I'll give piano lessons from my home. There are things we can do so that when our careers are peaking the industry can't say, "You're not valuable anymore." Artists become better when they get older. That should be valued, not dismissed. I want to build a broad presence with quality as a common denominator-not just a particular style.
Wellness
I do clinics at colleges. The focus is on wellness and musicianship. I'm part of a wellness center in New York for musicians to combat depression, tendonitis, and addiction and on the positive side to further the knowledge of the business--encourage artists to take responsibility for their careers and not act like little babies. The wellness center uses music therapy to heal musicians. We have clinics where we talk about music, but we also talk about how to keep your head together when there's all this competition around. How to function with other people. You won't get hired if you're a jerk no matter how good you are. How to get in touch with your creativity. How to get a record deal. Having a life and contributing to people in other ways-service. I encourage young people to get serious about an instrument. For people who are not musicians I encourage them to enjoy their creativity. I'm a Capricorn so it comes naturally for me to want to reach a large audience. But you have to be generous inside. You have to spend time meditating to find out what is your voice. We try to have a healing thing with the Z Trio. We're able to touch people because we've been able to tap a source of purity. We love Wayne's music, and we love what we're doing.
