"I'm familiar with what people call post-modernism, although it's one of those vague terms that mean different things to different people. I think if you look at music history, though, a technique of many composers is to combine things that didn't necessarily seem connected before. But then that becomes the new vocabulary that's normal. And it's been happening all the time, you just don't recognize it any more."

By Vic Schermer

OTHER WORKS WITH WINTER AND WINTER, LIKE "BLUE WAIL", RICHARD WAGNER IN VENICE, &C.

VIC: The compositions on "Blue Wail" are mostly yours?

URI: They're all mine, except for the first and last.

VIC: "Blue Wail" features the Uri Caine Trio, with James Genus and Ralph Peterson.

URI: I still play a lot of trio gigs, especially in Europe, and what I'm thinking in that group, I'm very wide open, but of course it's coming out of swing. After the Mahler recording, I had an idea. At St. Mark's Square in Venice, they have these groups- a string quartet, a piano, and accordion- and they play everything from light classics to Beatles songs, and the tourists are there, in this very kitschy but beautiful environment, it can be eerie in a way too. But I knew that Wagner loved Venice, and wrote in his diary of sitting at this very cafe that I was sitting in, listening to these same groups. Sometimes, he writes that "They're massacring my music [laughter] and I tell the guy to play faster;" other times, he's eating, and he says the music is very transcendent. Of course back then, he was listening to Austrian martial music. Wagner loved Venice. He lived there and died there, actually. So my idea was, let's update that concept and arrange Wagner for these groups, which is what I did. Of course, these are real tough Italian musicians! They said, "Man, we don't turn pages on our arrangements- you have to have it on two pages, and that's it. [Laughter.] So Stephan Winter brought some friends of mine from New York, like Mark Feldman, over there to play. It's not really an improvisation recording, it's just a performance out in the middle of St. Mark's Square. It's really noisy, you hear the bells. Of course, the engineers did their real sorcery on it too. The recording conditions were very difficult- it was very windy, and so on.

Before I went with Winter and Winter, Stephan Winter had a record company called JMT, Jazz Music Today, and I made two CD's for that label, the first was called "Sphere Music," the second was "Toys." These are more jazz oriented. "Toys" has some Latin stuff with Don Alias as well. It was recorded in 1996.

THE KNITTING FACTORY

VIC: Some of the musicians on your recordings are associated with the Knitting Factory, a very creative venue for jazz and other forms, located, as you know, in New York City's SoHo section. Has the Knitting Factory had a major influence on you?

URI: The place has a history-  when I moved to New York in the late '80's, the Knitting Factory was certainly a place where certain projects could be put together that you couldn't do, for example, at the Village Vanguard or Sweet Basil, either because they were perceived as being too far out, or just obscure. The Knitting Factory was very organized about how they grew. I remember them when they were just a performance space on Houston Street. Now they have four theaters, a record company, a branch in L.A., a worldwide touring program. I've always been a part of what's going on there. I made one CD for their record label with a group called Zohar, which is based on Sephardic Jewish music. It's called "Zohar Keter." Keter means "crown" in Hebrew. Zohar is the Jewish mystic book which postulates ten rungs of ascendence to the divinity.

VIC: Kabbalah? [Kabbalah is a source of Jewish mysticism, dating back at least to the Renaissance, currently undergoing a renaissance in America, and very popular in New Age spirituality.- eds.]

URI: It's the origin of the Kabbalah. The highest rung is the crown, Keter. In a sense, that recording is another aspect of some of the stuff in New York that I'm involved in. I've always had a good relationship in New York with the Knitting Factory. I'm not necessarily one of their main exports, because I maintain independence more than some of their other people.

URI'S CREATIVE PROCESS WITH HIS MUSICIANS

VIC: Can you tell us a bit about how you set up a piece? You may mix in a string quartet, a synthesizer, a singer, a poet, your mother was on one cut, DJ's, a piano. Your musicians come from vastly diverse backgrounds. How do you go about organizing this mix? Do you write an entire composition? Do you have sketches?

URI: It depends upon the piece. In general, I would say that there is an organizing principle, whether a particular piece of music, or a set of procedures, or a harmonic sequence, or whatever. And then there's often room for improvisation. Often it's set up so parts that are written go against improvised things. Certain people sometimes are designated as improvisers. In the Bach "Goldberg Variations," two people may play the Bach, and the third person improvises, but then when they hear that the second person is veering off into his improvisation, the others have to jump down and start playing the Bach, so there's always movement between things that are strictly notated and the element of improvisation.

VIC: Presumably, some of the musicians are not accustomed to this process?

URI: I think they are accustomed to it. When I first started expanding beyond the so-called normal jazz aspect, that when you play with DJ's [Uri utilizes DJ's for various effects and musical inputs- eds.], at the Knitting Factory they would have these sort of jam sessions. I was always interested in electronic music and in seeing groups use that in live performance, for example people like Richard Teitelbaum in New York, you realize their ensembles are doing pieces that are moving through a certain form, but that in and around it there is a lot of improvisation. That's the way I wanted to structure the Mahler piece- you have these very long pieces that in a sense provide their own structure or standard, but interwoven through that there should always be a type of "loose element" moving against it that could be in accordance with it, dissonant to it, mirror the emotional contour, be something totally different. Also, when you take groups to perform live- records can be made in different ways and be tinkered with endlessly- you can add, subtract, shorten, expand- but live on a tour, I want to put in opportunities for everybody to get a chance to play. Even if we're playing these "classical" pieces, what makes it different is what we're adding. I like that: it's that element of jazz where people go up there to tell their story, and if someone is having a bad day on the road, you know they're going to play well that night because they have a lot of feeling to express. I was just reading how Duke Ellington would actually start friction between two musicians, and then say, "OK, now you two play a duet," just to see what might happen. Now, I don't want to put anybody against each other like that, but I'm just saying that, as a leader, I'm sensitive to personality and to the individual's wish to perform, and so I don't want to have a group where I'm suppressing that.

VIC: Why do you have reservations about getting musicians to compete?

URI: Because I'm not manipulative, I'm more reactive. I wouldn't take someone and call them out on the road, with all the problems we encounter on the road to begin with- hotels, food, missing family, etc.- to deliberately provoke my musicians.

VIC: The article you read implied that Ellington actually provoked conflicts among his musicians?

URI: It was a review by Ben Ratliff of the New York Times about a concert where Luther Henderson, who was a Broadway arranger, took Duke Ellington and supposedly made a "crossover" project where Simon Rattle conducted the London Symphony Orchestra while jazz soloists played. The reviewer was trying to say that you don't have to do a crossover between jazz and classical for Duke Ellington- he already did that; he's a hybrid between the two. He used this "conflict" example to say that Duke's thing was much more subtle than that. In other words, Duke used psychology in his group, and I think anyone who has been a leader, sees that there is a psychology in the group, especially as you're moving through- sometimes the group becomes very tight knit and starts talking in this code that no one else can understand; this dark road humor; sometimes there's a feeling that "Whoa, man, we're really moving along," it's exciting, people really want to play. Then there are times on the road that you're feeling dejected and lonely, but when it comes time to play, something elevates it. You want to capture that feeling and you can't always do it, so in a way you have to learn this- for me- Zen vibe of just let it happen, but when it starts to move in a certain way, then push that a little. Many people have criticized the live performances in these recordings. They get the records and get into them, then they see it live, and it seems a lot more disorderly in a way, It's not the same thing. And my attitude is, of course it's not the same thing- different people are playing it and the piece itself demands that there be differences. It isn't like classical music, where you get to a certain interpretation and that's it. A jazz musician doesn't see it that way.

VIC: Some of what you're talking about sounds like a parallel to Stanislawski's school of acting.

URI: It is. I like that comparison.

VIC: Just as he encouraged actors to access their own inner feelings and mental states, you do the same, which in a way is part of the history of jazz as well.

URI: Again, I don't want it to sound like I'm being manipulative. I want to say more that we've had experiences that have shocked us. Many musicians have had that.

VIC: The experiences arise spontaneously and aren't deliberately evoked.

URI: It's a mystery. To me, it really started when I was playing the Mahler project, in places that were hallowed Mahler locations, like the festival at the place where he composed, or when we showed up to play at Salzberg, which for us is just a gig, but of course it's one of the most supported music festivals. But they were having this tremendous political battle in Austria, whose president told the head of the Salzberg Festival, who is Belgian, "You are not dealing with the true music!" And everyone said, "What does he mean by that. What do they want to bring back- yodeling, Herbert von Karajan?" But some did think the Festival was going too far out. And so we showed up. And the people were saying, "You have to go out there and play this concert, because you are the reason- there was such an eruption at this concert! We knew that everybody was looking at each other, the people were primed, and of course, at the end, they just wouldn't let us go!

It was intense! And I've had many more experiences like that. Sometimes when we're playing really emotional music, the audience is on the verge of tears. Once when we were asked to play the Mahler Project for the opening of a synagogue in Poland, when it came to the part where the Cantor sings, you could tell that the whole place was just dissolving. It's just to make the point that somehow the situations that we find ourselves in are very intense. This summer, and throughout the year, I've been playing the Bach project. At jazz festivals, we get one reaction. At "new music" festivals, other times in straight Bach festivals, very conservative, and you get the whole gamut of reaction, and in a way it takes you full circle, because you try to "psych out" the reactions of these audiences- and then you realize you can't do that, because it means so much, especially when in pieces like this where you tamper with things that aren't supposed to be tampered with.

VIC: There's a very intense interaction with the audience in these concerts, including the impact of the political climate, both within music and in the whole society.

URI: Very much so. Sometimes it's a good thing, and sometimes its shallow. For instance, people might give us "license" to "desecrate" "their" music, because somehow we're these New York downtown non-European jazz musicians. They see the visual effect- with the DJ, etc.- it's almost as if you're throwing their thing back in their face but in a totally different manner. It's jarring and sometimes very emotional for them.

MAHLER AND LEONARD BERNSTEIN

VIC: On another level, something similar happened when Bernstein introduced the Vienna Philharmonic to Mahler's symphonies. The musicians had forotten about his music, and at first panned it, and Bernstein was deeply hurt.

URI: It was even stronger than that! There's a video of this where Bernstein is rehearsing them, and it's not going well, because they're holding back, and he keeps on saying, "More! More emotion!" And then he hears somebody saying, "This is scheisse (shit) music!" And he puts the baton down and cried, "This was your music! You killed this music!" And there's silence because he's implicitly addressing that there's a Jewish feeling in the music, and you've killed it, and now you're calling it "shit music" and you know that there's this tremendous love-hate that's so deep seated in European culture, in how they were dealing with the Holocaust. In many ways, it paralleled the racial situation in the United States. There's tremendous guilt, fascination, and denial at the same of a minority culture that somehow gives meaning to the majority culture- I don't know how else to put it.

VIC: Mahler's music had a Jewish influence?

URI: I wouldn't say and never said that Mahler was a repressed Jewish composer. I think, however, that there is a certain very Jewish aspect to him, especially-- I'm really interested in the culture of Vienna, and how it changed. There's a very nice book called Fin de Siecle Vienna...

VIC: By Carl Schorske.

URI: Yes, he's arguing that people like Mahler and Schoenberg in music, Freud, etc., were all outsiders, Jews, commenting on the majority culture. And only someone like Freud could say to the Viennese, "You're too obtuse or too repressed to see what I'm seeing." In a way, that's simplistic, but there is an element of truth to it, so that there's a lot of nostalgia for the intellectual life in Vienna prior to WWII that is associated with certain aspects of Judaism. But I think Mahler himself was, however, not a Jewish "victim" in his own mind. Mahler was more typical in that he saw himself as coming from a disadvantaged background, but was happy to discard it [Mahler was born a Jew, and converted to Christianity- eds.], especially for the cause of social climbing and achieving his true goal in life, which was to become the head of the Vienna Opera. He didn't really see it as a betrayal of his own people. He might have felt that there was something unfair about what was happening, but I don't get a sense that he was really obsessing about it. But even as a Jew who tried to assimilate- he was still ironically called a "disrupter of German music." That's how the critics judged him. On the one hand, you can say, "I officially assimilate," On the other hand, you can say, that as a composer, one can take on any identity he wishes. And Mahler is one of the first musicians to exploit that idea of Freud that we have all these changing viewpoints- that it's not neurotic to say "I'm happy; now I'm cynical; now I'm this; now I'm that" that's just following the course of things [Freud used terms such as "free association," "self representations," and "identifications" to describe the co-existence of multiple meanings and identities in the flow of thought and language- eds.] Mahler put whatever he wanted to in his music. People said to him, "You can't put a little quotation from a klezmer band right after this intense passage!"

You know that he was analyzed by Freud because he was very upset that his young, beautiful, social wife, Alma, was already cheating on him while he he was in the cottage writing his music, she was with Kokoschka [a noted Viennese painter- eds.] or whomever she was flirting with. Freud said to him, "What do you want me to tell you, man? You married a woman twenty years younger than you, you knew what you were getting yourself into. You have to deal with it."

VIC: My psychiatrist friend, Dr. Emmanuel Garcia, wrote an article for the Conductors' Journal about that session that Mahler had with Freud. It was conducted while they strolled around Vienna! Mahler wasn't truly satisfied with the consultation, but did feel that Freud was "right on" in connecting his feelings about Alma to those of his mother.

URI: Mahler told Freud that his parents were constantly fighting, and he would always go running outside, and would hear the "hurdy gurdy" [a portable street type of organ-eds.] player. So he associated this "silly" music with the greatest tragedy, and often juxtaposed simple tunes with deep, intense passages. So many of his pieces have funeral marches. Also, he grew up near army barracks, and he heard the guys practicing their cadences on the trumpet and drums- very sombre.

VIC: I'm hearing you hinting at strong parallels between you and Mahler.

URI: Well, I would say that when I was working on the Mahler project, I did identify. Mahler lived in the Empire Hotel when he came to New York, around 1908. Well, I live on 72nd Street in Manhattan, and right down the street is the old Empire Hotel, what's now known as the Empire Apartments! I got a book on the history of the Upper West Side, and sure enough, it said Gustav Mahler lived there in 1908-1909, right across from the Dakota, where Leonard Bernstein lived, and also where John Lennon was shot.  My whole street has very strong associations for me. On the other side of the street is where Irving Berlin lived- one of my friends actually lives there. When I was working on the "Tin Pan Alley" recording, there is a big statue of Giuseppe Verdi at 72nd and Broadway- I really want to do a Verdi project. And I love walking by Miles Davis' house on 76th Street. It's not that I'm not trying to have it rub off on me, but there's something so beautiful about the thought of Mahler taking the subway at the same time that Eubie Blake was playing- all of it happening at the same time. I don't know why I'm interested in that, though: it's a mystery to me. My favorite books are biographies, and I love the intense detail accumulated by a really good biographer. It gives you a sense of how in a way the social history affects individuals- somehow something starts to happen, because people influence each other in a certain way.

VIC: I'm hearing from you that Mahler took melodies and motifs that were only remotely connected, and wove them into a single fabric. And that's what you do, as well. You utilize diverse types of ideas, sounds, and bring them together. All this has the feel of what is called "post-modernism," which, whether in art, architecture, philosophy, whatever, "deconstructs" previously hallowed forms, and allows for diverse elements to appear, almost without rationale, in one work.

URI: This is the way I look at that: I'm familiar with what people call post-modernism, although it's one of those vague terms that mean different things to different people. I think if you look at music history, though, a technique of many composers is to combine things that didn't necessarily seem connected before. But then that becomes the new vocabulary that's normal. And it's been happening all the time, you just don't recognize it any more. For instance, you see classical composers suddenly trying to write Spanish type of music or their version of an exotic music. Debussy listening to a gamelon orchestra and saying, OK, that changed his life. There's always the desire to reach out, and to use things that might not seem like they belong, and then it becomes normal. And I guess that if you catalogue the music I've been listening to- and I'm not that different from the other people I know who are thinking along these same lines. There are musicians who really have to put the limits on, and say "this is all I'll deal with"- and that's fine. But it really doesn't have to be that way, and there's a really long tradition of musicians combining many different elements from both past and present.

On to part 4 of the Uri Caine interview