Ken Vandermark: Raw and Refined

The Rigors of Touring

AAJ: Looking at Hoxha's tour, starting in Canada, playing Seattle the next night and then playing Portland the night after that...That's a huge stretch of miles between shows.

KV: Oh that's easy! [laughs] Yeah.

AAJ: With the travel time and overnight accommodations, don't they eat up whatever you've got to make the thing go?

KV: Yeah, that's the reality of the touring.. And sometimes it would seem to me that in some cases, people want to overlook that or ignore it, or not really acknowledge the impact it has on the music and the musicians and the availability for the music to grow.

AAJ-e: Physically and emotionally speaking, how have you managed to keep your busy schedule for such a long period of time? Is there a danger of burnout? And if so, how do you combat fatigue and renew your level of creativity?

KV-e: In all honesty, the work sustains me, it's what I love to do. Even though it can be a real struggle, and is a painful experience when I fail creatively, my favorite place to be is on stage playing with great musicians. I learned very early that in order to get on stage more often it helped to put together bands, compose music, and organize concerts. Yes, I get tired, but I also get to collaborate and am challenged by very passionate people on a daily basis, we're given opportunities to present our work to people who want to hear it, and am supported and loved by my wife Ellen. I would say that if I can't continue under these circumstances I don't deserve to be doing this job.

AAJ-e: Are the day-to-day realities of maintaining a band shut out from your creative process, or do these realities serve as inspiration?

KV-e: I believe that to be an artist in the United States it's impossible to ignore the economic reality here—there is hardly any government support for the arts. The challenge, for me, is how to create the work I need to make and then figure out how to get it heard in concert and on record; building a system that is self-sustaining without sacrificing any creative decisions. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Music with Hyphenated Feelings

AAJ: To return to the idea of dissonance and chaos for a moment, there's an optimistic feeling that comes from the music of the '30s, with the melodies and chord sequences that, for example, Lester Young and Ben Webster worked with. But that really changed with Ornette and Cecil, and now we have a music with hyphenated feelings, optimistic-anxious for example. Is that right, does that makes sense?

KV: I think I understand what you're saying. I don't know if, and I don't honestly disagree with the idea that the sort of levels of complexity on the surface of the music of someone like Cecil Taylor is quite a bit different than the music of, let's say, Lester Young. I would say that the content of the music of Lester Young is no less complex than what Cecil Taylor's music is about, and I'd be surprised if you talked to Cecil if he would disagree. It would be interesting to find out his perspective on it as an example. But I think that all art is complicated and all art, great art, art that stands the test of time and has meaning to people generations after it's made, is complex. Otherwise it's just a superficial statement, a superficial communication about experience that has nothing to say to people from another country, another time period.

I think that certain kinds of complexity that developed in the course of the twentieth century in the music of the United States and into Europe connected to jazz and improvisation in some ways, and it's certainly been said before that it's almost a compressed version of the developments of Western composed music that happened over several hundred years. But I think the components that are surface—and by surface I don't mean superficial, I mean the construction, the components, the language types, the grammar—are, to use an analogy, quite a bit different and in some cases quite a bit more dense than music that was earlier in the century. But for every example of those kinds of differences you can find exceptions and I think that it's very easy to find examples of someone like Peter Brötzmann being incredibly lyrical and introspective, and beautiful in his playing in a conventional way, almost out of a Coleman Hawkins, Sidney Bechet style. The same thing is true of Cecil Taylor, same thing's true of Albert Ayler, people that are associated more with let's say aggressive expressions in a music that has dissonance, that has many rhythmic layers to it that in terms of its surface, is seemingly more complex than, say, someone like Lester Young to use the same example. I think the more you come to appreciate and be able to hear the music of Lester Young, the deeper and deeper it goes and the more reference points and complexity become clear.

In an almost an inverse way...I know that for many years it took me, I mean it took me a long time to figure out that Cecil Taylor's music had conventionally notated material involved. You know in the early years of listening to him, I was blown away and impressed with the amount of energy and kinetic motion in his music, but it wasn't until I heard Student Studies after listening to Cecil for a few years that I realized, wait a minute, there's reference points here that they know ahead of time—it's not just all improvised. Okay, that points to my own listening ignorance and the time it's taken me to figure things out but once that happened, then it was okay. There's a certain sense of organization here, there's a certain clarity that I was missing before and once I was able to kind of crack that it got me to the clarity in Cecil Taylor's playing. Because Cecil is a great artist, because Lester Young is a great artist, their music has a lot of emotional resonance. It has a lot of intellectual resonance and it's like any art; it speaks to many levels simultaneously in a complex way. A beautiful Lester Young solo is not unlike a powerful Cecil Taylor explosion at the keyboards to me. The way they sound is quite different, the way they organize their material is quite different, but the complexity of experience is on a similar level and that's based on the way I receive that music and hear it, you know. An art experience, listening to music, looking at a painting...part of the thing that's fascinating about it is, there is a lot of subjective perspective and that makes the thing interesting to talk about [laughs]. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Changing Subjectivity

AAJ: As a listener, I've noticed that even personal subjectivity changes; what seemed like nonsense in the past becomes something beautiful and fascinating today.

KV: Oh yes, that's the thing; that we're constantly changing and that the music is constantly changing. Like you said, that's a reference point you go back to hear something that you think you know, and like, you know the art of Thelonious Monk, it's fascinating to go back and hear him again and again and realize how much I've changed in relationship to that music because it's a recording, it's a quantifiable thing—and the quantity that's changed is me.

AAJ: Exactly, the subject matter has remained fixed in time, but the listener is changing which changes the listener's whole experience.

KV: And that's why I think anybody who's serious about the music is always changing and their music is always changing and why you find a lot of the frustration at least with the people I'm friends with and know, why they get frustrated with how common it is to be pigeonholed as a certain kind of player doing a certain kind of thing, and how that prevents an open mind for so many people when they listen to the music. Again, it gets back to the idea of preconceptions and when you're dealing with a music that's supposed to be, for my mind, about exploding preconceptions, about erasing the status quo, about breaking apart boundary lines. It's very surprising to me how common it is for people to want to standardize the thinking about it and define people in a very, very limited way. And any art is complex, as we've already talked about. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Wynton Marsalis

AAJ: Off the record if you prefer: I think Wynton Marsalis became a victim of that line of thought. Folks attack the guy for the smallest reasons.

KV: Yeah, well I think that part of that may be because there's been an effort, it would seem to me on the basis of the work at the Lincoln Center and things that Wynton Marsalis is involved in, where he has really made a huge effort to define the characteristics of what makes something a jazz performance, or not. If your goal is to sort of develop categories and definitions in such a limiting kind of way, at least as far as I've understood it and have thought about it in comparison I would say that the thing is more open-ended than can be defined in a simple set of definitions. In a way, if you approach the music in that way, it's not surprising that people will turn around and approach what you're creating with the same set of standards or principles, you know what I'm saying?

AAJ: That's a good point. The way I've looked at it, Wynton's opinions, his thoughts, his method of organization does nothing so much as tell people of the self-imposed framework he works within. So I'm not sure what all the heat is about.

KV: Don't you think, as I've seen it, that the work at the Lincoln Center has been very connected into defining what jazz is and isn't?

AAJ: I'd have to agree since the Lincoln Center is so visible to the public, that it's hard to get away from.

KV: Yeah because, I mean I know that, at least things that I've heard, when people have asked well, why haven't you had certain people perform, the response is they're great, they're fantastic but they're not jazz musicians. And that, to me, sounds like they have a pretty strong sense of what is and isn't jazz as an art form. To me that's like saying, well, a certain kind of painting is painting and a certain kind of painting isn't painting, and that's way too limiting. Jazz, and this the way I see it so I have to preface it that way, jazz isn't a style to me. It's much broader than that. It's an art form which means it encompasses many, many different styles, many, many different sets of ideals and it's a living thing. It's something that's going to constantly change beyond the control of any set of individuals, and it has to do that to survive as an artistic act. Otherwise it's just a repertory, it's a museum piece. And the music I know and the music I play and the people I know and work with, we're definitely not interested in belonging to a museum. We're looking for something else to make.

AAJ: I don't think you have to worry about that aspect anytime soon.

KV: [chuckles] That's probably true.

AAJ: Would you rather that I not publish this part in the interview?

KV: No, I mean that's fine. You know I have respect for all the people that are working in this field and I think it's worth talking about these things because it needs, you know, it's a discussion and certainly the way I think about it is different then a lot of people, including people who are working in ways that are seemingly more in connection with the way that I work. It's worth noting these issues because if we don't talk about then they just sit there and don't move.

AAJ: As it is now, folks seem divided into two camps: One in thoughtless support of Wynton, and the other intent on vilifying the man. There's very little middle ground.

KV: There's gotta be a way to discuss these things in a way that's productive. Like anything, money is involved and if money is involved, certain kinds of power and political thinking are involved. I think that it's hard to separate the choices that some people are making from the issue of if you control a product, if you define something and make it a product, then you're gonna make some people angry. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Invention Versus Discovery

AAJ: Is there such a thing as invention or is there only discovery?

KV: I would think that there's invention. There are certain kinds of technical developments that people, I think, create and invent, you know? For example, Derek Bailey comes to mind 'cause he passed away recently. His approach to playing guitar, he invented a lot of that, at least by the way I define the word invention. He may have been influenced by other guitarists or other kinds of music even to realize his ideas on the guitar, but without question he invented a number of techniques on the instrument and certain kinds of tools that have been picked up by other guitar players since he developed them. So I would say yeah, invention is certainly possible.

AAJ-e: Judging by the large number of your recordings found published on Okka, you seem to have a fast bond with Bruno Johnson. Could you talk about your relationship with Bruno and how it started?

KV-e: When I met Bruno a little more than a decade ago I found out he was one of the few non-musicians who really knew and understood jazz and improvised music. Pretty soon after becoming friends he told me he was interested in branching out a rock 45 label he had, called One And A Quarter York, to include new improvised music—this became Okka Disk. The first releases on the label were Fred Anderson's duo album with Steve McCall, and the Caffeine album, back in 1994 I believe. We've continued to work together because he's one of the few people whose opinion I trust, and who represents the same attitude the musicians have towards the music through his label. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Beauty in Free Jazz

AAJ: A friend once asked what I thought was a pretty good question: With respect to free jazz, where are the romantic love songs?

KV: [chuckles] The romantic love songs? This comes back to the way the music is heard and received. Without question, again to use Peter Brötzmann as an example—because he's someone that's so often associated with the kind of aesthetic he presented on Machine Gun and so often gets categorized as this, like, hard-blowing, Teutonic kind of musician when in fact he's much, much more than that— I think that he's an example of someone who has quite a bit of very beautiful music in a conventional sense of what that word may mean to people...and his album 14 Love Poems, there are things on there, without question to use one example, that are extremely, extremely beautiful.

In all the kind of music I like, there's a kind of raw, edgy character and I would put Billie Holiday in that category. I think that to me, the kind of emotional directness in her music, and particularly in her later singing when her, her instrument had been so damaged, there's an immediacy to her music that I connect with the music of Albert Ayler. Certainly they don't sound the same but the content, the power of expression, the directness of expression, to me there's a relationship and I would say that Albert Ayler has a lot of music that's extremely beautiful, in a way romantic in the sense of expression as a means to change people's perception in that way. So yeah, I think there are a lot of examples of that music, or that kind of approach to the music, that content in the music that's being made now. I think that the issue, once again, that people have to be willing to let down their guard and receive it in the way that it was created, the kind of sets of intentions it was created for and not expect to hear a Lester Young ballad when they're listening to Albert Ayler, but that they would hear something else equally as powerful and emotionally resonant.

AAJ: Earlier you said that in terms of recording, your goal was to present the music as it would be heard if it were being played live on stage. On Territory Band-4's Company Switch, there's a section that was overdubbed, does this signal a shift in your thinking?

KV: Not really. You're talking about where Lasse recorded a separate track and we dumped it in?

AAJ: Right.

KV: Yeah, that was more an effort to, to create a solution to the problem, and the problem being that we had this really strong take of music except for this section where his equipment failed. So rather than get the entire ensemble to do another version of the piece which may not have been as strong for whatever set of reasons, it seemed to make sense to take the few minutes that involved Lasse and come up with a way to get the music to work as a whole. In that particular situation, the idea of having him, rather than hear the music and relate to something that was prerecorded, just do something completely spontaneous without any reference point...which was totally not the way the piece was designed and not the intention initially, but created a surprise which for me is a big part of what the music is about. In that particular case it seemed to be the best solution to the problem but normally, I would say 98% of the time the goal is to perform the music as I would in any circumstance and get a recorded document of that if I'm in the studio and very rarely at this point would I want to alter what has been done. In that particular case, "Local Works," that was the way to solve the problem that I hadn't expected. So an unexpected solution, I guess, and somewhat ironic if I made sense.

AAJ: In a way, it's the exception that proves the rule?

KV: Yeah, I would say so [laughs]. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Who Do You Play For?

AAJ: I'm going to rip-off a question that Art Taylor used to pose: Do you play for yourself or do you play for the people?

KV: The best response I ever heard to that, to rip-off another musician, was something that Elvin Jones said. He said he tries to play for the music. In my experience and in terms of my perspective, I completely agree with that stance. What I've tried to do from the entire time I've played music is to focus on what the music is about, what I'm trying to accomplish creatively with the music and think about what I can do to make the music stronger. When I've done that, it's always led me to good decisions, I think, about how to get my music to people, why I would be doing that and how it affects audiences and other musicians. If you're working hard to make the music sound good and try to meet the needs of what the music is indicating, I think the audience is going to have a good experience.

When I go back and listen to recordings and think about concerts I've seen, the memories, the best memories, the most positive memories are of musicians and groups that were playing and working on music on the absolute highest level it could be done. It's like Ornette Coleman's quartet, we talk about that group, the group with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, we talk about John Coltrane's quartet, we talk about Cecil Taylor's unit, we talk about Schlippenbach Trio, we talk about all these potential groups. These are people that pushed the music they were working on to the furthest points again and again to find something new to do with it, and to challenge themselves. And I think that meets the needs of the audience. It doesn't need to be; I mean, sometimes I think, am I trying to please the audience? That gets into a set of performance ideas that frankly aren't as important as making the music good. If I do my job as a band leader, as a composer to make the music interesting for the music's sake, make it strong for the music's sake, and providing material for the musicians that hopefully will inspire them it'll make them play better.

So if the center of gravity is about music, I think the rest of it will take care of itself and that's why I really agree with what Elvin Jones said. I think that's the best response I've ever heard to that question. class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Radio

AAJ-e: Do you have any thoughts on diminishing radio airplay of adventurous musicians in the U.S.? And is the internet poised to take over radio's former role as a key to exposure?

KV-e: I would say that for the last several years the source of information for improvised music that has been growing the most has been found on the internet. Mainstream jazz periodicals have not been covering adventurous music represented by independent labels in any serious way or on a regular for quite a while, and mainstream/public radio has also been quite limited in representing this side to what's happening culturally. Most of my music is played on college radio in the United States and I'm extremely thankful for their support.

AAJ-e: Just for fun, Ellery Eskelin's band with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black was once described as being the Beatles of jazz (personally I think Pink Floyd might be more appropriate). To extending the analogy, and considering the Vandermark 5's light and shade-like dynamics, would it be fair to say the Vandermark 5 is the Led Zeppelin of improvised music?

KV-e: Is this regarding our drinking habits or the way we dress? class="f-right"> Return to Index...

Selected Discography

Vandermark 5, The Color Of Memory (Atavistic, 2005)
Territory Band-4, Company Switch (Okka, 2005)
Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, Be Music, Night (Okka, 2005)
Sonore, No One Ever Works Alone (Okka, 2005)
FME, Cuts (Okka, 2005)
Hoxha, Line 26 (Spool, 2005)
Atomic/School Days, Nuclear Assembly Hall (Okka, 2004)
Vandermark 5, Alchemia (Not Two, 2004)
Ken Vandermark, Furniture Music (Okka, 2003)
FME, Live At The Glenn Miller Café (Okka, 2002)
Paal Nilssen-Love & Ken Vandermark, Dual Pleasure (SmallTown SuperSound, 2002)
Spaceways Inc., Version Soul (Atavistic, 2002)
Territory Band-2, Atlas (Okka, 2002)
Vandermark 5, Free Jazz Classics Vols. 1 & 2 (Atavistic, 2002)
AALY Trio + Ken Vandermark, Live At The Glenn Miller Cafe (Wobbly Rail, 1999)
DKV Trio, Live In Wels & Chicago (Okka, 1999)
Vandermark 5, Burn The Incline (Atavistic, 1999)
FJF, Blow Horn (Okka, 1997)
NRG Ensemble, Bejazzo Gets A Facelift (Atavistic, 1997)

Photo Credits:
Top Performance Shot: Bartosz Winiarski
Vandermark 5 Photo: Joel Wanek

Second Performance Shot: Bob Windy

Free Music Ensemble (FME): Andreas Froland

Third Performance Shot: Juan-Carlos Hernandez
Bottom Performance Shot: Seth Tisue

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