Did a B-52 full of Fender Rhodes really crash near a small Serbian village a quarter of a century ago? What’s a Steinway full of holes doing at a jazz festival? What is the connection between Jim Hall and the Dixie Chicks? And just who would pay $6,000 for a bottle of wine? European Jazz Artist of the Year 2005 and pianist extraordinaire Bojan Z has all the answers and in a candid interview talks about life and death (but mostly life), the paradoxes of American jazz, mediums, identity, the poor old CD and his latest recording Xenophonia (Label Bleu, 2006).

All About Jazz: You've come through Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia on this tour—are these new countries for you as a musician?

BZ: Yeah, actually all of them are new—they were a complete discovery. From Vietnam I know musicians that live in France, and I know people who are representative of this culture, but this has nothing to do with the fact that you go in a country and see it straight, first-hand observation. So that was very nice.

AAJ: Is there any difference to you as a musician playing to an audience who maybe don't know your music, I'm thinking of places like Vietnam and Cambodia, compared to playing to the converted at say, the Paris Jazz Festival where they know and appreciate your music? Is there any difference in the way you play?

BZ: Actually I started in Tokyo. That was the fourth time I was there, so you know the way the Japanese audiences are—once they grab you they don't leave you. They really have this long-term relationship thing which is…great! So I started playing this tour in front of an audience that actually knew everything about me, you know, even more than me! They're crazy! So I could really compare in an obvious way the difference but I didn't change many things in what I play, thinking 'this is the audience who don't know me'. There is a difference for me, challenges, because those who don't know me certainly need some more time to get into the story. The energy I get back from the audience can be different.

AAJ: When you are touring unfamiliar places, do your day to day experiences, the sights and sounds, does that enter your music at all in concert in the evening?

BZ: Of course, of course. In general that's where I find my inspiration, in life. One thing I know for sure my inspiration is life and not death. It's interesting, that I know for sure from those few years of war, you know, there was death all over the place—nothing artistic was coming out of this. But life! Ahhh! You know, colors, people, food and nature, smells, the sounds of course. I'm very, how do you say, sensitive to it? So I'm sure that in some way or another this inspires the musical playing every day.

AAJ: I notice in your music, in your playing, a great sense of fun.

BZ: Myself, yeah. At least I'm having a hard time hiding it. Maybe I should hide it more but I don't think so. I'm having fun. You know, it's this old thing about “Duende”—if it's there then I'm having fun, if it's not there then I'm sweating my ass, as they say.

AAJ: Your new album Xenophonia has been received by critics as quite a departure from what you've recorded up until now.

BZ: There are differences in the way it was done and there are differences certainly in the end result, compared to the rest of what I've done, but for me it's a complete continuation of the things that I was launching already. For me it's not 'now I stop what I was doing and do something completely different', I just took more time to work on the sound—the vertical dimension—the colors, the profundity, which sound goes where. For example, on some of the instruments I play, I had this set-up which was acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes and customized Fender Rhodes which gives me quite a lot of possibilities sound-wise— mixing the piano with Fender Rhodes which I already did onTranspacifik (Label Bleu, 2003). That's why I say it is a continuation; I already had these ideas for that record which was like, two or three years ago. The Fender Rhodes that I had in the studio was really not good so I didn't use it. I organized myself and I had two of them! [laughs] In general, about the performance, we were all working on textures and sounds more than who's going to be the fastest, that's where the difference for me is.

I played with guys like Ben Perowsky, who is a drummer from Brooklyn who is actually in my working trio since just after the release of Transpacifik.. So I just wanted to get into the studio and do something and the good thing was I didn't have the obligation, a luxury given to me by Label Bleu, to come out of the studio with a CD in my hand, you know. So what we did was just sit and play. I had a few tunes that were supposed to be tunes but the rest was just playing with the tape turning and that's it. Then it took like six months to listen to it at home with the multi-track while I’m imagining the thing afterwards. Then in the meantime Ben Perowsky stopped. He had many obligations back in the States and Ari Hoenig took the role and we did the second recording six months after the first. In the meantime I had composed some tunes and we did the same thing, just playing and seeing what was there. So I ended up with quite a lot of material and then I was obliged to put this material down on the famous form of CD, which was 60 minutes. Don't make it more than 60 minutes! That's at least what most producers think. So that's the short story about it.

For me the important thing, the year of work, more than a year of work on this CD corresponds to a very... I wouldn't use the term “heavy” but very full year of my life—full of changes, with life and death. My daughter was born, my Dad died, I got married for the second time, I moved to a new place, changed manager. I mean, it's like everything you can imagine changed in this one year. As Mingus used to say of his LP releases, he would always put a sticker with a quote from himself: (imitates Mingus) "This is the best recording I've ever made!" So this is exactly what I’m doing—“this is the best record I ever made!” [laughs]