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Take Five With Rhinoceri Trio

Take Five With Rhinoceri Trio
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Meet Rhinoceri Trio:


The Rhinoceri trio, named for the most ponderous and terrifying beast of the primeval forest, both ponders and terrifies. Firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, the group's repertoire spans and blends a tapestry of influences from Duke Ellington's jungle jazz, Eastern European folk music, Ornette Coleman, Bach, Wagner and minimalism.

Given the history of its members, the Rhinoceri Trio's wide musical pallet is hardly surprising. Cooney and Mervine are both members of West Philadelphia Orchestra, a balkan brass band. Brendan Cooney and Chris Coyle play bluegrass together in Noggin Hill (with Cooney on banjo) and have collaborated on several film scores. All three are at home in many genres: Gregg Mervine plays in the Klez Dispensors, the Panorama Jazz Band, and has toured with Ari Up. He has spent the last year in Brazil absorbing the local folk-samba traditions. Cooney plays classical music in the New River Trio, composes extensively for choir, and works as an arranger for pop groups like Dr. Dog and Buried Beds. Coyle is a founding member of the experimental rock project Son Step, works with Keisha Hutchins and Gillian Grassie, and performs all over Philadelphia in various jazz projects.

Perhaps this is why, in their new album Libera Me, Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" evolves from a brooding study in counter-point into an other-worldly cry of explosive energy, or why the Overture to Wagner's Tannhäuser finds itself in a lilting Macedonian 11/8 groove. For the Rhinoceri Trio Bach is just as comfortable in a moody salsa, virtuosic Latin passages are comfortable morphing into minimalist textures, Debussy is at home in a Bulgarian 7/8 in the style of Ivo Papasov, and the Rhino seems at home in the big city. This is as it should be in the forward-looking creative music of the new millennium.

Instrument(s):
Piano, bass, drums.

Teachers and/or influences?
Brendan Cooney: My biggest influence musically has been my study of the Taubman Approach to Coordinate Technique under the tutelage of Bob Durso, a world renowned expert on piano technique. After nine years of study with this discipline I have not only recovered from the tendinitis that crippled me during my early twenties but also completely liberated my technique, allowing me to play at an almost limitless level of virtuosity.

This new approach to the instrument has led to a profound series of revelations, many of which I am just beginning to work out. For one, I no longer see musical ideas, ears and hands as separate. Rather, they form a dialectical unity which I can now make sense of given the methodology of the Taubman Approach.

Gregg Mervine: I studied old-school military technique and big drumming—percussive orchestration—with Tony DiNicola, and he also insisted upon me playing melodically on the drums. In Philly, I learned a lot from watching Edgar Bateman, Mickey Roker, and all the other Philly drummers. But mostly, I feel influenced by my playing experiences, especialy my gigs and rehearsals with klezmer, Balkan, reggae, indie and Brazilian projects.

Chris Coyle: I started taking music lessons seriously when I was in high-school, studying with Kevin MacConnel—a veteran Philadelphia jazz bassist and professor at University of the Arts. He was a huge influence. Other teachers and mentors have been John Hood, Adam Berenson, Ben Schachter, Mike Boone as well as others. Most of my learning and influence has come from listening to all kinds of music, especially early on when my family planted the seeds of melody in my ear via Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young and others.

I knew I wanted to be a musician when...
Cooney: When I was a kid I wanted to be Bob Dylan.
Mervine: I'm still not sure that I want to be one.
Coyle: When I first had some serious encouragement from people like Kris Jennings and Kevin MacConnel.

Your sound and approach to music:
The Rhinoceri Trio's approach is influenced by a variety of factors. Pianist Brendan Cooney and drummer Gregg Mervine are founding members of Philly's popular brass band the West Philadelphia Orchestra which plays music influenced by Eastern European brass band traditions. These Balkan grooves have infiltrated much of the trio's repertoire. There is a strong compositional arc to the writing which is a reflection of the three's deep listening to great composers like Bach, Ellington and Wagner, and years of study of the classical tradition. Extra-jazz influences aside, the three come from a city, Philadelphia, with a strong jazz tradition. Drummer Gregg Mervine came up listening to greats like Mickey Rocker and Edgar Bateman. Bassist Chris Coyle has studied with Mike Boone, John Swana, Ben Schachter and many more.

Mervine: We like good melodies no matter where they come from, crafted arrangements in which many stories unfold, and sounds that we have yet to hear in a jazz trio format. In the interest of creating songs that are unified wholes, we give composition and improvisation equal weight, dovetailing them together as seamlessly as possible.

Coyle: I think we like to take difficult material and turn it into something poignant, and along the way cause some trouble, some head tilting spontaneity. I often sense that we are trying to run through a wall, like a rhino would of course, as if breaking through the challenges that musicians like us face every day—How do I write this tune? How do I get my music heard? What's in the ice-box right now?

Your teaching approach:
Mervine: I think someone must really internalize the movements, sounds and emotions they think they want to play through listening and observation; one can play the notes but it's got to be in the right way, in the right character. I've taken some inspiration from method acting.

Coyle: get your hands to feel what you are playing, learn how to hear and not just listen, and most of all, learn how to channel yourself into the music. To me, the music has to come from something within, come from something non-musical in order to stand out.

Your dream band:
Mervine: Shostakovich on piano, Bach on bass (synth, organ, or whatever he'd want), Naftule Brandwein on clarinet, Louis Armstrong on trumpet, and I'd have three singers: Mederic Collignon, Mario Joao, and Yossele Rosenblatt.

Coyle: John Coltrane, Bill Monroe, Paul Bley, Charlie Haden and Toumani Diabate. I would get to play drums and percussion.

Road story: Your best or worst experience:
Mervine: what happens on the road stays on the road.

Favorite venue:
Mervine: packed West Philly basements.

The first Jazz album I bought was:
Cooney: Concert by the Sea, by Erroll Garner;

Mervine: a Preservation Hall tape;

Coyle: Bright Size Life, by Pat Metheny.

CDs you are listening to now:
Cooney: Ivo Papasov, Dolly Parton, Art Tatum;

Gregg: Budowitz, Don Cabellero, Callers;

Coyle: Ali Farka Toure, Ben Webster, Panda Bear.

Desert Island picks:
Cooney: Stienway concert grand and the following books: Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues for Piano, Now He Sings Now He Sobs transcriptions, complete transcriptions of Oscar Peterson, Complete keyboard works of Bach, Kapital 1-3 Karl Marx Mervine: Andras Shiff's Bach Preludes and Fugues; Bartok's string quartets (Emerson Quartet), a good Louis Armstrong collection with the early stuff; Young Tuxedo Brass Band's Jazz Begins.

Coyle: Paul Bley, Open to Love; Pat Metheny, Bright Size Life; Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life; Brian Eno, Apollo Atmospheres and Soundtracks.

How would you describe the state of jazz today?
Cooney: Jazz today is in a sorry state. This is not due to a lack of talent, skill, vision or dedication on the part of the thousands of players who pour out of the conservatories each year, or the many more thousands of players eking out a living on the fringes of musical society. The state of jazz seems to be, rather, a result of much larger forces beyond our control. This is not a society that nurtures those who wish to do fulfilling work that betters us as people.

Rather, it is a society of assembly lines that seeks to divorce the human from any control over the labor process. As noble as the desire of musicians is to do meaningful work, this desire will never be strong enough to change the basic material realities of a society founded on the subordination of the individual to the needs of profit.

Mervine: Jazz is a deep American tradition that still inspires new music all over the globe. The traditional jazz format, having explored form and harmony to the outer reaches of intelligibility, and having appropriated plenty of appealing styles, seems rather exhausted to me creatively. The vamp format—playing over a short repetitive figure, one chord/one groove, or playing free time—I don't think comes from jazz at all, but rather from salsa, gospel, Middle Eastern music, Indian music, Cantorial music, etc. The new musicians I like are rarely jazz musicians, or at least it's not necessary to call them jazz musicians, once and for all.

Coyle: If certain influential educators and musicians keep pounding "tradition, tradition, tradition" into young musicians heads then jazz is heading straight for the museum. Classical music has experienced this, as many ordinary people consider a symphonic concert akin to a trip to a historical museum.

What are some of the essential requirements to keep jazz alive and growing?
Cooney: Given the above, there is really no stable future for creative music. There will always be fads and blips and some will be swept along in these fast-changing currents, but sustainable collective development of a musical culture that sustains its artists is impossible without a complete reorganization of the way we organize the basic social relations of production in our society. To this end jazz musicians should engage in radical politics, and participate in collective movements to alter the structure of society.

For too long, the individualism and narcissism of the music industry have served to divide and conquer us.

Mervine: New Orleans will keep jazz alive a long time. There's a city where a form of jazz is still relevant to the culture, and by that I mean the local culture. And all these improvise-by-numbers how-to-play-bebop books will keep bebop as potentially alive in 500 years as it is now. I'm not sure what's happening to culture, but the music is going to be there alongside it in some form.

Coyle: teach all jazz fans to appreciate the lineage of tradition up to and including our present day. Teach young musicians who have a bent for improvisation, for spontaneity, for something different, how to strengthen their ears and techniques and how to make music based on their experiences and their life-situation.

What is in the near future?
The Rhinoceri Trio is planning a fall or winter tour—specifics still in the works.

The album art by artist Brad Hendricks turned out so well that we are planning a children's book (no words) that tells the story of the rhino's journey to the post-apocalyptic city, to be accompanied by a CD of short pieces for each page.

By Day:
The Rhinos are all musicians by trade. Brendan teaches music part-time, running middle and high school jazz bands and directing choirs. He has composed extensively for student ensembles and has created the website shoutchorusmusic.com for himself and other like-minded composers to sell their compositions for student combinations.

If I weren't a jazz musician, I would be a:
Brendan Cooney would be a bluegrass banjo player, or a leftist intellectual;

Gregg Mervine: I am not a jazz musician. I'd like to farm one day;

Chris Coyle: I'd be playing other styles of course, as I do now.


Photo Credit
Courtesy of Rhinoceri Trio

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