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Burton Greene: From Bomb To Balm

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AAJ: Are you still active with klezmer bands?

BG: Klez-Edge is the small group I'm doing now. It's an offshoot of my band Klezmokum. As Klezmokum, we were not often popular probably because we were, are a synthesis of jazz with klezmer, Sephardic, and Hasidic music, which was not known or respected at the time. We got some gigs in the 1990's because klezmer was in. We were part of a trend for a while. It was interesting. We were playing weddings sometimes and still played creatively rather than commercially, maybe because the people who hired us for weddings were not Jewish and were curious. We played more for non-Jewish people.

AAJ: What kind of trend was that about the klezmer music in the '90s?

BG: It was just in to do that. It was often Protestant people hiring a klezmer band. I've always combined jazz with klezmer and other Jewish music. But for the Jewish festivals, we were too jazzy and when we tried to get on the jazz festivals, we were too klezmer. The box, it always has to do with the box. This is always the fight in my life. What I didn't know at the time: The Black history along with the Jewish history was combined, it was together, for centuries. I didn't know it, so I couldn't defend myself. Then, at my most recent recording with Klez-Edge, I worked with Alex Coke [saxophone, flute], a wonderful blues shouter from Texas; he is not Jewish, but he has a good feeling for the music and had played with Austin Klezmorim, a Jewish band in Texas where he comes from. Among others we recorded two pieces of old klezmer origins. Well, one piece didn't come on the record. I'll put that on a record the next time. This is a piece written in 1911 or even earlier, with jazz elements, by the Joseph Frankel's Orchestra, called "Zikhes" or "Ancestry." It's one of the first modern recordings of klezmer music. That piece has jazz elements in it; for me it was easy to play a jazz interpretation on that. And then another piece on that is called "Yiddish Blues," from the same time. So, there was always Jewish musicians working with jazz.

AAJ: When it comes to touring, is there any change from the '70s to now?

BG: Back in the '70s, where I had 75, 80 gigs a year, that was a great time. There was much more backing for contemporary creative music and socialism going on. Now I'm lucky to get 15-20 gigs a year, even though I feel my music is much deeper, more widespread, yet more focused than it was back then.

AAJ: But you are still touring the US with your music.

BG: Once every year or two, about 7-10 gigs or so. Of course, this is all on hold now thanks to the coronavirus.

AAJ: What music are you playing currently?

BG: I had that fight to get gigs with the jazz klezmer, and I still have that fight. I go on when I can with Klez-Edge. It's my roots, you know. What I'm doing now is rainbow music, a kaleidoscope. It's all kind of things. You can hear all kind of stuff in it. I've used a lot of compositions by a friend—Silke Röllig, a composer from Cologne, Germany. She uses all kind of elements, jazz, klezmer, music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. She gives me melodic lines and I orchestrate them and extend them with free improvisations.

AAJ: What projects are you working on currently?

BG: Actually, it's several things that I'm working on: A duo with flautist Tilo Baumheier. We did a nice recording called Post Monk Songbook [Cadence Jazz Records]. We're both strongly influenced by Thelonious Monk. Monk's spirit is flying over the music. Another trio I have is with drummer Roberto Haliffi. I'm working with him for years. We played a bit in the late '70s, when we first hooked up. He was my drummer at the beginning of my klezmer band Klezmokum. He's still with me, also for my jazz gigs I work with him. Also in the trio has been Renato Ferreira, a beautiful composer, tenor saxophonist and bassist from Sao Paulo. He plays bass in the trio. The last couple of years I've been working with an Italian guy, Salvoandrea Lucifora, a beautiful sousaphone player from Sicily. He blows the bass lines in Klez-Edge. And currently we alternate with two saxophonists from Israel—Itai Waismane and Aviv Noam. I haven't gone on tour with them, there is hardly any money, so we just do local stuff.

When I get to New York I go by myself to play solo or with some great local guys. In New York or on the East Coast, I've been working with Adam Lane, a wonderful bassist for years, and currently with Igal Foni on drums—he's from Israel. Sometimes I play with Igal and his wife, a wonderful trombone player, Reut Regev. They are in Rahway, New Jersey, 45 minutes from New York. We have a nice recording out with Adam on the CIMP label [Burton Greene with R*Time]. When I'm on the West Coast, occasionally I play with different local people like Marc Smason up in Seattle, Washington. And I worked with Tim DuRoche, in Portland. And of course, the last few years some gigs and recordings again with vocalist Patty Waters who is well known for her legendary debut on ESP Records (1965), with her first intense long free vocal improvisations. We collaborated on the song "Black Is the Color." My latest project during the past months of relative isolation is making many new recordings of new pieces on my houseboat with the fine Yamaha grand I got just before the corona came on.

AAJ: How would you describe your musical approach today?

BG: If I have tried anything in the music it was always about trying to contribute to the universal consciousness. So that's what I'm working on. I'm trying not to get disturbed by the so-called ups and downs. I try to bring that quality out in music wherever I can. So, let me end with something my teacher Satchidananda said, it's a modern interpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave: The darkness can be in a room of people for even 2000 years. As soon as somebody— maybe by accident—opens the blinds and the light comes in, people will scream and yell: 'What are you doing bringing this blinding light in here?!.' Once that curtain is open even a little bit, it will always be there and slowly people will have to come to the light. They'll have no choice than that. It takes centuries. Fortunately, more and more people have experienced that and will never go back. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

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