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Ken
Vandermark
Ken Vandermark : Energy, Music, Momentum
Aired November 12, 2001
WZBC-FM
Saxophonist / composer Ken Vandermark is a driving force in creative music
worldwide. Juggling several active projects, releasing several recordings
a year, and constantly touring, he is not just an overactive participant,
but also one of the music's primary instigators. Over the last ten
years, he has spawned a new level of activity in improvised music in his
hometown of Chicago that hearkens back to the AACM days of the 60s. In 1999,
he was awarded the so-called "genius grant" from the MacArthur
Fellowship, and has since been productive in using the award as a means
to subsidize important movements in improvised music across the globe.
Ken's recent projects include a duet recording with bassist Peter
Kowald; a double disc of live recordings of his DKV Trio, featuring bassist
Kent Kessler and drummer Hamid Drake; a new trio called FME with bassist
Nate McBride and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love; and new recordings this year
[2002] from his ensembles School Days, the Territory Band, and Spaceways
Incorporated. He plans on touring this year [2002] with the AALY Trio (featuring
Mats Gustafsson, Kjell Nordeson, and Peter Janson, and inspired by Albert
Ayler), Paul Lytton and Paul Lovens, and the Brotzmann Chicago Tentet.
Brian Carpenter spoke with Ken in this interview about his rise to prominence,
the MacArthur award, and his latest project with the Vandermark Five.
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BC: Let's get started from the beginning. I know that your father
Stu is a big supporter of the improvised music scene here [in Boston]. I
can guess that you grew up hearing a lot of creative music at home. Were
you self-taught, schooled before college...
KV: Well, I started off playing trumpet in fourth grade and I was a markedly
terrible trumpet player. But I wanted to be a musician and in high school
when I was a junior, I switched to tenor saxophone. From that point on,
I've basically been self-taught. I took some fundamental lessons when
I just first picked up the horn, and then I took some summer lessons with
George Garzone, actually. That was important to me, especially for the music
he played with The Fringe. I went and saw that band a lot when I was in
high school. That was very instrumental in opening up my mind to a lot of
different things, musically.
For the most part, I'm not really schooled in a conventional way.
I didn't go to a conservatory, I didn't study composition with
anybody, and for me personally...that's been the most useful way
to go about what I'm trying to do. I think that in some ways it's
slower, but you end up solving problems your own way, which gives you a
kind of - hopefully - more personal and unique stamp on what
it is you're trying to do. So it wasn't like a conscious thing;
I mean I didn't consciously decide to not go to music school. When
I initially went to college, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a musician.
I was studying film in Montreal, and I got more and more interested in music.
So it was actually a very organic, natural process to get to a point where
by the time I left for college I had realized I wanted to be a musician
and I wanted to play creative music. And that meant that I would have to
make certain kinds of sacrifices, and I was pretty clear on what those were
based on growing up in a household that was very much devoted to going out
and seeing live music all the time, and I met a lot of musicians and so
I had a pretty good idea of what I was up against when I started.
BC: What triggered your move to Chicago?
KV: Well, it was a lot of different factors coalescing at the same time.
I had a sense of what Boston was going to offer me musically and socially,
and I had an idea of what that would mean, and for a variety of reasons
wanted to just try something different. I figured I could always come back;
I had friends there and family there, so if I went someplace else and it
didn't work out, then I could just come back and probably pick up
where I left off, if need be. And that meant not very many options in the
United States, because you have New York and Chicago, and at that time San
Francisco was very active, so as far as moving to another city and playing
music, those were my options. And I didn't want to move to New York
at that time, because the things that I wasn't happy about living
in Boston would probably be - in my mind at that time -- exponentially
worse there. And I definitely didn't want to move to the west coast,
so that left Chicago. And I had a couple of friends from college who had
moved there after school, so I figured at least I knew a couple of people.
And that's why I ended up going there.
I actually almost moved back to Boston in '92. I had been in Chicago
for a couple of years trying to find people to play with, and I was having
an extremely difficult time, and was basically about to throw in the towel,
and move back to Boston, and pick up where I had left off. And Michael Zerang
- who I still play with in the Brotzmann Tentet - was in a quartet
that was formed in January of '92 with Kent Kessler, and that became
the Vandermark Quartet. I was going to move back to Boston in the summer,
and Michael said, "Look, we just started this band a few months ago.
Why don't you stick it out until the end of the year, and see what
happens, see where we can take it, and if it doesn't work out, then
go." And that's really when things started to happen. If it
hadn't been for him, I probably would have moved back to Boston.
BC: After being awarded the MacArthur Grant in 1999, you've done a
lot with that in the last few years, with recordings made on OkkaDisk and
the Brotzmann Tentet tours, etc. Groups like this and Vandermark Five are
such a challenge to tour with, financially speaking...this type of a
grant sort of enables these tours, does it not?
KV: Well, before I got the MacArthur, the quintet had been touring already.
I had been doing tours with AALY in the United States, and was trying to
figure out a way to do it without funding and without support, because there
are some issues and problems with grants...which is ironic: The MacArthur
actually isn't a grant; it's a prize, so it works a little bit
differently. Basically they give it to you and tell you "Use the money
for whatever you want, thanks for your work". In the case of giving
it to me, they made it very clear that it wasn't so much for what
I had done, but for what they hoped I would end up doing, or come to do,
if I was given some economic leeway. I'm certainly not suggesting
that I deserve this, or that I'm in the peer group with Max Roach
or Ornette Coleman. I mean that's just absurd.
I've been trying to figure out how to make things work in the United
States - because that is my home country - without financing,
without funding. And I was getting, and I had been getting, further with
that, but obviously having the MacArthur money has allowed doing things
like touring with Brotzmann's group. There is no way that would have
ever happened.
I feel like I'm really lucky because economically that money -
knock on wood - is a surplus. I've been able to live and survive
as a musician in my relationship with my wife -- who's a pediatrician
- and the combination of that has enabled me to be a musician full-time.
Most of the people who I work with...unfortunately...have to have
various forms of day jobs: Jeb Bishop is a translator, Dave Rempis is a
bartender sometimes, Tim Mulvenna is a full-time musician, but a lot of
the guys I work with are doing music part-time, which I think is unfortunate.
And I think that a lot of people don't realize that.
BC: Right, it's kind of behind-the-scenes...
KV: Exactly. It takes a lot out of people physically...energy-wise...to
do something different other than music and put all of their creative and
physical energy into this music. I feel like I am fortunate to be in a position
where I am a musician full-time. It gives me the time and leeway to try
to book tours and organize things and put concerts on and work with other
people and try to hopefully get more exposure for the people I work with
and hopefully get them more work. For me that's extremely important,
because I do feel like I'm fortunate to be in the position I'm
in. And all the money that's come in from the MacArthur I've
been trying to use on music projects. Right now I've been trying to
sock a bunch of it away over the next few years. I'm not going to
be using as much of it. I'm going to be doing this Brotzmann tour
in June, but other than that I'm going to try to save it all and invest
as much of it as possible, and use what I make off of the investments to
help subsidize projects and whatnot. So there will be a large chunk of money
there...ongoing...to help keep the music happening when times get
more difficult.
BC: How did the Vandermark Five group come together, and what's the
vision for it?
KV: Well, when the Vandermark Quartet disintegrated, I wanted to continue
to work with Kent and I wanted to have a group that only worked on material
that I wrote. I guess that's kind of an egotistical thing, but at
that point almost all of the bands that I was working with were like collaborative
bands: NRG Ensemble, where I wrote some of the music, Mars Williams wrote
some of the music; the Vandermark Quartet, where everyone contributed. So
I wanted to have a project where, okay, if I was going to run something
and I was going to do it my way completely, what would it be?
So that was kind of the objective - to work on aesthetics and compositional
ideas, and that was totally focused on those issues. And I was lucky enough
to find people that were willing to do that, and that's difficult,
because you're asking a lot from people. The music can be very difficult
and challenging at times to play. They have to put a lot of time into rehearsal
and touring and doing music that - from an outsider's view -
isn't there. People think of it as being my music, which makes sense
in a way because I wrote the compositions and the structural ideas behind
them, but everybody in the band contributes an infinite amount to the realization
of the music. And that's not just playing the parts right, but that's
bringing creative energy and ideas to the arrangements and obviously the
improvising. So for me, I kind of think of it as sort of my version of the
Mingus group, with Dolphy. Mingus brought in arrangements of tunes that
he liked by other people, like Ellington, and then he wrote music for the
band and no one else wrote compositions or arrangements for the band. But
they obviously all - like Dolphy or Jaki Byard - added an immense
amount to what the band sounded like, and what the band did, and how it
played. So I kind of think of the Vandermark Five like that.
I obviously wanted to use Kent and I wanted to use Jeb Bishop, who at the
time doubled on guitar when he first joined the group and he played guitar
- a great musician. I like the idea of having a small group that has
the most range orchestrally.
BC: Vandermark Five is one of the more composition-based groups you play
in, as opposed to DKV, which is more of a free form group. How do you approach
composition for groups like the quintet, groups with collective improvisation?
I hear compositions with a head followed by general sections with different
forms. Are they mapped out a priori? What do you do structurally to inspire
the improvisor? And what's the process of writing these pieces --
are you getting ideas from a piano, or are you getting melodic ideas from
just what's in your head? Or are you writing down your improvisations
-- are those the compositions? Maybe speak to that a little bit.
KV: Well, there's a bunch of different things in there, and they're
all really good questions. In terms of the actual writing process, I'm
a reed player, so I write off a horn. I can't really play piano...I
can sort of peck at it. But in terms of arrangements, the piano is really
helpful for voicings, horn parts, and that kind of thing. In terms of the
actual melodic content, I figure most of the time I'm playing the
instruments I work with, and writing off of those makes the most sense to
me because you're the most connected to those. The distance between
my idea and its expression is shortest between instruments I'm working
with. With the piano, I mess around with it occasionally, but I'm
not writing off of it, because it's not where I'm well-versed.
In terms of the compositional approach, it really depends a lot on each
band. With the quintet, it's as open-ended as possible; anything that's
interesting to me personally that I think may motivate someone to improvise
in a way that would be new to them or takes them someplace else I'm
going to utilize. If you look at the different records, there's a
lot of range, as far as source materials that have inspired the writing
- everything from funk and rock stuff to new music, classical, free
jazz to West Coast jazz -- it's all over the place. And I think that
it all holds together because the people I'm playing with understand
that there's a unifying quality to why these things may be interesting,
why they may work. And the job is to try to pull that off, and make it not
sound like a pastiche, or a postmodern cut-and-paste.
So with the quintet it's one approach to the writing, but with Spaceways,
that is a radically different kind of thing. Part of it is the musicians
involved, part of it is the size of the group, part of it is the aesthetic
that we are interested in working with - funk, reggae, and kind of
free jazz head tune oriented type of thing. The Vandermark Five compositions,
on the other hand, tend to be extrapolated narrative forms that start in
one place and end in another place. It's not like a head tune, like
an Ornette Coleman tune, which is a very functional and strong way to work,
and there have been a lot of people who have done that and done that extremely
well. But I'm trying to find other ways to write music for improvisors.
BC: Right, so the transitions stem from the improvisations. The compositions
on the latest Vandermark Five album, Acoustic Machine, are each dedicated
to pioneers of the music. Do each of your compositions stem from the composers'
styles or their writing...?
KV: Generally speaking, the fact that the pieces are dedications is not
so much that they're tied compositionally to the artists, but that
this is an acknowledgment that these people have made an impact on me. In
some cases, like "License Complete" dedicated to Julius Hemphill,
Dogon A.D is one of my ten favorite records of all time, and I was thinking
about that particular piece of music. His use of really heavy groove, bringing
something totally different to an improvised jazz context was really important
and central to the way I think about things. So that one ["License
Complete"] actually has some of that...for lack of a better term...blues/funk
head to it.
"Coast to Coast" I wrote, worked it up, and then later dedicated
it to Stan Getz, because with the approach that was taken on that piece,
it sort of made sense to dedicate it to him. I think Getz is sorely misunderstood
as an instrumentalist...he was just an amazing and fiery improviser...
BC: Oh, right, I agree completely...he has that West Coast reputation
of sort of laid-back improvisations...
KV: Right. So those tunes do have some themes that were written with those
artists in mind. But sometimes I don't understand people's dedications
at all...they have no reference at all. For me, knowledge of their work
really has changed my life for the better. Sometimes it's a musician,
sometimes it's a teacher, sometimes it's a good friend, but
these people have enabled me to do what I'm trying to do as a creative
person and give me the strength in any context. Sometimes - for anybody
- it's a hard living. Period. No matter what you do. And the
artists that keep us going, I think, sometimes get overlooked. They're
not acknowledged, and they should be. So it's an attempt to do that,
in a small way.
Also, I've had some people get in touch with me and say "I didn't
know who so-and-so was", and I want to check out his stuff after you
dedicated a piece to him. And that's amazing to me. So that's
part of it too. I'm totally fascinated by what musicians and artists
do and study, and what they're influenced by. And that's actually
how I discovered Warne Marsh, was through Braxton. I kept hearing him talk
about this guy Warne Marsh, and I was like, who's Warne Marsh? I had
never heard of him. Then through Warne Marsh, I ended up getting to hear
Tristano's work.
BC: So it's a thread...
KV: Right, it's an extremely fluid process, and it ties together all
of these artists in a cross-pollinating way. So doing the dedication thing
is an attempt to say, "These are the things that are affecting me.
Check them out if you want." And that's kind of what I've
been doing...I listen to artists I look up to and listen to what they're
influenced by. And then they impact me. So it's this really great,
wonderful way to take this creative energy and passing it on to other people,
hopefully...
BC: There's a wide spectrum of form on Acoustic Machine. Is that something
you look to when you write pieces for a record -- trying to present the
breadth of the group, in effect saying "This is what this group is
capable of"...
KV: Yes, I think that's a pretty accurate statement. One of the things
that I attach to the approach of the Vandermark Five is that it's
all possible; the musical spectrum that exists is potentially all material.
And hopefully we get to some things that are our own, and that are original
and personal and haven't been done before...and history will decide
that. But it's all potential material. For me, with the quintet, I'm
searching to find new things for the band to do that may push us in new
places to play and new ways to improvise with the material. So it is a conscious
thing. It would feel very strange to me to make a Vandermark Five record
that was all like...swinging jazz. It wouldn't be the nature of
the band, whereas with another group it might make complete sense. So it's
really an attempt to say in some ways, "There's a world of music
out there, and it's all potentially source material for where we may
go next." And that includes, in the case of the latest record, everything
from a short piece dedicated to Feldman that is very quiet and introspective,
to an extended aggressive pieces like "Auto Topography", and
the sort of funky pieces like "License Complete".
The thing is to try to put a coherent set together when we play live, and
put a coherent album together from all of the potential pieces. And I think
that it's really interesting because the way these tunes play off
each other in the course of a night or in the course of a record really
changes the way the improvisors will play. That's a big part of it.
Like tonight, "Wind Out" was the last tune of the evening and
then we did an encore with "License Complete". The way that
we played those tunes was different than if we opened the night up with
"Wind Out" and then did "License Complete" at the
end of the second set an hour and a half later. Those things play off each
other, and the musicians play differently based on how the sets and the
albums are constructed.
And it's interesting the way you end up hearing the music. One of
things that are great about CDs is that you can re-sequence things. So this
piece "Hbf", which is cut apart on the record into 5 pieces,
is tied together by extended improvising when we play it live. But when
we did the record, it seemed to make for interesting segues between the
other material. With a CD, you can lay all of those themes out consecutively
and actually hear how the piece works thematically, and that would change
the way you'd hear the piece.
When we were in Rochester, someone wrote about that piece, "Hbf",
and said it was completely unlike Feldman because, for one thing, it's
very short. And the truth of the matter is that when we actually play it,
it's an extended piece of improvisations. I can see where that writer
felt that way because it works that way on the album, but that's the
thing that's so beautiful about improvised music - the album
is just one version of that reality. And from night to night it changes
radically, so I think the combination of being able to play with the band
live, keep up with the material, and so forth, makes it an ongoing developmental
process of music. And that's why I love it.
© Free Association 2001
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