AAJ: Oh, yes. Japan-only, right? VM: Yeah.
I think you had to be a lottery winner to actually be able to find it at this point. But I’m hoping to see if I can put it out again on my website, or something like that. AAJ: Your albums Start Here , Instructions Inside , Jazzpaña and Sketches all came out within a four-year period, 1990 to 1994, and established you as this remarkable composer, arranger and large-ensemble leader.
The first two are rather comparable recordings, and of course Jazzpaña and Sketches are their own animals, but we are talking about a recording a year, which put you firmly in the expected production cycle of the jazz artist. This wasn’t the end of your recorded output as a composer, but the only thing out since then not counting the things you’ve done on, say, Jimmy Haslip’s Arc , or the Animato record with John Abercrombie and Jon Christenson is your very remarkable Epiphany with the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s not like you’re not always working, but you seem to have stepped away from the standard album-a-year model.
Any reason? VM: The main reason is that I just don’t have the time. I’ve had the suitcase with the music for my next solo record ready to go I’m ready for the plane to take off.
But whenever I’m ready for the plane to take off, some other thing comes in that I have to do. So I think a lot of my solo composition work has taken a back seat to the arranging path that I’ve been taking over the last few years. I’m hoping that the next Vince record is coming up quickly.
I had plans to do it recently, and now I’m planning to do it later this year. So I’m really hoping that’s going to happen, but I think it had more to do with timing than anything else. After Epiphany , I met up with [producer/bassist] Larry Klein, and we did some recordings together of course, the Joni [Mitchell] records [ Both Sides Now (Reprise, 2000), and Travelogue (Nonesuch, 2002)], and the Joni things led to other things.
I just felt that I wanted to be involved in a wider circle of music; something I wanted to do ever since I was a kid was be involved in every kind of music I could possibly do. And to be able to work on some interesting pop records was, for me, a reasonable way to spend my time. When I’m composing any music, it all starts from improvisations, and then the end result is that it inspires improvisation.
That’s how I think I can reconcile myself to being a composer in a medium that’s not supposed to too composed. Now, I would say that I’m ready to get back into what it is that I was doing before all of that happened. But I still have that bug in me when somebody calls me to do something, it’s hard for me to say no.
AAJ: Right. And that’s the first step to actually doing it being able to very specifically say no to some people who might not call back the next time. VM: Yeah, that’s true.
And maybe I’m going to have to make those kinds of decisions. And of course my involvement with the Metropole Orchestra as their artistic director now is taking me out there once a month, so it’s hard for me to really budget my time say, “yeah, I’m going to take a month and do my own solo record.” It’s hard for me to take a month to do anything any one thing in particular, let alone a record of my own music.
But I do think that’s the only way that’s going to happen. the 1994 album you did with WDR Big Band and people like soprano saxman Dave Liebman and Peter Erskine. It starts with a piece by Ravel, but then the meat of it is “Sketches, Part 1-8,” which is very wonderful music that really blends so many aspects of what you do.
It’s a unique recording. VM: Yes. But, you know, both the Jazzpaña and Sketches recordings were not originally going to be recordings at least, I didn’t know it was in the plan to actually make CDs out of the music.
They were really thought of projects for the WDR to do either in concert or at a festival. JazzpaГ±a was an idea that Siegi Lock had, I think, and in that way, it was intended to be a record. But in terms of the WDR, they wanted a project to do in concert, and the fact that we recorded it just made a document that the project existed.
Sketches was a commission to write a piece for the Berlin Jazz Festival that featured soprano saxophones. So a lot of the music in that multi-movement work had whole sections playing sopranos and Dave, obviously. So it was originally a concept of a project that was for a festival, and so my original process was to come up with improvisations that I thought could be worked through into longer-form compositions.
That’s a similar process that I take when I’m composing any music it all starts from improvisations, and then the end result is that it inspires improvisation. That’s how I think I can reconcile myself to being a composer in a medium that’s not supposed to too composed [laughing]. AAJ: I can’t think of another composer/arranger who’s as comfortable with so many elements of music as you are.
A lot of guys who do fantastic charts for large ensemble jazz aren’t comfortable with electric guitar, let alone synthesizer, and you seem without divisions in your sensibilities. Which, I suppose, is why you can work with someone with as much of an electronic element as Björk. The only person working in a similar way with the same openness and competence would have been Gil Evans, I think.
Any thoughts on this? VM: I think it really has to do with the early experiences I had. I didn’t grow up listening to jazz records like a lot of jazz musicians did.
I listened to the radio, and so part of my music sensibility had to do with pop music.
News RSS