This past week the Purple Cabbage we had a chance to catch up with New York guitarist Ben Monder, who will be playing at The Rex on Monday, June 27 at 9:30 for the TD Toronto Jazz Festival. We had a chance to speak about his previous experiences playing in Canada, as well as his upcoming record.

Purple Cabbage: You’ll be playing with Kieran Overs and Barry Romberg for the festival, have you played with them before?

Ben Monder: No I’ve never met Barry before. Kieran I’ve played with, but not too much – maybe just once actually.

PC: How did you come across them?

BM: If I remember correctly, we played with this drummer in Edmonton, he got us a quartet gig at the Yardbird Suite. I’m pretty sure that’s the only place I ever played with Kieran. And he came over for a guitar lesson recently because he’s also a guitarist.

PC: Having to play with unfamiliar players, is that something you’ve had to do a lot of in the past, when you’re playing your own music?

BM: Well I generally try not to play too much of my own music with people that I don’t know, especially if there is not much rehearsal time, because it’s just not realistic to try to get it, you know what I mean? So when I play with people I don’t know so well, or at all, I try to generally play standards or just really easy stuff. And it is something that I’ve had to do quite a bit, because sometimes somebody will book you at a festival, or a club in New York, but they won’t have the budget to take your whole band, so you’d have to find some local players to play with, so it’s always hit and miss. So I try not to do too much. But that’s not really the case with these guys, because Kieran and I know each other, and Barry has a great reputation.

PC: You have a very unique playing style, definitely unlike anyone else in Toronto. Is there anything in particular you look for or expect from players you play with – stylistically perhaps?

BM: Well stylistically maybe not so much, but, you know, I hope that people have good time, and you know, don’t try to follow me too much if I go off on some kind of, you know, rhythmic path – that could wind up being a disaster but I don’t know. Really, the basic qualities that make a good musician I think, just good sound and good time.

PC: So you’ll be playing standards then, mostly, for the festival?

BM: Yeah, but also incorporating some pop tunes into my repertoire. Not current pop tunes, but older ones that I like, and that seem to have forms that are fun to play on. A lot of Jimmy Webb and you know, various other things like that.

PC: Is incorporating pop tunes into your set something you were inspired to do from other players or was that something that came from you?

BM: My idea (laughs).

PC: It seems that that has become a lot more common now. I had a chance to speak with Vijay Yier recently and he’s been recording pop tunes on his records.

BM: Yeah, he stole that from me (laughs). No, I’m just kidding.

PC: So have you had a chance to play in Toronto a whole lot?

BM: Yeah, quite a bit I think at this point. I’ve played the Rex a whole bunch. A couple of times with Andre White’s band – we did this one record release there — and then one other gig with Kirk MacDonald and Neil Swainson. And then I brought my quartet up there about eight or nine years ago, but yeah, a bunch of times.

PC: How do you find Canadian players in comparison to guys in New York?

BM: Far inferior (laughs). No, I mean I haven’t – well Kirk [MacDonald] is you know, fantastic, and that band, but I haven’t played with that many Toronto musicians. Andre [White]’s band was great and Andre is really one of my favourite drummers — he’s from Montreal, but – umm, yeah Neil and Kirk are fantastic too. I think in general in terms of getting up there it’s been mostly with people I know from here, you know, Donnie McCaslin, he did a couple of nights there. So I can’t really say I’m that familiar with the Toronto scene.

PC: So when’s your next record as a leader coming out?

BM: Oh, funny you should ask because I just went into a studio yesterday for the first time to start the process of doing another record. It’s Ted Pour on drums, Skuli Sverrisson on bass, and Theo Bleckmann on voice, so basically the same band from the Oceana record, but just one bass player. I’m expecting it to be kind of a long process because we’re going about it real slowly and kind of concentrating on one song at a time. So we did just one tune yesterday which pretty much took all day (laughs) and probably another one in about a month and a half. We still haven’t finished writing everything yet.

PC: Is the music going to be along the same lines of Oceana?

BM: Pretty much. Over-written, through-composed stuff with not too much soloing.

PC: Was there a lot of material that came out of working with that group? I mean, you guys playing together, did ideas come out of that, or was it more-so your brainchild?

BM: No, it was pretty much what I wrote. I mean, I wrote a bunch of stuff and put it in front of them, and they sort of executed it. There wasn’t really a whole lot of group experimentation that resulted in that sound.

PC: Were you writing for that group in particular?

BM: No, not really, but I would write and then I would think who would be the best people to realize this. So it’s kind of the same thing, just the other way around.

PC: Do you have a release date for that record in mind yet?

BM: No idea. My goal is to have it finished by the end of this year, and so, ideally it would be coming out early 2012.

PC: Do you foresee some touring for that?

BM: No sure. Playing some of this stuff live, I don’t know how realistic that is because there’s like overdubbed voices and you know — I think without all the parts it would lose something. There are three voices at once at times, so I’m not going to hire three singers to go on tour with me. And then there’s two guitar parts. You know, ideally I’d like to. I really haven’t toured with an original band in a long time, so it would be nice to do that but I’d have to make some adjustments.

For sound samples and lots of other great things visit Ben Monder’s website at www.benmonder.com
Visit the TD Toronto Jazz Festival website for more information about Jazz Festival shows.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Vijay Yier is one of today’s leading pianists in jazz and improvised music, drawing influences from his Indian heritage as well as pop music to create a truly innovative and original sound.

For this month’s festival issue of The Purple Cabbage, we caught up with Vijay to talk about touring and how it has affected his life as a performing musician. Vijay will be appearing at the Glenn Gould Studio on Tuesday, June 28 as part of the TD Toronto Jazz Festival where he will be performing material from his most recent solo piano release.

Purple Cabbage: How did you start touring, and what was the process like?

Vijay Yier: Well, the first touring I did was in the mid 90’s when I was living in California, in Oakland, and I got hired by Steve Coleman to go to Europe. So that was sort of my first experience doing anything of the sort, and that was really exciting and it changed my life, really. I was at the time also leading my own group too in the Bay Area, but I guess touring started to first become possible after I released my first album and I had gotten enough press and enough promo and a reputation among the sort of aficionados, who thought that I had something to offer, you know. But then translating that into gigs, that was still pretty slow. I remember I was able to do some college gigs, and some small galleries and campus things out in California — like I was mostly west coast, you know when I was living out there. So things didn’t really jump off for me, as far as touring widely, until more recently.

The other thing for me was playing with a hip hop group in the 90’s, and we got to tour a bit around the US. That was because one of the MCs had been on MTV’s The Real World [laughs] so he was kind of a celebrity and he had sort of parléd that into a career playing at colleges and we would often use that as a way to get the band in too, so that kind of gave us an opportunity to play around the US a bit. So through him, that group had a chance to come out a couple of times. Generally, it’s actually pretty hard to tour in the States. I mean, if you don’t have college things, you’re kind of bankrolling it.

PC: Have you found European touring maybe a little bit different?

VY: Well there are just many more places to play in Europe and some more density there. Probably because there is more funding for the arts there and so there are a lot more performing opportunities, like a concert series, a festival, or even often like a jazz club, which will have some city funding to remain operational. We hardly ever have that here. In February of this year I did probably the longest US tour I’ve ever done as a leader, which was nine shows in a row [he laughs] you know, which isn’t a lot, but it was the most we could string together in a row and it was really nice. I really like touring in the US, but it’s generally just not that viable. It’s nice to tour in places where you really feel that you’re “of the same stuff” as everybody else. When you’re touring in Europe you’re sort of more like a foreign specimen. It’s different from touring in the places you live.

PC: In an article in Downbeat Magazine a few months ago, Dave Douglas said that his first European tour was booked from his New York apartment all on his own. Is this something you’ve had to do, or something you’ve had to work with in the past?

VY: We’ll, I’ve done it different ways, like strung together a handful of things, but I think my first engagement as a leader in Europe was in ’99 in Verona at a jazz festival where I was just invited to go out there to do that with my band. So little by little we tried stringing together other gigs. Also by then I was living in New York City and was able to start working with a booking agent, after I’d reached that critical mass of people in the music industry who can connect you to the rest of the world. Actually if you don’t live in New York, it’s a lot harder to pull them together. There’s a sort of connectivity and a network here.

PC: Was that the reason for you moving to New York?

VY: I think ultimately that’s why everybody moves here. As a musician, this is where the world is watching, kind of. It’s where you can get connected to the rest of the world.

PC: Some see touring as something that takes away from the artist’s true art of simply performing and writing. How do the negatives and positives stack up, and what are some of them?

VY: There is a balance. I mean it’s possible to just become a kind of road dog. You can start to lose a certain aspect of yourself if all you do is tour. But I will say that, you know, last year I probably toured more than I ever have in my life, and it was really gruelling, but you know I’m definitely stronger from it. Also what I found is that especially with this area of music, that what you discover in the course of 4 months and in the course of connecting with different audiences, there’s no substitute for that, and in a way it’s the greatest gift that you can ever receive: the opportunity to discover that. I learned so much through all those experiences playing live — and not just about music, but about being a person. I feel like I wouldn’t trade that in for anything. And I also know that it’s important to find time off when you can think about the larger plan and kind of regroup and sort of reground yourself. So there definitely needs to be a balance at the end of the day.

But I am really glad that I was pushed to break my own understanding, which is what happened to me because of touring with my trio, and solo concerts, and by being in a different city every night for weeks on end, and seeing how music works in different countries. Having all these kinds of encounters that you do, an improviser, it means that you are responding to all of that at every moment. And that makes you, you know — the more pure your responses are, it kind of makes you a better person. I really believe that.

PC: Do you ever get a chance to compose on the road, or do you find it’s too hectic?

VY: I try, but I find it depends on the situation, like last week I flew around the world [laughs], but I was able to be in one place for three nights at a time, and another place for three nights at a time, and that was actually kind of leisurely and I felt like I had time where I could work on music because I wasn’t in transit all the time. There is only so much I can do while I’m in transit because I’m always worried about all the mechanics of getting around and things like not missing my train stop and stuff like that. I can’t really concentrate or really immerse myself in the creative process all that much.

PC: How have you found touring as a solo piano act, with no band on the road with you?

VY: Well it means that sound check becomes my favourite time of day. It went from being the thing I dreaded the most to a thing that I actually cherish, because it actually gives me alone time with the instrument and a chance to kind of drift out and be myself, while not having to worry about putting on a show or really worrying about anything.

I also found that putting on a solo concert night after night, there’s a certain purity to it. In a way it’s such a discipline. It was really cleansing for me, almost like a ritual or a kind of Herculean trial, or something like that [laughs]. You know, just to do it night after night is really inspiring and I learned so much about myself and the instrument and I tried to push myself further each night in terms of depth and nuances and power and sound. It’s a wonderful experience and I’m so glad I’ve had the privilege to do it.

PC: What has been your most memorable moment on tour?

VY: Well, last fall, it turned out that I was with my trio in Azerbaijan on my birthday and we played at the National Concert Hall in Azerbaijan, and they had a jazz festival there and the whole audience — well somebody told the audience [that it was my birthday], and after intermission we came back on stage and the whole audience sang happy birthday for me and they brought out a cake and everything. I just couldn’t, it was something outrageous or something because like I was holding this–. Anyway, it was just one of those moments in life that you’ll always remember. The other thing was that it was so remote. I had never been there before and never imagined that I would ever go there. But yeah, it was a pretty memorable moment.

PC: What advice do you have for young musicians looking to go on tour?

VY: Well, I mean, for me it’s always been important to think of what I’m doing in relation to everything else, so not just about getting MY music heard but about connecting with people. You know, it’s not just about you; it’s also about what other people need and want. If you’re an artist or musician, part of your mission is to help people. So I guess you kind of have to check your ego. It can’t just be about putting yourself at the center of things. You can’t just do it because you want attention. You have to have a larger purpose that’s bigger than yourself, or else it’s not worth it — for you, or the people that came to see you.

For more about Vijay Yier, read his complete bio at www.vijay-iyer.com/about.html
Also listen to full recordings from his latest record at www.vijay-iyer.com/albums.html

Although here at the Purple Cabbage we like to keep things Toronto, we couldn’t resist but share this next interview with anyone whom has yet to read it. The interview was written and conducted by Toronto’s own Ted Warren, and can also be found on his blog at trapdted.blogspot.com along with other fantastic thoughts and articles on music.

Steve Swallow’s career in music (as both musician and producer) stretches over five decades, from the 60’s to present day, and includes collaborations with many of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. For more of an in-depth biography on Steve Swallow, click here. Thanks for sharing this with us Ted, and we hope you enjoy.

Ted Warren: You’re a very prolific composer. Do you have any specific techniques for getting started if you’re not feeling particularly inspired to write?

Steve Swallow: I wish I did. The initial hours, or in my case often days or even weeks, of the songwriting process are the most agonizing for me. Early in my composing career I sat at the piano and noodled until I hit upon something I liked, but I’ve stopped that practice; I found that when I did that I was cycling through all the most banal material I knew. Now I try to sit at the piano as still and alert as I can, with my hands folded neatly in my lap, until a germ of an idea appears. This often takes days. But once I have an idea that interests me the process becomes much more engaging. It’s time then to put on the crisply starched lab coat, to analyze what I’ve got, how it sounds backwards, upside down, and backwards and upside down, to examine its rhythmic possibilities, to wonder where it’s going. At the end of that procedure, there’s usually a finished tune.

I do have one trick I’ve used successfully a couple of times to thwart writer’s block. That is to paste a bunch of Robert Creeley’s poems onto the piano’s music stand, and to stare at them until they yield a musical phrase. He’s been my saviour on several occasions.

TW: You were a very early adopter of forming your own label and also having your sheet music available for download on your website. Was this inspired by the changes you saw in the music industry over the course of your career?

SS: I’ve never had my own label, but I’ve helped Carla Bley administer hers, and it’s a lot of work. But the advantages are enormous; you control the pace at which you release your work, and exercise absolute control over its content. Pressure from a label to produce a certain kind of music can be insidious; I feel particularly fortunate to be free to record what I like. Fortunately too, it’s become easier over the years to record and manufacture CDs, and the internet has provided a means of distribution that used to be monopolized by a few powerful record companies.

I’ve made it a point to make print versions of my songs freely available to anyone who might have use for them. My attitudes on this issue were formed at the time the Real Book appeared. I knew the guys who made that book; they came to me to ask if they could include some of my tunes in it. It was clear they were unable to maintain a structure to pay copyright royalties, but in the end I felt the over-riding issue was to make my music available to as many players as possible. I’ve seen this attitude vindicated over the years, and I’ve decided to make my songs available for free download on www.wattxtrawatt.com. My hope is that those songs will sustain a life of their own in the hands of players who have visited that site. I wrote those songs to be played, and I feel obliged to do what I can to further that aim.

TW: When you were making the transition to full time electric bass playing, was if difficult to go from plucking the acoustic bass with your fingers to electric bass with a pick?

SS: When I first switched to electric bass I played it with my fingers, but I was unhappy with the sound and articulation I was getting. I’d had the good fortune to play with a succession of excellent electric guitar players, and I looked to them for inspiration. I was particularly moved by Jim Hall’s sound and phrasing; I’d played with him for a couple of years with Art Farmer. I came to realize that, paradoxically, I could get a more singing sound and phrasing with the pick than I could with my fingers, so I set about learning to play with one. It took a while; I dropped a lot of picks on the gig and caused a fair amount of consternation within the front line, but I persisted anyway, and I’m glad I did.

TW: You have worked with most of the great drummers out there. (Roy Haynes, Pete LaRoca, Jack DeJohnette, Adam Nussbaum, to name a few). Do you have any favorites to work with and/or people you think you have an especially deep musical connection with?

SS: I’m reluctant to name names, for fear of leaving someone out. Clearly, the drummer I’m next to on the bandstand is the guy I’m most focused on; it’s a very intimate and intense relationship. If things don’t go well with the drummer I’m left with an incredibly sore lower back by the end of the gig, the product I suppose of trying to force the music into a smooth, relaxed flow. Of course, this can’t be done. Either you find a groove with a drummer or you don’t, and sometimes I’m surprised that it’s not there with a highly regarded drummer, or that it’s magically there with a drummer of less renown. I like that you refer to a “deep musical connection.” Really connecting with a drummer involves so much more than the placement of beats; touch, dynamics, the drums’ tuning, the drummer’s response to what’s going on elsewhere on the bandstand and many other factors are equally crucial.

TW: Do you have a favorite composition of yours, or do you have more of a “they’re all my children, I love them equally” attitude toward them?

SS: They’re all my children. At the time of its conception, each one was my favorite.

TW: Finally, according to Wikipedia, your classic composition “Eiderdown” was the first tune you wrote. True, or could the internet actually have gotten something wrong?

SS: The internet is more or less correct on this one. I had written many student exercises, and several failed attempts at tunes, prior to Eiderdown, but I’d discarded them all. I wrote Eiderdown in Berlin, at the instigation of Pete LaRoca. We were rooming together at the time, in 1964, on the road with Art Farmer and Jim Hall. Pete remarked one night that I’d been talking a great game about songwriting but had no actual songs to show for all the talk, and challenged me to write one. I took him up on it. Luckily, the song came out well enough that Art began playing it. Flush with success, I figured song writing was a piece of cake, and set about to write hundreds more. I often wish I’d failed, come to my senses and stuck to playing the bass, but here I am, still whacking away at songwriting, for better or worse.

Although the weather yesterday was more conducive to destroying kites than flying them, they were quite safe decorating the Lula Lounge stage at Fern Lindzon’s CD launch for her latest release “Two Kites” – in fact one of the kite’s tails twined around the arm holding up the lid of the piano. Radiant in a denim blue diaphanous gown (like the CD cover) we were tipped off that sunnier skies were about to prevail.

I kind of got a sneak preview of the contents at a concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre a couple of weeks ago, the CD being part of the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival Special Projects initiative. Josh Grossman, festival director, reminisced about meeting Fern at his tenure at the Markham Jazz Festival and touched upon her versatility, in particular scoring for the Buster Keaton silent film “Sherlock Junior” which was screened at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Theatre. I can assure you that was an amazing experience, complete with full orchestra. I am also familiar with her work in the glorious “Sisters of Sheynville” Klezmer influenced group.

The ensemble last night, who are of course featured on the CD, included Mike Murley on saxophones, George Koller on bass and Nick Fraser on drums. The band started out up-tempo with a swinging original of Fern’s called “All Fall Down”. Lindzon couldn’t resist a reference to that special event happening in London this week, dedicating the next tune to Wills and Kate, which combined “Moon in the Sky” and “My Romance”.

The delightful title tune, written by Antonio Carlos Jobim, featured a rapid-fire, stream of consciousness lyric – in fact his only lyric written originally in English. The piece continued with a wonderful curlicued solo by Mike Murley (you would never know he was suffering from a cold), which put me in mind of the namesake kites swooping and dipping on a lovely summer day.

One of the highlights of the show for me was the bluesy take on “Let Yourself Go” (from Fern’s 2008 release, Moments Like These), where the band did indeed let loose – particularly Fern on the keys and Mr. Koller on bass. Mike Murley was featured again on soprano on “Dona, Dona”, part of the homage to Eastern European Klezmer influenced tunes; an influence which is also felt on Two Kites – on a lovely Egberto Gismonti number, as well as a sensitive treatment on the great Norma Winstone’s “Distance”.

Each year, players from across the country and beyond come to Toronto for a chance to get on stage with some of the finest players out there. But if a newcomer to Toronto asked me where the local jazz scene plays out, I’d have a very hard time suggesting any more than one or two spots. And the more I think about it, it seems that this is not just a problem for out-of-towners, but for many local Toronto players too.

It’s true, creating an active jazz community is extremely difficult. But Toronto is endowed with many great musicians, three successful jazz schools, lots of venues, and even 21st century social media at its disposal. So where have things gone wrong?

Perhaps mentioning how many great players live and play in Toronto is already redundant, because we all know it. What is unfortunate is that many of them seldom share the same stage. It’s true that some jazz musician circles in Toronto are pretty tightly knit, but many don’t realize how big the Toronto music scene really is, and how many players there actually are. Every now and then I’ll hear musicians, young and old, talking about other musicians and how they have heard of one another, but have never heard each other play. What a shame, considering they probably live within a half an hour drive from each other. But unless you’re playing a jobber together, or a bandleader happens to hire you both, your chances of meeting on stage are pretty slim.

With three jazz schools positioned rather far from each other, players are coming out each year finding a Toronto jazz scene that they know very little about. The integration process, even for fantastic young players (although not impossible by any means) can be a discouraging one. Toronto jazz schools have independently developed a solid student community within their respective campuses (with opportunities to play at local pubs, take classes together, and mingle with teachers), but have yet to work together to bridge their jazz programs across universities. As a result, university students graduate with a Humber-centric view, or a York-centric view, neither of which really encompasses what the full Toronto scene is actually all about. It is true that young players (especially in Toronto) get frequent opportunities to attend fantastic local shows, but trying to count the places where these young players have a chance to actually play with one another doesn’t even take up a full hand.

No doubt, as far as networking goes, services like Facebook, Twitter and the web at large are unmatched. But there is such a thing as too big a pond. And that’s what social media has done: bypassed the pond and gone straight to the ocean. Toronto musicians make some use of these promotional tools, but are often found drowned out by the thousands of other musical happenings around town and beyond on any given night. How can it be even remotely possible to focus attention on a community of local players when everyone is scattered in a gigantic, globalized network? It is often easier to find out who is playing and putting out records in New York City over Toronto, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, unless I lived in Toronto! It needs be about building a local community first, and a global one second. Not the other way around.

But great players, eager students and a bustling social network shouldn’t be hurting the scene. In fact they are the essential building blocks needed to bring talented people together under one roof. I believe that the missing piece here is the glue; the bond that facilitates interaction between these loose parts. In my opinion, the answer is more jazz jam sessions.

Looking at the two best known, ongoing public jams – the Classic Rex Jazz Jam and Girls’ Night Out at Chalkers – one can go on and on about why these two are insufficient and do not accurately represent the Toronto scene. In just a few sentences, The Rex Jam (the session geared towards Toronto’s instrumental jazz scene) is often dominated by players whose only outlet is the jam itself. Unfortunately, the scene at the Rex Jam is not the Toronto jazz scene, but the Rex Jazz Jam scene, and it doesn’t take long to get acquainted with the crowd, as they show up week after week often playing the same handful of tunes. Girls’ Night Out at Chalkers on the other hand (the session geared toward Toronto jazz singers) consists of a large majority of jazz vocal amateurs, while its mid-town location makes it inconvenient to get to.

Ideally, jam sessions should be places where players of intermediate to advanced skill level can feel comfortable playing their hearts out; where older players can foster the younger ones to learn the tunes, the tradition, and develop the future; where musicians from the near and far corners of the city can share thoughts, ideas, and drinks. It’s not that there is something inherently wrong with either the Rex Jam or Girls’ Night Out. Naturally there will be pros and cons to any jam, and not one jam is going to cater to every kind of musician. It is just that these jams alone do not come close to representing the Toronto jazz scene and providing a suitable environment for a majority of Toronto players.

I don’t think it’s about particularly reforming any existing jam, but instead developing more of them, each aiming to bring different groups of people together from across this big city. Jam sessions should be welcoming and encouraging, with a focus on developing a community of Toronto players.