English transcript of THB interview with Sergio Piccirilli for elintruso.com

SP: Let’s talk about your beginnings…How did everything start? Your interest for music started through your parents, right?

THB: I was born in Baltimore, but moved to Boston when I was about 4 years old, where I was raised. While neither of my parents played music at all, they were both music lovers and music supporters, and luckily they had good taste, and Boston has a pretty rich music scene.

My mother is a big opera lover, and has been involved with the Metropolitan Opera Regional Auditions for years. So she was always befriending young singers and housing them when they were in town. Some of them stayed with us for years and really became members of our extended family, such as Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson and Lisa Saffer, so I was very spoiled in that I grew up with such outstanding musicians in the house. In general, her home was a remarkably creative place to grow up in; in addition to the singers my mother housed many young foreign students studying in Boston. Again, many stayed with us for years, a young woman from Japan lived with us for 8 years, a young man from Nigeria lived with us for 3 years, other folks from Mexico, Germany, Greece, Venezuela, etc. I think it was particularly important for me, as a young inter-racial kid, to have such an international and diverse home, it gave me a larger perspective.

My father would also take me to concerts by the Boston Symphony or the Handel and Haydn Society. And I remember when I first got interested in jazz, my father took me took a record store and got me CDs by Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Dave Brubeck, which are all a good place to start. In fact, when he was a boy, his cousin married the great early bebop guitarist Bill DeArango, and he lived with them in Cleveland for a few years growing up, so he was introduced to jazz at a young age by an amazing source. When I got into the music, it rekindled his interest and we would go to a lot of jazz shows together.

SP: Your parents got divorced when you were child…How did that impact you in your formation as a musician?

THB: I wouldn’t really say that my parents’ divorce impacted my musical development, other than it triggered my mother beginning to rent out rooms in our house, which led to so many interesting people around when I was growing up.

SP: When did you start with the music? Your first instrument was piano, correct?

THB: I started piano lessons at age 8, and while I had a good teacher, I never really took to the instrument. I started trumpet lessons at age 10, my mother found an excellent teacher named Mr. Pettipaw who lived on Beethoven Street, which seemed like a good sign.

SP: That’s not always true…I grew up on Mozart Street and it didn’t do anything!

THB: I guess I was lucky…I took technique lessons with him through high school, and did the whole classical-training, youth orchestra track.

The real breakthrough moment for me happened when I met Bill Lowe when I was about 15. My high school had cut its instrumental music program, and a friend of mine who was a student at a local university told me they needed another trumpet player in the big band, so I started attending the rehearsals there that Bill taught. He saw that I was an eager kid, and took me under his wing, and he’s been a mentor and friend and collaborator ever since.

Bill’s musical background ranges from work with Muhal Richard Abrams and Henry Threadgill to work with Thad Jones and Frank Foster, so I was really blessed to find a teacher with such an all-encompassing view of jazz from the start, especially these days when jazz pedagogy is becoming such a conservative field. In addition to being an excellent musician, Bill is a truly great teacher, with a gift for clearly articulating the most complex musical issues, inspiring student musicians to take chances and dive in over their heads, and keeps the classroom a real creative space, so it was a great environment for me to learn and develop in as a teenager.

SP: Why did you decide for the cornet?

THB: I started playing cornet about 6 years ago, late 2000 I think. My friend Timo Shanko, a remarkable bassist and saxophonist who I played with in the Fully Celebrated Orchestra, had been encouraging me to try it out for a different timbre. I was also playing in a New Orleans style brass band at the time, and the trombonist in that group was a brass instrument collector, so he had a bunch of old cornets that I tried out, and I really fell in love with this vintage 1910 Conn cornet, and he sold it to me for about $200. That night I tried it out on a gig with the Fully Celebrated Orchestra. Jim Hobbs, the leader of FCO, plays a vintage Conn alto sax, and the way the two horns blended was magical. From then on I was hooked. Once I started to concentrate on playing cornet, I realized a lot of the trumpet players I had always naturally gravitated towards were actually cornet players.

SP: For example?

THB: There’s early Armstrong, of course, and all the great Ellington players, like Ray Nance and especially Rex Stewart, one of my biggest favorites. Then all the great post-60’s players like Olu Dara, Bobby Bradford, and Butch Morris, and Don Cherry.

SP: Don Cherry?

THB: Yes, while most people think of Cherry on the pocket trumpet, he played cornet on all those great Blue Note records he led in the early 60’s.

SP: What are the subtle nuances between the trumpet and cornet?

THB: I find the cornet a more flexible instrument than the trumpet in terms of timbre; it’s more vocal, easier to bend pitches and play “between” the notes. I also feel playing the cornet frees me a little bit from some of the more aggressive, machismo type associations and connotations of the trumpet, where you’re expected to play high and loud and fast. And when playing fast, I really prefer the softer, rounder attack of the cornet, the trumpet can get a little grating. I also feel the cornet blends a bit better with other instruments in ensemble situations. In many ways, the cornet is a more difficult instrument to play, especially with an old horn, the intonation is trickier, it can be harder to control, but I really find that it’s worth it.

SP: Later you got into Wesleyan University.

THB: Wesleyan was an interesting place, somewhat of a mixed experience in general but really positive musically, and obviously, getting the chance to meet and study and work with Anthony Braxton was one of the defining points of my life. I actually dropped out of school for a while and biked down the West Coast, from Vancouver to San Francisco, then spent a semester at the jazz program at the New School.

SP: How was that experience?

THB: It was positive in the sense that it made me really appreciate the open and creative experience that Wesleyan offered versus the more rigid “jazz” approach and New York vibe of the New School.

SP: To put it another way, you didn’t like it.

THB: It wasn’t all bad, that was when I reconnected with drummer Tomas Fujiwara, who I knew in high school, and we’ve been playing together ever since. But I went back to Wesleyan. When I returned, I was lucky in that there were some really serious musicians there at the same time, guys like Evan O’Reilly, Guillermo Brown, Steve Lehman, Chris Jonas, James Fei, Jackson Moore, so the chance to be hanging out and making music with all these different folks was great. There were also some great dancers and theater and visual artists there at that time, so that’s also where I started working in an interdisciplinary context.

SP: And you directed theater, right?

THB: Yes, I directed this Asian-American theater group and got to do a wild version of the Monkey King story, and closely collaborated with some great dancers, so those were very important experiences for me. Though I have some issues with the school as an institution, the opportunity to be part of a community of young, creative artists, and be in a place where the time to collaborate and opportunities to perform and a built-in audience are all on hand was quite a luxury, and really helped my artistic development.

SP: Who were you teachers there?

THB: Braxton was my main teacher there, and as I said, being introduced to his music and ideas was a real life-changing experience, that continues on to this day. I also studied with vibraphonist Jay Hoggard, who remains a good friend and mentor; he actually played on my Other Stories CD.

SP: What happened later?

THB: After college, I moved back to Boston, and got really involved with the improvised music scene in Boston, which was quite interesting and exciting at that time. I was playing with guys like Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley, which opened me up to some new things, and had an ongoing duo with percussionist Eric Rosenthal deconstructing standards and an improv trio with percussionist Curt Newton and cellist Jeff Song, and a lot of gigs with folks like Timo Shanko, Nate McBride, Charlie Kohlhase, Soo-Jung Kae, Luther Gray. I was also playing with the brass group Paradigm Shift, which I had started with Stephen Haynes (one of my favorite trumpeters and a big influence on my playing), Bill Lowe and Joe Daley on tubas, and Syd Smart and either Warren Smith or Pheeroan akLaff on drums. That was a really fun group. It was great for me to work with such experienced musicians, and we did a lot of different projects in those years, including some interesting collaborations with theater, poetry, and art.

SP: And you began working with some big bands, right?

THB: Yes, I was working with Mark Harvey’s Aardvark Orchestra, a repertory big band led by Bill Lowe and Carl Atkins, and the projects of composer Laura Andel. But I was also doing great avant-salsa with my friend Aib Gomez-Delgado in Zemog el Gallo Bueno, and West African music with the Ghanian master drummer Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng…

SP: And even more?

THB: Yes, definitely. I was doing rock gigs, weddings, klezmer, straight-ahead jazz, whatever I could find. It was a great period for me, sort of a training ground with tons of different kinds of music.
During this time, I also started playing with the Fully Celebrated Orchestra, who I mentioned earlier, led by the amazing saxophonist and composer Jim Hobbs. The group had already been together as a trio for over a decade when I joined. We had a weekly gig for about three and a half years. That was a pretty seminal experience for me, being part of a regularly working quartet with exceptional musicians, all being really committed to Jim’s music and developing a band sound together. It’s really rare these days to get to have a musical experience like that.

SP: Later you reconnected with Anthony Braxton.

THB: Around 2001 I started working a lot with Anthony again, we recorded a duo record together in 2002, and he encouraged me to return to Wesleyan for a master’s degree in composition which I started that fall and finished two years later. I’ve been working with Anthony regularly since then, especially in the past few years, where I’ve gotten to do some unbelievable projects with him, including organizing an eight-hour, fifty musician recording he calls his Genome Project. I’ve also premiered his composition 103 for 7 costumed, choreographed trumpeters, had the honor of co-conducting his European Creative Orchestra, and have been touring and recording with his Quintet, Sextet, Trio, Twelvetet, and (12+1)tet.

SP: And when did you join Cecil Taylor’s ensemble?

THB: In 2002, I started working with Cecil Taylor’s large ensemble, (which includes Stephen Haynes and Bill Lowe in the brass section). He is a powerfully inspiring musician to play with, one of the living masters. After finishing my graduate degree in 2004, I moved to New York City. These days I’m doing some sideman work with great folks like Jason Kao Hwang, Joe Morris, Matana Roberts, and Miya Masaoka, but I’m mostly trying to focus on my own work and leading my own bands.

SP: Before talking about your own music, how is it to do projects and to be collaborating the ones who were your teachers?

THB: Actually, playing with my teachers seems the most natural thing in the world, but much of that is because I was blessed to have teachers who could so gracefully manage the transition from a more institutional teacher/student relationship to a more musical mentor/apprentice relationship, and who ultimately were so welcoming to me as a collaborator and peer. The exchange between generations on the bandstand is such a big part of this music, and though that tradition can get somewhat lost these days, I feel really lucky to get to make music with the folks I learned from. And because these are people I’ve known and have been playing with for years, there is a real deep musical connection there. With Braxton, for instance, I’ve been dealing with his music very seriously since I was about 18. While all the other musical experiences I’ve had certainly enhance what I can bring to his music, there is also something to be said for being able to speak his musical language in a fluent way that only comes from years of study.

SP: What composers inspired you?

THB: My big three for composers is Duke Ellington, Charles Ives, and Anthony Braxton. It’s been a particular inspiration to be so intimately involved with Braxton’s music in so many different contexts, the breadth of his musical vision is so powerful. A longer list would have to include Miles Davis, Henry Threadgill, Prince, Bartok, Astor Piazolla, Thelonious Monk, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Jimmy Giuffre, Beethoven, Sun Ra, and of course particularly the musicians I’ve worked with and learned from personally, especially Bill Lowe and Jim Hobbs.

SP: Lets talk about Other Stories. I think this is the best work of your career. Do you feel this way?

THB: It would be impossible for me to say definitively what is the “best” work of my career, I feel most of the CDs I’ve been a part of represent something of my musical personality, especially the duo CDs with Eric Rosenthal, the Trio Ex Nihilo CD, the Fully Celebrated Orchestra CDs, and the duo CD with Braxton and the more recent work I’ve done with him that’s just coming out. And of course, there are always those magical live gigs that are never recorded. However, the Other Stories CD is clearly the most complete and personal recording I’ve made as a composer and bandleader, and in that way it is very special for me.

SP: What does SpiderMonkey mean?

THB: I’ve used the name SpiderMonkey for a variety of projects ever since I was in college, usually for large ensembles with unusual instrumentation, often with interdisciplinary collaborations.

SP: When did you decide to add a string quartet?

THB: I first put together a string group for a film score I did for my brother-in-law, Leigh Dana Jackson, in 2002, and got to develop the music as an artist-in-residence at the ARTSTUFF festival in Boston. I so enjoyed working with those musicians and that instrumentation that I wanted to keep writing for and playing with that group, so it became SpiderMonkey Strings. I eventually added tuba, guitar, and drums to fill out the band, and we had a chance to do a few more gigs over the next two years. Then Jay Hoggard joined us a special guest on vibraphone one gig, and I loved that sound so I asked him to play on the recording as well.

SP: Is every composition on Other Stories from the same time or did you compose some earlier?

THB: Supo Eno was the first thing I wrote for the group, in the summer of 2002, (it spells “opus one” backwards) I later adapted it to include the additional musicians in the rhythm section. I had originally planned to use that music for the film, but it took on a life of its own and didn’t really fit the feel of the movie. So I ended up writing the music actually used in the film (The First Three Lives of Stuart Hornsley) soon after that, in early 2003. The other pieces were older compositions from earlier versions of SpiderMonkey that I wrote new arrangements of for this group. Dakinis’ Dance I composed back in college, both Chuck and Meditation I wrote while in Boston.

SP: Several times I hear you say “a friend of mine” when you talk about the musicians you work with. How did you pick the musicians of your band? What is more important, to be good musicians or good people?

THB: I think it’s at least of equal importance, especially in such collaborative music. I always want excellent musicians, but I want to work with people that I enjoy and want to spend time with and can have a real dialogue with. I’ve never been that interested in putting together “all-star” bands to get my name in with more famous folks, I’ve always wanted to work with friends who make great music. I was lucky with SpiderMonkey Strings, it’s a great mix of veterans like Joseph Daley and Jason Hwang, who are such inspiring and experienced musicians but also such cool, positive, and supportive people, and musicians of my generation like Stephanie Griffin and Pete Fitzpatrick, who bring such a great energy in addition to their incredible skills. And with my Sextet, the main group I’m gigging with now (with Matt Bauder on reeds, Mary Halvorson and Evan O’Reilly on guitars, Jessica Pavone on viola and bass, Tomas Fujiwara on drums), it’s particular fun because we are all good friends off the bandstand.

SP: Does the music change a lot when the band plays live?

THB: I’m a big proponent of old-fashioned live music, I think music always has a greater effect live, whether through-composed or fully improvised. Musicians can take more chances, and feed off the audience’s energy, and that really shapes the compositions. In fact, about half of the Other Stories CD was recorded live in concert. I like recording stuff both live and in studio and mixing it together, so you can have that live energy for some tracks, but are also guaranteed the accuracy and clarity of the studio for other tracks. Unfortunately, I don’t get a chance to gig very often with SpiderMonkey, it’s such a large ensemble it’s very difficult to find appropriate venues that pay anywhere close to enough, and almost impossible to tour. That’s one reason I started working with my Sextet, to have a slightly smaller, more maneuverable ensemble, but these days even that is seen as a big group. It is difficult to get promoters interested in anything larger than a trio or quartet.

SP: How would you describe your music?

THB: I would say it is contemporary creative music that uses composition and improvisation, but when pressed for time I might just call it “weird jazz”. Jazz and free jazz are such loaded terms, and many of my main influences come from outside the jazz spectrum, but my principle musical background is in that tradition. So much of my artistic inspiration comes from the 20th century masters of African-American creative music who successfully merged the roles of composer, improviser, and bandleader, such as Duke, Miles, Ornette, the AACM, etc. The core elements of the jazz tradition as represented by these artists are the basis of my musical aesthetic: the balance of composition and improvisation, the focus on developing an individual voice in a collaborative setting, the quest for new forms and structural innovations, and the practice of compositional inspiration emerging from personal instrumental investigation. But it doesn’t always come out sounding like something a lay-person might identify as jazz.

SP: How do you see the scene of the new creative music?

THB: In many ways it is a very exciting time for the music, I think there are a lot of young musicians doing interesting things all over the planet, and there are still masters around like Braxton, Cecil, Ornette, Threadgill, still out there pushing the music forwards. And in I think in my generation, we grew up with so many kinds of music available, so you have musicians who are equally comfortable with improvisation and composition, rock and jazz and hip-hop and free improv, real training in both non-western musical traditions and western classical, whatever. So there’s a real openness and potential for new and creative work. However, it is also a very difficult period, there are more musicians out there and fewer gigs and opportunities than ever, so everyone is struggling to find ways to stay active and survive.

SP: What place do you have in there?

THB: For me, it’s tricky, I don’t really feel I fit into any of the dominant scenes in New York right now, whether it’s the Vision Festival crowd, or the post M-Base guys, or the downtown Tonic/Stone scene, though I have respect for all those musicians and I work with a lot of individuals who might be identified as part of those communities. In some ways, I like the aesthetic freedom that allows, but it makes it difficult sometimes to find a spot and an audience for my music. I’d love to be a part of a cooperative group of creative artists, which is usually difficult to maintain, but perhaps at some point in the future it can happen.

SP: When people listen to music, they expect that the musician to be different and creative, but I suppose that at the same time, the musician also expects something from the people. What do you expect from the people?

THB: I guess I want an audience that’s informed, so they understand where I’m coming from and what I’m trying to do, yet at the same time will listen with an open mind and without presupposed expectations. The most exciting thing in live performance is for the musicians and audience to go somewhere unexpected together, and for that to happen there has to be trust on both sides.

SP: Listening to your music, everything sounds very cinematic, very “visual”.

THB: I’m glad you say that. Obviously part of Other Stories was explicitly for a film score, but I really like all my work to have a narrative component, even if that narrative is obscure or abstract or surreal.

SP: As a movie fan, do you like Kurosawa, Lars Von triers or Spielberg?

THB: I’m not a big Spielberg fan or Lars Von Triers fan (though I found the way he used music in “Dancer in the Dark” quite interesting, mostly because I love Bjork’s work). I absolutely love Kurasawa, he’s one of my big heroes, both for his visual power and his dramatic range, from the epic quality of Ran, to the humor of Yojimbo, to the intimite humanity of Ikuru. He also uses music very well, the way the action in Ran and Takemitsu’s score are integrated is brilliant.

SP: You work with electronics and dj’s…Why?

THB: At this point, I think electronics and turntables and laptops have just become accepted tools of music making. It’s not that I’ve ever consciously chosen to have “electronics” as part of my music, it’s more that there have been specific artists who I’ve been interested in working with that happen to use that as their instrument. My own inclinations tend to be acoustic, so I haven’t explored it that much as a practitioner.

SP: Do you think that is a new way of expression or something that will pass?

THB: I’m sure these tools are going to be with us for good now, and they will keep evolving. Even in the past ten years, it’s amazing how much more interesting electronic music has become, as the technology has opened up more flexible timbres and more interactivity. Also, as the music business gets uglier and the logistics of creative music become more complex, I’ve found a lot of musicians who started in acoustic contexts gravitate towards solo electronic music because it allows a creative outlet without getting buried in those kinds of hassles. There’s a clarity and simplicity to being able to make music this way that has obvious attractions, though I can’t see myself going that route, because I feel my work is so dependant on the collaborative input of other musicians and I still so love the particular energy of live acoustic music.

SP: And you’ve also worked with dancers. Why do you think many musicians of avant garde are working with dancers?

THB: There’s such a natural and instinctual connection between sound and movement, I think both musicians and dancers are attracted to exploring that relationship, especially in a live context. I’ve also always enjoyed working with dancers and choreographers because it allows me to present my music in a more ritualized and theatrical, interdisciplinary performance setting rather than just playing in the usual clubs or bars. My wife, Rachel Bernsen, is a dancer/choreographer, and we have been developing a body of duo work.

SP: Is it difficult to work with your spouse?

THB: It is always tricky to work with a loved one, but we were very careful developing this collaboration. We wanted to move past the usual kind of “musican stands to one side playing while the dancer moves about on the stage” performance that you see a lot of. So we’ve been working on pieces that are almost more performance art, where we are both equally involved participants, though obviously she has particular skills in movement and I can play the cornet, you also find me moving a lot, which I really enjoy. I’ve also found that working in this context has really opened up my playing.

SP: In what way?

THB: I’ve always wanted to be able to use space and silence that way that Miles or Leo Smith or Bill Dixon do so beautifully, but I’ve never had the patience or the confidence or whatever to pull it off before. But in performances with movement, I feel better about really using the silence, and I’ve been able to develop that and incorporate it more into my playing.

SP: What are your plans for the future?

THB: I’ve recently finished recording new music both with my sextet and in a duo with Tomas Fujiwara, both of which I’m looking to get out in the next year, and hopefully do some touring with both projects. I’m considering getting involved with a label myself, either partnering with someone or starting my own, to have a little more control over that side of the business. I’m working on a new piece for SpiderMonkey Strings plus a vocalist, using text from a really magical novel by my sister Sarah Shun-lien Bynum called Madeleine is Sleeping. I’m also pursuing the performance duo with Rachel, and in general I’m interested in finding ways to create more performance-based interdisciplinary work, that could be a direction I might move more towards.

I’m really excited to keep playing with Braxton, the work with him is so important and inspiring for me, we’ve got some gigs coming up. And I’ve got some interesting sideman work with some of the folks I mentioned before this summer and fall. I’ll be touring the UK this fall with a quartet put together by some young musicians there, and hopefully also going to Israel for some solo and collaborative work there.

In long-term future plans, that’s a harder question. I’m still trying to find a balance between making the kind of music I believe in and making a living. So I’m committed to pursuing my creative projects for the rest of my life, but how the specifics of that are going to work out I have no idea.

SP: How do you imagine the music to evolve in the next years?

THB: I hope we’ll see a burst of creativity as artists move completely outside of industry constraints and expectations. Creative music is probably more marginalized than ever due to all the mass media consolidation in the past decade, but hopefully all this new technology can make artists less dependent than ever. It can be an evolution of the principles of artistic self-determination of groups like the AACM and BAG and the 70’s loft scene. In terms of specific musical evolutions, I’m particularly interested in the possibilities of interdisciplinary performance; movement away from the head-solo-solo-head form that’s so dominated jazz for a century and movement towards a more integrated balance of composed and improvised materials; and more exploration of timbre, either electronics or unusual instrumentations other than the usual saxophone/trumpet/bass/drums. I also think the gender line is finally being broken, as it is more and more common to see women involved in the music, which has been way too slow in coming but is a hugely positive development, and the increased globalization of the music also opens up lots of new possibilities.

SP: Do you find in the music a political factor? Can the music change a society or a government?

THB: In our society right now, whenever someone makes the choice to follow a creative life, and obey different principles than the basic capitalist impulses we’re trained and expected to have, there is a political dimension to that. I don’t think creative music alone can change a society or a government, but it certainly can and should be part of the environment of creative thinking that is necessary for change. You can’t say Coltrane created the Civil Rights Movement, for example, but Coltrane’s music was certainly an inspiration and an expression of strength and identity for those within the movement.

At my most positive, I feel music, and art in general, has a real and important part in this struggle. When I get more depressed, sometimes I feel experimental music is a terribly self-indulgent thing to do in a world in such turmoil and with such pressing needs, and I feel I should go out and get involved in social work or public policy or something. But I’d hate to imagine the world without crazy music, and I’d hate not to make some of that crazy music myself.

SP: Being a musician for you, is it a profession like any other or does it have a transcendental mission in the world of art?

THB: I don’t see music as necessarily being any greater than any other profession. It certainly can be transcendent, but anything done with real love, that brings a real sense of spiritual satisfaction, can be transcendent as well. But since music is shared with an audience, and can serve as a reminder of that ideal, perhaps that is a special kind of mission, and maybe part of music’s political dimension as well.

SP: As an artist do you have a goal, a dream or do you simply live day by day?

THB: Well, it’s hard not to get caught up in the day to day, especially in a city as expensive and difficult as New York, but I try to keep focused on some goals. Creatively, I feel very happy now, I have real respect for all the musicians I work with, and some of them are my real heroes and major inspirations, so that’s a dream right there. I want to keep pursuing my own work, and keep challenging myself and trying new contexts for myself as a performer and composer. Career-wise, while I know I’ll never get rich or famous in this business, I’d love to be successful enough to get to just focus on music, and get the chance to bring that music to audiences, without having to deal with all the other business hassles and day jobs and such.

SP: If you would find Aladin’s genie bottle and you would be able to ask for 3 wishes… What would they be?

THB: Well, assuming I can’t wish for world peace (or wish for more wishes) and I have to make selfish wishes, it might take a genie to get to those career goals these days. Maybe the genie can function as my manager and agent and can run a great record label for me, and a great performance space. And I want a flying pony to get to my gigs.