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[Mark Helias & Ellery Eskelin]
Contents
Editorial The day after trio Open Loose - Mark Helias (b), Ellery Eskelin (ts), Tom
Point of view Rainey (d) - had played in Paris, we met two members of this trio around a
Jamal copious couscous. We have to say that they are both knowledgeable internet
Helias surfers and that we had met before through email. This interview develops
Lake important points of views. The second part will be presented in a next
Akosh issue. Visit their sites respectively : Mark Helias', sEllery Eskelin's.
Meschinet Don't miss the trio's CD review in this issue.
Garcia-Fons
CDs LE JAZZ: Mark, you've got lots of different [Mark Helias & Ellery Eskelin]
Concerts projects that you juggle, different groups.
Photo Ellery is in more than one of them. How did you guys get together? How do
Lists you make the split between working with one group or another?
Future
Press Mark Helias: We met when...
News
Barcelonnette Ellery Eskelin: We actually played together once, in the Tim Berne/Herb
Links Robertson P1 Orchestra. Later on, I went to see you play with Ed Blackwell
and Carlos Ward at the Alternative Museum, and I gave you a CD.

MH: Yeah, he gave me a trio CD, "Forms", on Open Mind. We had played
[Write to Le Jazz !]together in a big band situation one time, and he knocked me out. So I
called him up and he came over and played duo at my house, and I guess from
there we just started doing stuff. I had no idea what he was doing. It was
great!

EE: We started doing quintet stuff after that.

MH: Right, with Regina, and Pizo, and Tom.

LJ: That's the group that did "Loopin' the Cool"?

MH: Yeah, that group. The different groups have to do with a difference of
conception either in the repertoire, the writing, the role of improvising,
or just the different orchestrated sounds. The quintet with the African
drums was a particular sonic space with this percussion thing happening that
was really kind of heavy. It doesn't quite come across on the record, but
live, of course, the sound of the djembe is quite big. It had this big,
rhythmic motion to it that was really nice. And then the two voices in the
writing. The pairing of the tenor and the violin... I thought about it one
day, and imagined it, and in my head it sounded like it would be an
interesting blend of tones I was thinking about the registers of the
instruments, and how they would blend. I wrote some stuff for it, and we got
together and it sounded great. And then I started doing some other things.
At one point we had a project with Tom Rainey and Ellery where we were
playing all these tunes at medium tempo. All the tunes were at medium tempo.
Some people might consider it a bit boring, but I was trying to mine that
area and see what we could do within a limited area of design. That was kind
of fun. Open Loose came out of a gig I did a number of years ago, but you
were actually there, right?

EE: Yeah, Herb and Gerry.

MH: I did a gig with Herb Robertson and Gerry Hemingway, an openly
improvised gig, and I started to think about this trio. The trio thing is
real interesting because of the way it's structured, the role-playing that
can be switched, and the openness to it. It's got this nice symmetry. So I
wanted to do that, and I wanted to combine open improvising with playing
some pieces, and being able to freely do that however we want. And these
guys know how to do all that. I think we have a particularly good rapport
musically, and we can really think on our feet together, and that's a real
special situation to work in.

LJ:And the three of you also play under another name doing more traditional
jazz pieces?

MH: Actually, we sort of stopped doing that.

EE: But this is sort of a little of both...

MH: Yeah, it's a little of both. We do about half and half composed pieces
and open improvised pieces. The distinction is really about repertoire and
approach. And also orchestrational possibilities. We also did a quartet tour
with Mark Feldman, which is basically the Loopin' band without the African
percussionist. You get into the realm of two melody voices in the upper
part, then the bass and drums. That offers some more compositional and
orchestrational possibilities.

LJ: Ellery, you've got different activities going as well. The one that's
heard about most these days is your trio with Andrea Parkins and Jim Black.
What else do you have on the fire?

EE: At the moment that's pretty much my main concern. That group has been a
band now for four years and I really feel like we're just beginning... I
don't quite how to describe it, but when a group has been a band that long,
something new begins to happen after four years. I feel like it's beginning
again somehow, you have a past to build on, it's not like just putting an
idea together for a couple of gigs, it really takes on another kind of
dimension. So really that's my major concern. I do have an idea of maybe
doing a larger ensemble project later this year. Most of the things I've
been doing have been trios. I really like that concept.

CONTINUED...

Contents - Editorial - Point of view - Jamal - Helias - Lake - Akosh -
Garcia-Fons - Meschinet
Lists - Future - Photo - Press - News - CDs - Barcelonnette - Links

Copyright [le jazz] mai 1998




[le jazz] [Image]

[Mark Helias & Ellery Eskelin]
Contents
Editorial (continued)
Point of view
Jamal
Helias
Lake MH: What about the solo saxophone? [Mark Helias]
Akosh
Meschinet EE: Solo saxophone? Yeah, I do occasionally do some solo tenor concerts. I
Garcia-Fons did a recording five years ago of solo tenor. I recently did another trio
CDs which dealt with the music of Gene Ammons. It was a band with Marc Ribot and
Concerts Kenny Allison, but that's more a special project for the right time and
Photo place, something kind of fun to do. It's a sound that I wanted to capture,
Lists but it's not necessarily a project for long-term development, like the other
Future band with Jim and Andrea is. I really feel that there's a lot of
Press possibilities there, but we're just starting to get there.
News
Barcelonnette LJ: And Ellery, you write all the music for that trio?
Links
EE: Yes.

LJ: So it's really your project?
[Write to Le Jazz !]
EE: Yeah, it's my project, I do all the writing, and I direct things to a
certain extent, but I bill the group with everybody's name in the billing,
just because I feel the music is that intimate. They have a good amount of
input within the parameters that I define. They have a lot of input, and I
want to encourage that and bring that out. It wouldn't be the same band if I
had to replace either of them.I would have to write new music for a new set
of personalities. But I've always been interested in writing music for the
personalities of the musicians.

LJ: Whose idea was it to use the sampler, yours or Andrea's?

EE: I was looking primarily for an accordionist, and when I approached
Andrea I didn't even know that she played sampler. I only knew her as an
accordionist. Once we began to play together she told me that she could play
organ and piano things, which appealed to me. We do a lot of things that
mimic a Hammond B3 organ, sometimes we mimic a piano. And then beyond that,
she has a whole arsenal, a repertoire of other sounds that we've only just
begun to scratch the surface of in this group. Little by little, we're
opening it up. But it was primarily about the accordion. Now I think the
book is divided almost equally between things that are written only for the
accordion and things that are written with the sampler in mind, so it's
broadened since the beginning.

LJ: You made a duo album with Andrea Parkins. Did you do that first, and
then add a drummer?

EE: The trio was first, four years ago we played at the Knitting Factory.
The project you're thinking of is "Green Bermudas". That was a special
project. It's very, very different from the trio. It's unrelated.

LJ: Did you write the music for that as well?

EE: Yeah, but in that case it wasn't about putting notes on a piece of
paper. All the music was instruction, text, like what will occur when. I
worked with Andrea, I sent her a bunch of source material, I said take three
or four samples from this, three or four from that. I guided her, and she
picked what she liked, and then she played for me what she had, and I built
pieces around the samples. Each one has a certain shape to it, and beyond
that it's very much open. So, you can almost say I wrote it… I don't know
how you'd say it. I'm really most interested in the structure and shape of
pieces. I like to say, this piece is shaped a certain way, and within that
you can improvise. But I want that to be very different from the next one,
so that not every piece winds up sounding the same. If I didn't instruct it
the tendency would be, over time, that the pieces would get more the same,
and I'm trying to get a distinction so the pieces are more different.

LJ: You don't use much electronics in your music, Mark…

MH: Not in these live groups, but I've composed a lot of electronic pieces,
and I work a lot with the computer. I've done film work, film scores, where
I've had to record, due to budgetary considerations, a combination of live
instruments and sequenced or sampled sounds in the computer, and make a
score that way. To me it's all composition. Music is organized sound, and a
composer basically organizes sounds. A DJ organizes sounds. I was amazed
when I started listening to rap music in the 80's, guys that were not
"educated" musicians, but their musical intelligence and sensibility was so
clear in how they constructed pieces with sound and beats and all that. As a
composer I would listen to it and see it for its structural integrity and be
amazed at the intuitive intelligence in the organization of some of the
music. The better artists I found fascinating. So in a sense there's a sort
of egalitarian idea. If you can stretch the parameters of what we're talking
about, music, they are taking sounds that they're not producing on an
instrument through years of practice and all that stuff, but after all, the
end result of a piece of music is in the process of organizing the sounds
into some shape, like Ellery said. They were shaping pieces. It's a
challenge to the preconceptions one has about music and composition and all
that stuff. When you spend years working on an instrument as your mode of
expression and you are also a composer, and also an improviser, which is
sort of spontaneous composition, you're dealing with all these ideas in
different ways, from the traditional study of classical bass to the idea of
somebody organizing electronic sounds without having gone to the university…
that's an interesting broadening of the idea. Ultimately, whatever your
education technically, if you don't have a certain musical intelligence and
vision about how to structure sounds... that is ultimately the arbiter of
what you end up hearing. I'm interested in all that, because I took
electronic music courses in school, and then with the dawn of digital
technology and MIDI, it sort of put it all out there with the consumer, and
certain things rise up from there and the rest of it just sort of lays
there. As with everything.

LJ: Do you both have experience playing outside the field of jazz?

MH: Oh, all the time. I work in symphony orchestras. I've been doing some
chamber music concerts in New York, hired to play some pieces by composers
or players. I've done all that.

LJ: And outside of classical music?

MH: Pop music? Sure. I've played on a bunch of rap records, hip-hop records,
things like that.

LJ: What drives you to do that?

MH: It's fun! And they pay me (laughing)!

LJ: Which comes first?

MH: It's usually a lot of fun. It's interesting because the whole hip-hop
thing, this whole thing of jungle and acid jazz, if you think about the
hip-hop groove and then you think about bebop, rhythmically, it's perfect.
The marriage of those two is obvious to me, it's clear. So when I go in to
do a hip-hop record with upright bass, they love the sound of it. I can drop
it right in the pocket with that groove, because it's totally normal. They
say, "Wow! That shit's happening!" They love the upright bass, it's like a
different vibe. So it's fun.

LJ: You still play bass guitar?

MH: Periodically. I play in a funny little blues band in New York. A film
composer friend of mine likes to sing, and a bunch of really good players
get together and just do these little blues gigs. It's really a lot of fun,
we play all kinds of old stuff, Muddy Waters and all that.

LJ: And you, Ellery, do you have such experiences?

EE: When I was younger, I played probably every kind of music there was to
play.

LJ: You have classical training?

EE: I do, I went to a college in Maryland because of a man named Hank Levy.
He directed the jazz ensemble at the university I went to. He was pretty
well-known as a writer for the bands of Stan Kenton and Don Ellis. He wrote
things in odd time-signatures, that was sort of his sound. That was the
reason I went to the school, but the school program itself was actually more
classical. I didn't really know that when I signed up, then the first day I
get there they all said, "You can't play that mouthpiece!" I had to learn
how to make the distinction between jazz technique and the French classical
saxophone technique. Which I did, actually, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I
played alto saxophone for the classical program, and tenor in the band, and
I played clarinet studies, played recitals, Brahms clarinet pieces and some
Bach flute pieces in recitals, and then in order to make money I would play
in big bands on the weekends, or rock bands, all kinds of things. When I
first came to New York I was still playing a variety of gigs, commercial
music just to pay the rent. I enjoyed doing that music as long as I could
play the way I heard myself. But at some point around 1985 or '86, what I
was going for as an improviser was less and less what the people who were
doing commercial music wanted to hear me play. There were a couple of
instances on the bandstand that became unpleasant, I'll just leave it at
that. So I decided at one point that I would not do commercial music. When I
say commercial music, that means any kind of music that you do just to make
money, primarily. I don't necessarily mean it to be derogatory, I don't have
a moral problem. As long as I could play me, I was having a great time, it
was fun. But when it came to the point where they told me, "Play like
someone else, don't play that crazy shit," then it became just a drag and I
stopped doing it. For a while I took a day job, that's where I met my wife.
I devoted my time to strictly trying to develop music of my own composing,
getting together with like-minded musicians and rehearsing a lot. We didn't
have very much work at the time but we would get together three or four
times a week to write music, discuss concepts, and develop. This was around
'86 or '87 when I first began recording with a band called Joint Venture,
which did a few recordings on the Enja label. Since then I've really only
been doing music that I've wanted to do as a musician, and not really doing
any other kinds of work.

LJ: So it means you didn't have the opportunity to meet people willing to
play with you from other fields of music?

EE: At first nobody knew who I was. I was this completely unknown musician
on the scene, and it took a very long time for people to recognize who I
was. But once I decided to play strictly the music I wanted to play, that's
when people began paying more attention to me and slowly it got to the point
where if someone calls me to play on a project, they have an idea of what I
sound like. They want me to bring what I do to their music. That's
rewarding, because I play with a lot of different bands, I don't just
strictly play with my own group. I play with Mark, I also play with Joey
Baron, Gerry Hemingway, a bunch of other people from time to time, and I
enjoy that opportunity. I don't think I would feel satisfied playing only my
own music all the time. I really need the opportunity to realize other
people's ideas as well.

LJ: Speaking of sound, how did you develop the sound you have now? Is it
evolving every day, or is it done?

EE: Oh, it's never done. It's always evolving. It's a process, not an end
result. I'm just realizing that, much like having a group together for any
amount of time, where you get to the point where you can develop and build
upon what you've done in the past, that's an amazing feeling, and it's the
same thing with your sound. I've been playing the saxophone since I was ten
years old. That was 1969, so next year I will have been playing the
saxophone for thirty years, which is a frightening concept when you think
about it. But the interesting thing is that even from year to year, month to
month, I'm realizing that things are changing with my sound that can only be
possible after that amount of time. It's not possible to do after ten years
time, it's only possible after thirty.

LJ: We had an interview with Ricky Ford, who lives in France, and he told us
the same thing. He said you need twenty-five years on the saxophone to make
a sound, so the guy who has only ten years, the sound will be there in
fifteen years.

EE: It's true.

MH: There's nothing wrong with a ten-year-old sound, it's just that it gets
different, it develops.

EE: Yeah! There are certain things that can only happen after this long
period of time. It might only be a subtle thing but to me it's very profound
to realize that. It keeps it exciting, it keeps the feeling alive that I had
when I was ten years old and I first picked up the saxophone and I loved it
immediately, I loved the sound that it made. It's a real pleasure to realize
that that never goes away. If you're continuing to develop, every day can be
like the first day. That was another reason that I left commercial music: it
was beginning to get oppressive to the point where I thought I was in danger
of killing that spark of joy I had, and I thought, man, that's priceless. I
don't want to trade that in for any amount of money.

MH: Whenever they have a tenor saxophone in those commercial music groups,
there's a parameter within which it exists, sound-wise. If you sound too
original, man, it's not cool. It's just not cool. I laugh when I think about
it. The achievement of creating a unique sound on any instrument, having an
identifiable sound on any instrument, is something. I think on tenor
saxophone it's particularly difficult because of the legacy of the amazing,
great saxophonists. When you think about Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ben
Webster, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, just as starters, and you grow up
listening to Trane a lot, it's kind of hard not to assimilate that. To me
one of the highest compliments for any player is when you hear two notes and
you say, "Oh, that's so-and-so." That's amazing.

(to EE) I've had that happen with you on the radio.

EE: Oh, yeah?

MH: Put the radio on, hear a couple of notes… "Oh, it's Ellery!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

Contents - Editorial - Point of view - Jamal - Helias - Lake - Akosh -
Garcia-Fons - Meschinet
Lists - Future - Photo - Press - News - CDs - Barcelonnette - Links

Copyright [le jazz] mai 1998