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| Roscoe Mitchell, circa 1978. Photographer unknown. |
By Don Phipps
Roscoe Mitchell sat down with me on February 4, 1979
before he gave a solo recital on alto saxophone in front of a full
house at the now defunct Lulu White’s Supper Club in Boston,
Massachusetts. This interview, published in its entirety in the
September 10, 1979, edition of The Daily Free Press, where I was the
Art Editor and a staff writer from 1978-1980 while a student at Boston
University, has since been buried, available only on microfiche at the
university library. It has never been published on the Web. To me, this
interview is significant enough to warrant re-publication here.
Mitchell today is 84 but when I interviewed him, he was just 38 – a
good portion of his life and artistic output yet to come
Mitchell and his great jazz group, The Art Ensemble of Chicago
(consisting of Mitchell, trumpeter Lester Bowie, fellow saxophonist
Joseph Jarman, and a rhythm section of Malachi Favors Maghostut and
Famoudou Don Moye), had returned the previous year from a decade long
expatriation from the USA. This return was ebulliently celebrated with
a raucous North American debut and performance of their entire seminal
Nice Guys album (ECM 1126) at Jonathan Swift’s Pub in Cambridge, MA, on
October 23, 1978. At the time of this concert, I had no idea who the
Art Ensemble of Chicago even was! All I knew was that Anthony Braxton
was opening the concert with a series of solo alto saxophone
improvisations, and that I did not want to miss the event. Imagine then
seeing the Art Ensemble play without any bias, pro or con, without
knowing who they were, or having any idea just how important they were
in the history of free jazz.
The solo concert Mitchell performed after this interview was just as
special. It came on the heels of his 1978 release of L-R-G / The Maze /
S II Examples (Nessa n-14/15). I noted in my coverage of that concert
that a woman in the audience remarked loudly that Roscoe could “make
that thing (his alto saxophone) say everything.” I would argue that
truer words were never spoken.
My introduction to the interview began with the following:
“Mitchell, 38, is a founding member of the Chicago-based Association for
the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the mastermind behind what
many consider to be the greatest jazz combo of the decade, the Art Ensemble
of Chicago. He also plays almost every wind instrument imaginable, from the
flute to the contrabass saxophone. But even above these achievements,
Roscoe aspires to the principle of the artist uncompromised, seeking to
extend the boundaries of musical ideas. In a number of audible ways, he and
his followers are changing the concept of what we think of as music. When I
talked to him, he was both attentive and conscientious. His thoughtful
answers about jazz and music as a whole revealed a man who possesses a
confidence in manner as well as music. Above all, he was friendly. The
following are excerpts from that interview:]
After years of working with The Art Ensemble, why have you begun to
record on your own again?
Mitchell: I had started to do things on my own, so my
name had started to go out again. For instance… as time went on the more
push and sacrifice people had to do in the music, we formed (in 1969) the
Art Ensemble has a collective. I had devoted a lot of my energy to the Art
Ensemble. In the mid-70s the first things that started to come out on my
own was, I think, the Sackville recordings, solo things, and the quartet
and that, and I think that interest was starting to build up in me again.
Then when Nonaah (Nessa 9/10) came out, it got such a good critic
response, it was the natural order of things.
Your new album (Roscoe Mitchell, Nessa 14/15) contains
compositions unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Can you tell our readers
something about the pieces on the album and explain what you are trying
to accomplish?
Mitchell: The album contains a piece (“The Maze”) for
eight percussionists on one side, and on the other whole side is a solo
piece for soprano saxophone (“S II Examples”). On the other whole record,
it’s a double album set, is a trio (“LRG”) with myself, (Wadada) Leo Smith,
and George Lewis. The trio is a thing where we take the complete reed
spectrum and surround it with the complete brass spectrum and then you have
all of these interactions of sound going on. It’s a form of meditative
music. What I really like about it is that you can be listening to it and
you can go away from it, and wherever you come back to it, you can go right
back to listening to it at that spot.
The soprano sax piece, “S II Examples,” is fascinating. What
are you attempting musically?
Mitchell: “S II Examples” is a one to five projected piece
for soprano saxophone. The Examples section is where I take all the
fingerings of the saxophone, turn it all around, play it in a lot of
different ways and produce different sound patterns. I then take these
sound patterns, say I take one range of sound patterns, play them on tape,
listen to them, then maybe take these sound patterns and start to move
sound patterns around instead of notes. These are just examples of sound
patterns. I’ll probably release a tape to go with the book that catalogues
the various sounds. “S II Examples, tape example 1” for instance: “Delayed
side B-flat key.” Play that example. You could have sound movement,
Example 1 with the delayed side B-flat fingering to Example 2, a low B
trill. If I have these particular fingerings happening, then I’m going to
have new sounds. It can allow you to move in music in ways that can trick
you. You might even think that it’s going a certain way and it goes another
way.
You say you set up this recent series of concerts to do improvisational
music. What does improvisation mean to you?
Mitchell: Improvisation is in a really growing stage.
What happened was in the early sixties, when people started experimenting
with freer forms of music, there were a lot of choices to choose from…
because there were so many things that had not been dealt with. Everything
felt new and fresh. Now we’ve established certain things that can happen
within certain kinds of musical situations… It’s a constant thing, like
being able to improvise, being able to study improvisation, to be able to
take the idea of improvisation to the next level, improvise on that level,
study improvisation, and go on from there. You build up all this
information, and then release that information, experiment with it, and it
keeps opening up all the time. What I’m doing now… is investigating the
alto as much as I can in a solo context so that I can have some control
over that medium. I figure that playing by yourself is the other end of
playing with a lot of people.
Do you have any musical influences?
Mitchell: I just get the whole thing on people. I’ll go
through a day and I’ll listen to Duke Ellington, or go through another day
and listen to Bird (Charlie Parker), or go another day and listen to Bach.
Whatever is appealing to me at the time. Currently I’m in a real study
period in music. I’ll listen to some double record sets of Duke Ellington,
and I’ll notice how much music was on these double-record sets. After you
listen to the whole record, you couldn’t even remember what you heard on
the first side because so many things had gone down in the music.
Who did you listen to as you were growing up?
Mitchell:When I was growing up
there wasn’t such a divide between my parents and myself and what we were
actually listening to musically. My parents could go out on the street and
listen to Bird, Lester Young, or whatever, or go up to the club in Chicago,
and everybody was coming through there, Count Basie, Duke Ellington,
everybody. These are the kind of records we had at home. Now everything is
so much more separated. The parents don’t really listen to what the kids
are listening to.
I have the same problem with my parents.
Mitchell: Yeah, I even had that problem with my family.
My father grew up in music as a singer. But when my music started to
change, he said, “Oh Man, what is that?” At that time Jack DeJohnette and I
were playing together a lot and Jack was playing drums and I was playing
saxophone and that really took it out because there wasn’t any piano and
bass or nothing. Just this thing happening.
That’s pretty wild. Anthony Braxton has recently released a new album
with the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra titled For 4 Orchestra
(Arista A3L 8900). Are you doing anything in the way of orchestra
composition?
Mitchell: Later this month, I’m doing a thing in Austria
with a quartet, a solo piece, and large ensemble. What I’m doing with the
large ensemble is trying out different ochestrational techniques that I
want to apply to an orchestra piece I’m going to do later this year.
Eventually it will be recorded.
You mentioned techniques for orchestra. What do you mean?
Mitchell: I’m working with certain types of queuing
techniques where you can shift the music all around and different kinds of
things and have spaces happen differently each time depending upon the
people that are playing and the way their body tempo is going that day, and
how they are feeling; and checkpoints for each person in the composition,
so that if you are starting to go out of it, I can slow down the pace if I
want to, or speed it up; or like trying to have a lot of natural
considerations in the music so that the music can flow along naturally like
the way we are breathing.
Does it bother you to see yourself compared with Anthony Braxton so
much?
Mitchell: No. We all came up together in Chicago. We have
known each other and played together for getting close to twenty years.
People are definitely going to refer to us when they talk about the music.
I think the thing that is unique about the Chicago musicians (AACM) is that
Anthony and Joseph (Jarman), (Henry) Threadgill and myself, to mention some
of the reed men that came out of that era in music, although we all came up
together, everybody has still developed their own type of style and then
own type of approach to music. Then that’s even gone past that now,
because people are defying styles. You have people that can give an
illusion of having no style at all. It’s gone past like “he plays alto
saxophone, and he plays this or that.” People are beginning to represent
themselves in a lot of different lights now. Ten years or so ago, people
had to go out and function as strong people inside strong individual small
groups and make strong representations of themselves as soloists. Now
things are beginning to open up and people are being able to do even larger
projects
, so we are beginning to see another side of it.
The question of style interests me. Do you have a style you could call
your own?
Mitchell: My style is just the way I go about doing
things. I might play the same piece that you do. My tone will be different
from yours and the way I approach a particular thing rhythmically and the
type of accents I may use would make the difference. Once you make a style
for yourself in music, then you can keep your style, and everything else
that you can add to your vocabulary is just resynthesized in your own
style. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. I want to have music
where it doesn’t sound like me, but is me. That has got to be the ultimate
in pure music.
Where do you think you are now musically?
Mitchell: I’m trying to develop into a state where I can
be more meditative in the music, and play with longer concentration spans,
and have the music going on for longer spaces of time. I do want to get into
big pieces now. I think people ought to go out and hear these big
extravaganzas every now and then. The musicians are ready to do it now;
it’s just a matter of being able to finance these projects.
Besides wanting to do large pieces, do you have any personal direction?
Mitchell: I’m reaching for another level of my musical
existence. When I started to play all the different instruments, my
embouchure shattered, and I couldn’t play anything for a while. But now all
these instruments are beginning to come, they are beginning to come. It’s
not like if you pick up one instrument and go on to another it’s the end
anymore. A lot of things… motivate me. Such as the experience of being able
to go and get people that I’ve functioned with for almost twenty years now
and being able to have specialized pieces of music if I want to. There
are other opportunities that are opening up. We are getting fusion, not
only in the jazz rock thing, but now we’re getting fusion from classical
music into improvisation so that opens up so many more avenues.
You mentioned jazz rock. Jazz in the public’s eye is represented by the
fusion sounds of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Chuck Mangione,
rather than Roscoe Mitchell and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Why?
Mitchell: It’s a matter of nervous systems and how fast
people’s nervous systems can adjust to these other sounds before they can
start to take them in and listen to them. Now all of a sudden, “Wow man, we
can have the same rhythm with a whole lot of other chords!” That started
to open people up. When people hear other music now it’s not such a far
place for them to go, straight from rock to the more freer forms of music.
Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Chuck Mangione are really big draws,
comparable to the rock stars, and I think that’s good, because it is making
the transition and it’s coming out that we’re getting more and more people.
But there has been an acoustic whiplash in jazz. Some musicians such as
Keith Jarrett and Cecil Taylor have openly criticized the very basis of
electronic (fusion-based) music. You feel no antipathy?
Mitchell: You have to remain open. There is something that
can be done with all different types of sounds in musical situations. What
happens when you close yourself down is that you have died. No one else.
Everything else is still going on. We are now faced with the possibility of
the computer…. It’s a challenge to me to be able to sound like a machine if
I want to. I can learn a lot from that. It’s a challenge to deal with a
machine. It’s hard work just like anything else. You got people who can
go in there and get songs out of the computer but that is not really that
interesting. We want to try to strive for things that are on a much higher
level. It’s interesting to take yourself out of the context of a melodic
flow and move through sound structure in a different kind of way. The “S II
Examples” I’ve been telling you about comes close to being able to match
these sounds.
Music is founded upon a compositional process. With the advent of the
12-tone system and mathematical atonality, many people would say that
music is cold and unexpressive. In fact, insincere. What are your
thoughts on the matter?
Mitchell: If we look at it with an open mind and one
considers that sound is sound and we can use it the way that we want to
display a certain picture, and if you go about your work in a sincere
manner, then the results will be like that. No matter what medium you’re
using, it should turn out with the same sincerity.
How would a person guard against insincerity in music?
Mitchell: It has to do with longevity. People will come
up and sound good for a year, but how will they sound in twenty years? This
is the thing you have to look at. The thing about playing an instrument is
that in the final end, you have got to face the instrument and play it.
When a piece is done well and then it can be broken into a mathematical
equation, especially if you’re dealing with the 12-tone system or any other
system for that matter. People who do music, many times they don’t take
that into consideration the type of mathematical equation they are dealing
with. And sometimes they do. If we look at the music of Charlie Parker, it
is a clearly defined mathematical system that he uses to play his music.
However, when he was doing it he probably thought, “Well, I want to play
music differently from Lester Young,” because Lester Young inspired him.
Then he started to use the tops of the chords and developed a whole thing
from that. It is no different.
Your music has suffered economic repression, whether it has been the
lack of playing engagement or the inability to record. Does the
repression continue today?
Mitchell: Sure. People play all sorts of games. The period
that the Art Ensemble did not record was a result of these games.
But the music is coming around so strong that it is beginning to come
out. If you take something and try to press it into a wall, and it
keeps trying to come out, it is going to come out. The music was able to
push through… and still be alive at the end of it.
Are you bitter?
Mitchell: I’m not bitter. I’ve always managed to make it
in a good way. The music has been good to me. I have tried to be loyal to
what I am doing and the rewards come with that. I was able to survive.
You’ve done much more than just survive. A personal question, Roscoe.
Do you feel that your influence will be discussed 30 years from now?
Mitchell: I should certainly hope so.
I consider myself one of the prime innovators of this music. Whoever is
a historian and wanted to check the music out, the way you would have
to do it is to go back to the earlier recordings. You would be able to
see what my contributions have been to the music.
If you really listen to the music, you can hear something that might sound
new and go back and listen to something that I did in the sixties where I
covered the area already. I think it is very important for guys that are
doing the work have it documented very well, so that when people go back
and study these people, they can actually see their musical development as
it went along and relate it to the time it happened.
Do you intend to continue experimenting with music?
Mitchell: Yes. The thing is if you don’t do it, you’re
going to fall behind because there are guys out there that are doing it. My
thing is that I’m not going to spend this much time in the music and not
share in the rewards that are coming up now. I can’t see that at all.
It’s a shame you’ve not been able to record more frequently.
Mitchell: That happened because I put a lot of time into a
group situation, and now the whole thing is turning over again. I’m finding
now that most of my musical ideas are really extended kind of things,
meditative. You can have one idea on a record. One whole record!
And I think it’s just a matter of time and more and more things will be
happening.
[Author’s note: In the Daily Free Press of February 14, 1979, I
published a review of the performance Mitchell gave following this
interview. Some excerpts from my review:]
“Roscoe, playing on the E-flat alto sax, created what he fondly calls sound
collages – a spare minimal broach of mathematical reasoning and fiery
spirit…. In concert, he moved with confidence along cold floating melodies,
eerie… with patience and assurance. His breathing and pacing were
masterfully controlled, sparse, dry, raspy, and witty. His piercing
saxophone slotted inverse textures that courted perfection….
“The fourth piece of his first set had the presence of a Bach fugue. On an
audible stream of air, Roscoe transformed large bursts and running notes
into the sweet space of atonal modulation. Mitchell’s instrument belched,
boomed, and squeaked, sounding like Morse code. The motif were exciting
exposes with unparalleled use of dynamics and pointillistic impressions….
“Roscoe’s inner sense of ecstasy found joyful expression…. Full hand trill
runs, devoted concentration all flowered into beautiful lyricism. As notes
filled holes while other spaces opened up, the music hung balanced between
sound and silence…. His music contained elements of tribal rhythms and the
native south, of swing hop and cool jazz, of the cerebral and the gut level
of feeling….
“Roscoe’s many-faceted improvisation was set aglow in a radiant light. His
extraordinary genius found itself in inspired proportions; the sax
crumbled, decimated, disappeared – replaced by sound, pure sound on a
musical plane which transcended beyond itself….
“Outside of the small group of critics who have already paid homage to
Roscoe Mitchell, history awaits. His genius is sure to be recognized in the
future.”
