Kurt Rosenwinkel: Latitude

John Kelman

Senior Editor since 2004

With the realization that there will always be more music coming at him than he can keep up with, John wonders why anyone would think that jazz is dead or dying.

Recent articles (2,368 total)

Published: June 20, 2005

View All 1 2 3 4 5 Next »

Deep Song

Almost a reaction to Heartcore's intense and solitary studio experience, for his next record, Rosenwinkel wanted to get back the basics of playing his instrument in a band context. While some have looked at the personnel on Deep Song—Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummers Ali Jackson and Jeff Ballard — as perhaps a clever marketing ploy to gain a wider audience, the truth of the matter is that the group evolved quite naturally. "I was playing quartet a lot with piano at the time," Rosenwinkel says. "And then I was in New York and we were playing at Fat Cat for three nights. I was recording on Joshua Redman's record [Momentum] out in New Jersey, and it just happened to be those days when he was in town recording and I was doing the sessions with him that I had these gigs at Fat Cat. So I invited him down to play, and he came down and it was great; I mean I always enjoy playing with Josh, but this time we played for three nights in a row and the chemistry of the band was just totally happening.

"So then I thought, 'OK, this is great, I want to make a quintet record and I want to have that be the thing,'" Rosenwinkel continues. "And so, of course, this connection Josh and I have was something I wanted to capture. Also, Brad and I have been playing together and recording together off and on for the past 10 years, and yet we've never really had the opportunity to be in a band together and work on our musical rapport, because we've always been sidemen on somebody else's recording date. So it's something we've always wanted to do, and we would say that over the years. The same thing with Larry Grenadier. Larry and I played together a lot when I was at Berklee, it was sort of the same scenario with him, so it was a natural thing for me to say, 'OK, I'm putting this band together, and here's the band.'"

The band, with Ali Jackson, would do a three-week tour of Europe in the summer of '04, before heading into the studio a few weeks later to record the album. For the album, Rosenwinkel would bring in Ballard for a few specific tracks. "Jeff has a way of playing straight eighths that I think is like nobody else," Rosenwinkel explains, "so he's on those straight eighths kind of tunes. Ali has so much fire, he's so swinging and he's so consistent in his groove. On tunes like 'Use of Light' and 'Brooklyn Sometimes' Ali is just a master of changing things a tiny little bit to propel the music forward, to create a forward momentum with the groove. It's a little like Vernel Fournier in Ahmad Jamal's trio. And on tunes like 'The Next Step' he's so swinging, like that community feeling I had in Philly—it kind of brought the Philly out of me, and I really loved that."

Surprisingly, Rosenwinkel would include material from his previous records—"The Next Step" and "Use of Light" from The Next Step, and "Synthetics" from The Enemies of Energy. "Basically, the first repertoire decisions I was making for this group were live repertoire choices," says Rosenwinkel, "and in that regard I was motivated by just having the strongest material for the quintet, so I just picked what I felt was my strongest material. I wasn't even thinking about recording 'The Next Step,' and it was Verve that heard it and said, 'You've gotta record that.' Some of the other tunes I wanted to do as well. 'Use of Light' I wanted to do because the whole function of the instruments was changed around. For me, if I'm playing that song with a piano then I can be the melodic voice and I can fly as the melodic expressive voice; whereas on The Next Step my role was chordal, keeping the tune happening, and Mark Turner was flying. So for me I wanted to redo that tune just for me, as another take on it, with me playing the melody. 'Synthetics' is a very challenging tune, and I thought that it had been a long time since we recorded the first version, that I'd grown a lot, and had more to say on the tune."

Kurt Rosenwinkel, Larry Grenadier, Joshua Redman

Deep Song may be Rosenwinkel's most accessible recording to date, although it's never been his desire to make anything other than music that's approachable. "I've always felt that my music is accessible," explains Rosenwinkel, "and that's a subjective reality, whether it is or not. But for me, I've never been trying to write something that's complicated, that's not my purpose at all in discovering sounds and organizing them into compositions. For me what that's all about is containing some kind of fascination, or mood, or some kind of aesthetic quality that's pleasing to the ear. I'm only a conceptualist insofar as it translates to actual sound. So for me, the stuff under the hood is really meant to be under the hood; it has to be there in order for the melodies to come out, for the mood to be accessible. But at the end of the day I want my music to be accessible because I want to communicate."

Return to Index...

Future Songs

Having reached a certain stage in his career, Rosenwinkel no longer feels it necessary to live in New York and, in fact, relocated to Switzerland with his wife and newborn child a couple of years back. "I still do a fair bit of traveling," says Rosenwinkel. "Sometimes I go to New York and rehearse for a little while and then go out on the road, but at this point, if I have the right cats, we can just meet at the gigs and go over a few things at sound check. We're at a stage in our musical lives where we can do that, we don't have to be living in the same city, we can just meet at the gigs, and that's nice. I'm happy to get back to New York from time to time, I love New York—I love the people there. But there's a big appeal about being able to raise a child in Switzerland, the whole environment is healthier I think—not to mention the education and health care systems."

Meanwhile, with Deep Song out for less than six months, Rosenwinkel is already looking towards future projects. "I want to do a live record," explains Rosenwinkel, "a new project with a new band, another Heartcore record—but acoustic this time. I also want to do a trio record of standards. I want to do all those things, but I don't know which will come first."

Regardless of what the next project for Kurt Rosenwinkel is, there's a growing audience that will be waiting to hear it. And like Metheny, Scofield, Abercrombie and Frisell, Rosenwinkel is in the enviable position of being able to pursue whatever direction he chooses, with full support from a major label ensuring that his music gets the widest possible distribution.

Return to Index...

Visit Kurt Rosenwinkel on the web.

View All 1 2 3 4 5 Next »