PETER BRÖTZMANN INTERVIEW WITH KEN VANDERMARK

April 20, 2001

Vandermark: Peter, at one point you were telling me that in the early part of your playing, when you were working as a visual artist and playing music, you were having a difficult time getting some kind of acceptance from your peers in Europe at the beginning. And you mentioned to me that Carla Bley and Don Cherry were two people who recognized strength in your work. Can you talk about that period at all?

Brotzmann: Sure, sure, I’d like to. In the mid 60’s, I think it was ’66 to be correct, Carla was touring with a group called Jazz Realities. That was Steve Lacy, Carla, I think at that time it was Kent Carter on bass, and Alda Romano on the drums. Around my hometown Wuppertal, at that time, I went to art school. We had a lot of really well organized jazz clubs, and the radio Cologne, the WDR, was not far away. And so, at that time, we had a lot of really great musicians down there from Europe and from the states. It was a very active scene. Carla showed up with this . . . quartet it was at that time I think. I took my alto and I was just sitting in without even asking. That was not really a nice thing for them [laughs], but I must say it was quite a wild session then and I think Steve Lacy liked it most.

A year later, I got a phone call from Carla asking if I and Peter Kowald, my bass player in the very early years—and more than a bass player, he was really a good comrade in these heavy times—would join the next year’s band. The ’67 year. So of course we said yes and somebody planned a kind of European tour. But it turned out it was so badly organized that everything went wrong. Stockholm to Rome and things like that [laughs], all in rotten cars! I mean, it really was a bit too much. And Carla brought the baby she just had with her so we organized a baby sitter, which all the guys liked very much [laughs]. So some more complications arrived, but we did the job. And I must say I still like Carla’s piano playing. I like the way she is putting her tunes and her pieces together. And I must say I still have a lot of respect, even if she, at the end, was not very content with the result of that. She mentioned it later in some of the interviews about that time.

The whole tour ended in Berlin. I remember that quite well. It was the time of the Berlin jazz festival, and our group got to play at this very famous art gallery. And the only guys who showed up for that last concert were Kowald and I because the rest were in such a desperate condition that they just didn’t show up [laughs]. So that was that experience. But I learned a lot from that.

Another person that you mentioned before, Don Cherry, was an even bigger help and really a good friend because, as you must know, in these middle ‘60s, Kowald and I tried to play some music nobody wanted to listen to, especially not the musicians around. That was the end of hard-bop time. There were all the quartets and quintets like Gunter Hampel, Manfred Schoof, [Alexander Von] Schlippenbach, to mention a couple of names. They played hard-bop more or less. And so what we tried to do was already a very free form kind of thing and even the handling of the instruments was really not happening in the usual way . . . because we didn’t know better [laughs], or we really had some other things in our minds. So Don always encouraged us very much. The good thing was that he was living in southern Sweden and the work was more or less in Germany at the old radio stations at that time, setting up concerts, and recording sessions and things like that. So on the way to Cologne or on the way to Baden-Baden where Joachim-Ernst Berendt made the program, he passed by at my place and stayed a couple of nights with the family. We developed quite a nice friendship. And that helped me and our kind of music quite a lot because the others stopped laughing about us. They started to take us seriously.

I remember one concert in Cologne at the radio station. Schlippenbach’s quintet was playing with Gerd Dudek, Manfred Schoof, Jaki Liebezeit, and Buschie Niebergall, and my trio at that time of course was Kowald and . . . who was the drummer . . . I think Mani Neumeier, a Swiss guy who played with Irene Schweizer at that time. Don Cherry was in town. I think he played in some other place with Dexter Gordon. He showed up and didn’t tell us before, but when the trio played, Don was sitting in. And instead of sitting in with the more advanced guys he was sitting in with us. So all these little kinds of things helped my reputation a little bit [laughs]. After these kinds of things went over Schoof, Schlippenbach and the others started to cooperate with our trio, and that was more or less the basis of the Globe Unity.

To mention some other guys, Lee Konitz was a good help in these early times. He always said, “Brotzmann keep going, keep going. Don’t listen to the others. Just do your thing.” You can understand, as a very young and inexperienced guy everybody was nearly laughing about, this helps you a lot. So I’m very thankful.

Vandermark: Yes, well that’s why I was curious about that. It seems a lot of people who forge ahead on their own path many times find support from people. Like the thing with Lee Konitz, I didn’t know about that, and I think if you mention Lee Konitz and your name side by side, like me, people would be surprised that Lee Konitz would hear things in your music. But it makes sense because you’re both people who have kind of gone on your own paths and pursued the music very seriously. Getting that kind of recognition from musicians like that is very inspiring.

It’s 11:30, you’re listening to WNUR, I’m Ken Vandermark here in the studio with Peter Brotzmann who’s in town this weekend performing at the 5th Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. He played an amazing set last night with Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, and William Parker. He will be back at the Empty Bottle tonight playing in a duo with Hamid Drake for the first time in a little while in Chicago anyway, right?

Brotzmann: That’s true. I mean, we started our duo here in Chicago . . . it might be 10 years ago, something like that. In between, I think we just played it once here. I didn’t know that I would play with Hamid at the . . . what was that place called?

Vandermark: Southend Music Works?

Brotzmann: Right. I was supposed to play with the East German piano player Ulrich Gumpert. That was before the reunion of the two Germanies and they didn’t let him out! So I was standing there asking around, “Isn’t there any player around I could do a duo with?” I called my New York friends and they said there is this drummer playing in Europe with Pierre Dorge, the Danish guitar player and his band, try him. And we tried. I think we played a two hour duo thing the first night and I think both of us had the feeling, “okay that could work.” Since that time, we've played quite a lot together. I’m looking forward to tonight, playing a nice duo, hopefully, again with Hamid.

Vandermark: We were talking earlier about the beginning of your career in Europe. You mentioned some of the stuff overlapping in the fact that you’re a visual artist as well as a musician and the importance of being aware of other art forms and other things besides music to sort of have impact on what you’re doing as a musician. Is that something that was common in that period? With musicians was there an awareness of that? Was it an important part of the action at that time?

Brotzmann: It’s of course hard to explain the difference, I mean, it’s nearly forty years ago. Especially in that time, it was quite a situation in Europe. I mean, here, the US had the Vietnam War going on, you had all the race things coming up, and in Europe it was the students’ revolution, which was not only about students. It was really a revolution in all fields of creative life and we had the feeling and the meaning and the illusion that we would be able to change the world to some better place, which, as I said, was an illusion.

But it was really a hot, steaming time, and in all the fields of life, daily life too, politics, in the arts, anywhere. Stockhausen, in Cologne, installed his electronic studio that he ran with Mary Bauermeister, his first wife. They ran a little theatre in Cologne which was called Theater am Dom, which means “Theater near the Cathedral” where I saw [John] Cage, David Tudor, and Stockhausen perform with Mary Bauermeister. I met for the first time a very important person in my life, Nam June Paik.

If you wanted, you got a lot of information about all kinds of arts, which nowadays I don’t see happening so much. There was a lot of exchange between different 'musics' and musicians. I mean, I was asked to play with a lot of later famous German rock bands and we had connections to Danish rock bands.

Anyway, we had important connections to the other European countries at that time like Holland and England. Peter Kowald was responsible more for the connections to the English guys like Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley, Johnny Stevens, and Evan Parker, just to mention some of them, and the South African guys Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi [Feza], and Louis Moholo . . . who seems to be the only one that’s left. And because I already had contacts through my painting business, I was more responsible for the contacts to Holland. I met Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink and a little later Willem Breuker. So there was an exchange of ideas, a lot of traveling around, a lot of playing around everywhere. But I must say, it happened mostly in Germany because we have this handful of German radio stations. At the time, you really could work there. The people gave you studios. They gave you . . . a little money, which is very important of course too [laughs]. So I could sometimes invite people from really all over Europe.

A big scene was going on in the studios in Baden-Baden radio with Joachim-Ernst Berendt, the big jazz journalist, writer, and leading artistic promoter of the Berlin Jazz Fest at that time. He made a lot of things possible inviting, for example, Don Cherry to set up everything from duos to large ensembles. I was able to put together 10-piece bands, 11-piece bands. Once I remember I had a 20-piece band for a TV show, which . . . is nowadays impossible [laughs]. Nobody can think of such a thing. This music was played on the radios and even TV. That was a time really cooking and, as I said, it was the first contacts we had to the American guys traveling through. A really big exchange was happening. You had that jam-session character in the clubs, which is gone now, I think. It’s a shame, but that’s how it goes at the moment.

To develop my personal style of playing, I used my contacts to the other arts, to the other, as we call it in Europe, 'contemporary' or 'serious' music [laughs]. All the famous painters are my age and I know them all from that time, which helped me to get rid of certain rules that jazz music still had at that time. We could develop our own thing and get rid of certain things we thought we didn’t need anymore. We’re coming back of course . . . but at the time it was necessary to get rid of them.

Vandermark: Can you give an example of what you mean to sidestep the jazz conventions? An example of something you might do?

Brotzmann: At that time, all the great, big American groups like Miles Davis, [John] Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, [Charles] Mingus, and Ornette [Coleman's] early groups all toured in Europe. And I think they were more avant-garde, at the time, than most of the European musicians who still hung around the Horace Silver-Art Blakey style, so for me it was really very important to listen especially to Dolphy. I had the luck and the honor to spend all night long with him when he played in the Mingus band in my hometown when we organized a concert there. It helped me really step further on talking to those guys and listening to all of that fantastic music. But at the same time, I remember concerts with Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, Kenny Clark, Oscar Pettiford, for example, which made a big impression of course. Nowadays, I think for younger people, it’s easy to get informed by the internet and all that new technology, but we had the chance to have the live scene over there. And that was more than a big help. That really was something.

To add to that, at the same time, I was still very busy with my painting, and we had a very interesting, very avant-garde gallery in town, which had the first exhibitions of Nam June Paik and Josef Bois, and a lot of the guys you heard of later. And I had the chance to work for Nam June Paik because he stayed in town for several months and had a long exhibition there. Since I was still a student at the art school I had the chance to work with him and repair his funny installations everyday for that night! [laughs]. So I learned a lot from this guy. I didn't realize it at that time, but looking back, I think he and Don Cherry were my 'teachers' in a way. I learned a lot from them.

Vandermark: Well, it's interesting, that you mentioned Hawkins and Pettiford and Kenny Clark, people who are definitely attached to an earlier school of approaching improvised music than the one that we're talking about right now, but there's something in your playing that has always stuck me as being very connected to that earlier period, the period of the really great tenors: Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, people how played with incredible personality and distinction. I have a piece here cued up that I wanted to play for you, and I'm sure you've heard it before. It's Hawkins doing Picasso, I think the earliest solo saxophone piece that, at least, I'm aware of. Maybe we can talk a little bit about your solo music after listening to it and if there's any correlation between what he was doing at that time and your music. So this is Coleman Hawkins' solo piece Picasso.

[hear music]

That was Coleman Hawkins' and the classic Picasso. Peter, do you have any thoughts about his playing? Has it had any impact on you other than the fact that he was a great tenor player? Is there more to it than that for you? I remember talking with you and listening to some of the early Armstrong and Sidney Bechet stuff and it was clear how much you love that music.

Brotzmann: Yes, I mean, the first saxophone player that really impressed me a lot was Sidney Bechet. I had a chance to listen to him twice I think. Two times he came to my town with some French group. But he himself was really something. I'm not such a fan of soprano saxophone myself and it's not my tool anyway, but Sidney Bechet really impressed me a lot. And the second one was Hawkins. People sometimes ask me, "why don't you mention Lester Young so much?" I love Lester a lot, but I feel my personality more connected to Hawkins than to Lester Young. I don't know if I learned something from his playing, but listening to him was always a great inspiration and I think I liked his tone best of all the tenor players. I still do.

Vandermark: It's something to reckon with [laughs]. I was going to ask you about something that's almost opposite in a way. Many times people talk about your music referencing Albert Ayler and I know you talked about how you were on that path before you ever even heard his music. Also, you knew Frank Wright fairly well I think, from what you told me before. The music that you're working on seems connected to approaches that they had to the instrument, to the music, but in Europe there's a distinctly different approach to the saxophone maybe referencing extended techniques and some kind of concept of that extended playing. I've got a piece here with Evan Parker and Louis Sclavis playing together. We'll give it a listen and I was curious if you could comment a little bit on that because it's just a different thing. And it's different from what your approach to the horn. I wanted to see if there's anything in it that may be interesting to talk about. This is Evan Parker and Louis Sclavis from Duets: Dithyrambisch on FMP and we're going to listen to the piece "Trane and the Rive Gauche", obviously a take on [Jimmy] Guiffre's "Trane and the River."

[hear music]

Okay, that was Evan Parker and Louis Sclavis off of the Duets: Dithyrambisch record and while that was on, we were talking a little bit, Peter, about the idea of technique. To me, the issue is connected to ideas about conventional technique, things that, as you said, you can learn, versus ideas about technique as tools necessary to express experience. Many times it seems like Thelonious Monk or Pee Wee Russell or Albert Ayler or Frank Wright or maybe even yourself get criticized for having bad technique, when in fact, it seems to me, you're working with technique very outside the convention or conventional knowledge. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about this issue at all.

Brotzmann: Yes of course, because all throughout my career I was confronted with that question. "Hey you don't have any technique at all," from the beginning on and it still is happening. Maybe these people are right, I don't have very much of the conventional technique. Like, for example, our friends we just have heard, Louis Sclavis and Evan Parker. I never had a teacher for the horn, so I experienced everything myself, and I think that's what the interesting part in the arts, whatever arts it is, is about. And if you look at people like Frank Wright or Albert Ayler, they didn't have much technique in the sense of modern time's saxophone playing. They had roots somewhere in the blues, in gospel, in their own peoples' music and they tried to work with that. I think that's a much more interesting and much more important part of being creative in a way. I don't think, for example, Thelonious Monk had great technique, but for me, he's one of the greatest piano players of all times, if not the greatest! So technique doesn't mean anything. If you listen to very early blues recordings, I mean where the guy didn't even have strings on the guitar, what he was doing with that one string that was left, maybe what he was telling you, that was the essence of his life. And, I'll tell you, the older I'm getting, the more this matter is my interest, to get us as close as possible to what is it about. And you don't need technique for that. You need certain tools to express what you want to say, and if you don't have the tools, you have to work on them until they are there and then you can say what you want to say. And it's happened all my life and I think it's happening in everybody's life, in a way. I'm lucky to have started very early to discover that, and I'm still far away from my target, but I'm on my way. We will see. 

Vandermark: Alright, well, thanks for talking about that because I think that's one of the big misunderstandings in improvised music, jazz, whatever you want to call it, that difference between the Marsalis approach to technique and things that you can be taught and you can learn, as you said, and really trying to express who you are through the experience.

Brotzmann: Yes. That's why I have the feeling that the whole range of jazz music is getting a little poor. Most of the guys coming from the colleges, from Berkely and other schools--it's the same in Europe, maybe schools here are better, I don't know--form a certain kind of musician: they know everything up and on the horn, up and on harmonics, scales and everything, but nobody, or very seldom is there a guy, who is able to teach them what to do with it and what to do with their life and what it is about. I think we need many more of these kinds of people than we need all the nice, skilled teachers.

Vandermark: [laughs] Well you can't teach life, you know. That's what everyone, as an individual, has to grapple with. That's the toughest one maybe. Talking about personalities and individualities, I know that throughout your entire career you've been interested in working with larger bands. Right now you've got the tentet, but you've had . . .

Brotzmann: You should say we've got the tentet . . .

Vandermark: Okay, okay, thank you for including the rest of us too in that because . . .

Brotzman: No, the tentet's got us!

Vandermark: [laughs] That may be true! I think that based on your history that's something you've been interested in. There are obvious reasons, for example, having a larger palette of sounds, but is there anything in particular about large groups that you keep coming back to them. Why would that be?

Brotzmann: I think there are a couple of reasons. I think one reason for all kinds of music, and especially jazz music, is I see a very strong social function in working the way we do. If it's a small group from duo to quartet to quintet, I think the social connections between one another are very important. That doesn't mean that we all agree all the time to everything, and everybody has his own way of life of course, but the way we work together, we hopefully talk together too. I mean, we have to be open for everything. If we talk about politics, art, or girls, or music we have to be honest to each other. I think that's one point.

In the smaller groups, you develop your own style. You develop sounds. You have an idea about how it should sound. And then, of course, it's always a big experience to have not only one horn, but to have four saxophones and maybe a couple of trombones around and what you can do with that sound is always a great, great pleasure to find out. Being on the road with the tentet, for example, and since I played with Machine Gun, in '68, I always tried to put bands together, mostly ten, eleven piece bands. It's a question of money of course. Nowadays you can't go on the road with twenty people. Nobody's going to pay for that if you don't have friends at the Lincoln Center . . . [both chuckle]. But, you know, there's always chances. I'm so happy that the tentet started here in Chicago. In between, we have played a lot . . . not a lot, always can be more, should be more . . . but we have chances, possibilities in Europe, we might have chances here in the country, in Canada, wherever they want us we go.

And it's nice, because as you travel and work with these people you learn to know them very well. Not only music-wise. You learn the human being, which is, for me, always a part of jazz music too. I think all the great bands, whatever they did to each other, necessarily had that connection. I could never sit in a big band just coming to work and going home. That I can't imagine. I never could. 

Vandermark: Speaking of groups together for a long time and speaking of personalities, one thing about the tentet that I love so much is that it's a group of individuals. Everyone in the band has very distinct playing approaches and ideas, and that, for me, connects that group very much to Ellington's band even though musically, aesthetically there are differences there without question. I never talked to you about Duke Ellington, and I was wondering if there is anything in his music or his approach to leading a group that you've been inspired by?

Brotzmann: Always, always, but of course all you can do as a normal, hard-working musician is listen and look at how Ellington organized his band and how he handled his people. I think in both ways he did a fantastic job. So you can learn from that. I think we are far away from the great master Mr. Ellington, but we are on our way to getting our stuff together and if we have more chances to work on the music and chances to travel, that will make us come closer and closer to the ideal situation. You know, these bands like Ellington, Count Basie, just to name two of them, were stuck together for weeks, months in a lousy bus, driving from town to town. So of course you want to kill each other, but on the other hand, you learn to respect the other in all his manners [laughs] he carries around with him. I think we need that experience and that is a good experience for the music too because it makes you open and respect the other person and the other human being. 

Vandermark: And that's a beautiful thing. We're going to close out now because the news is going to be coming on in a few minutes, Peter, and we're going to finish off with actually something by Duke Ellington. I obviously set you up for the track [laughs]. This is from Suite Thursday with much of the music composed by Billy Strayhorn. We're going to listen to the last movement of the suite. Peter, it's been really great to have you here this morning. Thanks for getting up, well, you got up earlier. Thanks for coming by.

Brotzmann: I thank you for the chance.

Vandermark: Just to remind everybody, Peter will be playing tonight in a duo with Hamid Drake at the Empty Bottle festival and will be playing at noon Saturday, tomorrow, at the Cultural Center, in a solo concert. So both of those are a must and it's free which is totally staggering. So Peter Brotzmann solo in a beautiful hall at the Cultural Center tomorrow, I think that's 78 East Randolph. Thanks for listening and hope to see you tonight and tomorrow. This is Duke Ellington from Suite Thursday, Lay-By. Thank you very much Peter.

Brotzmann: Thank you.