Interviews

When I was finishing my schooling, I came up with a large plan to launch a project of interviews. I had utopic visions of interviews with musical artists that could somehow show the importance of listening to one another and reading. Like many projects of my youth, I never quite got past the initial planning stages. The musical end of that project has become its own space on my website, ‘to listen · to read’; a holding space for the raw materials of lives engaged with listening and reading. My interest with interviews however only continued to grow. As I have slowly grown into a reader, the interview as a form has been one of great interest to me. I have not been able to shake my interest and in 2023, I embarked on a new project of interviewing people within my circle.

The major challenge as a composer, saxophonist, arranger, full-time academic faculty member, band leader and father of three is editing the extreme amount of content already recorded and that which is yet to come. In the age of the podcast, I have gained much from the personal touch (and ease of mental investment) the recorded interview offers. The written word still reigns supreme. It is for this reason that I dedicate the time to committing these to reliable documented source materials. And in more practical applications, I find the form invaluable to further investigation, explanation, and removal from temporal demands.

Most intimately, and candidly, is the need to confront my role as interviewer. The interview of a literary and artistic nature has a handful of model relationships. Often, a reader is at the mercy of an indiscriminate, impersonal, and boring interviewer; and at the other extreme they are forced into a dissection of a display of ego-driven conceptions. Television and the daytime/late-night interview have given us personality over quality: you’re at the mercy of your superficial mutual interests with the celebrity. Radio follows suit. Outside of specialty publications, interviews are often consumed in a situational report on the evening news, or in an effort to publicize a new offering for economic consumption. Too often, these result in unforgettable interviews - unless they find their way into momentary immortality because of our culture’s continued obsession in public shaming due to all-too-public gaffes. At brighter times the interview is presented as a conversation between two like-minded individuals. As ever, you are at the mercy of the individuals. A musical example of worth, but that at times becomes too coded in friendship, is Absolutely on Music, a conversation between conductor Seiji Ozawa and author Haruki Murakami. Another musical example of this nature is the covetable Radio Happenings, conversations between John Cage and Morton Feldman. Here too, ‘in-jokes’ and past conversations can often take center stage, but the overall communication is valuable.

Of the more lauded musical interviews, Ethan Iverson’s blog Do The M@th, featuring a trove of interviews with the musical elite, is an example of something often more akin to open forum debate. He has done a great service to the musical world by the sheer scope of his documentation of conversations with such a wide array of artists of such a high caliber.

My first deep and sustained interest with written interviews was a golden era of internet-giveaway by the Paris Review. The editorial oversight, the bookishness of the multiple interviewers, and the sheer artistic quality of those interviewed, made nearly all of them worth something of value to me. Different interviewers leads to different conversations; some insightful, others strange. Our shining example of the potential of the interview is Michael Silverblatt and Bookworm. Of interest is the fact that until recently these were completely audio based, interviews recorded for a radio audience. A recent publication by Song Cave, Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt is proof of the value of the written word. Michael transcends the limits of the recorded conversations. It is not just about hearing the quaintness of someone’s speaking voice, it is rather about hearing the immense potential of human communication - a type of transcendent meditation between two ‘others’, finding one another in the sea of subject matter that makes up the poetry of life. In one evening news advertisement interview he gave, housed on our great multi-headed demon YouTube, he likens his practice to psychoanalysis. Yet in another talk at Cornell, also hidden on YouTube, he speaks vividly and tenderly about the interviewer’s role and ability to make that which is hidden in a work of art, more real in conversation with the creator. This idea of ‘critic’ is of course not his, but his thirty years of recorded interviews (now finally available on Apple Podcasts) are a testament to his near prophetic ability in embodying this role.

Of my role as interviewer, I’ll let the interviews be the commentary. I am not yet clear as to what I wish to offer. But I do know that it will be written, readable, investigative, personal, and I hope, insightful. [December 2024]

Glenn Thomas - Painter

In the Summer of 2023 I sat down with painter Glenn Thomas in his Amsterdam Studio. Born in New Jersey, he grew up in Pennsylvania. He has lived the majority of his life in the Netherlands. His brother Ron is a master composer and pianist in Pennsylvania.

David Noon - Composer

A series of interviews from 2024 with David Noon, composer and Emeritus faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music. Spanning his broad interests from his professional work, his friendships with a who’s-who of 20th century musical art, biblical translations, poetry, and his work as a composer.

Bob Curnow - Composer

I am at work with composer, arranger and publisher Bob Curnow of Sierra Music Publications on a book about his life and arranging and composition for improvising ensembles. Our work together, starting in the winter of 2023, has many hours of interviews. I will utilize smaller portions as I prepare and work on the future larger book length work.