Painting pictures small yet profound: Marilyn Crispell and solo piano improvisation

Interview by Tom Chandler

 

When Marilyn Crispell started recording for ECM in 1997, she moved somewhat into the mainstream, releasing a string of trio CDs (with either Gary Peacock or Mark Helias on bass, and Paul Motian on drums) that are uniformly brilliant, emphasizing space and deep listening and interplay. Her newest CD, however, bucks that trend slightly, because it’s completely solo. The dark spaciousness is still there however, both in her piano tone and in her musical conception. Vignettes was largely improvised in the studio, with some pieces preconceived only in basic structure and some actually composed. The word “vignettes” is both apropos, because of the brevity and variety of emotions Crispell is evoking, but also not quite adequate in describing the depth of musical intent at work here. While a solo recording isn’t new territory for Crispell (notably The Woodstock Concert on Music and Arts), Crispell as a musician and artist is constantly looking for new ground and new inspiration. Over her extensive history playing with the legendary Anthony Braxton Quartet of the 1980s, Barry Guy’s groups, Reggie Workman, or her own ensembles, the search for the new has always been a priority. On the phone from her home in Woodstock, NY, she spoke about taking inspiration from the Scandinavian jazz scene, breaking down preconceptions in her playing, and her love of dance.

Tom Chandler: Do you practice a lot?

Marilyn Crispell : To be honest, I spend more time doing business than practicing. The business of playing music takes up an inordinate amount of time. At the moment I’m pretty much doing it all myself. The people at ECM are helping somewhat, but the bulk of it I’m doing myself. I would love to have somebody do all the paperwork and talk to people about gigs and book the travel and all that. As to practicing, I tend to practice more when I have a gig.

TC: Do you ever feel you need to take time off from playing?

MC: Yes, because I think things can get stale. I like leaving spaces. I went one time for almost six years without playing. I believe Gary Peacock did a similar thing when he lived in Japan. But then when you come back to it, you can do all kinds of things you couldn’t do when you had stopped.

TC: What kinds of things do you do when you’re not concertizing?

MC: I read a lot, I take walks, I hang out with friends. This summer I’m going to a lot of dance concerts out at Jacob’s Pillow. Also at the Dia Beacon, in the town of Beacon, which is a huge new modern art museum in an old factory building, and Merce Cunningham has a grant to do eight site-specific performances in the museum. I’ve gone to two of them, I’m going to another one in July.

TC: Have you written any music for dance?

MC: I used to play for classes and do structured improvisations for people’s choreography. When I lived in the city I used to play at Cunningham studios for classes there. Two years ago, I got a Guggenheim to do a project with dancers, musicians and video projections of twelve works by Sy Twombly, so I put that on here in Woodstock.

TC: I wanted to ask you about the latest record. When you’re recording something like that, do you go into the studio with it mapped out in your head, or do you just show up with a selection of pieces and see what happens?

MC: I showed up with a few pieces, which I mostly ended up not using. It’s primarily improvised, except for the two pieces written by other people, and the two pieces of mine, “Once” and “Valse Triste.” I think I played “Valse Triste” without improvising. I had some idea of some basic structures, and some of the improvisations were based on things that I often do when I perform that have become semi-solidified, but haven’t been written down and formally called a composition. “Axis” is one of those, for instance, and “Ballade”.

TC: Do you find that any trouble being “on” when you hit the studio?

MC: Well, there’s almost a conscious putting yourself in this altered space. Sometimes, even in a performance, it’s just not working. Then your basic experience carries you through, even if it’s not the most inspired performance. But in the studio, you have the option of changing things, or not using things. I was pretty psyched up for this recording, and had been for a long time. It’s an idea that I started having a few years ago, that I really wanted to do a solo recording for ECM, and that I wanted to focus on the lyrical aspects of my playing, and that I wanted it to be very simple, pure, not a lot of extraneous material. A lot of space, using sound, using the decay of the sound, letting sound just ring out.

TC: Does Manfred Eicher have anything to say about all of that? Does he just let you go, or does he comment and steer things a particular way?

MC: He seems very happy with it! He’ll make suggestions, definitely. He has a very good ear, and sometimes things won’t sound right to him. For instance, one version I did of “Valse Triste” I did an improvisation, and we both kind of had the idea that it would be more effective to just play it, and not improvise it, just make the statement. He also is very good at arranging the order of the pieces. Sometimes it seems like something won’t work, but then he’ll place it where it can work based on what came before and after.

TC: When you thought about ECM, were you consciously thinking about the more lyrical side of your playing?

MC: Yes, but that had been happening before I even started recording for ECM. A lot of that was the influence of being in Scandinavia and hearing some Scandinavian musicians. I always was playing lyrical things, but I wasn’t particularly focused on that. Coltrane tunes and things like that. When I went to Scandinavia for the first time in 1992, I was very affected by what I heard. So it was a lot of things coming together.

TC: Who were some of the musicians that struck you?

MC: Well, in particular, the bass player Anders Jormin.

TC: Do you encounter listeners who know you primarily through the ECM recordings who might be surprised by your more aggressive tendencies?

MC: Yeah, but I’d say it’s more the other way around! (laughs) People will say to me, “oh I listened to Amaryllis and then I listened to the Barry Guy trio record and it’s hard to believe it’s the same person!” People like Cecil Taylor have a different style, definitely identifiable. I’ve been told that my sound is identifiable. People have a lot of true aspects to them. For me, the challenge has been to unite all these different aspects of myself in an organic way, and to make the transitions between them as seamless as possible, and to give voice to them all. There’s the influence of contemporary classical, Bach, African and Indian traditional music, contemporary jazz, Scandinavian folk music, it’s all there. I used to have a more purist point of view, I have to define a particular style for myself and stick to that. But that wasn’t correlating with my feelings! I thought, what use is it if I’m performing and I’m holding back something I really feel like doing? So one person said “she sounds like she’s channeling her inner Keith Jarrett.” Maybe I am from time to time, so what? (laughs)

TC : And Jarrett is the perfect example of not holding back. Whatever he feels like doing, splat, there it is.

MC: Mmm-hmm! And I definitely haven’t abandoned what you referred to as the more aggressive style, although I think, having done these more recent things, that even when I play that music it’s more grounded in a certain way.

TC: Some time ago, when the club Tonic closed, Marc Ribot wrote this diatribe about public funding for art and jazz music, and how he felt that public funding was drying up in Europe as well. Do you find that to be true?

MC: Yes! I think there’s certain festivals that aren’t happening any more. The radio stations are becoming privatized. The radio used to be a fantastic place to work, I remember someone at the station in Cologne years ago telling me that everything was going to change, to get more privatized, and that’s exactly what happened. So then, the more privatized it gets, the more commercial it tends to get. Although there’s still a lot more happening there than here. I have to say, though, in spite of everything, I seem to have more work this year here than there. I played in Buffalo, Concord, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, I’ll be playing in Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New Hampshire. I have a concert in Woodstock this summer at a summer chamber music series that started doing some jazz. That’s a very nice gig, and it’s five minutes from where I live!

TC: Is there any expectation that when you put out a solo record that all your concertizing is going to be solo?

MC: At the moment, I’m doing mostly solo, and when I’m playing with groups it’s usually because I’ve been invited by people to do projects with them. In Europe, Michele Rabbia had a trio with me and a cellist named Vincent Courtois. Also Lotte Anker is putting together a small tour in November for her, me, Anders Jormin and Raymond Strid. She plays saxophone, she plays a lot with Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver. I’m going to Australia in September. Next April, I’m going up to Nova Scotia, the first cellist of the Halifax Symphony improvises, and a clarinetist named Jeff Riley, they invited me to come up and do some workshops and play with them. It’s a lot of that kind of thing. I’ve gone online trying to find some gigs, but the logistics of everything is overwhelming right now, with the travel costs and such. And the trio with Paul and Mark can only play in New York, because Paul doesn’t travel. I’d love to do some more stuff with Joe Lovano, we did this one concert a couple of years ago which was really great, it sold out, but that’s not a door gig. You can’t do a door gig with Joe Lovano. You have to come up with money!

TC: What defines a good gig? Environment or money?

MC: Both! I’m not one of those musicians that wants to be on the road all the time, for six months at a time. A couple weeks is about what I feel I can handle. I need to keep coming back and touch base with where I live and my cat, you know. I’ve been offered some residencies and been asked to apply for some teaching jobs away from here, but for that reason, I haven’t accepted them.

TC: What about the piano as an instrument, are they pretty good everywhere now?

MC: I’m pretty lucky, the pianos I get are pretty good. Every now and then you get a bad one, or someone will say, “we’d like to have you, but we only have an upright, but it’s a very good upright.” I’ve done a few of those, but I don’t like doing that. I’ve had a few strange experiences. I think it was Queen Elizabeth Hall in London where five minutes into a solo concert the pedal fell off the piano! I had to stand up and ask if anyone in the audience knew how to reattach the pedal and someone came running up on stage, people were shooting photos of this guy lying under the piano. That was kind of funny! Then they talked about her “American cool,” well what else could I do? (laughs)

Then one time, at the Smithsonian Festival in Washington D.C., I played a piano where the keys were coming off under my fingers as I played them! The tops of the keys were coming off!

Well, Liszt used to travel with his own piano, he had a very, very light action piano. I have to say, the piano does make a difference in what you play. If you have a very heavy action piano, or it’s very mellow and it doesn’t have a lot of definition and brightness, you do tend to play differently than if you have a Yamaha, with a bright, light sound. But then sometimes that doesn’t have the depth of the other. But I like that! I like living on the edge. I like improvising totally, in my life! I like not knowing what I’m going to get.

TC: What do you think about classical-jazz crossover?

MC: Well, I think that anything someone feels strongly they want to do is realistic. To my ear, some of it works better than others. For instance, Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor are two examples of a very successful synthesis of contemporary classical music and contemporary jazz. Uri Caine does some stuff that’s very impressive.

TC: What about making the transition stylistically as opposed to a synthesis. I feel there’s this desire for legitimacy that jazz musicians imagine classical music has, and classical musicians feel that jazz musicians have this special mystique.

MC: Yeah, you have to forget about all that stuff. It’s bullshit anyway. You asked me before how I prepare for playing, and what I do is I try to get out of my own way. And how I get out of my own way is to forget about that kind of stuff. What’s so-and-so going to think, is somebody going to like this? Is it OK to do that? The only real reason for doing something is you feel very attracted to it and you want to do it. When I first started playing jazz, after only doing classical music for 28 years, I studied with Charlie Banacos in Boston for two years, and he had me playing with one finger of each hand to try and get rid of that classical sound, and all that. I did definitely incorporate new elements of phrasing especially. A classical and a jazz musician can play the same phrase and it would sound completely different. I did internalize some of that. On the other hand, some of the classical sound has come back now, particularly with the ECM recordings and I’m no longer trying to stuff away some part of my past. I started out doing composition in the contemporary classical tradition, and the first stuff I heard was Coltrane and Cecil, and I jumped right over and totally related to it, harmonically and emotionally, in every way. The only criteria for legitimacy is if you yourself feel what you’re doing is legitimate. If someone else wants to judge what you’re doing, that’s their problem. You have this one chance to do something that’s really you, and only you can do that! So if you’re trying to do what someone else thinks you should do, what’s the value? What are you doing?

TC: That’s inspiring!

MC: Lots of people do that! I’ve done that. Of course, you want people to like what you do, you want people to respect what you do. That was a very big thing for me! I wanted to be acknowledged, I wanted to be respected. I’m reminded that Miles Davis didn’t read any reviews of his work, good or bad. He just didn’t want to be influenced. People change too; different aspects of people will emerge at different times than others. Who knows, maybe five years from now I’ll be playing totally wild crazy music again, only. I kind of doubt it, but there’s all these doors you can open, and why close some of them because someone tells you you shouldn’t do that, or because you’re afraid to do it. It’s all a part of creativity.

TC: I read that when you played with Braxton, there was never any rehearsal, and he would spring new pieces on you a half hour before the show.

MC: Uh-huh! We would sing through them in the dressing room. I wish I had recordings of that (sings, laughs).

TC: How do you feel about rehearsal for yourself, if you’re playing with a group?

MC: I’m into it, minimally. If I lived in the city, I probably would have rehearsed more with Marc Helias for the Village Vanguard gig. I know we’re all good enough musicians to have an hour rehearsal and then play. Of course, if you rehearse a lot, you’d be tighter. In the case of Braxton, he didn’t want that. He wanted this very on-the-edge thing.

TC: That blows my mind, because it seems like such complex music.

MC: It is, it is! And when you see it half an hour before the gig, you do what you can, and maybe you only play the right hand and then use both hands to do that, because it’s impossible to play with one hand.

TC: Did you ever freak out?

MC: No! (laughs) The first time we played a duo concert, in Minneapolis I think it was, I was terribly nervous. But most of the time you just go in and do it. And you really have to be present, in the moment, and you really have to be listening. It was really exciting!

TC: Do you feel like you would put together a trio that would tour?

MC: Possibly. Like I said, the logistics of even organizing a solo tour are daunting. So if you have two other people involved, with their schedules and their travel and getting together and rehearsing and everything else… I don’t know. I guess!

TC: In your career you’ve played with the best of the best, and I wanted to know if there is anyone you haven’t made music with that you would like to make music with.

MC: Yeah! Pharaoh Sanders! When I first got into the music through Coltrane, he was the first jazz musician I ever heard in a live concert, at the Jazz Workshop in Boston when I was living there, and I used to go hear him night after night. I just totally adore him, and someday I would love to have a chance to play with him. Tisziji Munoz is a close friend of Pharoah’s, and a couple years ago, he was going to do a recording and Pharoah was going to come up and do the recording, but it didn’t happen. I just would love to play with him, he was such a major inspiration.

Also, in the past, Ornette has invited me to come down and play with him, and I never followed up on it. A little bit of strange shyness? I don’t know. Somehow I couldn’t get myself to pick up the phone and invite myself over. But of course, I would love to play with him. Also I’ve always had the fantasy of playing with a bunch of African drummers. I did play with Olatunji when he was alive, a couple times. He was up at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, teaching, and he said “I hear what you’re doing rhythmically, let’s play together.” So we did something at this place called Soundscape, which isn’t there anymore, and it was great! He sat in with a group of mine once or twice. I would love to do more of that kind of thing. I’m really into African traditional music. He taught me one of his songs and we walked into the room singing this song, and we played. A lot of his relatives were in the audience and they got it, and I was really surprised, I thought they would hate it because it wasn’t traditional. I’d love to go in that direction.

TC: What else do you like to listen to?

MC: I’m very partial to Scandinavian music. I have lots of recordings of Lena Willemark, she’s on the ECM label. Great, great singer. If I’m putting on music, I’ll put on some of her stuff. And there’s a Finnish singer, Sinikka Langeland, I just love that recording, it’s called “Starflowers”. I’ll put on traditional African music. I have a recording of Irene Schweizer and Pierre Favre, an old one that I love very much. I don’t tend to listen to a lot of music. I think a lot of musicians don’t. You’re so inundated by it all the time. I can’t just put it on… If I’m trying to do something or talk to someone, I keep getting distracted by the music, even by muzak! Part of my mind is always going there.

 

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