I'm a Big Fan of Kurt Rosenwinkel

[TRANSCRIPTION] Solo on "I'll Be Seing You"

2008-08-06T21:19:00.000-07:00

Solo of Kurt Rosenwinkel on "I Wish Knew" transcribed by Jens Larsen

taken from Jen Larsen's website

[TRANSCRIPTION] Solo from "I Wish I Knew"

2008-08-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

Solo of Kurt Rosenwinkel frim "I Wish Knew" transcribed by Jens Larsen

[TRANSCRIPTION] Kurt Rosenwinkel - Brooklyn Sometimes

2008-08-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

kebetulan saya menemukan transkrip lagu brooklyn sometimes dari kurt rosenwinkel oleh lawrence dunn yang diambil dari website free jazz institute semoga bermanfaat.

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Hey folks.

I've done a lead sheet for Kurt Rosenwinkel's great tune Brooklyn Sometimes, from his latest Deep Song album. I know he's released a book of tune transcriptions, I personally haven't seen it, this chart was done as more of an exercise for me. It is a great tune, nonetheless. Bouncing along with a kind of wistful ease and swagger, it's upbeat but gentile, and as Rosenwinkel has mentioned of many of his tunes, it is very songlike. I've done a pretty long analysis, and any corrections would be useful!

Analysis:

The first 16 bars are piano introduction, the same chords as the repeated section at the sign. I think on the recording Kurt plays the piano here, so his singing is a part of the tone colour of the introduction. The vocal line is very quiet, and difficult to discern, but is there, and elegantly sows some of the seeds of the melody within the harmony by embelleshing the melodic tones. The vocal line also adds a certain specialness to some parts here: note in bar 10 how the vocal line doubles the bottom rising figure, which is quieter from the piano, and does not double the higher figure. Rosenwinkel said that sometimes some harmonies need a richness added to certain tones, and he will try and add this richness through his singing. I'm sure Kurt could have sung that top line, but he chose to sing the rising one, adding a shimmering rising texture to the major sixth, which falls to a perfect fifth, which lifts the figure. The rising figure makes the lift more subtle, which the top, higher line being the lit one, the one that is noticed. The embellesment of the rising figure makes a point of highlighting the slip from the slightly more dissonant sixth to the more consonant fifth, rather than a mere fall from the D# to D natural.

The chords themselves appear beautifully chosen and structured when the melody appears in bar 17. I've written chord symbols, most probably to aid in improvisation over the section, or to make the harmony understandable. However the voicings should be strictly adheared to. They are necessary for the tune to make sense, in my mind, and are great, simple chords.
The repeated section itself is split into two further subsections, made clear by the bassline. In the first 4 bars the harmony moves up, and then twice down, and in the second four bars performs a similar outing except for the B major(add4) in bar 24.
The cadence here falls to the Asus in bar 25. Really this is an E chord, but the Asus makes for more clarity of voicing than E7(omit3)/A, and really the Asus is a true Asus performing the function of the E chord. This second subsection would appear to be a dominant section, but is not quite what it seems. Instead of having a section of movement around the dominant, the bassline conceals the key centre by hovering on the B and F#. This makes for an intruiging mix of ambiguous tonality - the first subsection is very clearly a D minor sound, but here, it is difficult to work out exactly what is going on. Moments like bar 28, with a Eb major sounding chord, superimposed over this B natural make for a jolt in tonality. The lower Bb of the voicing clashes with the B natural in the bass. But it isn't really dissonant, it is merely the harmonic extension of the perpendicular nature of the melody and the bassline at this point. The section shuffles along, with the bassline being altered in bar 30 to make the sound more consonant, to finally find the dominant in bar 32 (albeit with a b9, which adds to the slightly more dissonant nature of this section).

Then follows a bridge section. This section is intruiging, not only harmonically, but rhythmically also. Firstly we have the A / Gm / | D/F# figure which is then lowered and continued in the E / F/Eb / | D figure. But there, apparently, the logic seems to end. Even the melody is disjointed, although still songlike. It is not nearly as memorable as the melody in the sign section. Mehldau approaches the piano melody with great touch but also robustness, which allows for the melody and Kurt's interjections to coexist carefully and not compete.
After the piano plays its melody, the guitar returns with a strange, haunting melody over some even more illogical changes, and a strange rhythmical structuring. I've written it in 4, but it could easily be split up into other time signatures. Ali Jackson supports the bassline by adding cymbal sounds and crashes, but also continues with the double-time feel with the hihat on upbeat quavers. Really, to me, the purpose of this bridge section is to contrast the logical nature of the sign melody, so when it returns on the D.S. there is a release of tension and rhythmic uncertainty - suddenly, there it is, that incessant bassline, the upbeat quavers, bouncing along.

The bridge changes return for a piano solo, only before a guitar solo on rising chromatic harmony. At bar 51 I've written the changes extremely simply - some of the voicings should be more minor, some should be more major in sound. But really the voicings are up to the pianist. The bass shows where the harmony is going, and the resolution at bars 57-8 allows a little breath of fresh air. The rising chromatic harmony builds tension incredibly, and this is greatly contrasted by the release of tension as the piano solo enters.

Finally, the melody at the sign is recapitulated, to fine on the dominant A7(b9), which lingers in midair. Despite this, the tune is extremely satisfying - it doesn't end on the bridge. The great melody comes back, and the listener goes off humming it.

Hope this has helped shed some light on a great Rosenwinkel tune.

Cheers...

[TRANSCRIPTION] Kurt Rosenwinkel - Brooklyn Sometimes

2008-08-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

conversation with kurt rosenwinkel

2008-08-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

conversation with kurt rosenwinkel
by Mike McKinley | photography by Ian Gittler

As I was listening to guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel's latest double live album‚ The Remedy‚ the concept "music as the remedy" really soaked in. It was in the midst of a solo‚ where Kurt kept digging deeper and deeper‚ developing into a blaze of raw‚ emotional expression. The band was having a great conversation -- suggestive‚ wrapped with as much subtlety as fire. You could feel how much they were getting out‚ pouring from the heart.

As simple as the concept sounds‚ it felt like the perfect theme that kept coming up in conversation with friends -- whatever life throws at you‚ there's always music. Yes‚ it is the remedy.

"That's it‚" is all Rosenwinkel had to say when I told him my assessment of why his album is called The Remedy. Following a noble tradition of the giants who came before him (Coltrane‚ Evans‚ Dizzy and Dexter to name a few)‚ The Remedy was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Certainly‚ the dynamics of this band fit right in‚ superbly‚ with the rich lineage of this room.

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Let's talk about the new record. It's good to hear you stretch out. I know it's been out for a while now‚ so how are you feeling about it?

I feel really good about it. I'm really happy with how it came out and I feel good about having a record out there that really shows what we do live. I think it's a really well-made record. I'm proud of it personally.

Do you think it captures the chemistry of the band?

Definitely.

I think so‚ too. I just don't know how much more there is out there. It's hard to get it all down.

That's a pretty high representation‚ I would say.

What kind of things happen when you're up there and in the zone. What kind of things do you see? Is it visual?

Yeah‚ it can be. Well‚ last night‚ for example‚ I was playing a gig and we got into this zone and I saw this space station and this spaceship docking into the space station‚ and these aliens talking in the space station and broadcasting over the universe. My part was this person in a spacesuit working on the outside of the station hammering something. I was playing the hammering. [laughter] The way that everything was fitting together musically was what was creating this vision for me. It's also some kind of narrative‚ almost like a movie. When I used to play Brooklyn a lot‚ I would imagine that my part playing the melody was this stage with no band‚ but just an older woman off to the side giving this sort of soliloquy to the audience. So I would imagine that I was that woman giving this soliloquy.

Where do you think that comes from?

I don't know. I guess just the imagination and from things sparking memories. When you go about your day and you smell something and suddenly you remember something-music is very visual for me like that. Music can trigger dreams for me sometimes‚ literally. It actually can trigger the memory of the dream‚ and I go back into this dream that I had‚ almost like déjà vu. Like a dream that I had but I didn't remember.

Do you ever have things that pop into your head about your childhood?

Yeah‚ music is really an extension of childhood play for me. When I got too old to play with toys‚ I started playing music. All that childhood adventure quality to life transferred into music‚ so it definitely represents that kind of world to me. It's deeper than just playing like a kid; it has everything in life as you get older and learn the lessons of life. Music has all of the lessons in it‚ I find. Music shows you everything you need to get through life as a person. When things aren't balanced inside your own person‚ it's very obvious through music that that's the case‚ if you're aware. Music is really a good teacher‚ I've found.

What do you do to nurture that relationship? Is there any ritual experience you do when you approach it‚ or are you always looking for new things?

There are a lot of things‚ big and little‚ that I feel that I have to do to approach it in the right way. You've got to clean your room. Sometimes you have to light candles‚ or sometimes you need to meditate‚ or sometimes you need to just practice long enough until you open the door‚ and then there's music. Sometimes you need to study‚ and sometimes you need to just go for a walk or make sure you're living life right. Maybe you need to get back in touch with your old journals from your youth or something-get power from different sources. I remember for a long time‚ I would imagine that when I would play‚ this hatch would open in my head and these antennas would go up in the back of my head. [laughter] That doesn't happen anymore. There's all kinds of ways to quote-unquote put your antennas up.

That makes sense-you become a catalyst. That's a funny image. [laughter] Talking about meditation and these images that happen in the thick of it‚ how much of that do you think you can control‚ knowing that you're in the middle of this crazy music and knowing that you're really riding it? I've heard a lot of musicians say that if they think about it too much‚ they lose it. But other musicians feel like with improvising‚ that's the next step-to be able to ride it‚ but to be able to think about it.

The reason why one practices is so that when you lose yourself‚ everything doesn't fall apart. You're still functioning on whatever the music demands craft-wise. That helps‚ making sure that your level of craft is as high as it can be‚ giving you the freedom to really let your heart take over.

That's the key for me-having an open heart and thinking with your heart‚ or experiencing the music first through your heart and then processing with your brain‚ but always having it go through the heart as an organism. You feel like you experience life in your head‚ in your brain‚ in your face. You listen to things and smell things and taste things and think about things. It's all in your head. Life is taking place in your head. It's another thing if you imagine that everything is being processed through your heart‚ which is powerful. I think it's a very important distinction of how to approach life.

And for me‚ music is very much a reflection of that. The thing about that is‚ the heart is associated with love in all of its different shapes. There's the truism that all that loves‚ listens. And so‚ it's about listening. I'm listening with an open heart‚ and making sure my skill and craft levels are as high as they can be. But everything else-my internal thinking process is listening and experiencing through the organism of the heart. I find that if you're engaged in that way‚ then your mind is in its correct function‚ which is just informational‚ translating forms of chord shapes. It can be working a lot during the whole thing‚ but it has its own function‚ which is secondary to the whole experience. It's the calculator.

When do you think you hit that point where you realized that?

I'm constantly re-realizing it. I think you learn that pretty early on‚ though.

It's a continuous journey. You have to keep assessing. You've been teaching….

I teach in Berlin at the Jazz Institute.

Are you learning quite a bit about yourself being a teacher?

Definitely. I really love teaching because you have to kind of diagnose a problem and figure out how to help them‚ and I enjoy that a lot. I feel like I'm a kind of music doctor for people. It's fun. Everybody's in a different situation.

Do you feel like you're also a philosopher?

Yeah. I tend to teach a lot in metaphor. I'm always coming up with analogies and visualizations for whatever we're talking about. I enjoy teaching because it's like having a really good conversation sometimes. It's philosophical‚ but also very practical. I'm a very practical teacher.

taken from state of mind

Kurt Rosenwinkel masuk artist list Java Jazz Festival 2009

2008-07-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

Menurut info yang didapat dari situs resmi Java Jazz Festival , Kurt Rosenwinkel telah masuk daftar artis list untuk acara tahunan Java Jazz Festival 2009 yang rencananya akan diselenggarakan pada tanggal 6, 7, 8 Maret 2009 di Jakarta Convention Center.

Apabila Kurt memang jadi tampil, maka kedatangannya ke Indonesia merupakan yang pertama kalinya. Belakangan ini namanya banyak dibicarakan di forum, komunitas, sekolah musik di Indonesia.

Mudah-mudahan rencana mendatangkan Kurt bisa terealisasi, sehingga album rekamannya pun bisa lebih mudah diperoleh, karena kenyataannya saat ini sangat sulit mencari album rekaman Kurt, bahkan di kota metropolitan sebesar Jakarta.

Kurt Rosenwinkel at U.Va.

2006-02-25T21:06:00.000-08:00

Kurt Rosenwinkel @ U.Va. (Part 1: Friday)

This might well have been the best weekend I have ever spent here at U.Va. And this just might well be the best weekend I will ever spend here. I attended three events in two days where I had opportunity to listen to one of the most inspiring musicians out there today: Kurt Rosenwinkel.

If you live in Charlottesville and are interested in music at all, or any kind of creative art, that is to say, anything truly human, and you did not come to the New Music Ensemble concert Friday night, pray tell: what on earth were you doing?

It made absolutely no sense to me that that event was free of charge. For such beautiful, grand, ambitious works of music that I was fortunate to listen to that night, I would have easily payed 50 dollars, nay, 150 dollars. It was that good.

That John D'earth, the U.Va. professor who directs the Jazz Ensemble and leads the Free Bridge Quintet, is an awesome trumpeter, quite many people know. But that he is also one of the most innovative, intelligent, and genre-daring composers of our day, ought to be known much more widely than it is now.

Silent Faustus, which opened up the concert with the acclaimed chamber group, Kandinsky Trio, is D'earth's own adaptation of the same work originally composed for F. W. Murnau's 1926 silent film, Faustus. I did not know that a trio could sound with such power, grandeur, and intensity, bringing forth the vast scale of the legend.

D'earth's mastery of arrangement technique is astonishing: despite himself being a jazz trumpeter, he knows how to do things with the strings. The work easily transcends the category of film-music. I particularly liked the part towards the Act III (I think), where Faust recollects his one true love, Gretchen. A sweet, pining melody is first played by the cello, then by the violin, while the piano accompanies with an intense and cold shower of chords.

But of course the highlight of the night was Natural Bridge, a suite piece for chamber trio, acoustic bass, and jazz guitar, where Kurt Rosenwinkel was featured. It is "an attempt to combine the languages and procedures of two different musical worlds: classical/contemporary chamber music and waht is inadequately referred to as "jazz"" (program note).

And when D'earth says this, he doesn't have in his mind, for example, the one-directional absorption of jazz into classical music which composers like Ravel attempted (as beautiful and successful as his works are). Nor does he mean mere arranging of classical piece into jazz instruments, like Coltrane's adaptation of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. He means the total integration and free interaction of these two genres, which results in a phenomenal work of art whose power and beauty completely defy categorization.

"Perhaps one discovers, as this cobination is explored," D'earth writes, "that these two musical worlds are not so very different, after all; that they invite each other in and, by reciprocal influence, suggest new directions and possibilities."

You have probably heard of some would-be "fusion" works that attempt to break down the wall between "the classical" and "the jazz," resulting in rather uncomfortably mingled pieces of music that does justice to neither genre. Such an attempt is bound to fail, for one sole reason--that there is really no wall separating these genres in the first place. To see this rather natural truth of "music," however, requires a very high degree of musical knowledge, affinity, creativity, and freedom. And John D'earth possesses these qualities. This work is absolutely amazing. It's a full-course of world music. Poly-rhythm, free-style improvisation, blues, scherzo... everything is fair game.

Let me here at least begin to talk about the guitarist. Kurt Rosenwinkel is probably the greatest jazz musician who is able to sing his instrument. The guitar and his body are one during the performance, and the melodies flow one after another with such beauty and elegance. His virtuosity is just the kind that does not condescendingly shows of its virtuosity, but takes the audience's mind away into a different world of musical ideas where his mind dwells.

The notes played in his sweet clean tone are raindrops, as it were, that sometimes fall quietly, sometimes drop with gentle weight, and still other times cascade and create misty atmosphere, upon the billowing surface of water that is the accompanying strings instruments and the piano. Kurt Rosenwinkel seemed to be just the kind of guitarist whose voice is called for by this magnificently ambitious work (although the works was not originally written for him). I sincerely hope they would record this some time soon, which will definitely be the beginning of a new phase for the history of both classical and jazz music.

Such a night, where I was able to sit down at the very front row and listen to the sparks of those absolute artistic geniuses, has never been, and will not come so often in the future.

Kurt Rosenwinkel @ U.Va. (Part 2: Saturday)

How amazingly rare and precious an opportunity it is to glimpse the mind of true artists! And how resonant, attuned, noble, and admirable their philosophy is! Philosophy that does not have to degenerate itself into pitiful rubble of words!

On Saturday morning, the visiting jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel presented a master class to the public, which was like a special lecture. And, let me tell you, it was definitely one of the most impressive and inspiring talk I have ever attended here at U.Va.

The lecture was kind of like a semi-workshop type discussion, where Kurt sits in the front with his guitar, taking questions and answering them with words and melodies. The session continued in a fun, relaxed and intimate mood for about 2 hours.

What Kurt explained and demonstrated with his guitar, from the perspective of jazz theory, I presume, wasn't so outrageously advanced (if it were, we wouldn't have understood what he was talking about). First, he showed us some substitution method with altered chord based on the melodic minor scale whose VIIth note is the root of the dominant. I suppose you can open any jazz theory (Berkeley method) book and find the explanation there, but how valuable it is to hear it in action, from the hands of a musician who really has digested it, has made it his second nature. . .

Then he talked about how he practices. He said that for him the purpose of practice is "to warm up": to align his physicality with the guitar, to attune mind to the kind of music he wants to play. What he said might have been simple, but oh boy, how profound it really is.

Then I asked a question about comping, for that was something I would like to work on especially. He traced the process by which he would approach a new song (when he was a kid, that is): he would start out by taking a tune, play it over and over again until you memorize it, then start finding different paths by which you can approach it. He took the standard "Darn that dream" as an example, and played for a while to demonstrate what kind of thing can be done to the original progression. I'm not even exaggerating: it was like magic, how the music gets transformed, at his will, through his fingers. What a joy it would be to be able to play like that?

But what I think was above all valuable wasn't the taste of jazz theory he imparted, but what he talked about his conception of music, and his passion for it. He emphasized the critical importance of the "singing" element throughout the lecture. For such impulse to sing is truly the beginning of all music. Imagination is another important factor. Always thinking imaginatively, he told us, about what it is that you want to play, what melody, chord, tone, and striving to achieve it, that is what music is for him. By the end of the period I thought I could understand better whence the beautiful melodies that come out of his playing.

There are many other truly stimulating lessons, not just about jazz guitar but about artistic passion in general that could be learned from that short 2 hours. I'm sorry the music department had not, in my opinion, promoted the event very well.

Then at night Kurt was again on stage, as the featured guest guitarist of the winter concert of U.Va. Jazz ensemble. This ensemble is a group of very gifted student musicians whose ambitious and solid performance pleases me always.

In a word: the gig rocked. It was awesome. A series of very original, inspiring tunes (many were compositions of John D'earth, the director) driving the audience, and the ensemble's sound was tight and enjoyable. I was so fortunate, as I was on the previous night, to sit in the very front row, right in front of the legendary guitarist, and witness how true music is being created. I could really here his voice, not just the physical voice (for he sings while he plays), but the melodious voice that is ceaselessly welling inside his spirit.

Oh what a weekend. How so cool. As is the case with most jazz musicians, Kurt was really nice: I was able to talk to him a couple of times and he responded nicely, and he even recognized me at the end of the first set, Saturday night. Ah. This kind of experience drives me more strongly than any other. To where? I'm not quite sure. It's not necessarily music, for me. But I have to do something, and I want to. Recognition that there still remains in my heart something that is capable of burning. An indescribable well of feelings, gushing forth, that one cannot put into words, but can only sing of. . .

taken from Cahier No. 9

Kurt Rosenwinkel: Jazz Guitar's New Voice

2000-03-31T20:48:00.000-08:00

Kurt Rosenwinkel: Jazz Guitar's New Voice

Kurt Rosenwinkel '90 stands tall among a crop of young jazz musicians who are breaking new ground.

By Mark Small '73


	Photo by Lourdes Delgado

It's like living in The Sound of Music," Kurt Rosenwinkel tells me during a white-knuckle ride down Sixth Avenue in the backseat of a seemingly out-of-control Manhattan cab. He's describing the idyllic setting of his current home in Lucerne, Switzerland, but his statement could also describe his artistic life. Rosenwinkel's deep immersion in music over the past three decades has enabled him to record six CDs as a leader (four on the Verve label) and guest spots on nearly 40 other discs. His artistry has elicited glowing tributes from jazz guitar-giants Pat Metheny and John Scofield (see the liner notes for Rosenwinkel's Enemies of Energy CD).

Rosenwinkel was introduced to international jazz audiences through his tours and recordings with Paul Motian, Gary Burton, Joshua Redman, and others in the early 1990s, and he has since built his own career as a headliner.

After leaving Berklee in 1991 to tour with Burton's band, Rosenwinkel relocated to New York. He became a pivotal figure in a coterie of rising young jazz musicians that included pianist Brad Mehldau; saxophonists Myron Walden, Mark Turner '90, Seamus Blake '92, and Chris Cheek '91; bassists Matt Penman '95, Omer Avital, and Ben Street '88; drummers Jeff Ballard and Jorge Rossy '90; and others. They established their careers collectively during the 1990s playing an adventurous brand of jazz in various configurations in New York clubs and on recordings for the prolific Fresh Sound New Talent label. Mitchell Borden's legendary nightspot Smalls Club in Greenwich Village became the proving ground for Rosenwinkel and company. Smalls provided a forum for Rosenwinkel to explore his ideas, develop his artistic identity, and begin attracting an audience.

Rosenwinkel grew up in Philadelphia, the son of parents who both played the piano and listened to a variety of music around the house. While Rosenwinkel's music reveals traces of the musical influence of others (then again, whose doesn't?), his style is virtuosic and absolutely distinctive. Some critics have compared his harmonically complex compositions to those of Wayne Shorter. As far as his guitar playing goes, the torrent of eighth notes that Rosenwinkel is wont to unleash in up-tempo, bop-oriented solos may occasionally recall those of fellow Philadelphia fret master Pat Martino. At other times, Rosenwinkel's slurred-note approach evokes the smooth lyricism of Metheny or the intervallic probing of Scofield.

Rosenwinkel has his own unique identity, though, both as a guitarist and composer. A trademark of his sound is the blend of his clear guitar tone with his subtle, wordless vocalizing. Singing each note he improvises through a lapel mic fed into his amp creates a wide, legato sonority that is instantly appealing and even otherworldly at times.

I caught Rosenwinkel's set on a warm summer night at the Fat Cat in the Village. He and bassist Ben Street were exploring South American grooves with celebrated Brazilian musicians Toninho Horta (guitar and vocals) and Robertinho Silva (drums) to a packed house. While most of Rosenwinkel's recorded output lies within the broad parameters of contemporary jazz, the Fat Cat set suggests his openness to other avenues of expression. Now that Rosenwinkel has left Verve, he plans to explore other possibilities on his own label and through tracks that will be available only at his website (www.kurtrosenwinkel.com). Rosenwinkel has proven that even in the populous field of jazz guitar, a new voice with something compelling to say will be heard.


Photo by Lourdes Delgado

You started out playing piano. When did you switch to guitar? I began playing piano when I was nine and picked up the guitar when I was 12 and played both from the age of 12 on. By the time I got to high school, I knew I wanted to go to Berklee, and I thought I should choose one instrument to focus on. I had taken guitar lessons the whole time but I'd only taken piano lessons at the beginning. To help make the choice, I decided to take a year of jazz-piano lessons and see where I was with that. I studied with a great pianist and teacher in Philadelphia, Jimmy Amadie. In the end, I chose guitar because I felt I was better at guitar than piano. I had gotten farther with it and developed something on the guitar. Sometimes I regret the choice. [He smiles.] In some ways, the piano is a more natural instrument to me. It's easier to get pleasing sounds out of the piano. Guitar is like a trumpet. You have to stay on top of your practicing and technique. It requires a lot of discipline to keep from making mistakes all the time.

Do you think that's because it takes two hands to produce the notes on a guitar? Yeah, and the hands do completely different things. Guitar playing is counterintuitive. The piano or the drums are very direct. There's one action to make a sound. Guitar is a very incredible instrument. It's deep. The musical ideas that come from the guitar itself don't sound like anything that comes out of another instrument. The sounds can be so interesting and peculiar sometimes.

What attracted you to jazz when you were in your formative years? My dad played Erroll Garner-style piano-very free and improvisational. He'd go off on tangents. My mom didn't play that much when I was growing up, but she had trained to be a concert pianist. Although she'd put it down for a number of years, she was always listening to music. I heard a lot of different music around the house and on the radio. WRTI-FM in Philadelphia is a great jazz station. Every night when I was going to bed, I'd put it on and listen. They played Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and avant-garde jazz in the late hours.

So the more adventurous jazz artists were those who caught your ear? Yeah, I was really into the idea of free improvisation, or conceptual approaches to music. My mother took me to a concert by the Ganelin Trio, a Russian avant-garde piano trio. It was superb, one of the best concerts that I've ever seen. It made a deep impression on me. The musicians were doing things like hitting the inside of the piano to make different sounds, and I really loved it.

Did you get a chance to play jazz in the early stages? I had The Real Book and started learning standards. There was a club in Philly called the Blue Note. It wasn't affiliated with the other Blue Note clubs. But I would go there for jam sessions every Monday and play the tunes I'd learned. The players were older cats, and I felt I was making contact with the real aural tradition of jazz. I'd call a tune, and they would come up with an instant arrangement. They had all these ideas that were a revelation to me. All I'd gotten from The Real Book were the melody and chord changes.

Now, when I want to learn a song, I'll try to find a vocal version with strings or a big-band version and see what the arrangers did to the tune. I like to learn from the history and tradition of the song. That will teach you a lot about the jazz tradition, and you can bring those ideas into your own version of the tune.

At a young age, were you feeling inclined to become a jazz musician? I knew I wanted to be a musician, but I wasn't thinking about being a jazz musician at first. When I was eight years old, I liked Kiss and wanted to be a rock star. That was just a youthful thought. But I was as certain then as I am now that I wanted a career in music. I was really lucky to know without any doubt from the very beginning that I was going to be a musician.

What did you come to Berklee to study? I didn't have anything in particular in mind. A lot of my musician friends in Philadelphia were going to Berklee, and I followed in their tracks. I wanted to go to a school where there were a lot of people doing what I wanted to do. At Berklee, I would go down to the ensemble rooms with my amp on a cart and listen to the bands in the practice rooms. If something sounded cool, I'd ask if I could hang out or play. I'd do that maybe six hours on the weekdays and 12 hours on the weekend. Playing all the time was a valuable part of being at Berklee.

I wasn't too focused on the academic work back then, but I had some very good courses. Ed Tomassi's "Chord Scale Voicings for Arranging" was great for me. I had some excellent harmony classes too. I liked the Berklee approach to harmonic analysis.

You left Berklee to accept a gig with Gary Burton's band. How was it that he became aware of you? Larry Grenadier and a few other friends who were playing in Gary's band recommended me. After [guitarist] Wolfgang Muthspiel ['90] left the band in 1991, I did an audition with Gary and got the gig. I remember going home and finding messages for gigs on my answering machine from both Gary and Paul Motian. That blew my mind.

When you left Boston to relocate to New York, did you know many people there? There was an exodus of my musician friends who left Boston and went to New York. I moved down here with Ben Street and Jim Black ['90], and Jon Dryden ['91]. We lived in a house together and played a lot of sessions. It took about a year for me to really meet people from the New York scene. It was hard to make contact. If you played a session, you might meet a new person who would call you a month later for another session, and you'd meet more players there.

New York is expensive. Were you getting enough gigs to make ends meet at first? Actually, that was the period of time when I was playing with Gary's band and with Paul Motian's band, so I was making money on the road. It was a perfect transition. After I'd been in New York for a year, I quit Gary's band and went to Spain for five months. I wanted to clear my head. When I came back at the end of 1993, I began playing at Smalls in the Village. Ben Street, Jeff Ballard, and I had been playing together since I moved to New York. Jeff was given a regular Tuesday night gig at Smalls by Mitchell Borden, and Jeff asked Ben and me to play there with him. We played at Smalls every Tuesday night for five or six years.

It was a struggle to get by at that point. For years I was pulling the cushions off the sofa to see if I could find some change to buy a slice of pizza. John Scofield has always been one of my big supporters. He and his wife, Susan, were really good to me. Back then they were helping me shop a record I'd made and knew money was tight for me. Once, Susan just sent me a check and wrote on it, "Pizza money." That was really warm.

How did you become connected with Fresh Sound New Talent Records? I'd met Jordi Pujol [Fresh Sound's owner] through [drummer] Jorge Rossy. Jordi had asked Jorge to help him find new musicians. When Jorge became the A&R man for Fresh Sound, he did a record with Brad Mehldau, with whom he'd been playing. Later, I did a record, and soon a lot of players I knew were recording for the label. I played on about a dozen CDs for Jordi. It was a great opportunity to record, and it helped financially. It gave a lot of us a medium in which to manifest our ideas as artists and formulate concepts.

Did you ever think it was a daunting prospect to develop your own identity as a jazz guitarist amongst influential players such as Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Mike Stern, and so many others who are so very well known in the field? I never had to grapple with that issue, but I know a lot of people do. What helped me in that regard is that I have always written music. That has helped to define my style. I don't have an agenda when I write. The songs come out and are what they are. And then I have to learn to play them. They're written at a level that's beyond my abilities as a player. Composing has been an important teacher for me. My songs have forced me to grow as a player and helped me develop my style. When you're writing, what you hear is not limited by what you can play. If people thought about it, they'd realize that they can hear beyond their abilities on their instrument.

Your angular melodies and harmonically rich chord choices indicate that you must work a lot on the harmonic intricacies of the guitar. I do. I love harmony. I've had to work really hard to be able produce these sounds on the guitar. I want to be free to improvise with the harmonic language I am dealing with in my tunes. I play a lot with [saxophonist] Mark Turner, and the harmonic content of his songs is really sophisticated. His songs force me to come to terms with the intricacies of my instrument and make music with the songs. I work a lot on the instrument to become conversant with the harmonies. I don't want to be thinking about scales and chords when I'm playing. I want those to be second nature so that all I'm thinking about is melody.

Does singing along with your improvisations help you to keep things melodic? It keeps me in touch with the primary impulse of music: to sing. I imagine that's where music started.

When did you start using a Lavalier lapel mic to capture the sound of your singing? When we were developing our sound at those weekly gigs at Smalls, people would come up and ask me if I was using a chorus effect on my guitar. I would tell them I was just using a delay and some reverb, and they'd walk away puzzled over how I was getting my sound. I didn't realize how much the singing was part of my sound until I started recording. The engineer would usually just put a mic in front of the amp, and I'd come away from the studio feeling that there was a big part of my sound that hadn't been captured. I finally figured out that my voice was creating the effect that people at the club were asking me about. I realized that in the studio they should record my voice, too. Once we started doing that, I got what I recognized as my sound.

From that point on, I started to pay more attention to it and develop it. At first I had a mic on a stand setup in front of me, but that made me self-conscious. I hated having a mic in my face. It called too much attention to what I was doing, because it's a subtle thing. Then I had the revelation to get a Lavalier mic that would be out of the way and inconspicuous.

The blend of the singing with your guitar lines gives the notes a bit more sustain. It also solves the problem of balancing the notes within a chord. When I play a chord and realize that one note of the chord didn't come out as loud as I wanted it to, I can sing it. This enables me to react and balance the harmony, whether it is an inner voice or the melody at the top of the chord.

Will the music you've been playing with Brazilian guitarist Toninho Horta become a recording at some point? We are discussing that, but for now it is just a tour with a week at the Village Vanguard, gigs in Japan, and a few West Coast dates. I have been a fan of Toninho for years. My manager Anders suggested that we work together. In some ways, what Toninho does has parallels to my music. He also sings along with his playing, but in a different way than I do. I love what he does. We've been playing tunes by Milton Nascimento, some of Toninho's, and some of mine.

Since you and your family now live in Switzerland, do you feel a little removed from the New York jazz scene? I felt like getting out of New York after living there for 13 years. My wife is Swiss. We came back and forth for a while when she was in school, but I wanted new information in my overall life scene, and I just decided to move. First Rebecca and I moved to Zurich, and our older son Silas was born there, he's now two years old. Our second son, Ezra, was born last June. Now we live in Lucerne, and I teach at a music school there a few days a week when I'm in town. The schedule is very flexible so that I can do my tours. We have a garden, and everything is very peaceful there, with the view of the mountains. When I'm home, I become a recluse. When I come back to New York, I get an influx of energy.

I understand that you have now left the Verve record label. Verve was great for me. They helped me get established and build an audience, and I'm proud of the four albums I made for them. I'm independent now. My manager Anders and I are starting a new label. This time, I'm going to make all the money. The first release will be a live album I recorded last January with my quintet at the Village Vanguard. That will be released in March of 2007. We will have a distributor to get the CD into the stores, and it will be available through iTunes. We are taking care to launch the whole thing correctly.

I have a home studio and I'm planning to do another studio project like the Heartcore album. I enjoyed making that record; it was a huge challenge. Except for the mastering, I did it mostly myself-composing, engineering, mixing. Heartcore was very different from anything in my recorded output. I wanted to do it because I had been doing things like that my whole life. I would make tunes that were completely free in my home studio-my laboratory. Along the way, a lot of cool songs have come out that didn't fit with the music I played with my band. They were oddities.

My website will be upgraded so that I can sell downloads. I want to be able to upload songs I create in my studio that don't have anything to do with what I do live. For instance, I've recorded a rock song that's very dark. I'm singing lyrics on it and showing my David Bowie roots. I want to have an outlet for these things. I'll upload them, and people can buy them for a buck.

What else do you foresee in your future? I look forward to developing my group and making a record with Toninho Horta and making Heartcore II. I'd also like to do a solo guitar record someday and an album of the songs with lyrics that I write. I'd also like to do an orchestrated project with a larger group. Right now, though, I'm really where I want to be.

taken from BERKLEE website