Danny Fox

This interview with Danny Fox was conducted by email, March-April 2011.

Tony Reif: Let’s start with your background – you grew up in Manhattan, and your bio says you became immersed in the NY jazz scene from a young age, and that in high school you were selected as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and performed at a ceremony for President Clinton. I assume you were already playing jazz piano at that time – what kind of jazz were you listening to and getting into? Was Monk an early influence?

Danny Fox: I was pretty fortunate to grow up in NYC and be exposed to so much amazing music at a young age. When I was little, my parents would take my brother and me to all kinds of events: young people’s concerts at the New York Philharmonic (although at the time I was mainly excited about what candy I would get at intermission), Broadway shows, folk concerts, etc. When I started listening to jazz in high school I went out and heard as much live music as I could. The access I had to the scene was a real luxury. I was able to hear guys like Tommy Flanagan, Roland Hanna, Kenny Barron, Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson. I could listen to a record and then go hear that artist the next night. The great bassist Bob Cranshaw lived down the block from me, and when I would bump into him on the street I could ask him about a Hank Mobley record I had just heard him on. I ran into McCoy Tyner once in the Steinway showroom (I was routinely kicked out for playing on the pianos without any intention of buying) and got to play his tune “Passion Dance” for him. These kinds of experiences made a huge impact on me. I was surrounded by so much great music and tradition and I soaked it all up.

The first jazz record I remember hearing was Miles Davis’s Milestones. My brother had a tape of it and we would listen to it driving around at night during a family trip in Israel. I was completely mesmerized by the sound: mysterious, dark, wide open. I had no idea what was going on but it hit me on such a visceral level. Thelonious Monk was certainly a big early influence, especially The Unique Thelonious Monk which is him playing all standards. It’s such a powerful example of an artist having conviction in their personal voice. In both his playing and his compositions he was always searching for interesting melodies and rhythms and the result is a strikingly distinct sound. I’ve always been drawn to music with an exploratory quality to it and am especially inspired by groups like Miles’s 60’s quintet, the Coltrane Quartet, etc. where you can really hear everyone searching for a personal sound, both individually and, more importantly, as a group.

TR: You got into Harvard (I’ll bet not many other jazz musicians can say that), where you majored in psychology and continued performing in the area, self-producing two CDs of original music (solo piano music?). I’m curious why you didn’t decide to formally study music in university. Were you thinking of the possibility of an academic career, or did you just want to get a top-flight education in the humanities before turning to music as a full-time pursuit? Did you learn anything interesting about yourself as a musician or about the psychology of musical perception and understanding as the result of those studies? (Do you know Daniel Levitin’s books This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs?) And how did you find the time to continue developing your own voice as a musician?

DF: I had always done music on the side growing up. My high school didn’t have a music program and I got used to doing it alongside other pursuits. I knew that at Harvard I could get a well-rounded liberal arts education and also have access to the Boston music scene. I like to joke that I “mooched” off of the conservatory scene, as I would play lots of sessions and gigs with students at Berklee and NEC, which in reality is often the most important part of music school. At Harvard there were limited opportunities for jazz musicians and so I had to create a scene for myself. I organized lots of concerts including a monthly residency at a great folk club called Club Passim and these gigs motivated me to write. It was during this time that I really started to get into composing. I found the process of writing and workshopping new material in rehearsals and gigs extremely rewarding.

Having studied cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I am fascinated by how the brain perceives and processes music. I have read some stuff by Levitin. I know he did an experiment where he charted the brain activity of subjects listening to classical music and was able to see their brains first processing the material before activating the pleasure centers in the brain, giving insight into the cognitive basis for our emotional reaction to music. And there was another one that highlighted the differences in brain activity when people watch live performances as opposed to listening to recordings. The case studies in Oliver Sacks’ “Musicophilia” are also pretty amazing: one patient is struck by lightning and then has an urge to listen to and play classical piano. Another suffers from auditory hallucinations that involve deafening versions of “The Sound of Music” in her head. And one of my favorite composers, Messiaen, had the condition of synesthesia, which means that certain notes or chords triggered specific colors in his head. It’s interesting to think about the role that played in his composing process as his music is so richly colored.

TR: What effect did Harvard have on your path as a musician?

DF: You mean besides annoying people telling me “you went to Harvard and you’re playing music now? Your parents must be going crazy!” For one thing, it confirmed that music was what I wanted to pursue for a career. I was exposed to a whole range of subjects and fields there but nothing ever hit me the way playing music does. And the fact that I wasn’t constantly surrounded by music like my peers at conservatory made me savor every chance I did get to practice, compose, or perform. I never felt burnt out. This excitement fueled me once I did actually start playing music for a living. Also, without any real formal instruction/structure during this time, I had to discover a lot of things for myself and that was crucial to the development of my musical voice. At Harvard I was surrounded by a staggering diversity of people, cultures, and ideas, which fostered an open-mindedness and willingness to draw from many influences that I will always carry in my career as a musician.

TR: Back in New York you studied privately with concert pianist John Kamitsuka. Were you thinking of a parallel career as a classical pianist? How have your classical studies influenced your music making, e.g. in terms of the ways you structure your compositions, your harmonic language, etc. (your press kit name-checks Scriabin and Messiaen)?

DF: No, I never thought about playing classical music professionally. I didn’t really have any classical training growing up but it came to a point where I knew I needed to study it to expand my musicianship. I wanted to be able to play and hear a greater range of material. So when I moved back to New York I began studying with John Kamitsuka who is a student of Sophia Rosoff. Despite my not having played much repertoire prior to that, he had me jump right into some pretty heavy pieces: Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Prokofiev’s Toccata, Bach Sinfonia, Scriabin Etudes, etc. Besides improving my overall musicianship and piano playing, learning this repertoire opened my ears to new sounds, harmonies, and shapes which had a huge impact on both my composition and improvisation. Although I never really sat down and analyzed the pieces, certain elements began to seep into my own music naturally by virtue of having spent so much time with the material. Having worked on some of the more fiery Scriabin etudes, I found myself reaching for darker sounding chords. Listening to Messiaen opened my ears up to ways of making dissonance sound beautiful.

Also, in terms of composition and structure, I began to notice how great composers are able to extract so much music from a few strong, even simple ideas. They take a motif and create an entire world out of it. When you listen to a Bach Sinfonia, you can hear how he takes one rhythmic phrase and weaves it throughout the entire piece, exploring it through harmony, rhythmic displacement, register, dynamics, etc. This commitment to an idea is something I try to apply to my own compositions as well as to my improvisation.

TR: Coming to 2008 and the formation of the trio, how did the three of you hook up, and what do Chris and Max bring to your compositions that makes them ideal partners for you? What particular strengths and individual perspectives do they bring to your music?

DF: I met Chris over ten years ago through mutual musician friends in Boston. He’s from Maine originally and was living in Boston after going to school in New Hampshire. Chris brings so much musicality to everything he plays: every note is in service of the music and overall vibe of the group. He strikes the perfect balance between laying down a solid groove and playing with rhythmic and harmonic adventurousness, always listening deeply and interacting with what’s happening around him.

I met Max in New York about four years ago and we founded this trio soon after. He is an incredibly versatile drummer and his embracing of many different styles gives him a personal sound on the drums. Like Chris he focuses on how his playing can contribute to the composition, searching for a certain beat or feel to fit the mood of the tune. Sometimes we’ll be in rehearsal and Max will say “I’m not happy with what I’m playing over this section” and then he will explore all sorts of ideas until something emerges. He is quite compositional in how he plays, constantly searching for new sounds and colors to elevate the piece.

Both Max and Chris play a huge role in shaping the music that I bring in. Sometimes I have a tune that is pretty much finished, but more often than not I will bring in material and we will workshop it, experimenting with forms, ideas for improvisation, etc. until we’ve crafted it into an arrangement together. This collaborative process results in music that bears the stamp of the entire band and not just my personal writing style. I am fortunate to have bandmates that are as dedicated as these guys are. They pour themselves into every aspect of this band and I think that comes across in the music.

TR: Your press kit describes the trio as “almost a mix between a jazz trio, a chamber ensemble and a rock group” and talks about using the instruments creatively/experimenting with the roles of each musician within the group. Granted this is not a straight-ahead piano trio, but neither is it avant-garde: the music is structured with a lot of clarity and incisiveness, e.g. in terms of contrasts between sections, and the development from beginning to end (I’m intentionally using a classical term here). As your press kit says, “the meshing of our three voices shines through in our improvisation, both individual and collective, which is highly interactive and flows organically out of the composed material.” I would say however that this is an ideal that a lot of jazz being made today aspires to and not very unusual in itself. Could you maybe take one piece on the record and walk us through what’s going on in the performance, or pick some moments from different pieces, to illustrate these points (especially the relation to rock, which might be harder for many people to hear).

DF: Although I love the traditional piano trio sound, I like the challenge of coming up with different possibilities for the three instruments. It’s a limited palette in that there are only two melodic instruments (piano and bass) but I find working with that limitation to be freeing. I often will write melodies or countermelodies for the bass to play and it gives the music a more compositional sound. The album starts with the bass playing the melody along with the piano in “Next Chapter”. At that point, the left hand of the piano plays the low end role usually assumed by the bass. n tunes like “Sadbeard” and “Fable’s End” the bass plays a counter melody to the main piano melody. Chris will often suggest bowing some of these melodies and it adds a lot of color to the piece: a good example of this is the section in “The Icebox” before the drum solo where his bowing highlights the two contrasting melodies. We go for a similar effect at the beginning of “Roquette”, where the bass answers the staggered canon-like melody of the piano. As far as the drums, Max is so creative in coming up with parts that highlight the themes of the compositions. In the same section I mentioned of “The Icebox” Max plays a minimalist beat using the cowbell that strengthens the syncopated idea played by the piano. In “The One Constant” he adds haunting sound effects to the first section by bowing the cymbal and sliding the back of his stick along the tom to get a howling sound. He then builds to the climax of the piece with a drum roll on the toms, as if he were playing a timpani part.

In terms of structure and development, I usually build the pieces around a couple of themes such that any given section will relate to the ones around it. In “Next Chapter” the two main themes presented at the beginning are the 5/4 piano ostinato and the floating sustained melody played against it. In the following section the piano and bass both echo that original ostinato before moving to the next section where the piano hearkens back to the opening melody, this time with different harmony and a slightly different 5/4 based rhythm underneath it. In the long-form “Drama King”, all four sections are based on either the triplet figure of the first melody or the shape of the C half-diminished chord that prevails throughout the first section, or a combination of the two. For example, the bass line Chris plays during the second section is just the first three notes of the first melody reversed. And the final section echoes that first melody but this time in a major key. Limiting myself to working with a few ideas really opens me up to different possibilities and allows the pieces to take on a natural structure. Similarly, when we improvise we continue this process of exploring the thematic material of the composition.

When I mention being similar to a rock group, I mean more in terms of how we approach rehearsing and performing. We follow the model of the hungry young rock band in that we will rehearse for hours in a basement coming up with parts and internalizing our material, and then we will play as many gigs as we can to get the music to the desired level. Ideally, we’d like to combine the tightness of a rock band with the improvisatory freedom of a jazz group.

TR: In some way complementing the music’s outward clarity and energy, I think there’s also a deeply introverted or self-communing quality about much of it. This isn’t just a matter of “dark” harmonies or the intricate weave of the playing, though certainly these things contribute to that impression. If music is (as Levitin argues) a supremely social artform, it seems to me that the ‘how’ of your music reflects the liberal side of western democratic values today: it’s cultivated, egalitarian, aiming for social cohesion by integrating individual contributions into a creative group dynamic – but its ‘what’ (let’s say its emotional bedrock) is something less obvious, less easily defined, and this contrast (I wouldn’t call it a contradiction) is part of what makes it compelling. Care to comment?

DF: That’s an interesting observation. I agree about the music being both introverted and socially cohesive and I think that’s a logical extension of my personality, which is both reflective/self-analytical and socially outgoing. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about why our music sounds the way it does. I like to joke that a lot of it sounds dark because I am Jewish and sad minor chords are part of my heritage! But I think most of the pieces I write have a searching quality to them that springs out of my own process of self-discovery. This takes on a new dimension when the three of us begin on working on the piece, as we are searching for something together.

TR: Where do you see things going from here?

DF: We are about to go on our third US tour (New England, Upstate NY, and Midwest), which we’re very excited about, and we look forward to more playing opportunities here and abroad. We’ve also set some musical goals for ourselves, the most recent one being memorizing our repertoire (which with around 30 songs often with multiple sections is quite the challenge). We are also working on a lot of new material that we will test out on the road. In the three years we’ve played together so far, we have established a special rapport that will only get stronger as we go forward.

I’d just like to add that the three of us are involved in a wide range of musical situations in addition to small jazz groups. have played in the pit band for a circus for seven years, toured the US with traditional big bands, accompanied dance troupes, backed a comedy show, etc. Chris has played in afrobeat bands, bluegrass bands, and theater pits. Max plays in an electronica/pop band, backs singer-songwriters, etc. Together with our broad musical tastes, this variety of experience comes out in our music.