Matt Choboter
This interview with Matt Choboter was conducted by email during May 2022.
Tony Reif: Let’s go back to your education as a musician and how that’s affected your music up to now. Where and with whom did you study, and what musicians and traditions have been particularly influential in shaping you as a composer-performer-bandleader?
Matt Choboter: My mother, Serah Strandberg, was my first piano teacher, and perhaps the most important in terms of understanding the nuances of musical phrasing and expression. She would play a lot of late-romantic classical music at home, and it seems to have seeped into my ears and fingers, leaving traces in what I might compose or perform even nowadays.
Around the age of 18 I discovered jazz and soon after enrolled in Capilano University’s jazz performance program. I was interested in pianists like Thelonious Monk and Keith Jarrett and was listening to a lot of classical music ranging from Shostakovich to Steve Reich. I was also listening to great local musicians like Brad Turner, Peggy Lee, Chad Makela and Gordon Grdina.
After finishing at Capilano in 2014 I took a formative trip to Chennai, South India, where I studied Carnatic music. I was particularly drawn to their rigorous rhythmic practice, and how rhythm could serve as a foundation for compositions. In a western rhythmic context I became interested in the music and compositions of Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Henry Threadgill, Miles Okazaki, Dan Weiss, to name a few.
From 2017-2019 I lived between Montréal and New York on a Canada Council grant. It was particularly important for me, as a developing jazz pianist, to learn from Jean-Michel Pilc. At the time I was living with close friends and musicians Andrew Thomson and Cole Birney-Stewart and we turned our apartment into a seemingly full-time rhythmic laboratory.
The past four years I’ve been living and studying between Copenhagen, Paris and Berlin. It’s been a period of dramatic transformations, musically and personally. Along the way I’ve been influenced by many, including studies with pianist Benoît Delbecq and just intonation composer Marc Sabat.
TR: Outside of music, what studies, practices or influences have been particularly important to your artistic development?
MC: I must say that my father and grandfather, both visual artists, have been instrumental in giving me the courage to take on an artistic path. Whether talking art and viewing sculptures in my father’s basement or the many visits to my grandfather’s painting studio, I slowly grew into some kind of artistic identity.
In general I have an inclination towards looking back in time – whether ancient history, psychology, anthropology or archaeology – and asking questions as to how this can inform our current times and where we might be going. I’m interested in dreams, myths, and more generally in nurturing a relationship with my subconscious. Along this path I’ve been particularly influenced by Jungian psychology.
TR: You work across (outside?) genres, and every project has a different set of references and parameters. What initially sparked the Hypnopompia project and how did it develop over time – was it a protracted bout of insomnia? And what does the title “Sleep Inertia” mean?
MC: The compositions heard on Sleep Inertia emerged slowly as I workshopped the music with various musicians across various cities. For instance, “Knecht” was written in 2019 just before leaving Montréal; “sleep inertia” was written in Paris and orchestrated and performed by the Paris Conservatory orchestra. The electronic drones, heard on “pagan rainmaker” and “Goldmund’s Chautauqua,” were improvised in Copenhagen on semi-modular pedals. So it’s been a far-reaching process, and at some point I needed a tangible context for the music to live in. Insomnia pervaded much of the periods of work and so it became a theme for me, much like my sister project Hypnagogia. “Sleep Inertia” became an appealing title as it kind of encompassed my general “being in the world” for those years where the music came to be. Its meaning involves a living in some liminal plane where vestiges of sleep will simply not wear off. Often these vestiges can be described as perceptual distortions – for instance, imagined colours, sounds, tastes and smells. Often a random event would trigger a far-off sense memory that I hadn’t experienced since early childhood. Some sounds, smells or tastes I couldn’t even identify with a previous experience or memory. These left-over ‘colour streaks’ or fragments of sleep (usually from dreams) often resulted in non-linear, atypical rational functioning and recollection of thoughts and memories.
TR: I understand this music was composed 4 years ago – did you create it with particular instrumentation or musicians in mind? It was first performed in its entirety with this group at the 2019 Vancouver International Jazz Festival, but between then and the recording last August it underwent some major shifts in the way it’s structured and performed – even the feel of some of the pieces is different (for example there’s more of a drone/ambient quality to sone of the music). Could you fill us in on how you and the band brought this music to the form it takes on the recording? How have the musicians’ approach to improvising on this rather complex material developed (including yours)? In your note you write: “These compositions and improvisations attempt to evoke personal hypnopompic content – embodied dreamscapes, real and imagined places in the world and archetypal characters. We, the band, explored and sonically fleshed-out these landscapes and processes. The pieces perhaps nurtured deeper subconscious shared experiences. My hope is that they will continue to do so.”
MC: Yes, these pieces certainly transformed following our performance in 2019 at VIJF. My experiences with the free improvisation scene in Copenhagen were challenging my notions of what music should speak about and in what fashion. Reflecting on this transformation, I now realize it has been important for me to give more creative freedom to the artists I was working with.
Yes, the intricacies of the music were essential to internalize (to the best of our abilities) but I became more and more focused on deconstructing, blurring formal elements and creating more moment-to-moment creative choices for us collectively. By doing so, I think the musicians were able to abandon the written material enough whereby buried subconscious contents could emerge and dialogue collectively. On several pieces I wanted the conceptualizations – which were often the rhythmic frameworks – to dissolve away like beach sand receding into the ocean tide. The musical goal was to express a meeting point for the cerebral and the subconscious – a shifting interaction where there might emerge disorientation, ambiguity and illusion.
TR: Could you talk about musical symbolism in relation to the psychological/psychic experiences that the music is meant to represent, even in some ways evoke or embody? Or perhaps symbolism isn’t the right word. I guess what I’m asking is how quasi-subliminal experiences get transformed into group artistic events out in the world. Are there pathways that become more familiar, more specific and satisfying, with time?
MC: I think the pathways toward collective subliminal experiences converge in the need for exploring a kind of inner child. Basically, in staying curious and open to new experiences. I think this is why the music has changed quite a lot since 2019. I’ve invited more possibilities into exploration, essentially. On the surface, this could manifest as using preparations – bolts and pieces of wood between the strings of the piano – or in the case of clarinet, guitar and bass, the use of electronic pedals. The greater prominence of electronics, since 2019, is perhaps a reflection of this need for exploration but also an identification with the overarching metaphor of moving from the dream-world into wakefulness (which is hypnopompia). Electronics traverse this liminality, but more importantly for me are symbolic of wakefulness, and the mechanistic and technological “waking world” we find ourselves in. It may be ironic that the “most free” pieces, for instance “pagan rainmaker,” are composed heavily of electronics. This is why it’s important for me to avoid too much rational linearity in trying to explain this music.
TR: How did the process of creating and performing the music on Sleep Intertia resemble (or differ from) how your Hypnagogia project developed (Matt Choboter’s Hypnagogia, Anima Revisited)? How would you characterize the differences in those states as you’ve experienced them, and how did those differences affect the musical “trans-forms” they inspired?
MC: Both projects deal with conveying liminality through sound, but they have marked differences relating to how they were recorded, mixed and conceived at a macro level. Hypnagogia is the psychological process from wakefulness into sleep. Thus the intention was to create more ambiguous and amorphous states of mind. This came to be, most concretely, through the use of more pervading electronics; more involved piano preparations and de-tunings; more intricate polyrhythmic layering; and the decision to record in a reverberant church.
Hypnopompia, the psychological transitioning out of dreams, often reflects more clarity, and is more in the direction of rational wakefulness. Still, in tracks like “Goldmund’s Chautauqua,” the last vestiges of sleep continually interrupt and dialogue with this cerebral state of being. But since Hypnopompia was recorded in a studio and was mixed with the intention of resembling an acoustic concert, it takes on a clearer and more rational frame of reference. Hypnagogia doesn’t make efforts to conform to a purely realistic concert-listening perspective. Its mix is spatially more adventurous but also more disorientating for the listener.
TR: What’s the relation of this music to jazz, besides the instrumentation and some of the improvising? In other ways do you think of it as closer to contemporary classical music (whatever that is these days!)? Does it matter what it’s called? (That will probably affect where you get to perform it – jazz club/festival/concert hall etc.)
MC: I think the overarching psychological ideas, and the methods of composition and dramaturgy, relate to a contemporary classical and experimental context. But given the instruments, the instrumentation and the improvisations I believe this project still relates more to a post-jazz aesthetic. I’m continually reminded of the difference in perception relating to what is jazz and what is not when moving between West Coast Canadian and Northern European standpoints. Especially in Copenhagen, if one uses a drum-set I think there is an automatic boxing of the musical genre into the improvised music or jazz category. I’m fairly annoyed by this, as it affects the economics and where the music gets played. I’m certainly more interested in moving away from “jazz” venues like bars and poorly funded artist-run spaces. It’s simply not viable in a meaningful way for me. If I’m going to do something, I want it to be without compromise and have a recognized worth to the public.
TR: You’re currently finishing a big project involving prepared pianos and percussion in Copenhagen as the final part of your graduate studies at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. In the process I believe you’ve completely retuned the pianos – could you describe this project a bit, and how it has affected your other music? What unusual tunings are you using on Sleep Inertia?
MC: The past two years I’ve been focused on re-thinking, or at least questioning and confronting, what an acoustic piano should sound like and how it might be perceived differently. I’m calling it the microtonal prepared piano. I’ve been asking questions like: why should western ears continue to be so accustomed to only one tuning system? In contrast, can “pure sounds” meet ethnically diverse microtonal tuning constellations? Can magnets and metallic preparations placed inside the piano evoke timbral effects from Balinese gamelan or Indian classical? And how can this instrument merge with spatialization and electronics to create embodied experiences for audiences?
In contextualizing the new instrument I’ve chosen to work in several formats: solo piano; piqno, percussion and saxophone trio; and finally culminating in two microtonal prepared pianos, two percussionists and soprano saxophone. I’m excited to collaborate with some great musicians including Lotte Anker, Peter Bruun, Simon Toldam and classical percussion Matias Seibæk. I’m excited to bring together improvising and classical musicians and ask them to perform in ways that might challenge their preconceptions. Hopefully these ensembles will enjoy movement between classical stages and jazz festivals as well as contemporary and experimental venues.
TR: What plans do you have for Hypnopompia? Are you thinking of writing more music for the band?
MC: My current thoughts about Hypnopompia is that it will continue to evolve, releasing and performing music for many years to come. I envision it as my Canadian project. I could imagine pieces shifting around, with modest or more extreme changes to instrumentation and size of ensemble. As I’m currently more interested in moving away from a jazz aesthetic I might make more radical compositional or process-related choices for the next release. At the moment I’m just really excited to be releasing this project on Songlines and letting the current music evolve as it needs or wants to.