Mikkel Ploug III

This interview was conducted by email during November 2024.

TR: This trio has been performing on and off since around 2006, correct?

MP: Yes!

TR: And the first record (the first under your name in fact), titled Mikkel Ploug Group, came out on Fresh Sound New Talent in 2006. I’m curious about the history. How did you get to know Sean and Jeppe? You were all very young – in your early 20s?  How and where did the group originally form, and what was the impetus that brought the three of you together?

MP: While studying at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague I came across a recording of Sean playing at a live gig in Dublin. It was on a friend’s minidisc, and although Sean was in Ireland and we had never met, I was so impressed that I reached out to ask if he’d play at my exam in 2004. He agreed, and I vividly remember him sitting behind the drums for the first time. Playing as a duo with him felt so effortless and enjoyable that I decided to take a chance and open my exam program with a drum-and-guitar duo.

When I returned to Denmark I was searching for a bassist, and Jeppe immediately came to mind. His playing reminded me of Ben Street and Larry Grenadier, but with a unique, personal, and distinctly Danish touch. Interestingly, Jeppe and I used to play drums as kids, and Sean actually played guitar before focusing on drums. There’s definitely something special about those shared beginnings that connects us musically.

TR: And was the band’s book always only your compositions? Also, saxophonist Mark Turner is part of the group on that debut record and the 2008 follow-up, Harmoniehof. How does he fit into the picture? The first record by just the trio (but with Kevin Brow on drums) was 2009’s Fernweh. In those early years had group been touring with Mark or mostly as a trio already?

MP: Yes, I write a ton of music so we played my tunes always.

When Mark came in in 2006 he was our biggest musical hero – for me he was a horn player who could play melodies like no one else, plus he was hearing all the harmony I write so easily and played beautifully on it. We were amazed to be playing with him, it was the best lesson in music ever.

And my repertoire suited him, he seemed to like the songs and playing with us. He gave me some contacts of tour promoters and venues and I went all out on booking many tours for the group. The first one was 15 shows in Europe. After over 100 shows with that formation Mark got increasingly busy with other projects, and I got really interested in seeing how the three of us sounded without one of the strongest personal voices in modern jazz in the band. We immediately started looking inwards to see how we could fill the void when we didn’t have Mark to play incredible solos on everything, and it didn’t take long to sound like ourselves. In this new space we eventually felt maybe even more at home. I love the trio format and we’ve done so much together now as a trio.

TR: Continuing up to today, what have some of the high points of the trio been for you, musically or just as great experiences, and how has this long friendship/collaboration informed and changed the musicmaking over the years?

MP: The trio is like family, we’ve lived through so much together, the many European tours, and our US tour was fantastic. We have also played in a bunch of other projects with each other. Even one with me on drums, Sean singing etc etc. All three of us are always somewhere new musically when we get together again, so we pick up where we left off and maybe go with a new direction set by the person who seems most enthusiastic about something new. Lately it’s been playing classical pieces and old Danish folk music.

TR: Turning to Hope – the first record by the trio since At Black Tornado (2015) – how did this set of pieces come together, including the decision to arrange two songs by the Danish classical composer Carl Nielsen? Perhaps the title gives a clue to the vibe of this record compared to the more subdued feeling of Nocturnes, your 2022 release by the trio plus Mark Turner (a product of or response to the pandemic?).

MP: These songs were recorded fresh from two tours in Europe and are in that way also a testimony to the live sets we played in 2022 and 2023. I wanted to do a live record in the studio. So much happens to the songs every night when we play in concert, so I was hoping to catch some of that feeling and I think we did. The two Carl Nielsen pieces are beautiful old songs, for me they are my Danish “standards”.

TR: In rehearsing and then touring the music that’s on Hope, did you talk much about the pieces, did you bring arrangements to work on, or was it a more intuitive process, with more creative input into forms and structures and the emotional tone or feel of each piece from Sean and Jeppe?

MP: We always make arrangements together, but they can and will change from performance to performance. We know we’ll play the tune but how to get in and out can change.

TR: How would you compare this trio music, with you playing electric, to the two lovely solo acoustic guitar records we’ve released on Songlines? Certainly there are very lyrical pieces on Hope that one could easily imagine in arrangements for acoustic guitar, and other pieces that take advantage of the foundation provided by the bass and the active, high-energy drumming to propel the music in a different direction. Would you say that there are certain techniques or approaches (melodic, harmonic and rhythmic) in your composing that link all your music, no matter what its instrumentation? How do you generally come up with the initial ideas that eventually take form as tunes?

MP: Often I’m following a harmonic subject of interest, or maybe a small, curious bit of melody that I then gradually develop and let unfold. But a song like “Chant” for example is actually a solo improvisation from a solo church gig that I happened to be able to remember afterwards and made it into a tune. I need some structure or alternative composing methods to get outside of my comfort zone, which is writing one-page tunes. I have about 250 registered tunes and most of them are like that, songs. “Daybreak” is another piece that came together differently. It’s partly a study in extreme tension, with piercing melody notes outside the key. The whole B section is a transcription from another church solo improvisation that was particularly inspired and that I happened to get on video. I found that its odd-numbered structure (with bars and phrases of 5, 7 and 9) worked perfectly in this context. The last section was written on an old Martin acoustic that a luthier lent me to take to my hotel room while he was fixing up my acoustic for the next day. So “Daybreak” is made up of very unexpected ingredients and was written on three different guitars, which I think helped push me to new places.

“Winter Lullaby” was written on a guitar that can barely be played anymore, my Dad’s first acoustic instrument, really bad quality. It only sounds good when just two notes are played together, so the whole tune is written like that. “Hope” came out of transcribing a Craig Taborn performance, and when this almost schlager-like theme emerged I decided to see how far I could go with that, ending up in Messiaen’s 9-tone scale at the end.

TR: Do you have any favourite pieces/performances on this record, and if so, why?

MP: Ugh, this is hard, as I tend to love 3 seconds then dislike the next 3. I’m too much inside of it. But I like “Winter Lullaby” because the time-feel is so stretchy and liquid, and I can hear by how we play what each of us is contributing all the time. But I’d rather leave it to someone else to judge.

TR: Why did you choose to title this record “Hope”?

MP: There seems to be a thread in all my compositions that is hopeful. No matter how dark and minor-key-sounding it gets I seem to write my way into some kind of major for an ending. I always look for that hope in life and in music.

TR: What’s next for the trio? Do you have any thoughts about possibly expanding it to, say, a quintet for the next tour/recording?

MP: We will probably be touring both in trio and with Mark again playing music from Hope, Nocturnes and new stuff that’s on the way. So this is just another beginning!