Ryan Blotnick (I)
This interview with Ryan Blotnick was conducted by email in November 2007.
Tony Reif: Let’s start at the beginning – how did you get interested in the guitar and in jazz?
Ryan Blotnick: My dad plays a little bit of fingerstyle guitar and used to play me to sleep with folk songs. One day I asked him if I could learn and he dusted off his spare acoustic. I started on steel-string, playing with my fingers – I used to like the feel of the strings. I started off learning folk and then got into rock and grunge in middle school. I wanted to learn everything about the guitar and my teacher suggested that I check out Maine Jazz Camp. I packed my new ‘magenta’ Fender and went off to this amazing camp where people like George Garzone and Reid Anderson were teaching combos and giving concerts of original music every night. From then on I was hooked and knew what I wanted to do.
TR: You left high school at 16 to study music at William Paterson University in New Jersey. What prompted that decision and what did you learn there, studying with people like Gene Bertoncini?
RB: When I was 16 all I wanted to do was get out of Maine and start playing music all the time. I had met my friend Ned Ferm who was living 3 1/2 hours away in Bar Harbor, and we somehow figured out how to get out of our senior year of high school by going early admittance to William Paterson. All of a sudden I was living on my own and playing with some really amazing musicians – I got to play with Tyshawn Sorey, Sam Barsh, Mark Guiliana, Jameo Brown – all kinds of great musicians from very different musical backgrounds. I also got to work on some solo guitar playing with Gene and he really pushed me to strive for new sounds on the guitar.
TR: Eventually you dropped out of the William Paterson program, traveled to Europe and decided to begin a program with the Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium (Rhythmic Music Conservatory) in Copenhagen. Your studies lasted four years (including a year and a half as a “reverse exchange” student in New York sessioning and gigging around), gaining you a BA and MA in Music Performance. Tell us about your time there – what their approach to teaching popular music and jazz is like, the teachers, other students, etc., and how it broadened your outlook on music. How did you try to put it all into practice there and in NYC?
RB: The school I went to was designed as a supplement to the Classical Conservatory, to teach all other forms of music. In order to accommodate all sorts of different styles and ideas, the school was set up to be based on mostly project work and private studies. This meant I could do almost any project I wanted that related to music, and the school would pay for an advisor of my choice to help me along. There were also “free-disposition” lessons that you could take with anyone you wanted, and the chance to study a second instrument for a whole year. One of the more unique classes was a Rhythmic Coordination class that involved stomping polyrhythms while chanting and playing African drums. It was hilarious.
The general attitude at that school was pretty irreverent toward anything to do with jazz. A lot of the teachers were jazz or fusion oriented and I think the students mostly felt like jazz was something being forced on them that they couldn’t really connect with, and chose to do more rock or experimental projects. People were trying to make collective bands and come up with a new sound – almost everyone played original music.
I learned a lot from playing at jam sessions around the city. There was a jam for almost every night of the week, and people were there to make music. The jam session in Christiania was a place where anything could happen at any moment. The house band would be playing “Inner Urge” in shifting time signatures and then somebody would wander on stage with the wrong instrument. The rhythm section would fall out of time into some improvised vamp, and follow the soloist’s every move. It was a really non-competitive vibe unlike anything I’ve seen in the US. On the other side of town, the La Fountain session was a happy place that was always packed, and you could practice playing standards in front of a really receptive audience. It was the way you imagined jazz was in the 50’s – a tight little community where everyone knows each other, and all kinds of people come to watch it.
TR: What is your conception of the guitar as a (jazz) instrument, and who are your influences/inspirations? What has formed your language as an improviser, and has that come mainly from other guitarists and the guitar itself, or do you often find yourself inventing ways of saying things on the guitar that aren’t part of the standard procedures? And what has gone into your guitar sound?
RB: When I was growing up I always felt like the guitar was kind of an awkward instrument to play jazz on. My best friends played saxophone and could make it honk and swing and I did everything I could to get that kind of sound on the guitar. I would get frustrated because it seemed harder to fake it on guitar – every note had to be set into motion somehow. I think that is how I ended up playing a lot of legato stuff, and arpeggios and things like that to try and compete with the horn players.
My early guitar influences were Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny, Jim Hall, and Joe Pass and they definitely shaped my phrasing quite a bit. Since I didn’t use a pick I had to translate their playing into my own technique.
Since then I’ve been exposed to a lot of different music and I try to find a way to put it all on the guitar. I work stuff out while composing and practicing, but when it comes time to play I try not to play worked out stuff, and am very influenced by the people I’m playing with.
TR: When did you form this quintet, and why did you choose to work with these musicians? In particular, why a group in which two of the performers live in Barcelona and the other three in NY?
RB: This group was formed as part of a Spanish tour where I was both a sideman in Centric and the leader of my own group. I don’t usually play in groups with acoustic piano, but Albert’s style is so spacious and that I was inspired to write some music that would work for a quintet with him. A few of the songs here were written specifically with him in mind doubling bass lines, and playing chords to free me up a little. I’ve played a lot with Pete and we always work well together. He has that percussive approach that kind of balances out the group. Joe Smith and Perry Wortman are very soulful musicians that really lock up well, and they go for a real group sound instead of the showy modern jazz thing. It’s hard to get this group together but I feel like it’s worth it.
TR: I know you’d been considering what aspect of your composing/playing to present on your first record. Why choose this music/band rather than something more avant-garde/contemporary/free? The music here has a definite character – could you say something about your melodic and harmonic language for example? And how does the repertoire for this group relate to your approach with other ensembles? Generally the music here sounds quite traditional and “inside” compared to some of things I’ve heard you play (including free improvs and more atonal, contemporary classical sounding solos). Was there a stylistic concept for the group, or an era of jazz that’s close to your heart and that you wanted to pay tribute to? The alto sax/guitar combination for example brings to mind the Jim Hall-Paul Desmond quartets. And my own reaction to the record involves something I’ve decided to call “jazz nostalgia.” There’s often a bittersweet, romantic feeling that seems to hearken back to the pre-bop era of great jazz standards by Ellington/Strayhorn, Porter etc., and also a certain laid-back, softly-treading quality that reminds me of the west coast sound of the 50’s – and definitely a singing quality to your tunes and lines. But at the same time the music isn’t a throwback, its approach is thoroughly modern. So it’s as if you have a nostalgia for a past you know only through recordings, and are making an emotional link to it while moving ahead…
RB: I guess the music here is still heavily influenced by standards and music from the 50s and 60s. When I first started writing music I would write very simple songs – usually AABA, and try to do what I could within those limitations. It was part of the process of learning that repertoire. Now I’ve been exposed to all different kinds of forms, and people are writing a lot of non-repetitive forms – no one writes a bridge anymore! Listeners often complain that new jazz lacks melodies, or doesn’t have a steady beat, or is self-indulgent. The same people might say the same about most new classical music. I think it is the musicians’ responsibility to prove them wrong.
When I sit down to write, I feel like I should try to stick to standard forms, time signatures, etc., unless I have a justification for straying from that. The language of those standards is the common language that all jazz musicians share – and without that, improvisation can become very arbitrary or detached.
The other thing I like about standard forms (as opposed to vamps, or free forms) is that there’s a slow tension and release based on the chord structure. That gives the music the feeling of moving forward without having to push it forward. I’m also just naturally drawn to some of the rich harmonies that only really come about when they are planned ahead of time. In this music I’m combining jazz harmony (chords with lots of extensions), rock harmony (simple chords), and classical counterpoint-based harmony where harmonies are created by superimposed melodic lines. I’ve been studying Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony, and have been reshaping the way I hear chord progressions. I’m trying to go for that sound that you hear a lot in classical music from the turn of the last century where the chords are moving fast and in such a smooth way that you get kind of lost in them. I try to write sing-able parts for everyone and have interesting bass lines that obscure the harmony a little bit.
The great thing about this band is that you can bring in a chart with those Wayne Shorter-type harmonies and everyone’s approach works over that – then you play something free or groove-based and the same qualities are still there. I think if you can get a group sound playing over forms and changes, it really opens up possibilities for other kinds of improv.
I try to make my music as democratic as possible. Everyone has a part that is structurally necessarily to the whole piece, but no one is boxed in or pinned down for very long. Everyone gets a chance to shine and be the center of attention. In order to make this work you need musicians that are comfortable with themselves, and also sensitive enough to get out of the way and play a supporting role. Since the musicians are all capable of making music regardless of context, a big part of my job as leader is to keep the music diverse and concise so that the audience stays involved and invigorated. Often when I’m composing for the group I think ‘what kind of song are we missing from our repertoire?’ Then I get an idea: a slow floating melody, say, with a specific drum groove under it and an abrasive countermelody. The music is easy to get because it is not trying to overwhelm the senses or prove a point – the goal is to reveal the beauty of human interaction and bring out the best in the musicians and the audience.
I think people remember melodies almost the way we remember smells – one whiff of wood smoke or perfume and it stimulates all kinds of memories and emotions within us. Everyone has a huge number of melodies and musical structures stored in their minds, and I think tapping into them is the key to creating music that people really respond to. Instrumental music has the advantage of being able to weave these melodic responses into a web of synesthesia, without getting the linguistic half of the brain too involved.
TR: Bring us up to date on your activities – bands you’re currently in or leading, and where you want to take your career.
RB: My quintet will be playing in Spain at the end of the month, and also doing some CD release dates around New England in Feburary. I’ll be in Dublin and London in March to play with Simon Jermyn and Peter Van Huffel, and may extend that tour up toward Denmark with some of my own music.
I play in an Afrobeat group called Akoya and with Pete Robbins’ group Centric. I’m also part of a new project that Michael Blake has just started up.
Right now I’m trying to move in the direction of playing more sit-down concerts where the emphasis is on the music and less of a social kind of thing. I want to write some really dynamic, detailed music – kind of on the “new music” end of things but there is no point if people are talking over it. That’s why I’ve been trying to focus on reaching out to audiences outside New York. I also want to find a way to reach out to a non-jazz audience in New York by tapping into the more compositional scene.