Samuel Blaser

This email interview with Samuel Blaser was conducted during May-June 2013.

Tony Reif: Since this is your first Songlines release under your own name rather than as a member of François Houle’s 5+1, let’s delve into your background for those who don’t know your music. There’s a bio on your website so we won’t duplicate that, but it doesn’t really go into your classical music studies or interests in any detail. So let’s start at the beginning: when and where did you get into early music in particular, what specifically did you study, and how did that interest eventually develop into Consort in Motion?

Samuel Blaser: I had the chance to study at the conservatory of music in my hometown, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland where I eventually received my bachelorsdegree 11 years later.Its avibrant music school with open-minded teachers having many interests and playing all kinds of music, starting from early music andleading to jazz and more.My teacher at that time, JacquesHenry, was a fantastic sackbut player, an adventurous composer and a good improviser. The best thing he ever taught me was to remainflexible and be able to play any kind of music. I followed his advice to the letter.

La Chaux-de-Fonds is a small town (40,000 people) but with an extremely rich patrimony:the architect Le Corbusier, the writer Blaise Cendrars, the car builder Louis Chevrolet, and some of the biggest watch brands were born there. At the beginning of the 20th century my hometown built a beautiful theater in the Venetian style. It seems the energy in LaChaux-de-Fonds is amazingly high.

I guess all these things affected somehow my approach to music. I also strongly believe there’s a very specialway of thinking in the Swiss Jura that has made artists of that region perfectionists and eager to export theirart abroad.

However, during my classical studies in Switzerland I was not really into classical music and even less into baroque music. Nonetheless, ironically, I had a brass quartet in which we were essentially performing baroque and contemporary music. It’s only when I arrived New York that I finally decided to take more of an interest in early music, thanks to my friend Jay Elfenbein, a marvelous viola de gamba player, with whom I have had a duet. Since then Ive bought a number of records and really gotten into musicians such as Jordi Savall and Pedro Memelsdorff. Recently I bought the Diego Ortiz method to deepen my knowledge of ornamentation, diminutions and augmentations.

I decided to work on the concept of melding early music with jazz improvisation in 2011 when the Swiss label Kind of Blue Records offered to record an album with Paul Motian.

TR: That first Consort in Motion CD worked its magic on the early baroque music of Italy Monteverdi, Marini etc. What drew you from that to late medieval music, specifically Machaut and Dufay? What guided your process of selection in that repertoire, and did you find that the methods you used to create new jazz pieces by extracting certain melodic or rhythmic elements and developing those (often beyond recognition) were similar to what you did with baroque music, or different in ways that reflect the vast musical differences between medieval and baroque, in terms of modes/scales, counterpoint, rhythmic elements, tempos (generally a bit slower?), and emotional affect and effect? And working with sacred as well as refined secular music? Did you have a sense of there being a different sound world that you wanted to create to somehow mirror the differences in the music, culture and social/religious ethos of those two eras?

SB: For the first Consort in Motion CD I collaborated with producer Robert Sadin, owing to the fact that not long ago he also worked on the similar concept to adapt early music to new forms of music. His album Art of Love released on Deutsche Grammophon focused on the music of Guillaume de Machaut. That increased my interest in working on that era in particular. Machaut and Dufay were of course familiar: I studied their music at the conservatory, and today I keep studying their counterpoint with my composition teacher.

The methods used to create jazz pieces on A Mirror to Machautare very similar to what I did in the first album. However, I attempted to include more medieval elements such as isorhythms (“Cantus planus”, “Hymn” and “Linea”), hemiolas (“Saltarello” and “Hymn”), and simple counterpoint (“Hymn”). Emotionally speaking I think we were able to re-create the world of Machaut’s love songs with tunes like “Bohemia”, “Hymn”, “Douce Dame”, “De Fortune” and “Complainte: Tels rit”. Those melodies are extremely beautiful and some of them were easy to put in a jazzcontext.

I was not really paying attention to the whether I was using sacred or secular music, nor to mirroring the differences in the music, culture and social/religious ethos of the medieval and baroque periods. Maybe I should have?

TR: This Consort in Motion is a different group than the first one, apart from yourself and Russ Lossing. What guided your choice of musicians, and how did things work out, musically and interpersonally? You have a new trio with Gerry and Benoît Delbecq which toured a few weeks before the new Consort in Motion. Had you ever performed before with Drew? And did having a 2nd frontline player in Joachim, and the options of clarinet and tenor sax as well as bass clarinet, significantly expand the expressive possibilities from the first album, for example in terms of counterpoint, rhythmic complexity, and the sound of the group (personally I really love the combination of bass clarinet and trombone, and also the two different trombone mutes you used here for the first time).

SB: The first line up featured Russ Lossing, Thomas Morgan and the late Paul Motian with whom we were supposed to record the second album. He unfortunately left us too early. So I needed to find a new drummer for the project and Gerry Hemingway was my first choice. He played several times in my quartet with Ducret, subbing for Gerald Cleaver, and we also had a couple of great duet concerts. I thought that Gerry’s playing and personality would fit the project perfectly.

I had been in touch with Drew Gress for many years trying to find a way to play and tour together. We performed the first time together at the Cully Jazz Festival in Switzerland with Consort in Motion for the CD release party: Russ was on piano and Gerald Cleaver was on drums. Drew’s sound is extremely warm and precise. His playing is fluid and can fit many kinds of music. In jazz it’s also rare to find bass player who can bow correctly.

As a matter of fact, this is the first time I hired another horn in one of my projects. I was looking for a player in Europe who could play bass clarinet, clarinet and possibly saxophones. Joachim Badenhorst came to mind automatically. Wed met several times in the past but never got to play together.

As for Russ Lossing, we have been playing together for a couple of years now and we are already featured on four albums together. I like to develop strong duos, especially with musicians who play a harmonic instrument.

Those mutes were sitting in my closet for years and I never really had the chance to use them except for the plunger mute. For the trio recording with Benoît, Gerry asked me to bring a few different mutes for his piece, to obtain various colors. I fell in love with those sounds and decided to use them on the Consort in Motion recording.

TR: The recording happened in the middle of a European tour. Did the extra instruments available in the studio (Rhodes, Wurlitzer anything else?) give anything more than extra colors to the arrangements they were used on?

SB: Russ actually had the opportunity during the tour to have both a grand piano and a Rhodes so we were used to those new colors. The only new color at the recording session was the Wurlitzer, and the other difference is we could use all those instruments together. On Colorswe were able to almost get a Milesian vibe.

TR: What was it like working with Benoît Delbecq as co-producer? He really did a lot of work on the recording, from supervising the recording sessions, doing all the editing, and co-mixing, to supervising the mastering, and I think the results, in terms of the sound quality anyway, speak for themselves. So I’m more interested in how his input during the later planning stages and in the studio affected how the music was shaped, in terms of your arrangements and the performances. Did anything surprising happen along the way that really changed how the music turned out? Did his sense of how to bring these two musical worlds together pretty much match yours, or were there interesting differences here and there?

SB: The collaboration with Benoît was a great experience. Somewhat to my surprise I found I had total confidence in his decisions and choices. I think that comes from the fact that he is a great friend and also someone who I have a lot of respect for as a musician.

We had several talks about the music before the recording session and he suggested a few things I could try to explore further, such as the use of rhythmical materials and how to incorporate them into the music, for example in the development of a melody. When we started collaborating the material for A Mirror to Machaut was pretty much all written, but Benoît was there to guide and give me his opinion about the arrangements.

TR: You mentioned a while back that you’ve been performing early music on sackbut recently. Do you bring a very different mindset and technical approach to performing notated Renaissance music, say, than performing creative jazz/improv such as your quartet on Hat Hut on the one hand, or the two more-or-less straight medieval pieces on A Mirror to Machaut on the other? Do you think as an artistic statement A Mirror to Machaut finds the right balance between, let’s say, elegance or polish and freedom/abandon, reverence for the past and forging a new hybrid music?

SB: I do find a lot of similarities between the two worlds: the ways of shaping the music and of phrasing lines are almost identical. The variety of articulations, dynamics, rhythmical cells, the delicacy and the lightness in early music is incredibly rich and can easily be translated to improvised music. Of course, the approach to performing notated early music is different than performing improvised music, especially when reading from facsimile (exact copy of written and printed material), which helps us understand the manner composers used to phrase, since most of the music was written without bars.

A Mirror to Machaut is a vision, a suggestion of how Machaut’s and Dufay’s music can be used in improvised music. I might do something completely different tomorrow but this album reflects my current interests: from early music to contemporary music passing by improvised music, jazz and various grooves. However I don’t think Ive forged any kind of new hybrid music here. I think the music sounds like mine but spiced with medieval colors.

TR: How does Consort in Motion fit into your overall aesthetic as a musician?

SB: The music in this new albumreflects my interestin different styles and contains a variety of interesting characteristics exposing the musicalqualities of each memberof the group. The album contains beautiful melodies and interesting rhythms, and I also attach a lot ofimportance to the searchfor sounds, space, and interactions between the musicians.

TR: What do you look for in your own music,what do you think you’re aiming for that’s personal to you and maybedifferent from other trombonists, other improvisers riding the wave between free and composed?

SB: The first thing I am looking for is to have fun with the music I am writing. I am also trying to challenge myself with either difficult material or adventurous projects like adapting early music to my vocabulary. I also like to compose music that its possible to play with: explore the form, extend the speed of a melody, create somehow complex forms with ‘easy material.

TR: And what in general do you look for and appreciate in collaborators?

SB: I have a few rules that I like to keep when I start playing with other musicians. Have fun on the road, have fun on stage, builda long-termmusical/personalrelationship,work with people I can trust, find people that can be complementary.I havedevelopedsome amazing and beautifulrelationships with musicians likePierre Favreor Marc Ducret.

TR: Any idea where Consort in Motion might be heading in the future, musically? Any other periods/styles of early music you’re interested in exploring?

SB: Im not really sure yet where CIM might be heading in the future. First, I would like to tour that program for a while since the music is really happening and I am fortunate enough to have band members who really get along. Of course, Im always interested in discovering new music I can work on and get inspired by.

On top of that, Im trying to meet more musicians who share my interest in melding styles. Eventually I would like to try to build an ensemble able to perform early music as well as improvised material on historical instruments: I am thinking of musicians like Michel Godard, Jörg Meder or Francesco Turrisi. Also, as mentioned, Jay Elfenbein and I have been trying to perform early material while mixing it with improvised music. Very interesting.