|
Dave Liebman Interview (1/99)
7. Liebman as Composer & Listener
RK: I've known your work for years and admired it as a performing artist. I also (from one particular album) know your work as a straight composer because bass trombonist Dave Taylor is an old friend of mine. I used to do a lot of playing with him. Where does your work as a composer fit in with your career right now?
DL: I am an unabashed eclectic. The '60s was a period when someone like myself, without much looking, could find music from everywhere without having to go to Bali to do it. In the same day you could listen to Ravi Shankar, John Coltrane and Buddhist music. Coltrane took me first. But then I was exposed by friends and the kind of people I was referring to earlier who said, "Man you gotta get this Tibetan chant, you gotta get this gamelan music, or check out Bartók's violin concerto, etc." I learned about things that normally wouldn't have come down the pike 10 years earlier, not to somebody like myself of my generation. So that affected me and made me really like all this music and find that I could (or would like to) express myself in various idioms. And they range of course from straight jazz (from be-bop to all styles) to free jazz to classical (I mean contemporary 20th-century classical) to pop and world music.
The thing you're talking about with Dave is one of those aspects (trombone with string quartet); I just love the sound of quartets. I haven't done brass yet because I don't know the instruments that well, but I've done several things for three or four woodwinds and strings. Especially in jazz, three to four voices intrigue me. It's the string quartet in essence. I'm not a classical music expert, but when you talk to guys they say, "Look, in the end, the string quartet will tell you the whole thing anyway." It's a cut-down version of the real deal, and in the final analysis I feel that three or four voices is really what you want to hear. It takes into account the whole scene: you've got your chord, you've got your harmony, and so forth, taking the rhythm out of the question here. And that's why I was very interested in Dave Taylor: he heard a string quartet I did and he approached me. That's how that particular piece, "Remembrance" [Ed: published by Advance Music], came about.
I've done several things in that genre, and I'll tell you, next week, I'm going to Dublin doing three very nice nights. One is a concerto (written for me by Bill Pobbins); the next night, I'm doing string quartets (several of mine and a new one by a composer); and then the third night, we're playing jazz in a club. So that is exactly what I would like to do. That is for me a perfect week artistically, because it allows me to manifest myself in all those various ways. And I think the challenge, for any artist, is to be yourself within various genres and backgrounds. Coltrane did it for 15 years; Miles did it for 30 or 40. And to me, that's really the challenge: to be yourself; to have your voice; to have something of worth to say; and to surround yourself in (hopefully) interesting and challenging backgrounds that are different and changeable. In some ways it has been bad: it has diffused my audience and my critical appeal, because there are those who like one aspect of my music.
RK: So you haven't focused on a market?
DL: If you look at my recording discography, I am among maybe three or four other people (like Steve Lacy or David Murray) who are on literally dozens of labels. It's because one producer likes one aspect of your work, another guy likes another. If you work on it enough, you can spread yourself out. And that's been the bad part from the business standpoint. On the other hand, I know that in the long run, doing what I'm doing is going to be OK as far as the public is concerned. It's just that you've got to add on another 10-to-15 years because you didn't stay in one style, and because you weren't in one clique. I've really made sure of that now that I can see it. I don't belong to any school of thinking. I wasn't part of M-Base or part of this or that. We started out together in the late '60s in a kind of situation a lot of guys together playing free jazz, but then I just found my own voice. I can't compare myself to anybody else, and I feel very proud of that. And now it's too late to change.
RK: What are you listening to today?
DL: Well, to be realistic, with the little time I have, I'm usually listening to my own stuff, or editing, or trying to catch up with what I have to do. Like right now, I'm sitting downstairs about to listen to the string quartet that I have to play next week. I mean, people like us have very little time to listen to things of choice. The second area I usually listen to is tapes of students or people who send me their stuff to check out. If I just turned off the hose and said, "No tapes, no CDs," I would probably have time to listen. I'd love to get back into Mompou and this Graetinger-thing with Kenton because it has been on my mind, or something that's apropos to a mixed project I'm doing, and so forth.
But being a teacher and an educator is part of my personality, and I feel a debt to it. I answer everybody. They send me tapes and I might write three or four words quite quickly, but I'm in connection with a lot of people -- student types or musicians who want me to hear their music. So that takes a lot of time, and it keeps piling up. Every couple of months I leaf through and just listen and make comments when necessary when I feel it has to be. So sometimes I can't even listen to the things I want to. For example: yesterday I talked to the guy over at Verve, and he's going to send me something called 20th Century Genius (Art Tatum) that he says is unbelievable. I have the box that came out last year, Coltrane Live at the Vanguard, but I still haven't listened to the outtakes. Because I'm so busy and involved, I just don't have the time to concentrate, and I haven't had it for probably 10 or 15 years. It's a terrible, unfortunate part of being an artist today, because so much time is spent on business and logistics and the mechanical aspects of getting your stuff out there. That's just the way it goes. I don't have a manager; I do it myself.
Continue
Liebman Interview
Supporting Materials
Biography
Links
Archive Home
|
|
Dave Liebman |
Supporting Materials
Biography
Links
Archive Home
If you need RealPlayer 5.0,
you can download it free here.
|
