Five Questions for Linsey Wellman
Ottawa avant-garde saxophonist Linsey Wellman will be all on his own Thursday night at Club SAW when he launches his new disc Ephemera, a collection of music for solo saxophone.
Below, Wellman discusses the challenges and rewards of his latest project.
1) How do you compare the experience of playing solo saxophone with playing in a group?
I love playing with other players. There’s something special about hearing your ideas filtered through another instrument and musician, and there’s also somethings special about taking someone else’s ideas and reacting to them, and then hearing the reaction to your reaction. Beautiful things can be built.
That said, one thing that I really enjoyed about putting together this solo set was that it allowed me to explore (and discover) what I do well. Playing solo has been a process of reacting to things that I’ve done in the past and building on them. At first I wanted to do everything that I felt I was capable of, but after a while I had to cut things, and after the cutting I was left with the best of what I was able to do (and a list of things that I wish I could do better). It was, and continues to be, a very painful, but rewarding process. I feel like I have a better sense of where I’m at as a player, and that helps me in my group playing as well as my solo playing.
Aside from all of that, one of the main challenges is purely physical. It’s very taxing to play the saxophone for 45 minutes to an hour straight. I had to be very careful in putting together a roadmap for the recording that I allowed for easier sections between the more physically demanding ones. Interestingly, though we tried doing takes of single movements in the recording studio, all of the takes that we kept on the disc were from continuous performances of the whole album.
2) Who are some of the people or recordings that lead the way for you when it comes to solo saxophone?
I remember seeing Evan Parker play solo at the Ottawa Jazz Festival the first year they had the improvisor series at the NAC Fourth Stage. It was the first time that I’d heard anybody play solo saxophone live and I found it really intriguing. It also helped that I had only just started with circular breathing, and what he was doing dovetailed really nicely with some of the concepts that I had been exploring at the time (he was, of course, doing them much more creatively and capably than I had even imagined was possible at the time).
The very next night, Roscoe Mitchell played with his band (I may be mistaken on the order of the concerts) and he was approaching some of those same techniques in a very different (and equally exciting) way. I have since heard recordings of Roscoe Mitchell playing solo and have been blown away. Those two concerts, happening in short sequence as they did, were very inspirational to me. I also found inspiration in David Mott’s stunning album for solo baritone saxophone. I’ve recently been listening to Frank Gratkowski’s latest solo album (he has two of them), and I’m absolutely blown away. He’s a German saxophonist/clarinetist who’s been to Ottawa a couple of times with some of the Dutch groups that occasionally pass through here (usually with the help of the Dutch embassy and the Ottawa Jazz Festival). I’ve seen him play maybe four or five times, and every time has been a revelation. I’m also looking forward to checking out (some day) Ellery Eskelin’s solo saxophone album, I’m a huge fan of his playing. The first solo album that I ever heard was one of Anthony Braxton’s. He’s a remarkable player.
3) For you, what are the attractions of extended techniques such as circular breathing and multiphonics?
I do a lot of free improvisation with groups of musicians, and one of the things I really enjoy is creating a soundscape as a background for other players to work with. Before I had worked on circular breathing, I would often start on something, and one of the other musicians would be doing something really interesting over what I was doing, but I’d have to stop and take a breath before their idea was fully developed, which would create a break in the flow of what was going on and the whole thing would change direction (not always to bad effect) when what I really wanted to hear was where they were going before I so rudely interrupted with my selfish need for oxygen. This doesn’t really apply to solo playing, but it’s one of the very important things for me.
In a related vein, I recently had the chance to see Frank Gratkowski with his quartet (with Wolter Wierbos on trombone, bassist Dieter Manderscheid and Gerry Hemingway on drums) while away on a short tour, and one of the things that struck me was that all of those players have a huge vocabulary of available techniques, but the most important thing was that they are always intensely musical in their choices. You can do all sorts of amazing things on your instrument but if it doesn’t serve the music, then you might as well not be playing. I suppose that some of the most musical ideas that occur to me require for me to do some unorthodox things on my instrument; I’ve heard some players that can play much more creatively with the standard set of saxophone techniques, but I guess that’s just not the way I’m wired.
4) What’s the significance of the title Ephemera?
The idea of impermanence has always been attractive to me. If I’ve played a great show, it often feels all the more beautiful if I know that it’s gone forever, and that I’ll never play in quite the same way again. It reminds me to enjoy the good moments (and not just the musical ones) while they’re happening. I realize that it’s somewhat ironic that I would call a piece Ephemera and then put it on record, but sometimes we do things that are a bit inconsistent with our ideals.
In an ecological sense (at the risk of sounding a bit lofty) there’s also the ideal of treading lightly and leaving nothing behind. I’ve often felt attracted to the idea of leaving this world (one day – hopefully not too soon) as if I had never been here at all — but that’s in there with a lot of competing ideas and ideals that rattle around in my brain from time to time.
5) What other projects/performances do you have in the works for 2011?
I’ve been really inspired in the last year or so by playing in a Balinese gamelan (Gamelan Semara Winangun). I’m fascinated by the way the music is organized, and I’d like to do some composing along those lines. I’ve got a show with a couple of friends (Ryan Purchase on trombone and Craig Pedersen on trumpet) as part of the Improvising Musicians of Ottawa/Outaouais concert series (which I co-curate with Craig) in December, and I’d like to put together a tune or two that explores the kind of interlocking lines that feature in Balinese music. Craig and I have also been talking about ideas using pre-recorded sound as a compositional tool, along with some electro-acoustic ideas (we’re still trying to figure out how that would all work — could take a while). I’ve always got lots of ideas for new projects, but I tend to like to sit on things and let them take shape in my head before playing them.
I’ve also been lucky to find work in other peoples’ bands. I’m hoping to work a lot in the coming year with a calypso band by the name of Kobo Town that looks like it will be pretty active in the next little while, also with Mike Essoudry’s Mash Potato Mashers. I had a blast recording a Christmas album mixing traditional Christmas carols with Albert Ayler songs with a great group of musicians under the direction of Bernard Stepien (it’s still surprising to me that I’ve recorded a Christmas album.); I’m looking forward to working on more silent films at the Mayfair Theatre, and I’ve been enjoying playing with the Craig Pedersen Quartet doing more jazz-oriented material at Café Nostalgica for our November residency. I will continue playing in the gamelan and am looking forward to learning new things in whatever context they come up.
Linsey Wellman launches his new solo CD Ephemera at Club SAW (67 Nicholas St.) at 8 p.m. Admission is $15 at the door. Tickets available at Compact Music.
