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| Reid Anderson by Cristina Guadalupe |
“The Rough Mixes”
is an evening-length piece for chamber ensemble, percussion, electronics, and
video. The chamber ensemble includes SPCO violinist and concertmaster Steven
Copes, SPCO violinist Sunmi Chang, and Minnesota Orchestra cellist Anthony Ross.
The percussionist is
Jeff Ballard,
currently a member of the Brad Mehldau Trio, Joshua Redman’s Elastic Band, and
Fly with Mark Turner and Larry Grenadier. Cristina Guadalupe is the
videographer. Anderson, best known as the bassist for
The Bad Plus, will play electronics.
Until now, electronic music has been a personal passion for him, his "other life." You can hear bits of his work with electronics at the
start of
“On
Sacred Ground,” The Bad Plus’s reconstruction of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of
Spring,” and at several points during “Made Possible,” their most recent studio
album. But these are never performed live. On the road, the band remains
acoustic.
PLE: Let’s start with
your background and fill in some details. You were born in 1970 in Golden
Valley, Minnesota. Where did you go to high school? Did you graduate from
Curtis?
Reid Anderson: I
went to Armstrong High School in Plymouth. I did graduate from Curtis [the
Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia].
At Curtis, you
studied classical music. When did you turn to jazz?
I took a sort of unnatural path from jazz to classical music
and back to jazz. I was interested in jazz first and foremost. When I was
finishing high school, I was very much interested in jazz and playing electric
bass; I didn’t yet have an acoustic bass. I thought I should take some lessons
and contacted [Twin Cities bassist and educator] Gary Raynor. He said, “You
should get an acoustic bass, come back, and we’ll start with basic classical
techniques.” I got together with him and took to it naturally. Then he suggested
I seek out Jim Clute with the Minnesota Orchestra. [Clute was the Orchestra’s
associate bassist; he also taught at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire,
at St. Olaf College in Northfield, and at the University of Minnesota.]
I entered the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire with the intention
of learning how to play jazz. To be a music major, I had to be in the
orchestra, so I was doing that and studying with Clute. One day Clute said, “I
think you could get into Curtis if you wanted to.” He had sent a couple other
students to Curtis. I made that my goal. I really wanted to get to the East
Coast, and I saw that as my ticket out.
I got into Curtis and was sort of a rarity there. I had only
been playing bass for a year. Everybody else had been playing all of their
lives. And I had no experience playing classical music – a little bit at Eau Claire,
but on a very limited basis. So I went
to Curtis totally inexperienced and also a bit conflicted because I felt I was
setting myself on a course I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on.
I couldn’t deny the fact that in my heart of hearts, I
couldn’t see myself as a classical bass player. It just wasn’t the kind of
creative space I personally need in my music-making. After three years, I told
my teacher I wanted to graduate and leave. [By then] I had enough credits. I
could have stayed another year but decided I needed to pursue this other thing
in my life.
Up to that point, for the years I was in Curtis, I hadn’t
even thought about jazz. Toward the end, I started thinking I’d better figure
out how to be a jazz musician. I started playing around Philadelphia with some
great musicians there, then moved up to New York, and the rest is history.
You have very little
web presence. Even your article on Wikipedia is a stub. Why is that?
I’m not somebody who has the energy to put into that. Anyone
who knows me knows that if you send me an email it could take me two weeks or
more to get back to you. I want to put my energy into other things.
For a lot of artists I really like, there’s a lack of
information out there. I find that appealing. We don’t all have to be fully
exposed, fully knowable to everybody. These days, there’s a lot of pressure to
have a Facebook page and a Twitter account and update your Wiki. I think
there’s another side that’s also valid and to me more interesting.
This isn’t a personal philosophy. Maybe it’s just pure
laziness.
Will “The Rough
Mixes” be your first public performance as an electronic musician?
I’ll say yes. I did one little thing a couple of months ago where
I made noises with a friend in a bar in Brooklyn. I was happy that when I
plugged things in, everything worked. I considered that a trial.
What do you mean by
“The Rough Mixes”?
It can mean a lot of things. Something happens when you’re
creating anything that’s sort of that first draft. It always has something
magical in it. It’s full of potential. I like that state of things. It’s a
fragile state.
I don’t want to get too wordy or philosophical about the
title. I just like the energy of those moments. Confluence happens, congruence
happens, and something comes out of that. It’s all individual elements, and
they’re completely indifferent to each other, but there’s a meeting point. I
see it as a society where all of us individuals are doing things. We encounter
each other sometimes and interact with each other and move on, but just because
we move on doesn’t mean there isn’t some kind of larger interaction going on.
In the end it’s music, and music is abstract.
It’s an incredible opportunity to perform your first music
in front of an audience, in a very public forum. It’s something I have worked
on for a long time, but it’s high-risk.
I’m deeply interested in and have a real love for … I can’t
say “electronic music” because that’s such a wide thing, but I love the
potential of what you can do with those kinds of sounds. It’s still such new
territory, but I connect with it personally.
You’ve said that
Charlie Haden was your main inspiration for playing bass. Did you have a main
inspiration for playing electronic music?
Yeah, of course. It feels clichéd to say this, but Richard
James of
Aphex Twin is truly the
untouchable master as far as I’m concerned. That’s the music that really turned
me on to electronic music, and I still find it deeply moving.
Talking about your influences is a funny thing. On a number
of levels, you can’t be what you love. It’s a tragic situation. You just can’t
do it, and you have to guard against it as well.
Have you had any
teachers for electronic music?
No, I’m an autodidact. But pretty much everybody is. You can
study electronic music, but the people who really are doing it, generally
speaking, didn’t get a degree.
Electronic music is modern folk music. It’s something that everybody has
ready access to.
What do you listen
to?
I’m not a big music listener, but I recently bought a
turntable. I have a lot of records, a lot of classical music. I’m pretty
eclectic in my listening habits, when I do listen. Like everybody. That’s the
most common thing in the world these days.
You’ve often said
that your music with The Bad Plus is “part of the jazz tradition.” Does your
electronic music belong to a particular tradition?
I really don’t think so. I have to admit I’m a total
outsider in this world. I’m not part of the community of people making
electronic music. I’m just at this lonely outpost, trying to do something that
is personal and trying to find a way to do it. I don’t know if I would choose
that option, but I have to admit that’s kind of what it is.
In
an interview with Duke, you described “Rough Mixes” as “basically a chamber
music piece – two violins, cello, drums – with electronics and video.” Why that
particular configuration?
Since this is my first foray into this, I really wanted to
keep it simple and contained. Just balancing those elements is enough.
Drums aren’t usually
associated with chamber music.
Electronics aren’t, either. Jeff Ballard is going to be an
important bridge between the strings and the electronics. He’s a great soulful
musician, a great improviser.
Now that you’re
working with strings, would you ever write for full orchestra? It seems a lot
of jazz musicians are doing that lately.
Having come this far [with “The Rough Mixes”], I think it
might have been easier conceptually to write for full orchestra. When you’re
dealing with two violins and a cello, there are certain practical
considerations. It’s not the sound of a full orchestra, it’s an intimate sound,
and when you add electronics and drum set, it’s easy to overwhelm. I’m very
conscious of that.
Have you felt any
pressure to write certain things or in certain ways because you’re composing
for classical musicians? Compositions for classical and jazz musicians can sometimes sound
more like bits of music on parallel tracks than true collaborations.
That’s been my entire existence for the past year. It’s a
tricky thing. I’ve come to this: I’m not
thinking of myself as an electronic musician, I’m thinking of myself as an improviser,
a musician who’s very interested in electronics and how to incorporate that
into live music-making. Because I know a little about the classical world, I
want those musicians to feel very comfortable.
Are you asking the
classical musicians to improvise?
Not per se. Some things are going to have to be sussed out
in rehearsal, to see what everyone’s comfortable with. I’m not going to put
anyone in a position that’s out of their comfort zone. It won’t be
improvisation per se, but the way the music is set up … I mentioned
“congruence” earlier. There are independent elements that aren’t concerned
necessarily with the other elements around them, but their coexistence makes
something. As a composer, your job is to set up the right conditions so it’s
not chaos.
What do you want from
the classical musicians?
I really only want people to play their hearts out. That’s
all I require. I hope they’re challenged in an enjoyable way.
What has been the
most challenging part of working on “Rough Mixes”?
This is all such new territory for me. Even though I feel
the integration of electronics with live musicians is very much a part of the
music-making quest these days, trying to come up with a personal solution from
scratch has been … engaging. It’s all very abstract up until the point of
performance. There are all these abstractions in the air. I’m trying to tether
them down with whatever I can.
I see a lot of people out there trying to develop ways of
performing electronic music live. One criticism of electronic music as a live
art form – and it’s a valid criticism – is you just hit “play” and [the
computer] plays a song, like a deejay playing records. That’s an
oversimplification, but to some extent it’s true. The technology has reached a
point where it’s now possible to be more interactive. There are a lot of people
putting their energy and thought into how to do that. It’s still the Wild West, but it's full of potential.
Does it feel like
you’re making live music?
Yeah, it does, because basically everything I’m using is
something I built myself to do things I want them to do. Even though there’s so
much incredibly capable commercial software out there, sometimes, oddly enough,
there’s no easy or obvious way to do things that seem easy or obvious. I
approach the whole process of making electronic music from my experience of
being a live musician and improvising. I think, “What do I want to have happen
here, and how can I make it happen?”
It’s not like putting
your fingers on the strings of your bass – or is it?
It feels like that to me. Of course, the physical sensation,
the tactile sensation is very different. But there’s still an emotional
sensation.
I’ve heard people say
that electronic music is cold.
It can be, but a lot of music is cold, not just electronic
music.
What kinds of equipment
are you using?
I have a computer, a couple of controllers, and a
synthesizer with knobs and buttons. The computer controls everything. There’s a
lot of stuff going on in the computer.
What can we in the
audience expect to hear on Tuesday and Wednesday?
Generally speaking, this is music that unfolds at a fairly
leisurely pace. There’s a certain amount of minimalism involved. I feel connected
to the idea of minimalism, not in any dogmatic sense, but I once heard John
Cage say, “Familiarity can breed love.” I like the idea of becoming familiar
with something, of melodies you want to hear again, things you like better when
you hear them again and again. Not to say this is a minimalist piece, because
it’s not, but it certainly engages that concept. It’s definitely part of myself
as a composer that I don’t attempt to deny.
Any closing words?
I’m realizing I don’t quite have my spiel together about
this. But that’s what happens when you’re entering a new realm. I’m not someone
who puts the words first and then does the work. I would rather do it in the
other order. I guess that in a way explains my lack of web presence, too. It’s
really important for me that the work speaks for itself.
There is one thing I will say about “The Rough Mixes”:
Electronics is a part of this music. It’s not electronic music.
_____
Reid Anderson’s “The Rough Mixes” will have its world
premiere at
the
Music Room at SPCO Center at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, June 18-19.
Tickets ($10 adults, $5 children) are available
online
or by phone at 651-291-1144.
