SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2021
VOLUME NINE NUMBER THREE
FARUQ Z. BEY
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
William Parker
(January 23-29)
Jason Palmer
(January 30-February 5)
Living Colour
(February 6-12)
Charles Tolliver
(February 13-19)
Henry Grimes
(February 20-26)
Marcus Strickland
(February 27-March 5)
Kendrick Scott
(March 6-March 12)
Seth Parker Woods
(March 13-19)
Christian Sands
(March 20-26)
Ulysses Owens
(March 27-April 2)
Steve Nelson
(April 3-9)
Steve Wilson
(April 10-16)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kendrick-scott-mn0000866511
Kendrick Scott
(b. July 8, 1980)
Artist Biography by Matt Collar
Drummer Kendrick Scott is a technically proficient and intuitive modern jazz drummer, composer, arranger, and bandleader with a bent toward expansive post-bop. Steeped in the lineage of Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, and Elvin Jones, he is best known as the leader of the Kendrick Scott Oracle, and has also toured and recorded with a host of jazz all-stars including Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock, the Crusaders, Kenny Garrett, Gary Burton, Roy Hargrove, Pat Metheny, and many others. His playing style is at once imaginative, lyrical, and versatile. As a bandleader, he arrived in 2007 with the Oracle's The Source, issued by his own World Culture Music label, and he's garnered an abundance of attention for his canny senses of swing and groove. Since then, he has recorded under his own name with his longstanding Oracle band that includes pianist Taylor Eigsti, reed and woodwind ace John Ellis, guitarist Mike Moreno, and bassist Joe Sanders. Scott's Blue Note debut, 2015's We Are the Drum, was produced by the Robert Glasper Experiment's Derrick Hodge; it made most jazz critics' best-of lists for the year.
Born in Houston, Texas in 1980, Scott grew up in a musical family who encouraged his interest in drumming from a young age. A member of his church and junior high school music ensembles, Scott eventually attended a performing arts high school and later the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since graduating from Berklee in 2003, he has performed with a variety of name artists including the Jazz Crusaders, guitarist Pat Metheny, saxophonists Joe Lovano and Kenny Garrett, vocalist Dianne Reeves, and trumpeter Terence Blanchard. He released his debut album with his Oracle group on World Culture Music in 2006. In 2007 he performed on Blanchard's landmark score for director Spike Lee's A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina), and continued to work with vocalist Gretchen Parlato. Scott signed to Concord in 2012 and Conviction, his sophomore effort with Oracle, appeared on the label in March of 2013. It was produced by Derrick Hodge of the Robert Glasper Experiment. In 2015 he returned with his third album with Oracle, We Are the Drum, which included an appearance by vocalist Lizz Wright. Four years and many tours later, the drummer returned with his sophomore Blue Note date, A Wall Becomes A Bridge, a 12-song cycle about overcoming obstacles and personal responsibility. Again produced by Hodge, the set featured turntablist Jahi Sundance as a sixth member of the Kendrick Scott Oracle and was released in early April of 2019.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/kendrickscott
Kendrick Scott
Drummer and composer Kendrick Scott kicked off his Blue Note contract four years ago with We Are the Drum. Expertly produced by Derrick Hodge, Scott’s creative confidant and musical brother, and featuring a stunning guest performance by vocalist Lizz Wright, it earned rave reviews and reiterated how Oracle, Scott’s long-running working group, is one of the most thoughtfully powerful jazz bands of its generation.
When it came time to follow this success up with a new effort, however, Scott felt stuck. Nothing he wrote or played seemed good enough; self-doubt had formed a blockade where inspiration once flowed. But, as Scott points out today, “Wayne Shorter says there’s always something unfolding on the other side of the negative.” Hodge, who’d signed on again as Scott’s producer, witnessed what the drummer was putting himself through and had a similar realization. For years Hodge has been dedicated to shaping Oracle’s sonic identity, even relinquishing his role as the band’s bassist to work behind the scenes. Scott calls him “the sixth member of Oracle.”
“Derrick said, ‘We need to tap into your fears and insecurities and make some art about them,’” Scott recalls. “That was amazing to me—that he got me out of my own head.” Scott gathered up the compositions he’d been working on—both finished and unfinished—and headed into the studio, where “Derrick and the band helped me unfold them, and they became the record that you hear.”
That gorgeous new Blue Note album from Scott and Oracle is called, not incidentally, A Wall Becomes A Bridge. And the implications of that title aren’t exclusive to Scott’s artistic breakthrough. “A Wall is a provocation,” Scott says, adding that he “loves to create things for conversation. So I also wanted the idea to speak about a certain president.” Many of us would argue that 45 is all wall and no bridge, but Scott sees a silver lining in this increasingly absurd political age. “With all of these different issues coming to the forefront, we can now say, ‘Things like systemic racism still exist and we need to deal with them.’ More people are paying attention to the government, and that level of intensity is what we need—as is that level of intent in how we vote and how we live and how we treat others. All of those things are a bridge.”
An even more essential part of why this 12-track song cycle is so affecting lies in its ability to be interpreted. A musical and metaphorical journey in reverse, it arrives with a bridge and voyages back toward its beginning as a wall. Along the way, a gamut of themes is explored, including innocence (“Archangel”), acceptance (“Windows”), fear and insecurity (“Voices”) and resistance (“Plēh”—or help spelled backwards). “I want listeners’ imaginations to run wild,” Scott explains. “I want them to think about, ‘What does this mean to me and my community? What does it mean to our country and the world at large?’”
These performances—these soundscapes—certainly provide an occasion for searching and reflecting. Oracle’s peerless lineup includes the pianist Taylor Eigsti who Scott calls “the engine of the band”—a virtuoso with a keen sense of time, and a natural, good-humored communicator on and off the bandstand. Bassist Joe Sanders, as Scott puts it, is the “embodiment of innovation,” at once a stalwart anchor who understands that less is more and a supremely gifted melodic voice who belongs in the frontline. Scott met his guitarist, Mike Moreno, at age 14, when both were students at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the venerated incubator for jazz talent like Jason Moran, Robert Glasper, Chris Dave and Eric Harland. “I kind of started the band around Mike,” Scott recalls. “He’s always been an inspiration to me.” Moreno’s playing here is equal parts expressive grace and jaw-dropping mastery. But it’s a similar sense of aesthetics that might be Moreno’s most crucial contribution to Oracle; namely, Scott and Moreno share an ongoing search for the space between Brazilian geniuses like Milton Nascimento and the icons of postbop. On tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet and alto flute is John Ellis, a still-underrated musician whose staggering range of abilities extends from jazz’s deepest roots—Scott met him while on tour in New Orleans—to its state-of-the-art, 21st century harmonic and rhythmic language.
Within that singular meld of talent on A Wall Becomes A Bridge is a secret weapon: the turntablist Jahi Sundance, whose credits include high-profile hip-hop production as well as tour-DJ duties for Glasper, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Meshell Ndegeocello. On both interlude-esque cuts (like “BeLoved,” a near-psychedelic probe into trust and vulnerability) and longer explorations like the meditative opener, “New Eyes,” Sundance immerses his own artful craft into the musicianship that surrounds him. (In many band-plus-DJ situations, Scott argues, “the band plays on top of what the DJ’s playing. Jahi was inside of Oracle.”) What’s more, Sundance was able to internalize the concepts and purpose behind Scott’s new work, as well as the genre-bending mission that has defined Oracle from the start. With brilliant oversight from Hodge as producer, the sessions became unprecedented aural experiences. “What he added really makes you contemplate what the record means,” Scott says. “The sound of it and the sonics. [Jahi is] like a bridge.”
As far back as he can recall, Scott, who was born in Houston in 1980, has imbued his music with deeper meaning. “Coming up in church,” he says, “you played music for a message; you played music for a purpose. Oracle lives in that space, no matter what we’re playing.” Like his fellow Houston drum greats Harland and Jamire Williams, Scott grew up with a mother who was an acclaimed gospel choir director. On top of that bedrock, he developed his technique through private mentorship and public jazz education, spurred on by an environment of fierce but brotherly competition. He moved to New York in 2003, and raised his profile performing and recording for Blue Note in trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s band (with future Blue Note artists Hodge, pianist Aaron Parks and guitarist Lionel Loueke).
“I was receiving so much information from Terence on bandleading and writing,” Scott recalls. “He was saying, ‘Take that opportunity and try to lead your own band.’ I credit him with giving me that kick in the butt.” He debuted as a bandleader with 2006’s The Source, released through his own World Culture Music label, and in 2009, the New York Times featured him in a piece entitled “Five Drummers Whose Time Is Now.” In the ensuing years, his reputation as one of the premier drummer-composers currently in jazz has only grown.
Throughout his time at the helm of his own group, Scott has employed the lessons he’s learned as a sideman working with jazz’s great bandleaders. Like Blanchard, Scott encourages his players to exercise their personalities and to contribute music. (A Wall Becomes A Bridge features tunes by Eigsti, Moreno, Hodge, and Parks alongside the drummer’s writing.) He has also performed regularly as part of Charles Lloyd’s band, and has adapted the tenor legend’s sense of trust and intuition to define Oracle. “The main thing I learned from Charles is that everybody needs to take ownership,” he says. “I feel like what makes Oracle Oracle is that each member has ownership of the band. They have ownership of the music and ownership of the intent.”
https://downbeat.com/news/detail/kendrick-scott-oracle-height-optimism
Kendrick Scott At The ‘Height of Optimism’
Drummer Kendrick Scott wrestles with self-doubt on his latest album, A Wall Becomes A Bridge (Blue Note). (Photo: Todd Cooper)
On an unseasonably warm May night in Portland, Oregon, members of Oracle, the post-bop quintet led by drummer Kendrick Scott, are having a bit of a tough time.
It’s the last stop on a short U.S. tour in support of the ensemble’s recently released album, A Wall Becomes A Bridge, an occasion that usually finds a road-tight band playing with panache and confidence. But packed awkwardly onto the undersized stage at The Jack London Revue, the five performers are dealing with a chatty crowd and onstage sound issues. About halfway through the set, bassist Joe Sanders leaves the stage and walks through the crowd to have a terse word with the club’s sound engineer.
“[The stage] is his sanctuary,” Scott said. “So, when you mess with that, he gets a little upset.”
Despite the visible annoyance at the situation and the bemused looks bandmembers were giving one another about it, Oracle powers through. Renditions of tunes from A Wall are lucid and sharp, blending post-rock atmospherics with sliding rhythms and some particularly sparkling solos from pianist Taylor Eigsti and guitarist Mike Moreno.
As for Scott, although his name is on the reader board at the top of the stairs and it’s primarily his material that the band is playing, he takes on a supportive role, laying into grooves and triggering the spoken-word samples that open many of the songs. He plays around the melodies being drawn out by his bandmates with cymbal hits and quick fills. What he doesn’t do is take a splashy solo of his own: Not once during the 90-minute set does he yank the spotlight to his side of the stage.
“I feel that I play my best, honestly, when I’m playing behind the band,” Scott said over the phone a few days after the Portland gig. While the rest of Oracle traveled back home, the bandleader headed to the University of Oregon in Eugene to lead some drumming workshops. “I feel like I can shape and shade things in a way that is even more effective than soloing. Funnily enough, that’s one of my insecurities: playing drum solos. It’s something that I’m working on building, but I’m also working on trying to showcase the way I play within a song.”
Scott has been talking about his insecurities a lot during the past few months. The story of A Wall’s creation has everything to do with how full of self-doubt the 38-year-old musician was as he looked to write material for a new album. Despite being a noted bandleader and someone who’s spent time playing alongside legends like Charles Lloyd and Terence Blanchard, Scott wrestled with the pressure of creating something perfect and brilliant for Oracle. He would start a song and then get too far into his head about it, and never finish it. Or it simply wouldn’t sound good enough.
“I think it came from the volume of things that I’m around,” Scott said of his insecurities. “I’m around such great musicians and great artists that make the extraordinary ordinary, that I felt like I had to be that. I had to write or bandlead like this person or I wasn’t doing anything.”
It was his former Oracle bandmate, current producer and friend Derrick Hodge, who helped pull him out of that spiral and set him on a path that resulted in A Wall. And it was with a perfectly simple idea: Use those same insecurities as fuel for creativity. Make the music about being unable to make music.
“Derek was such a catalyst,” Scott recalled. “He said, ‘You know, we have to trust this process and know that, first of all, you all are great musicians and something good can come out of it.’ He funneled my insecurities into creating this music.”
A huge part of that was relinquishing some control of the album and handing it over to his bandmates. Of the 12 tracks on the album, Scott was the sole composer on fewer than half. On the rest, he shares credit with his bandmates or wasn’t responsible for the writing at all. The majority of A Wall was conceived in the studio, working with fragments the bandleader brought with him or just built from scratch.
“We went about making a record in a different way than jazz records are made,” Scott asserted. “Usually, everybody has everything written down and you go into the studio for a few hours and you leave. [Oracle] spent days in the studio trying to capture the intention of what we were doing. We set up a chalkboard and we wrote down, ‘OK, what does acceptance feel like? What does denial feel like?’ And we went after each of those pieces, trying to see how they fit into the narrative. I think that’s the beauty of the way this record went.”
The music that Scott and Oracle came away with has a lushness that also marked the group’s 2015 release, We Are The Drum, but approached from a postmodern angle with shades of ’70s ECM classics. The lyrical ballad “>>>>>>Becoming” sets a low heat for Eigsti and reedist John Ellis’ spiraling melodies, until it becomes a minimalist stride blues. And tracks like “>>>>>>>>>>>Mocean” and “>>>>The Catalyst” build like waves, cresting and receding into sprays of pixels and smears of sound.
Perhaps the most crucial step toward the completion of A Wall was trusting the musical mind of turntablist and producer Jani Sundance to add some finishing touches. The L.A.-based musician, best known as a touring DJ for artists like Meshell Ndegeocello and Robert Glasper, was given many of the almost-completed tracks by Scott and wound in vocal samples and little flourishes that warped elements of the original Oracle performances. Those subtle treatments broke some psychedelic sunshine through Oracle’s sometimes dense, cloudy playing.
“Sometimes with a DJ, they put something down and you play on top of it,” Scott said. “But Jahi can respond in the moment like a true musician. That’s why we sent the music to him. We knew he would be able to find the spaces that were pertinent in getting the message across. He added just enough—not so much that it took away from the sound and intention of my band.”
Scott’s decision to let someone else fiddle with the tracks took a substantial leap of faith, one that a performer dealing with a crippling bout of insecurity generally wouldn’t take. But Scott has learned that trust is an essential part of creative relationships. When he gets the call from Charles Lloyd to play a gig or is brought in for a studio session, the implication is that the bandleader trusts him to bring the goods without requiring too much direction.
That’s also the level of trust Scott has built up with with his Oracle bandmates. He’s known all of them for years. Scott and Moreno met as students at the prestigious High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. He and Eigsti have performed together with Blanchard and as members of Gretchen Parlato’s quartet. And Ellis and Sanders have been in and out of each other’s orbits for years, before helping to form the nucleus of Oracle. Without a baseline of friendship, A Wall never would have happened.
“If I think about it, if I did this record in this same way with people who aren’t very close to me or I don’t have that trust in, the product wouldn’t be the same,” Scott said. “Even though I didn’t know what the product would be, I know the personalities of the people that I’m writing for. The stuff that I did write, I knew they would be able to play and interpret.”
Knowing that, too, means that Scott can shrug off the difficulties that he and Oracle were having onstage in Portland, and that the band can keep pushing until it creates something beautiful and unique. The rest of the audience might have been none the wiser, but watching the ensemble get pulled apart by technical difficulties and hearing them recalibrate, becoming a cohesive unit once more, was a thrilling musical experience.
As for Scott, working through his creative block and coming out the other end with a substantive album—turning that metaphorical wall into a bridge—has had an obvious impact on his creative mind and his day-to-day life. It’s not so much fearlessness as it as a resolute calm that comes from knowing that with the right mindset and the right people in his corner, he can survive anything.
“Wayne Shorter says, ‘Music is but a drop of water in the ocean of life,’ and I really believe that,” Scott said. “I feel like music is only a reflection of the life that’s being lived. So, I definitely see that all these insecurities are within me, and sometimes I’m better at managing it than others. Part of making this record has also become a mantra for me when I’m dealing with these issues; for me to just say in my head, ‘Whenever you’re dealing with insecurity, this wall is going to become a bridge’ ... . That, for me, is the height of optimism that I’m trying to get myself to live in musically and outside of music.” DB
https://www.msmnyc.edu/faculty/kendrick-scott/
Faculty
Kendrick Scott
College Faculty: Jazz Arts: Drum Set, Small Ensemble
Named a “Rising Star” by Downbeat magazine and a “drummer whose time is now” by the New York Times, Kendrick Scott is a premier drummer of his generation. Born in Houston, Texas, Scott grew up in a family of musicians and had taken up the drums by age 8. He attended Houston’s renowned High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a school which has produced an impressive array of musical talent, including Scott’s label mates Jason Moran and Robert Glasper, as well pop star Beyoncé, among many others. While still attending HSPVA, Scott won several Downbeat student awards, as well as the Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Award from the International Association of Jazz Educators. He was later awarded a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music, where he majored in music education.
Kendrick Scott has toured and recorded with a wide array of artists, including Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller, Charles Lloyd, The Crusaders, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Kurt Elling, and Terence Blanchard, on whose Grammy-winning Blue Note album, A Tale of God’s Will (2007), he appeared. As a bandleader, Kendrick has released Reverence (2011) and three albums with his band Oracle—The Source (2007), Conviction (2013), and We Are The Drum (2015). In addition to composing and performing with his band Oracle worldwide, Scott continues to be an in-demand sideman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendrick_Scott
Kendrick Scott
Gear
Yamaha Drums
Yamaha Phoenix Drumset in Ash Amber Gloss
12×8 Tom Tom
14×13 Floor Tom
16×14 Floor Tom
18×14 Bass Drum
22×16 Bass Drum
Lang Snare Drums
14×6.5 Lang – Gladstone/ Dunnett Custom Snare, Titanium Shell made by Ronn Dunnett and the rest by Morris “Arnie” Lang.
Craviotto Snare Drums
Also I use a 14×6.5 Craviotto Snare (Solid Shell – Walnut/ Maple/ Walnut)
Zildjian Cymbals
15′ Inch Zildjian Old K Hihats from the 50’s with Rivets
21 Inch Spizzichino Ride
22′ Inch Zildjian Bounce Ride with Rivets
21″ Inch Zildjian Bounce Ride
10′ Inch Zildjian Ascending Gong
Vater Sticks
Vater Swing Model (Nylon Tip)
Vater Super Jazz
Vater Retractable Wire Brushes
Vater T7 Mallets
Vater Poly Flex Brush
Remo Drum Heads
Snare
14″ Inch Remo Coated Ambassador Snare (Top)
14′ Inch Remo Snare Side Head – No Collar (Bottom)
Toms
12″ Inch Remo Coated Ambassador (Top)
12″ Inch Remo Renaissance Diplomat (Bottom)
14″ Inch Remo Coated Ambassador (Top)
14″ Inch Remo Renaissance Diplomat (Bottom)
16″ Inch Remo Coated Ambassador (Top)
16″ Inch Remo Renaissance Diplomat (Bottom)
Bass Drums
18″ Inch Remo Coated Ambassador Bass Drum (Batterside)
18″ Inch Remo Powerstroke 4 Yamaha Logo Head (Front)
22″ Inch Remo Clear Powerstroke 3 Bass Drum (Batterside)
22″ Inch Remo Powerstroke 4 Yamaha Logo Head (Front)
Humes and Berg Cases
https://musiqology.com/blog/2014/08/02/a-closer-look-at-kendrick-scott-and-oracles-conviction/
Musiqology is very pleased to introduce to our audience K. Shackleford. She is a jazz enthusiast who enjoys writing about the connection between jazz and spirituality. K. Shackleford is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and she lives in North Carolina.
Please also take some time to check out her interview with Kendrick Scott for All about Jazz.
In 2013, we witnessed the inauguration of Barack Obama for a second term, while later that year we mourned the loss of Nelson Mandela, South African former President, anti-apartheid leader, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. In the same year, North Korea president Kim Jong-Un reconsidered expanding a nuclear weapon project despite disapproval by the United Nations. And there were tragic events that littered the United States as well. Such as the unexpected killing of five people after two bomb explosions at the Boston marathon. In the same year, drummer Kendrick Scott and his band Oracle released its spiritually galvanizing album Conviction on Concord Records. Yet the album is not merely spiritual but politically elucidating. This is one of the marvels of Conviction, and it superbly illuminates the jazz album as a medium for spiritual and political empowerment as presented in the work of jazz icons John Coltrane and Max Roach.
In his book, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of The Sixties, historian Scott Saul notes that A Love Supreme introduced “the new position of the jazz musician as spiritual avatar.” Saul also goes on to say that A Love Supreme represented “a resonant expression of spiritual uplift and gratitude” and that “Coltrane affirmed the deepest of religious longing.” A Love Supreme as a “liturgical language” was a musical antiphony that documented Coltrane’s spiritual conversion after a tumultuous time of suffering from drug and alcohol abuse. The album’s ability to touch the human spirit propelled Coltrane’s meteoric rise in jazz, and has made it one of the greatest albums of any genre.
Now if A Love Supreme introduced the jazz musician as a “spiritual avatar,” then it could be said that Max Roach’s We Insist! album (1960) presented to the world the jazz musician as a “political avatar.” Filled with themes that addressed the social and political drama of the late 1950’s in the US and abroad, We Insist! served as a precursor to the jazz album’s ability to musically contextualize and package the musician’s political critique.
Scott and his band Oracle, as well as other new jazz leaders, are carrying the tradition of employing social commentary and/or spirituality as an underlying motive for their compositions and arrangements. Other examples include faith themes on saxophonist Kenneth Whalum III’s To Those who Believe as well as Kirk Whalum’s The Gospel According to Jazz. Trumpeter Christian Scott also engages several political themes from Yesterday You Said Tomorrow such as the passionate tune, “Angola, L.A and the 13th Amendment,” which is a commentary on neo-slavery.
On “Pendulum,” the first track of Conviction,the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, a 13th century monk, is read by Scott, introducing the album’s intent and the bandleader’s petition for humility and submission to God’s will. Even though the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi is Christian in nature, it is similar to the poems read on A Love Supreme—– although Coltrane’s poems embody what historian Scott Saul calls a “pan-spirituality.” Nevertheless, Scott and Coltrane’s usage of poetry/prayer is a remarkable tool that uses “spoken word” to verbally coalesce their personal faith experiences with their music.
The prayer on “Pendulum” also challenges humanity to counteract depraved gestures of “hatred,” “doubt,” “despair,” “sadness,” and “darkness,” with ones more divinely virtuous. It’s not just a prayer for personal devotion but could be a poignant response to national and international political woes. For example, if we think of the life of Nelson Mandela and his death in 2013, the prayer is timely.
Guitar virtuoso Mike Moreno begins “Pendulum” with a repetitious 7-note melody that starts on A- flat, followed by a middle section with haunting “ooh’s” laced by a 16th note filled tenor saxophone groove by the uber-talented John Ellis. The ghost-like “ooh’s” are aesthetically conspicuous as the “ooh’s” sung by Abby Lincoln on “Triptych: Prayer, Protest, Peace” from Roach’s We Insist! album. At least, for me. Yet, the musicality at the end of “Pendulum” does not exude, in any way, anything peaceful as petitioned by the prayer spoken at the beginning—- much like the “Prayer” and “Protest” sections of “Triptych: Prayer, Protest, Peace” does not seem like a prayer, or an attempt to evoke any musical peace.
But peace comes at a cost.
To obtain personal or social peace, sometimes the journey must begin on roads of pain, sacrifice, conflict, tension and dissonance. Moreover, when peace is pursued, oftentimes, something has to die in an aggressive manner. Someone or something loses. Even if it’s death to one’s ego and pride. Near the end of this piece, this is sonically exemplified through Scott’s driving, rhythmic, and light-speed drum solo that seems counterintuitive to what is requested in the prayer of St. Francis at the beginning. Scott’s ardent beating is as serious as the intense ascetic practices that must proceed before a spiritual breakthrough or transcendence. Perhaps this type of playing is why people are connecting mysticism to Scott’s work.
I found one of Conviction’s most spiritual pieces to be Joe Sanders’ improvised solo bass performance entitled, “We Shall by Any Means.”The first part of the title of “We Shall By Any Means” is actually derived from the gospel tinged “We Shall Overcome,” which became the anthem for the 1960’s Civil Rights movement and is still sung today. The other part of the title comes from the phrase “By Any Means Necessary,” which was extracted from Malcolm X’s 1960’s speech and has since become a popular catchphrase. Both phrases were from leaders whose pursuit of social justice and freedom emanated from their personal faith.
I am glad that in the midst of several “back to back” tracks on the album that engage the idea of human rights, (an arrangement of Herbie Hancock’s “I Have A Dream” and Scott’s original composition “Liberty or Death”), the decision was made to choose a bass solo. Sanders’ performance creates the same type of spiritual awe and meditative soundscape that emerges when listening to Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites in a minor key. It was a completely unexpected and arresting surprise.
The solo’s minor key immediately posits the listener in a state of “all seriousness,” with its aesthetically dark and melodious theme beginning on D. It becomes a monophonic narrative as Sanders’ utilizes careful and beautifully peculiar harmonies —-with tenths and other leaps —–between the upper and lower register of the bass. On “We Shall By Any Means,” the solo seems to express a politically intense and historical moment where African Americans struggled for democracy and equality. However, the theme can now apply to race and gender groups around the world who are fighting for these ideals as well.
The track entitled “Conviction” is driving and also spiritually penetrating. It’s a total musical drama that perfectly glues all of the voices through the compositional brilliance of acclaimed bassist and composer Derrick Hodge. Taylor Eigsti’s gorgeous chord selections and ornamentation on “Conviction” are both clever and sophisticated. Last, “Conviction” features another meritorious drum performance by Scott.
Oracle has an incredible line-up which includes bandleader and drummer Kendrick Scott, pianist Taylor Eigsti, guitarist Mike Moreno, saxophonist John Ellis, and bassist Joe Sanders. The album also features bassist and vocalist Alan Hampton.
Conviction is available on iTunes and Amazon. Check it out.
Copyrighted 2014 K. Shackelford (used with permission from the author)
Kendrick Scott Oracle "Cycling Through Reality" Live at Jazz Standard NYC
March, 2013
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19207655
From
Just the Music
Kendrick Scott in Studio on WBGO 2008
Performers:
- Kendrick Scott: drums
- Fabian Almazan: piano and Fender Rhodes
- Derrick Hodge: bass
- Mike Moreno: guitar
- John Ellis: tenor saxophone and bass clarinet
Credits
- Producer: Josh Jackson
- Mix: Darren Jones, assisted by Yujin Cha and David Tallacksen
Kendrick Scott. Courtesy of World Culture Music
Oracle. What an intriguing name for a jazz ensemble — one that conjures prophecy, divination, mythological seers and soothsayers. It's also reminiscent of drummer Kendrick Scott's inspiration: another drummer-led group, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
Kendrick Scott brought his group, Oracle, to the WBGO studio to play music from his self-released debut, The Source. The quintet plays three Scott originals, including "Memory's Wavering Echo," words borrowed directly from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
Every language has a poet. Consider the language of jazz, which happens to have many. New composers in jazz function like emerging wordsmiths. They inject the narrative of humanity with a fresh shot of adrenaline, and they reinvent the basic vocabulary of a cultural tradition. Scott is a new voice in jazz. He is a drummer, a composer, and a 2008 recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award.
Scott's music doesn't lay so easily in the beat, as one might expect from a drummer. "Whenever I'm composing, I'm actually singing melodies," he says. "I'll call my voicemail and sing a melody into the voicemail. Then when I get home, I sit down at the Fender Rhodes or at the piano and I'll try to harmonize it. And then I'll come up with some rhythms. Melody is first, harmony is second, and rhythm is actually third."
The results are often sprawling, cinematic compositions like the twofer, "Retrospect/View from Above." It's worth the wait, seven minutes into the medley, to hear guitarist Mike Moreno and pianist Fabian Almazan in cascading harmony. This kind of heightened interaction and listening is the result of directing live action in the moment.
Scott learned some valuable lessons when he recorded his debut release, The Source, on his own label, World Culture Music. He labored over every minute detail until his mentor, Terence Blanchard, offered some advice about making records. "It's just a snapshot of who you are at this moment," Blanchard says. "This record doesn't define your whole life. And hopefully after this moment, you'll have more and more records to document that."
Our session with Oracle ends with "The Source," featuring an introduction from bassist Derrick Hodge, Kendrick Scott's bandmate in the Terence Blanchard Sextet.
Mysticism aside, it takes more than a drummer and composer to give Oracle its power.
"The band itself is the oracle, not just me," Scott says. "They send out the messages, and it's free for whoever is listening to interpret however they feel the music should be. You go to the oracle not to get the answer, but to find out what the question is. So you can get to the answer."
Listen to the previous Favorite Session or see our full archive.
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Kendrick Scott Turned His Demons Into Jazz
Kendrick Scott, whose band, Kendrick Scott Oracle, just dropped A Wall Becomes a Bridge in April, knows a few things about walls — particularly the figurative kind.
Being an introvert, the Houston-born, New York-based jazz drummer can get lost inside his own head, dwelling behind personal walls of fear and insecurity. That might surprise those who know he’s toured with jazz greats Charles Lloyd, Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard and had multiple albums released by the prestigious Blue Note Records label.
But shortly after his band’s release of We Are the Drum in 2015, Scott’s anxiety and insecurities stifled him. Sometimes he would hear voices telling him the music he was writing wasn’t good enough; other times he would become distracted, weighing himself against fellow musicians and composers.
When longtime producer Derrick Hodge suggested that he tap into his fears and insecurities and turn them into music, Scott took the advice and came up with “Voices,” the starting point for A Wall Becomes a Bridge. (The band will draw from the album during a pair of shows at Dazzle on Friday, May 3.)
An expansive song, “Voices” ebbs and flows, fueled by Scott’s nuanced drumming and built around a melody that Scott and Hodge hum with Oracle guitarist Mike Moreno and saxophonist John Ellis. Pianist Taylor Eigsti and bassist Joe Sanders also help propel the composition through various peaks and valleys.
Scott says there’s a flow with “Voices” that encompasses the feeling of A Wall Becomes a Bridge. “Even though we go in many directions on the record, I think that was the tipping point in some ways of how I was feeling and learned how to accept what was coming out,” Scott says.
Scott wrote or co-wrote the bulk of the material on the album; he says it’s sometimes easy to get stuck writing alone, so he makes an effort to be around collaborators.
“Feeling other people’s energy is big for me,” Scott says. “I am an introvert, but I do get energy from people. Sometimes I think as artists we get so hung up being in the lab, so to speak, that we forget that the art is bigger than just the music. The art is bigger than the art. The art is actually reflecting our lives.”
While the art reflects the lives of the Oracle musicians, it’s also a response to an era in which our president is more concerned with building walls than bridges. So in addition to making A Wall Becomes a Bridge about overcoming inner obstacles, Scott, who loves to spark conversation, wanted the album’s title to comment on Donald Trump’s policies.
“I actually believe that in this current political climate, this is a bridge for us to be better,” he says. “If we all pay more attention and actually band together and try to get some unity, even within things we disagree about, that’s a good thing; that’s a bridge. I feel the optimistic way of thinking is the way, so we can always stay positive.”
A Wall Becomes a Bridge marks Kendrick Scott Oracle’s fourth album since the group debuted with The Source in 2006.
“If you notice, sonically my records all have a certain theme to them. And I think one of the most paramount things that I try to do is capture a feeling and what’s the intent behind the music that we’re playing,” Scott says.
When he brings compositions to his bandmates, it’s like giving them a small seed they can germinate into a garden, he explains. “I give them a seed and they plant it, and they change it in ways that I wouldn’t know how to do. And that’s what I love about having my band — that everybody tends to the seeds in their own different ways and germinates the ideas in different ways.”
While Scott spends a lot of time performing, he’s also in his second year teaching at the Manhattan School of Music. Two words — “command” and “surrender” — keep coming up as he tries to explain to his students what he’s doing in music and life.
“Each time we sit down and play, it’s going to be for a different purpose,” Scott tells them. “We have to learn to surrender to the moment. That’s one of the hardest things to do as a musician, as a drummer, sometimes, because I’ll be in the practice room and practice something for five hours. And of course, my ego says, ‘Let’s play this tonight, because this is really dope, and I practiced it for five hours.’
“But, really, that has nothing to do with being in that space with those people each night,” he continues. “There’s going to be a different vibe. I can only garner those things to help me build myself as a person, but I can say [whether] I’m going to use this tonight. That’s the ego. So being in that moment and living in that nirvanic place of surrender is so hard to do, and I do that a lot while I’m playing the drums. That’s when I feel like I’m at my most honest self.”
Kendrick Scott Oracle, 7 and 9:30 p.m., Friday, May 3, Dazzle, 1512 Curtis Street, $12-$27.
Exclusive Interview - Kendrick Scott
Kendrick Scott Oracle returns with the release of A Wall Becomes A Bridge, an inspiring new 12-song cycle about overcoming obstacles both personal and collective. The album was produced by Derrick Hodge, and find’s Scott augmenting his long-running quintet with the addition of turntablist Jahi Sundance who joins guitarist Mike Moreno, pianist Taylor Eigsti, reedist John Ellis, and bassist Joe Sanders to expand Oracle’s palette.
Listen to a clip of the interview below in the latest episode of The ArkivJazz Podcast!
ArkivJazz: This is a tremendous project with a great band.
Kendrick Scott: Thank you so much.
AJ: The album is really built around bridges and walls, and both certainly are featured in the news a lot these days, for better or for worse. So, what were your objectives with this project…because it certainly seems to be a really beautiful listen from beginning to end.
KS: For me, the mantra surrounding A Wall Becomes A Bridge is pretty much optimism in the face of everything happening socially, with as much chaos as there is. I think we're thinking of walls as bad things, but I think that with those walls, there are provocations for us the to make them bridges. When I think of the current state in the U.S., I'm just trying to be a little bit more optimistic and hopefully this heightened awareness, and this heightened dialogue that we're going through around all these different issues will hopefully bring us to an area of unity even within our disagreements. We can find some common ground. Finding that tipping point where a wall can become a bridge is one of the things that started this project for me internally, because I have my own walls of fear and insecurity, and I think sometimes that other voices can help. I think sometimes the voices are guiding you in a way where it's just like, okay, let's be cautious about this, or stay away from this but let's go for this, and sometimes the negative voices can override everything that you're trying to do. So, this project is about that struggle, both social and personal. Derrick (Derrick Hodge, producer) came in and said, we’ve got to make some music about being in that place where you know that your voices are talking to you. They’re telling you that you're not good enough and are comparing you to other people and all those things. So, we wanted to look at the process of a wall becoming a bridge not only from it being a wall and then all of a sudden you break it down and it's this beautiful bridge, but if you listen to the record the record actually plays in reverse. The first piece that you hear is called “New Eyes,” which is about perspective because that's after the wall is broken down. After that, you go into “Mocean,” which is the breakthrough when the wall actually breaks down. If you look at the arrows and how the tracks are written, the arrows actually get smaller and smaller all the way down to the last track which is “Archangel.”
AJ: I was going to ask you about that. That’s a great bit of typography and you're obviously getting a signal there.
KS: Right, and within that, trying to approach things with optimism, we started the record at the end of the process. When I was brought up in church, they always used to tell me to pray like you've already gone through the storm and it's done. Just thank God just from the beginning, you know what I mean? That’s kind of what this is, you know, it's like we're in the storm now and we can rejoice already because we already know we're going to come through this. So, if we just start at the other end, where the wall has become a bridge, then we can look at everything with the different perspective of optimism. It's all personal for me and for each member of the band the way we play together, and in the way we take ownership of it. Each player took an element of what I brought in and expanded it in a way that I never thought we could do. That's definitely a wall becoming a bridge for me, because I give it to them and they plant the seed in a way that I never would have thought of planting. I think the bridge for humanity is just us reaching out to each other and saying, what do you think about this? So, that's what the record was about.
AJ: Also, it seems that you’re working with a group of people you're very comfortable with.
KS: Yeah, we've been together for some time.
AJ: I’m sure that allows you to certain amount of freedom to get out get out on the high board and see what happens with reducing the risk. How long did it take you to write the material?
KS: How long did it take me to write it? This is a really interesting question because I really don't know. I've been writing and not writing for years. It's one of those things where again I'll get up in the morning and write something and I literally say it's not good enough and stop writing it. Then, the next day I’ll start something else and say, oh that's not good enough. So, a lot of the session was me bringing in some of those sketches. Some of them were full songs and some were sketches, and Derrick said that we have to break through this wall and open up to everybody else interpreting the intent of what you want to happen with the music and then we can act on that. We had a chalkboard in the studio, and we were writing out the sentiments for each song. Like I said, “New Eyes” was about ‘perspective’, “Mocean” was about ‘breakthrough,’ and those and every other song had a sentiment. As we wrote those sentiments down we were finishing the songs in the studio compared to the sentiment. One of the sentiments was ‘acceptance,’ and so, what does that sound like? Do you see what I mean? So we were actually in a total mind state of intent even in even writing in the moment, which is really scary. That was a risk, but with my brothers, that was one of the most beautiful things that could have happened.
AJ: Well, it comes out as being incredibly well-formed. You guys did a lot of great sculpting and you have Joe Sanders on bass, Mike Moreno on guitar, yourself on drums, and John Ellis (sax), a man who I used to know who played with Charlie Hunter…
KS: Yes, sir.
AJ: He's an amazing reed player and you give him plenty of space to move. You’ve worked with him for a while, right?
KS: Oh yeah, John was one of the first people to give me a job when I came to New York City. We used to play at the Knitting Factory…I remember playing with John in this little bar at the bottom. John had faith in me before I even thought about having faith in myself. We've been playing together forever, me and Mike have been playing together since high school, me and Taylor for about 13 years and same with Joe…about 13 years. We have long-standing relationships in which we've all been playing together in other people's bands and have experienced each other in different settings. For some reason when we all got together something magical happened. I also attribute that to Derrick Hodge, who was playing bass in the band before. Derrick actually saw us play a show when he lived in L.A. I got Joe to play that date, which was on a live feed. Derrick watched that show, heard Joe play, and he said that Joe was the sound of the band. He said that he wanted Joe to play bass and that he wanted to produce. Ever since then, Derrick has been my secret weapon, and produced the last three records. He gives just the right amount of direction and freedom for everybody to be themselves. That’s what I love about the ownership of this band. Taylor is the engine of the band. Joe always knows how to take something that you give him and turn it on its head in a way that you didn't think about. Mike always allows us to have a certain sonic space in the bed that we can lay on. John in all of his reed knowledge, brings this huge balance of soulfulness and intellect. I just love every one of these guys.
AJ: How did you get hooked up with Jahi Sundance?
KS: Yeah, I got hooked up with Jahi through Robert Glasper. I had seen him before working with Glasper, and saw how his voice in particular was important to the overall sound. It’s because of the way he uses the electronics and the way he uses his voice on electronics. It’s very singular in that he uses his voice around the band and in the band setting instead of the band being on top of what he does, which is completely hard to do. What he does is inside of the group, and inside of what's happening. He’s responding in the moment, which is kind of hard for you to do and play the right things. When Derrick suggested that Jahi could make statements around what was happening, as soon as we added that it made everything coalesce.
AJ: Yeah, absolutely. I can hear that on this record and it’s a beautiful thing.
KS: Thank you so much.
AJ: It's an experience that begins, has a middle part, and ends…and everything really holds together well. How do you think you’ve grown from your time with Terence Blanchard up to now? Do you feel like you’ve grown artistically or have refined what you were going for within your own plane?
KS: Every day I'm growing in contentment of who I am as a person. Wayne Shorter has one of the best quotes…he said that music is but a drop of water in the ocean of life, and the more I think about that, the more and more I realize that music isn't about music. That’s really been one of the best things about getting older and having perspective and looking at things in a different way. I've become a better human being and I think that also makes me a better player. I think I've grown as a bandleader in that way, and as a drummer and composer. I think this album is specifically one of surrender where I had to literally surrender, because to me that wall was there and I was just going to keep it there [laughs]. I had to surrender and say let's take the snapshot. Making records is capturing a moment in time. Terence told me a long time ago when I was doing my first record, that you have to do your first record because you have to take that snapshot of yourself at that time. You’ll never be that age again. What happens is once you take that first Polaroid, you look back at it and say, wow, my hair was out of place and I look like I hadn’t slept in two days. Then you look at that snapshot of where you were, and you’re ready to make something new. Then, after that it makes you want to capture the next moment, which means you're moving forward and your body of work is too. You know that at the end of your life, there will be something to look back on. All I'm trying to do now is stay balanced.
AJ: Are you planning on touring the album?
KS: Yes, yes. We have some dates. Right now, we have Boston, Philly, and Brooklyn dates in April, and then we’ll be in Chicago, Denver, and Portland in May.
AJ: That cover is absolutely stunning. Did you come up with that or is that an artist you knew?
KS: Yes, Yashua Klos is artist in Brooklyn, and he does really amazing work. Jason Moran led me to Yashua's work and I told him that we have to do something together. I licensed that image because I fell in love with it and I encourage everybody to check out Yashua's work.
AJ: We’ll spread the word. It's really a kind of a jaw dropper. Well, we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today.
KS: Thank you so much.
PHOTO (L-R): Allen Ginsberg and Thelonious Monk
For Drummer-Composer Kendrick Scott’s 37th Birthday, a Pair of Interviews From 2007, and a DownBeat Article From 2007
For the 37th birthday of drummer-composer Kendrick Scott, I’m posting a pair of interviews that I conducted with him in 2007—the latter one, specifically conducted for a DownBeat “Players” article, comes first. At the bottom of the post is a “directors’ cut” of the article.
Kendrick Scott (Aug. 15, 2007):
TP: I want to talk about your New York experience, and I want to talk about your career as it is now and the label — I won’t have room to go through a lot of personal history, though I want to address some of it, since I want to discuss you as a composer and how you accumulated vocabulary. But first, let’s talk about how you joined Terence. Also, have you played sideman with other major bands besides Terence?
KENDRICK: Actually, the first band that I left school to go with… Well, when I finished Berklee, I went out with the Crusaders. So I was booked to go with the Crusaders, but while I was in my cap and gown, Terence called me and asked me to join the band. So I had to turn him down and say, “Well, I’ve got these gigs with the Crusaders coming up.” So I played with the Crusaders that whole summer, and then when October came, I started with Terence. That was 2003.
TP: Was the Crusaders hookup a Houston hookup?
KENDRICK: It was a Houston hookup. Joe Sample had moved home in I think 1998, and me and Walter Smith and Mark Kelly, a great bass player who played with Scofield, we had played for his homecoming back in Houston, and Joe sat in with us, and Joe remembered me from then. So through Walter’s father, who is also a tenor player… He was asking Walter’s father, “Who is that drummer?” So he asked about me, and then he called me up while I was at Berklee, and he flew me out to L.A. and auditioned me for like three days.
TP: This was during your final year at Berklee?
KENDRICK: Yes. The end of my final year at Berklee.
TP: But he met you while you were in high school.
KENDRICK: He met when I was in high school. He remembered me from high school.
TP: That’s when Terence met you, too. At a jazz camp.
KENDRICK: Terence met me I guess in 1999, my second year at Berklee. The alliance was so strong between the Houston drummers, I always hung out with Harland, whenever I could go to see him. Especially when they were in Boston or any other city where I was, I would go hang out in New Orleans… At IAJE a lot of times. So it was great to meet Terence with Harland, and then, with the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead, that was in ‘99 at the Kennedy Center. That’s actually where he met me and Aaron Parks at the same time.
TP: So he called you while you were on the stand, and you had to…
KENDRICK: I was in the line.
TP: So you missed gigs with him over the summer.
KENDRICK: Yeah, I missed a lot of gigs. The Crusaders were booked solid until then, so I couldn’t really…
TP: And I’m sure they paid good, too.
KENDRICK: Yes, they did!
TP: But apart from the pay, what was the value of the experience?
KENDRICK: Well, the initial draw for me was to take myself out of the kind of straight-ahead barrier that I had kind of…well, I wouldn’t say consciously put myself in, but that I kind of just got in by being talented at what I do. I started getting so much work just playing straight-ahead stuff that I didn’t get any work playing more groove-oriented things, and I thought it was a huge blessing for me to be able to play that type of thing, and especially with those type of people and that type of stage. So I couldn’t deny that. To this day, that’s been a great experience for me.
TP: There’s a groove aspect to your playing, to your flow certainly with Oracle. I was hearing that at Christopher Street, that you’ll do beats, and then you have interesting ways of playing the beats, and timbral things you would do. Is that a correct observation?
KENDRICK: It is. I’m really in tune to space, dynamics, and groove. Those are the things that I love. When I listen to great drummers, it seems like they all have that. I concentrate on those type of things more than I do actually facility or those type of things.
TP: Did playing with the Crusaders burnish your feeling for grooves, or the way you think about them?
KENDRICK: It definitely did, because they have their own way of thinking about the groove, which is so specific that it really helped me in channeling my energy to the groove first, and then everything else lays on top of it. That’s what I try to do even with using space. So that’s one of the things that I always work on, trying, without playing notes or anything, to have the groove there. Most all the great drummers that I listened to did that. They didn’t have to play so many notes to play a strong groove. That’s what I love about drummers like Blade or Tony, and people like that. I really love that they can just leave it up in the air, but the groove is so strong. But the Crusaders were on the other side, “play a strong groove and then let us float over the top of it.” I really thought that was interesting.
TP: During college, did you do any summer sideman work, or outside of Houston…road work with established bands?
KENDRICK: Not really when I was in Houston. When I got to Boston, I had been playing with Darren Barrett, and we did a few tours here and there. While I was at Berklee, Joe Lovano was named one of the artists-in-residence, and we did some gigs with Joe, with another band I played with called Califactors. I did some other things… Actually, I played with Terence. That’s when the relationship really started with Terence… The summer of 2002 is the first time I played with Terence, and we went to Japan for 3 weeks. We played all the Blue Notes in Japan. That’s when it started. It was a rough thing. I’d just been in school, and you get taught how to play in school, but you don’t know how to play unless you’re playing the gig. It was on-the-gig training. Actually, I don’t know if Terence really liked me at first. It was definitely on-the-gig training. I just learned how to use everything that I’ve learned, but then totally abandon. At that time, I was struggling with holding on to those things, like trying to play like Max. “Oh, this section, I should play like Max.” Trying to play like Philly or trying to play like Al Foster. Really, I’ve come to such an enlightenment, actually letting what comes out to come out instead of filtering what I think I would play.
TP: Did Terence encourage you?
KENDRICK: Terence encourages that a lot with us, even now. He encourages mostly about honesty, which is what I try to center my music around nowadays. I don’t ever want to cloud my judgment on what I play by thinking about what the listener wants to hear, or how can I impress someone. I just try to do what I feel in my heart, and if it’s acceptable, cool, but if not, whatever.
TP: You talked about the intense connection with the Houston drummers, spending a lot of time with Eric Harland. Is there an approach to drums that comes out of Houston, in your opinion? Or are there commonalities that you and Harland and Chris Dave…
KENDRICK: Mark Simmons and Jamire Williams. I think the commonality is that we all came out of the church. Gospel music has such a feeling to it that I think the vocabulary that we have actually reflects… It’s funny, because it’s true of a lot of drummers nowadays, especially in the Afro-American community, that we come out of the church, and our vocabulary reflects people that we have been listening to, and these are people who maybe jazz people wouldn’t be listening… People like Marvin McQuiddy(?) or even people like Dennis Chambers. So we kind of fused that gospel mentality with jazz, and it created a fresh sound for us. At the time, I wasn’t thinking of it that way. I was just trying to emulate what Chris Dave and Harland were doing while I was playing. But the tricky part about it is, every generation has started to do that. Chris Dave looked up to Sebastian Whitaker, who is a great drummer. Actually, he’s a blind drummer in Houston. If you see him play, if you see the way he sets his drums up, you can see similarities between him and all of us. We all sit high and play low, into the drums. I felt it was so empowering but it was also so practical, because it means that all the instruments are down here and ready for me to play. It’s a better thing for your posture and all that type of thing. So learning that from a blind man… That passed on down from Chris to Eric to Mark Simmons to me, and to Jamire…
TP: That’s also a New Orleans thing, no? It’s a parade drum posture. That’s how Idris plays, how Blackwell used to play. Now that I think of it.
KENDRICK: Yes. It provides your body so much… You can put the momentum into the drums, instead of you sitting underneath them and going up to them.
TP: So it was less about Sebastian Whitaker’s vocabulary than the way he addressed the drums.
KENDRICK: Yes. Because his vocabulary was thoroughly rooted in Art Blakey. One of his records is One For Bu, which is a good record. We definitely took from that vocabulary, but us being church musicians, we were always hearing different guys coming out of church and we were like, “Well, what if we play these church type of ideas within our idiom.” For me, I got in a lot of trouble in high school trying to set up the band playing church fills, which didn’t work. But eventually, when I learned how to use them better, they did work.
TP: Was it one particular church, or a network of Baptist churches in Houston?
KENDRICK: No, it was just a network. In Houston there are a lot of mega-churches.
TP: Were the music directors in those churches sympathetic to a jazz attitude, or was that a thing you had to keep quiet…
KENDRICK: Not really. Especially with youth and young adults, I found it very encouraging that they would let us… They wouldn’t censor us, but they would definitely keep their eye on us and make sure we weren’t going too far. But they allowed us to express ourselves, how we felt, which was great, and which is what I see in music now. Sometimes I think we’re on the edge and we go too far, but I think that level of expression is something that is needed.
TP: It’s a very interesting thing, not just with drummers, but overall with the African-American sector of the jazz community under 40, how many people do come out of the church experience. Do you have any observations on why that is? Is it because that’s where instruments are available, whereas in inner city high schools they’re not so readily available?
KENDRICK: That’s definitely a part of it nowadays, with arts being gone from the schools. But for me, when I went to elementary school, I can’t even remember… I think we had music, but it wasn’t music where we had the instruments to play. We would go in and play on small little tambourines or something. But for me, I was always going to church, so the instruments were always at church. My mother was an instrumentalist also, so I would always be at choir rehearsal… She plays piano. The way my family worked is, my mother played, my brother also played piano and organ (he’s ten years older), and my father was the sound man. When we went to the rehearsal, my mom was playing and my dad was working the sound for the choir. So when rehearsal was over, my dad would be wrapping things up, my mom would be talking to the director, and I would go jump on the drums. I would bother the drummer, whose name was Roderick (or the other drummer, Eric), and say, “Man, let me play!” Of course, there were four or five other kids there who’d want to get on the drums, too. But they would let me get on, and eventually my father asked Roderick to give me lessons. That’s where it started. I was around 6 or 7.
TP: You were just feeling it.
KENDRICK: I was just feeling it early on. I just love my parents for readily being there and saying, “Just go for it.”
TP: Forgive me if this is stretching it too much, but one notion in the African-American church is the idea that when you’re playing music there’s a testimony going on, a very personal statement…
KENDRICK: Oh, yeah.
TP: Which I think has had a lot to do, whether directly or indirectly, with the nature and course of innovation across the jazz timeline. I’m wondering if you feel in any way that’s something else you got from the church background.
KENDRICK: I never tried to push religion on people. But for me, musically, that is my homage to God. When I play my instrument, that’s like the highest form of thanks that I can give for everything in my life, period. That’s why I take music so seriously, and that’s also why I think honesty is so key when you’re playing. When you start putting ego and things like that in your playing, that cuts you off from actually getting your blessing from playing.
TP: Do you play with churches in New York?
KENDRICK: I should. I don’t play with churches in New York, though.
TP: Back to Terence. You said you had to get rid of what you knew. That was the biggest challenge?
KENDRICK: It still is.
TP: When you were learning, people are telling me that you’d obviously mastered a lot of vocabulary… One thing you said is that you were very blessed to be good at what you do, which is a straight-ahead drummer, so you were happy to be able to play the groove with the Crusaders. For a 27-year-old guy, what does being a straight ahead drummer mean in 2007?
KENDRICK: To me, nowadays, being a straight-ahead drummer just means the ability to get to the essence of what the master played. I’m still in a quest daily to get to that. But I feel I was talented enough to not only feel it, but get to playing it more, or get to the feeling of Max Roach or get to the feeling of Shelley Mane, rather than… I mean, other than other people who were able to get to the feel of Bernard Purdie before I could. Studying Bernard Purdie is something I’m doing now, whereas I just got so enthralled with listening to straight-ahead music as a kid, when I was 14, which I think was kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time, because now I’m kind of going backwards listening to other music. I think that’s what definitely helped me out.
TP: Did you get to straight-ahead music through your parents? Your teachers at school? So many kids of your generation are just into what’s around them, what’s popular with their peer group. For instance, my daughter isn’t allowed to watch MTV or VH-1, but she knows every song and all the accouterments. It’s in the air.
KENDRICK: Through my family life… My mother went to University of North Texas, and there she studied classical piano. Her classical training allowed her to do things in gospel music that were a little bit out of the realm. She would also play weddings and different engagements where she would pull out the Real Book and play around with stuff. I always thought, “Wow, that sounds kind of cool.” At the time, she didn’t have many jazz records per se, but she had a lot of things that were open… She had Stevie Wonder playing sometimes on the radio. I’d think, wow, it’s not jazz, but the way the chords were moving, it really drew me in. Then at age 14, I guess, I was graduating from middle school. I was telling you that mega-churches are big in Texas, but the biggest thing behind mega-churches is Texas football. I wanted to join one of the biggest high school marching bands in Texas, which was Willow Ridge—the Willow Ridge Marching Band. So for me, I wanted to play snare drum, because those were the most flashy guys, their chops were killin’, and they were twirling sticks, they were dancing. My decision came when my mother said, “Look, I want you to go to this performing arts high school; I think you’re really talented and you might be able to do something with it.” But my head was, I want to play snare drum and then go on to Prairie View University, where my father went to school, which is right around the corner from Houston, because they had an awesome drum line.
TP: That’s an all-black school.
KENDRICK: Right, that’s an all-black. My Mom was like, “Look, you need to go and get with a teacher,” so she got me the teacher at Texas Southern University, which is another black school which is in Houston, and she got me with the teacher. He sat me down and he just showed me “Seven Steps To Heaven.” He showed me the record. Then I was like, “Wow, who is that?!” Then he said “Tony Williams,” whatever, blah-blah-blah. I said, “Okay, that’s kind of cool.” It wasn’t a hard decision. It wasn’t a point of decision. But it was definitely a point in my life where I could see the turn I was turning towards. So what I did for my audition for the performing arts high school is I played “Seven Steps to Heaven” on the drums. I had 5 toms, and I said, [SINGS MELODY]. I played the solo. That’s when it started. I had them tuned to that…
TP: So your mother was able to give you really intelligent critique from early on.
KENDRICK: Oh, a lot. She’s a great musician and also a great mother, to let me do what I do.
[END OF FIRST SOUND FILE]
TP: I’d like to talk to you about the group of musicians who…I guess we could speak about the people who are on your record. Apart from your compositional abilities and the overall arc of the record, it’s interesting how you to deploy everyone’s different sound. Just the guitar players, Lionel, Mike Moreno, and Lage, are three of the most creative and distinctive of the new guitar players. What’s different about them. What’s in common? What made you think you could use all of them?
KENDRICK: I actually was talking about this with somebody. I think The Source actually turned out to be a snapshot of myself at one moment. But actually, the people that I used were…it shows you the timeline from high school all the way up until that point. I had been playing in high school all the time with Mike, and to be honest, Mike was always on the cutting edge, before any of us were. He would show us the records, and we would be, like, “Oh, okay,” and we would go check it out. Mike’s sound is so lush. Guitar is one of my favorite instruments, and partly why I had the three different guitarists is… I love texture, and each of them plays texture a certain way. Mike can float and sting like a butterfly. His things can be ethereal and on top.
I started playing with Lage right when I got to Berklee, and because he’s great friends with Jaleel, and I played with Jaleel a lot. I could always hear in Lage the influences of Grant Green and George Benson, and I always was drawn to those type of things with the jazz purist attitude I had at the time in school. For me, Grant Green and Wes…that was IT for me. So Lage’s sound draws me to that mindset. So I always played with Lage in school.
The funny thing was, Lionel and I played less than five times during my whole time at Berklee, though we knew each other. So when we got in Terence’s band, rhythmically, as a drummer, I’m still lost—I’m still trying to figure out where he is. For somebody to play the guitar in that way and involve all the rhythmic aspects that he uses, I was always flabbergasted.
So those were the parts of each person that I wanted to use, and if I could have killed each one of them and taken an attribute from all three, I would be a badass guitar player.
TP: You used Aaron Parks and Robert Glasper.
KENDRICK: Again, they represent two aspects of my growth. Robert and I grew up in the gospel community. His mother was a singer, and a blues singer, and a choir director also. She ran the gamut.
TP: She sounds like quite a woman.
KENDRICK: She was. Robert’s personality is very much an indication of how she was. She was a great young and inspired mother. The last piece on Robert’s recent CD, the eulogy that Joe Ratliff gave about her was so fitting, because when she lived, that was the best part. Like I said, she went from being a blues singer on Saturday night, and then a few hours later she was up at church. Robert came up in that, and he learned how to adapt. That’s really what drew me to Robert, because he knew how to adapt before I did. When I was a jazz purist, he was in the gospel thing, and he was more bringing his gospel into the jazz stuff, whereas I was kind of keeping them separate.
Aaron’s talent was so natural on the instrument, and I always thought that he had studied the instrument classically, although he actually hasn’t. For me, again, I am drawn to harmony and chordal instruments. Robert can run up and down the piano spontaneously, and he can create different cascading lines and so on, but I thought Aaron could lay down certain harmonic motions that would touch me in a certain way where he I could play… He would make me play something different every time. I always love that feeling, because I always felt that from a person like Herbie or Keith Jarrett or somebody like that. Again, that’s probably the way I would play if I were able to really play the piano, and I felt that Aaron could instantly read the chart and go beyond the page. That was like the top thing. Which everybody does, but I felt he could really sit down and read the music, and instantly hear other textures and other things that you weren’t even thinking about.
TP: Were most of the tunes written for the record?
KENDRICK: They weren’t written for the record. A lot of those pieces are really old. The piece “VCB:” was written in high school. I was hanging out with Robert one day, we were about to go to a party or something, and I said, “Rob, I’ve got this melody and I’ve got this form of this tune that I want to do—can you help me?” He said, “Sure.” At the time, we were seriously watching TV. He went to the keyboard, he was still watching TV, and I was singing the melody, and he was like, “Oh, oh!” Then I would touch a few notes, I’d be like, “This is kind of what I’m hearing,” and then he would play a chord and say, “That’s what you’re hearing?” I’d say, “Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah!!” He would literally watch the TV, came up with all the chords, and then I was like, “Rob, wait. Let me write it down.” He said, “Come on, man, I’m trying to watch this TV…’ That’s the way that tune got written—me singing and him being like, “What are you singing?” That was one of my first experiences at writing.
After that, I did a lot of writing in college. That was my junior year of high school. It subsided a bit my senior, with school and everything. I wasn’t hearing anything. Then when I got to Berklee, I started hearing a lot more things, just being exposed to so many different people and vibes. I’m mostly a singing composer.
TP: Elaborate on that.
KENDRICK: For me, the message, especially in gospel music, always takes precedence over everything else. Even when I went to church and I’d hear someone sing a cappella by themselves, and they would sing a message and they would hear the note, that would just hit you. That always gave me more goosebumps than when a drummer played the most flashy thing he could play. So I’ve always been drawn to that, and I’m always singing while I’m playing. When I’m sitting around, I’m always singing melodies and hearing melodies, and I think that’s partly the way I play and partly the way I write.
TP: So you hear the drums melodically.
KENDRICK: I hear the drums melodically. The funny thing is, I’m a drummer but I hear the drums subordinate to the music, to the band. There are times when I think… I definitely believe in give-and-take. That’s one of the biggest things I use in my playing, is give-and-take. If I’m going to play time for this much, then I’ll give you no time. If I’m going to play colors, maybe I won’t play any colors—I’ll just bash. The give-and-take is a great thing to use for me personally. But I’ve always had that feeling, and I think harmonically and melodically, stuff moves so well together that rhythmically you just have to give it a little push. I think that’s why my drumming is what it is—because I give it that little push. However, I’m working on becoming more of (I don’t know how to say it) a drummer’s drummer, and I’m always practicing those things…
TP: By “drummer’s drummer,” do you mean having certain technical things and signature things?
KENDRICK: Having more technical things and my signature things. The crazy thing of it was, I was teaching a lesson to a guy, and he was asking me about those type of things, and I told him that I practice all of that stuff. So I started playing some of it for him. I’ve been practicing claves like El Negro or Antonio would play, and I started playing those things, and he said, “Wow, what are you doing?” I said, “I practice this stuff all the time, but you would never know it because I don’t use that stuff.” That’s partly because of the honesty thing that I talked about—if it doesn’t honestly come to me, I’m not just going to throw it in there just to play it. I’m still trying to work at that balance of bringing in new things, but being honest… Just because you practice it doesn’t mean you have to play it.
TP: But you could write it. Do you write to give yourself things to play also?
KENDRICK: That’s what I’m working on now, is getting myself to write to feature myself. That’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, is just say, “Okay, I want to write an up-tempo, I want it to feature the drums, I want it to do this and that.” It’s just one of those things that dove across my mind.
TP: Are you working on another body of…
KENDRICK: Right now I’m writing, and most of the tunes are coming out to be… It’s funny. I’d probably be one of the only drummers that would write a ballads record. I don’t think this next record will be a ballads record, but the ballads are coming to me first. That’s all I’m hearing. It’s weird.
TP: Another thing about the cast of characters on the record is that it’s such a diverse group of people, ethnically, geographically and the whole thing, which is a sort of microcosm of the jazz world today in many ways. For someone who grew up in New York City and saw how politicized and cliquish things got in the ‘80s, one got a sense of a certain ethnic-racial polarization that translated into musical style. But I notice that less with musicians over the last 15 years. A lot of people seem to be crossing those boundaries. Does that seem to be a fair statement to you?
KENDRICK: For me especially, and for most of us from Houston because we all went to a certain high school. Our high school ranged from everything from Vietnamese to African-American to Indian to Caucasian—everything. So from age 14, and even before that… I went to a magnet school in elementary school that had so many different types of people. From an early age we were exposed to so many different types of people and cultures that we learned to embrace it at an early age—not really think about it, but just embrace it.
TP: Does that translate to musical choices. Does Bjork or Radiohead mean as much to you as it might to…
KENDRICK: To everybody else. I don’t know. I think it does. I think it does because… Maybe one of the reasons I would listen to Radiohead in high school is because one of my friends, whose music I wasn’t readily going to listen to, listened to it, and it opened my ears to that type of shit. I think I definitely benefitted from that, especially being around different artists from different genres. Because a lot of times, to be honest, maybe they weren’t listening to jazz. When they were doing their thing, they had different things on—maybe Joni or Rolling Stones or whatever. But I think that type of shit definitely translates to how we come together nowadays.
TP: It seems like a very blended record. But on the other hand, Terence has that quality of being able to take in information from a lot of different places and create a unified sound out of it. It sounds like you were predisposed to do that, but that you learned a lot of the techniques…
KENDRICK: I did. The funny thing about it is, when we were doing the record… Glasper’s just a funny guy. When we were in the studio, he was calling the record “The Terence Blanchard outtakes.” It has the feeling of some of those things that Terence does. I’ve always been in love with the cinematic approach to writing and to music, and with the singing thing as well, it’s perfect to the way I want to write music. So that was funny, because I had all those people at the studio at the same time, and Robert was cracking jokes. So before it was Kendrick Scott Oracle, it was called “Noah’s Ark,” because I took three of every instrument and tried to have it on my record. That was some funny shit, “Noah’s Ark.”
TP: Any other sideman gigs over these last four years with major bands besides Terence?
KENDRICK: I’ve been playing with David Sanborn of late as part of a trio of musicians. What’s funny is, when I first came out of Berklee, that whole summer the Crusaders and David Sanborn were doing double bills. He heard me then, and finally later we got to hook up and play. I was fortunate enough to play with the late, great Don Alias before he passed, which was a true honor for me. At the beginning of this year, I played with John Scofield in a trio with John Patitucci. We went to Uruguay and Argentina and other places. I played with Diane Reeves at the end of last year; we did some orchestra things with her. I played with Maria Schneider’s Big Band once. That was awesome. Her writing is awesome. I’m just drawn to writers.
Speaking of writers, with Terence we played with the Metropole Orchestra at Northsea, and Vince Mendoza was with them. Vince is a real hip cat. The way he writes is amazing. Now I’m listening to a few of Joni Mitchell’s records where he did the orchestration and conducting. Jimmy Greene…
TP: Another Eric Harland connection.
KENDRICK: Yes. Well, that’s the blessing of coming from that line of musicians. Harland got me in contact with Terence, and then Chris Dave got Harland in touch with Kenny Garrett. Everything kind of happens like that. Harland also got Jamire Williams with Jacky Terasson.
TP: You’re talking about practicing montunos, playing with Don Alias. Another dynamic of jazz over the last 10-15 years is bringing all these rhythms into the mainstream of the music rather than being exotic. Not that it’s anything new, but it seems that a much larger percentage of working musicians need to know all this stuff to be able to function. So it sounds like you’re spending a lot of time listening to music of other cultures and Afro-diasporic music.
KENDRICK: I definitely do. The thing I feel about Latin and World music that I find very interesting is that the music we’re studying is actually popular music in their cultures. So I’m trying to figure out a way to make jazz have the popular type of thing without necessarily making it too simple or dumbed down. That’s what I practice at home, is using those elements from those rhythms and actually making them sound in a way where people can accept them but also be challenged to listen to them. Latin and African rhythms are paramount.
TP: Do you play hand drums, skin-on-skin?
KENDRICK: I really don’t. I dabble a little bit, and I have a feeling for them, but I don’t…
TP: I notice you use your hands on the drumkit.
KENDRICK: Yes. I definitely have a feeling for the sounds. But actually making them, I leave that to the bad cats.
TP: Tell me your impressions of Max Roach as someone you heard early on and were thinking about.
KENDRICK: Early on, listening to jazz, I always listened for the bounce in the music. I noticed that certain drummers had that bounce. Roy Haynes was one of them and Max was the other. Listening to bebop, Bud Powell and Bird… I thought the bounce that he created while he was playing actually created the hump, so to speak, in the music, and that really grabbed me the first time I heard Max Roach.
Not only did it do that, but he’s always called a melodic drummer, and I think that is definitely so. The way he approached the drums, not only just the way he played them, but the tuning… The tuning of the drums and the cymbals that he used were all very important in his sound. I think that doesn’t get as much attention as it should, because those type of things separate the good drummers from the great drummers. He’s playing the hell out of the drums, but he’s also approaching them and tuning them a certain way, to really make it melodic. So he’s not only playing melodic; he’s making it melodic. That really affected me in a certain way, so that when I go home and practice patterns, that’s what I’m going for—to achieve a certain melodic flow within the drums like he had. You can get the feeling that he practiced figures, and later on, when he played, they became shapes. They became octagons and triangles when he played, but when he was actually at home practicing it, it might have been very simple—simple rudiments. I think he was just a master of creating shapes on the drums.
TP: Are you familiar with his solo drum compositions?
KENDRICK: Yeah. “The Drum Also Waltzes.” That stuff is amazing to me, because he was a pioneer in playing ostinatos. It’s different now… It’s funny how these two things tie in. If you think of “The Drum Also Waltzes,” the type of ostinato he was playing—which was kind of simple, but not simple the way he played it—it’s the same type of ostinato you would hear when Antonio plays the claves and he’s soloing over the top of them. I think the lineage of drumming is still coming from Max and all the masters, which it should. I think that’s the great thing about drumming right now, is that we’re expanding, we’re going more outside, but it still keys in on things that the masters that we look at were doing.
[END OF CONVERSATION]
*_*_*_
Kendrick Scott (WKCR, June 28, 2007):
TP: Kendrick’s record features a slew of musicians… [ETC.] Kendrick Scott is performing with Oracle, with different personnel, at Iridium at midnight as part of the Round Midnight series they do there. Let’s bring you to the audience through the mundane path of having you introduce the personnel.
KENDRICK: Oh, no, that’s good. On piano we have Fabian Amanzar. Mike Moreno on guitar. John Ellis on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet. Matt Brewer playing bass.
TP: You’ve been playing with Terence Blanchard since 2003, four years. There’s a recording you did with him called Flow, where he seems to have tuned in to a lot of ideas that strong young musicians in their twenties are paying attention to—world rhythms and sounds, melodies from very highbrow contemporary pop music, and so on.
KENDRICK: Right.
TP: You on this seem to have brought in a lot of similar information and somehow filtered it into your own way of seeing things.
KENDRICK: Right.
TP: I’m sure you’ve garnered a lot from watching a master like Terence Blanchard in action, but this date doesn’t particularly sound like him. How did the pieces for this recording fall into place?
KENDRICK: I’ll start with Terence, because it was interesting joining his band. I came at the time when Terence had just moved to Blue Note, and he was starting to branch out and get a lot of young musicians. I noticed more and more that Terence’s film career and the sound of things he would do in films was creeping into the writing for the band—the ethereal sounds, the drums, the beats, some of the world rhythms he was using. When we did Flow, that kind of happened on that CD. Then when I was doing my own CD, I started… I’ve always been drawn to those type of sounds. The writing on the CD actually spans from my college days, where I was in Berklee College of Music, and some of them even from high school, Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and up to about a few years ago. So I started compiling all of the songs together, and I actually went in and recorded a few times. I liked the first day and I didn’t like the second day. So a year later, I came back and fixed it all up and put it all together, just an amalgam of all the music.
TP: Was a lot of the music written for the musicians involved? There are three guitarists—Lionel Loueke, Lage Lund and Mike Moreno; Myron Walden, Seamus Blake and Walter Smith are the saxophonists; Gretchen Parlato sings; Aaron Parks more and Robert Glasper less are the pianists and keyboardists. A lot of different sounds and tonal personalities…
KENDRICK: Not all of it, but most of the music was written with a sound in mind. I’ll take, for instance, Lage, some of the songs that he played on—“The Source’ and also on “Psalm”—were written with his sound in mind. When we were at Berklee, we would have sessions and play as a band all the time with some groups. So everybody had a clear part to play in all of that music.
TP: Was the record workshopped live at all?
KENDRICK: No.
TP: So it all came together in the studio.
KENDRICK: As you can see with all the talent I had on there, it’s kind of hard to get everybody… I’d always heard that, but as a bandleader I see what that’s all about.
TP: And on Saturday night you’ll be playing primarily material from this recording?
KENDRICK: Yes, primarily material from that. Just a few different things from other live shows that I’ve done.
TP: Let’s hear “The Source,” which you mentioned. Robert Glasper plays fender Rhodes and Aaron Parks plays acoustic piano, Kendrick Scott, drums and voice, Myron Walden on soprano sax, Walter Smith on tenor sax, and Derrick Hodge on acoustic bass… [PLUS “Between The Lines”]
You and Mike Moreno attended high school at the same time, the same high school that Robert Glasper and Jason Moran attended, as did Eric Harland, from whom you inherited the drum chair with Terence Blanchard. Also on the track were John Ellis, Aaron Parks, Doug Weiss and Kendrick Scott. [ETC.] There seems to be something about the way music is taught at this high school in Houston that produces not only technically proficient musicians, but musicians who seem equipped to approach this business with their own point of view.
KENDRICK: I think what mainly set our high school apart was the chances and opportunities we had to go and hear music, and to play music. As high schoolers we had 3 or 4 gigs a week, which is something people usually don’t do until they get to New York. Our high school teacher, our band director, Robert Morgan, got us gigs. You had to keep your grades up, and you can do some gigs. If you made a D or an F, no gigs this week. So it was an incentive. We were making a little bit of money, too. We learned so many things about going to the gig and being on time, those small things, but the greatest thing is that we were playing music so much.
TP: Were they gigs of all kids from the high school, or gigs with experienced musicians?
KENDRICK: They were all combos from the school. But the other great thing at the school was that a lot of artists-in-residence came through. While I was there, Kenny Barron and Cyrus Chestnut and so many other people came through the school week by week.
TP: So it took the music off the paper.
KENDRICK: It took the music off the paper. Everybody was self-motivated to practice on their own. So the practicality of playing was actually the best thing for us. That’s what I really appreciate about the whole experience, that I wasn’t so caught up with practicing in my little bubble. It was more about getting to play with people and learning the experience.
TP: Did you play a wide spectrum of music back then, too.
KENDRICK: Yes. My parents are gospel musicians, so I started playing drums pretty much in the church. Throughout high school I was playing church and I was playing a few other gigs here and there, but mainly jazz stuff. It was a great experience to be exposed…
TP: Was it basically a backbeat sort of thing, or a more contemporary style of drumming?
KENDRICK: The church where I was playing was pretty traditional. We did a few other things that were out of the normal traditional realm. But I would say modern gospel music, not too far removed.
TP: Were there any sacred-secular issues in playing jazz for you as a young guy, or did they not come up so much?
KENDRICK: It didn’t come up. Sometimes I would invite some of my church members to come see me play at the school, and they’d be like, “I don’t know, I don’t know about jazz,” and this and that. I’d be like, “Well, you know…” I don’t separate the two, because for me, my gift doesn’t have one place or venue that it’s supposed to go. I think it can be used for good in all venues.
TP: When did jazz begin to come into your consciousness? When you entered high school?
KENDRICK: Yes, at age 14. Before then, my main goal in life was to play the snare drum in a marching band. Because in Texas, marching bands are huge, so I was always like, “I want to play the snare drum in the marching band!” There was a great high school band called the Willow Ridge High School band, and they had all of these snare drums… The drum line was excellent, and I wanted to be a snare drummer. At that point, my Mom (bless her for doing this) said, “Look, you’re going to go to the Performing Arts High School; go in there and practice.” So what I did was, I got with a teacher and I learned how to play “Seven Steps To Heaven” on the drums. I tuned the drums a certain way to play it. And I got in somehow! Then that was that right turn. We’re going this way, not…
TP: How did you know about “Seven Steps To Heaven”?
KENDRICK: I had been listening to jazz on and off. I had a CD by Lionel Hampton called Ring Them Bells. Every now and then, I would hear jazz, and to tell you the truth I wasn’t totally sparked by it right away. But when I got into PVA, which is Performing Arts High School, it was amazing. I couldn’t believe it.
TP: At a school like that, I suppose that you’re not going against peer pressure in playing jazz. It would have been a status thing, and not an oddball thing to be doing.
KENDRICK: Not at all. Actually, the whole school embraces anything like that. We go to the theater department, and they’re studying all kinds of things. Talking about Terence, we actually did an artist-in-residence program in Moline, Illinois, for two weeks. I noticed that you get more inspired by being around people who are doing similar things to what you’re doing. Even though all of them weren’t actually musicians, being with artists and people in theater, all the people in the arts, really inspires you to do your thing. Also, it took the veil away from being this weird thing to just being open.
TP: As a young guy in high school (1994-1998), who were drummers you were using as role models, picking up ideas? Were they the iconic older drummers, or people from the generation that came up in the ‘80s and beyond?
KENDRICK: The most amazing thing to me about Houston right now is the amount of drummers coming out of Houston. The local drummers were like the big drummers now. Chris Dave, who played with M’shell Ndegeocello and Kenny Garrett, and Eric Harland, who’s playing with everybody, and also Mark Simmons, who plays with Al Jarreau, and then Herman Matthews, who plays with Tom Jones. So many people. But the biggest guy of all in town was Sebastian Whitaker. He pretty much taught us all. In that environment, all I had to do was just look around and go to a random place in Houston, go to the Convention Center or something, and I’d see Chris playing or somebody else playing. Those were my main inspirations at the time. Then I started listening to DeJohnette and Shadow Wilson and Roy Haynes, all these different people, and those were my big idols.
TP: So you were plucking ideas from all across the timeline.
KENDRICK: All across it. That was the great thing about our music library at the school, too. We had a lot of different things available to us.
TP: You’re pretty busy. On the road with Terence Blanchard, playing in a lot of people’s bands, obviously doing a lot of composing, and running a label. Apart from the obvious reasons, why did you decide to take on this responsibility?
KENDRICK: The label itself came along because I noticed a need for younger musicians to take snapshots of themselves, to take those pictures of their growth. I noticed that big labels aren’t doing that well now. So pretty much, it was one of those things where I felt that we shouldn’t wait for anybody to do anything for us—we should take the initiative.
TP: A notion you share with countless jazz musicians before you. But actually putting that together, producing dates, recruiting artists, etc., is a lot of to do. Did you see it as an investment in the future?
KENDRICK: It’s definitely an investment in the future. For ourselves… I feel if we start making these snapshots now, and making these records now, they’ll only get better with time. We need to document our actual growth and our writing at each moment. I realized that’s what all of my heroes did. I listen to Art Blakey, and he has all these records. I’m like, “wow, if I could just make half of these records, what can I work on between each one to take a new snapshot of myself and to develop my talent?”
TP: Could you speak briefly about your interest in composing. You seem to be thinking about the whole ensemble as you’re playing. Everything seems to be covered. Does composing go back to high school?
KENDRICK: Composition has always been so unconventional for me, because… I wouldn’t say that theoretically I’m the best composer. But most of my songs come from me singing, actually, like me sitting at the drums and singing a melody. I think that my songs are more singable than anything, and I always felt like if I wanted to go hear myself play, I would want to go away from the gig singing something and remembering something. So I always try to make the songs in some way singable. Coming from the background I come from in the church, all it takes is one line or something that will catch you in a certain way. I also think compositionally on the drums that way, to leave space, so the messages can come through, and not totally bombard the music with drums themselves, but try to develop the band as the whole vibe and develop the message. That’s part of the reason why the band is called Oracle.
TP: So a lot of the counterpoint would be coming out of a call-and-response attitude.
KENDRICK: Yes, always call-and-response. But I always try to make the message simple.
[END OF CONVERSATION]
*_*_*_*_
Kendrick Scott (DownBeat Players Article, 2007, “Directors’ Cut”:
“I noticed a need for younger musicians to document their growth and writing at each moment,” said Kendrick Scott, explaining why he decided to launch World Culture Music, his imprint label, in 2007.
By evidence of his debut release, The Source, the 27-year-old drummer, a Houston native, is more than ready for prime time. Each of the eleven tunes, ten composed or co-composed by Scott, contain strong melodies, which he sets off with ethereal sounds and an array of world, contemporary and hardcore jazz beats. Although he barely solos, Scott asserts his footprint throughout, orchestrating the individualistic tonal personalities of a diverse cast of twenty- and thirty-something New York A-listers—guitarists Lionel Loueke, Mike Moreno and Lage Lund, pianists Aaron Parks and Robert Glasper, wind players Seamus Blake, Myron Walden and Walter Smith, bassist Derrick Hodge, and vocalist Gretchen Parlato—with sure-handed grooves across the tempo spectrum, impeccable dynamics, and a penchant for informed call-and-response. It sounds like anything but a first attempt, and it takes you on a journey.
“Kendrick is great at orchestrating, but he’s even better at trying new things every night,” said Terence Blanchard, who hired Scott out of Berklee in Fall 2003 after a three-week tryout the previous summer, featured him extensively on the 2005 release Flow, and continues to retain his services. “He experiments at being creative within the framework and context of the situation. He has amazing technique, but that’s not what he wants to display as a musician. He’s also a gentleman, with a lot of class, which translates into his musical personality.”
“I hear the drums melodically, as subordinate to the band,” said Scott. “I believe in give-and-take. I’ll play time for this much, then give you no time. I’ll play colors, then maybe just bash. I’m working on becoming more of a drummer’s drummer, having more technical things with my own signature, but if something doesn’t come honestly to me, I won’t play it. For me, the message always takes precedence over everything. Most of my songs come from sitting at the drums and singing a melody, and I like to leave space so the messages can come through—you don’t need a lot of notes to play a strong groove. When you start putting ego into your playing, it cuts you off from getting your blessing.
“With Terence, I learned how to use everything I knew, and then totally abandon it. Early on with him, I’d think, ‘This section, I should play like Max Roach,” or play like Philly Joe or Al Foster. Really, I’ve come to such an enlightenment, actually letting things come out instead of filtering what I think I ought to play.”
Scott developed the notion of music as testimony during formative years—his mother and older brother played keyboards professionally on Houston’s church circuit, and, as he puts it, “I was always at choir rehearsal.” It’s a background he shares with such fellow Houstonians as Glasper and drummers Eric Harland, Chris Dave, Mark Simmons and Jamire Williams, all established professionals, who came up during the ‘90s under Robert Morgan at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Scott nailed his high school audition by playing “Seven Steps To Heaven” on a drumset containing five tuned tom-toms.
“Kendrick already had a deep understanding about the music’s history,” Harland recalled. “Early on he could emulate Philly Joe, Max Roach, Lewis Nash. Later, he checked out different things and opened up his sound.”
“We fused a gospel mentality with the jazz idiom, and it created a fresh sound for us,” said Scott of his Houston cohort.“We also looked up to Sebastian Whitaker, a blind drummer with deep roots in Art Blakey. Through him, we all sit high and play low, into the drums. Then also, our high school—and my elementary school—had many different types of people, from Vietnamese to African-American to Indian to Caucasian, so we learned to embrace diverse cultures from an early age. For example, a friend listened to Radiohead, and opened my ears to that type of thing, which I benefited from.”
On down time from Blanchard’s band, Scott does not lack for employment—his recent c.v. includes engagements with David Sanborn, John Scofield, and Maria Schneider. Off the bandstand, he oversees his label; joining The Source in the World Culture Music catalog are Between The Lines by Moreno, Scott’s PVA classmate, and The Wish, by singer Julie Hardy. “It’s an investment in the future,” Scott said. “We shouldn’t wait for anyone to do anything for us. If we start recording these snapshots now, they’ll only get better with time.”
https://www.msmnyc.edu/news/msm-spotlight-kendrick-scott-msm-jazz-faculty-member/
January 24, 2020
MSM Spotlight: Kendrick Scott, MSM Jazz Faculty Member
Downbeat Magazine calls drummer and composer Kendrick Scott a “rising star,” and for The New York Times, “as a drummer, his time is now.” Kendrick is leading MSM students in a performance of his work Mantra during the special concert MSM Icons: Terence Blanchard with the MSM Studio Orchestra on Friday, January 24.
How has it been working with Terence on this concert?
Kendrick: Terence is one of the most amazing people. On a human level, he doesn’t have an ego and encourages everybody to contribute. He has one of the strongest forms of leadership that I’ve ever experienced. One thing I’ve learned from Terence is how to surrender to different musical moments and use everybody’s greatest talents in their own way rather than directing them how to do it your way.
I think his album A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina) winning a Grammy in 2009, was a real reflection of his leadership and vision. It was incredible that he mustered up the courage and wherewithal to actually make a recording during the tumultuous time for his city, and I’m looking forward to sharing this work with the audience on Friday.
You wrote Mantra for Terence’s album being performed in the concert on Friday—can you tell us about the meaning behind the composition?
Kendrick: I had written Mantra some time before the album was recorded, but this was the first time it had been arranged and recorded for an orchestra. It was actually my first time ever writing anything for an orchestra! Terence loves to put us in situations in which we have no idea what to do and we can only trust in our hearts and in our training to make something happen.
As for the story behind Mantra, I felt that the tone of the piece was apt for what was going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The people of New Orleans and the surrounding areas were dealing with so much loss and were trying to rebuild. There was a need for the sentiment of a mantra, something you say over and over again to bring peace and calm. I personally have my own little mantras that I say to get through the day. I think it’s something we all need.
Photos by Toby Winarto (BM '19, MM '21)
How does it feel to have your composition performed by MSM students?
Kendrick: It’s very humbling for me to watch and listen to students play my music because in my heart, I feel like most of them are possibly better composers than me. As I’m listening to the students play I’m just like, “Wow, this is amazing! Maybe I should have written this instead, or changed this note.” My brain is constantly trying to improve upon what I’ve already accomplished. One of my mentors Wayne Shorter says, “once you compose a piece it is never really finished, you just keep working on it.”
It’s humbling to be around young people at this point in their growth because I remember how important this time was like for me. I’m trying to give encouragement and just share what I’ve learned so far in life, which is what Terence has done with me. If you’re open to the truth, you’ll be able to evolve. It’s amazing to witness how the message of Mantra continues to change as it’s received by these students.
What’s your favorite part of teaching at MSM?
Kendrick: My favorite part is seeing the light bulbs go off when my students are making the connection between humanity and music. So many of the students at MSM are great musicians because they understand that music is connected to being human. The more you realize that connection, you start to understand the language of music and how it’s meant to communicate. The whole piece that we’re playing (A Tale of God’s Will) is about how we can communicate an idea, how to embody that idea inside of the music. I’ll often ask student to play a passage with more hope, and they’re like “wait a minute, do you want me to play it forte?” and this or that. I’m asking them to really think, “What does hope feel like? What does anger feel like? How can we interpret that through music?” That’s the type of thing I really enjoy about working with the students at MSM and they are certainly up for the challenge.
I ask my students to really think about what hope feels like, what anger feels like, and how we can interpret these feelings through music.
MSM Jazz Arts Faculty
Tell us about your teaching style.
Kendrick: My teaching mantra is ‘command and surrender’. I think we all need to have command of our instrument in order to be able to execute sound and silence as best we can, but as musicians we always have to surrender to the moment. To me, these are life principles that I’m dealing with every day. Right now you and I have surrendered to this space as we had to come here to do this interview, but we have the command of language to communicate and to go wherever the conversation leads. I just try to take those two things and infuse them with the music. Learning the command of playing a passage correctly with the correct dynamics, but surrendering to the story of that passage without changing the notes or technical aspects. ‘Command and surrender’ are my main principles for teaching students, for my own music, and for my life.
What are you most looking forward to with the performance?
Kendrick: Terence has been such a big mentor for me, I feel like I wouldn’t even be here as a performer, a composer, or a teacher without him. He taught me that music is bigger than jazz, and he brought me into the film world. I remember one of our first recordings together in London with a 90-piece orchestra and me on drums, and I just kept making mistakes and the orchestra would turn around and look at me like “can you get it together?”. That experience changed my life because I started to see myself as more than just a drummer. Terence changed my outlook, opened up so many possibilities for me, and showed me that I could do what he was doing. That was the greatest thing he afforded me and that’s what I’m most excited to see on Friday. I’m looking forward to seeing the graciousness he embodies and how he gives that to the students in the orchestra.
Kendrick Scott: Making Walls into Bridges
AllAboutJazz
"Trump wants to build a wall to keep people out. But what I'm saying is a wall that's preexisting is a provocation—a provocation for you to break through."—Kendrick Scott
All About Jazz: First of all, I've got to say, it's quite a coup to have you over here playing with these guys in Hong Kong. What made you want to take this step and come out here?
Kendrick Scott: Well, I mean I've played with [co-headliner] Dayna Stephens for a long time, and Dayna cut for Teriver and said he was a great musician and I've heard that he sounded good. So, you know, I came to support the music scene here in Hong Kong and to be a part of that as well. I heard Teriver's last record and it's really, really beautiful.
AAJ: I'd like to talk about your record. I've been playing it a lot these last few months, while our city is having its own issues of division, and I still feel like it's unraveling. It's something you can't completely absorb easily—and I understand wasn't easy for you to put it together either.
AAJ: There was a period of writer's block. Was the problem that you weren't writing, or that you weren't happy with what you were writing?
KS: Yeah, I wasn't happy. But the thing about that is... my personality, I'll never really be happy with anything until it's done and finished. I'm sure I'll look back on it years later and say, okay, it's all right. You know? But in the moment, I'm never satisfied. And I think that's a good thing and a bad thing. When it leads you to a certain balance it's good, but it's a bad thing when it takes you over the edge. When it stifles your creativity it's bad, but when it propels you, when it says, no, let's try that again, let's do it again. That's cool. That's what the album is about. That balance.
AAJ: And what was going through your mind when you're writing those tunes? It's obviously very reflective.
KS: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, half of them I wrote at home and the other half we wrote in the studio. We wrote to the sentiments of what "A Wall Becomes a Bridge" was, what that sounded like. We wrote each sentiment down on a chalkboard in the studio and just kind of thought what they would sound like. So we composed the music and played it right there in the studio.
AAJ: How long were you in the studio?
KS: It was, maybe five days total. Yeah.
AAJ: So I presume you think it's the best thing you've done?
KS: It's one of the best things I've done, definitely. I mean, I'm proud of the message because I think it's the true message of where I was as a person at that time. There's a part of my personality that I'm constantly dealing with, and a lot of times when I make records, I make records about things that I need to deal with in my life and that I'm hoping other people are dealing with at the same time. So I feel like, especially in the US and probably all over the world, we're trying to have optimism. And to me that's what the record is about. A Wall Becomes A Bridge: It's taking the wall that exists and making it fall down, and making it become a bridge. And realizing, the walls that we have around us are opportunities for us to break through. So that's what it's about.
KS: It's usually melody, a singable melody, somewhat rhythmic, and then I harmonize it and then that sparks a mood. For me, every time it's different, different scenes for different things.
AAJ: So the meaning often becomes apparent later.
KS: Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Sometimes melodies just come and I just sing them. Then later on I think about what they mean. They come in all different types of seeds and colors and everything. Sometimes it's just a rhythmic idea. Sometimes I'll write a whole song with no notes. It's just rhythms.
AAJ: When did you start composing?
KS: I started writing music in high school, I guess, but there's only one song that I wrote then that still play.
AAJ: And you started on percussion?
KS: Yeah, percussion instruments. My mom's a pianist, and she taught me theory on piano, but I've never really played piano.
AAJ: It does feel like right now there's a lot of very strong drummer leaders coming through—yourself, Makaya McCraven, Antonio Sanchez is also doing wonderful things, Brian Blade's been doing amazing stuff forever. People expect drummer bands are going to be very showy, very bombastic, but it feels like there's a lot of very interesting textural work being made. Have you noticed that trend, or see any kind of reason why people are responding, or people are creating that way?
KS: That's a good question. It's hard to answer for me because I just feel like people are laying more into what their personalities are, and so instead of going for the bombastic drummer leader thing, I just think it's more widely accepted to just be yourself. And Blade was the one that taught me that, you know, you listen to his music and it's like; wow, what is this? You know, the more question marks I have about people in music, the more I think to myself, well, that's okay to be yourself. You know what I mean? I feel like Blade played with so many different great artists that it wasn't a question of whether he knew how to do this, or he knew how to do that. Which I think sometimes jazz police have [this idea] where it's just like; well, if your music doesn't do this, then how would I know you could swing, and how would I know, whatever? I think it's more just about your own personality, who you are, and you create a band around that, and it exists in its own space. And so I don't actually know. That's a hard question. That's a hard question because, I mean, Art Blakey was bombastic, but he still had textural things that he did, and Tony Williams was bombastic, but he had textures. I don't know, it's crazy.
AAJ: Would they be your heroes if you had to pick, say, five kind of all-time inspirations?
KS: I mean, Roy Haynes, Jack DeJohnette, you know, you can't really...
AAJ: Well, who have you been most anxious about meeting or encountering?
KS: Well, I'm always anxious around Roy Haynes. Yeah, I'll see Roy Haynes once a year, maybe twice a year. And every time it's like, it's weird, 'cause that's my man.
AAJ: But you must get younger guys looking up to you that way now.
KS: Right, and that's a little weird to me, but I do understand it in some ways because I guess now that I'm ten years out of school, or more; I see how I was going to hear Brian Blade, who's like 10 years older than me, and I remember bugging him while I was at college and being like that. So now it's a continuum. But you know, I still feel like the reason why I'm still around is I'm still learning, and I don't know anything. So I feel like if I stay around and be a master student instead of worrying being a master teacher, then then I'll keep them off forever.
AAJ: Do you still have much of a relationship with Blade?
KS: Yeah, we see each other a lot. Just on the road.
AAJ: Talking about being "ten years out of college," it sort of feels like you're part of a generation, right? It's been a really fertile period— I don't need to tell you that everyone's been talking about this new golden era of jazz for a few years now, right? How do you feel about that? Do you feel like something's changed—did it start with it the new audience, or the musicians?
KS: I don't know, I don't feel that anything's changing. It's funny—the music is constantly changing, it's always changing. I just think it's what people are exposed to. You know what I mean? If you go to New York and just chill and go to a club every night and hear music, you're going to hear the whole gamut of what music is, from hip-hop to funk to rock to everything. It's all happening right there, but it's just what makes it on a record and what makes it even over here. What makes it to Hong Kong? Some things get marketed and some things don't.
Or I feel like all this stuff has been happening forever. It's just now people are coming to the attention of it. You know what I mean? The music has been growing like this way before us. We didn't start shit. It's just always existing in its own space. People laid the groundwork; I think the people who come before you are way more important.
AAJ: A big part of this has been the increasingly organic crossover with hip-hop. When was the first time you really heard something that truly captured the spirit of hip-hop and jazz together? There were always experiments, but when did you first encounter someone doing it, like, right?
KS: I mean, [Guru's] Jazzmatazz (Vol. 1, Chrysalis Records, 1993) was the one where I first felt, "Oh, this is the right mixture of both." But I was young when that came out. You know, I was still in high school or maybe middle school, but that was my first time hearing that kind of stuff put together.
But in essence, you know, hip-hop is jazz; it's just jazz by another name. You listened to Busta Rhymes, and if you solo his vocal and then listen to a Charlie Parker solo, and have that by itself in one ear and the other in the other ear— you'd just be like, Oh, okay, Buster's doing with words what Charlie Parker did with notes. It's the same thing to me. So once you started looking at everything as one, then you really start seeing it's just all a progression.
AAJ: Before you went to Berklee and committed your life to this journey, studying jazz, what were you listening to as a teenager?
KS: When I was 14 and I'd gotten to performing arts high school, I just really listened to a lot of jazz. Not all along—before that I listened to gospel music, pop music, R&B, lots of different types of stuff. But I just started listening to a lot of jazz in high school just because I was exposed to it and around a lot of musicians that were playing it and I knew that was the direction that I wanted to head, because of the freedom that it offered me to play.
AAJ: You're playing here in Hong Kong just a week before we have Robert Glasper coming to town, who played on your debut album The Source (World Culture Music, 2007). What's that relationship like today?
KS: That's my brother. You know, we went to high school together [at Houston's famed High School for the Performing and Visual Arts] and he's doing great things. I mean, he's in the history books at this point. No, I'm always happy for him, to see what he does. He's one of the people who have truly blended jazz and hip-hop in a way that is authentic to him, that really only he can do it that way because he has those relationships and, and that sound in mind— where I think other people are trying to do it and it doesn't have the same effect because it's not authentic. So that's why I don't really call myself anything jazz and hip-hop. When people say that about my music, I'm kind of like, yeah not really. I may have some of those influences, but yeah, it's never, it's not going towards that. It's not really authentic to me. I love hip-hop. I listen to hip-hop, but my music isn't [hip-hop].
AAJ: Whatever you call what you're doing, you're definitely part of something pretty special. It just seems like a really wonderful time in music right now.
KS: [Laughs] Well, you know there were cats way before us, you know. Our big brothers: Gregory Hutchinson, Eric Harland, Karriem Riggins... and before them, Ralph Peterson, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Lewis Nash, and then before them it's all of the cats—all of the cats—Billy Hart and Al Foster and you know, it's just, it's just a historic thing that I think is just carrying on. 'Cause it has to, yeah, it has to.
AAJ: Going back to your record for a second, a lot of people remarked on the title, which seemed to be an explicit statement about your country's president.
KS: I mean, in some ways. But it's weird because people don't sometimes actually see it the way it is, because it's actually "a wall becomes a bridge," meaning Trump wants to build a wall to keep people out. But what I'm saying is a wall that's preexisting is a provocation. A wall is a provocation for you to break through. It's almost like saying that, just because you want to build this wall, if you actually build it, it's going to come down anyway because you're provoking us to come together. So in the spirit of optimism, that's what the record was made out of—the spirit of bridges, not walls. It was mainly my internal things that I was dealing with in another type of way, other than trying to be some big political statement.
AAJ: And it came out on Blue Note, again. It must have been a big deal to establish that relationship.
KS: Yeah, definitely. From what I was doing on my own (World Culture Music) and stuff that I did with Concord Music Group, it was a no brainer to be with the company who was the vanguard of jazz labels, and to be a part of the family that I was essentially ushered into when I started touring with Terence—and before I even started touring I got a Blue Note scholarship when I was 18 years old to go to a jazz camp. So I met [executive] Bruce Lundvall when I was 18. Most of the records that I listened to when I was a kid had that Blue Note stamp on it. That was always the sound that I heard in my mind, those were the starting points of many of the sounds that I try to make now.
AAJ: You mentioned Terence Blanchard. You made several wonderful records together and I'm sure that was a very, very enduring relationship. Can you just talk me through how that kind of happened between you guys?
KS: Well, I met Terrence through Eric Harland who went to my high school, and Eric moved on and was playing with different artists—I think he was going to play with Charles Lloyd at that time. Different artists just ushered me into playing with Terrence; Terrence was really gracious and gave me the opportunity to play in a band and that lasted for 11 years. I mean, I can't say enough about how much he's been a mentor and a great father-slash-big brother figure for me—from letting me be in his band to also encouraging me to record my first record and to write music. Also letting us write music for his band. I mean he was the one that started it all.
AAJ: So would you call that your most important musical relationship?
KS: Yeah, that one and then also getting to play with Herbie Hancock—just getting to be around Herbie was like the pinnacle as well. It only lasted for three months as far as touring with his band, but that left a huge impression on me and how I view the world and view music. That was enough—one night is enough being around Herbie—between Terrence and Herbie, I learned so much.
A lot of people just talk about the music, they talk about the notes and all that stuff. The [2019] Blue Note documentary is called Beyond the Notes—and I feel like Terrence and Herbie are "beyond the notes." They are in another stratosphere where they're trying to communicate something through their music. And that's where I want to live.
AAJ: I think the first record I heard you on was Blanchard's A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina) (Blue Note, 2007)—a very heavy record, and a very percussive one.
KS: Yeah, that was a heavy record. We were on the road touring while Terrance's family was lost. He couldn't talk to his mom and we're on the road trying to play gigs. That's what I'm saying—music is only one drop in the ocean of life—Wayne Shorter said that. You think about it, it's very small compared to what's really going on.
AAJ: Is Wayne Shorter the greatest living jazz composer?
KS: Oh, for me, definitely, yeah. We've got to play and meet him... yeah, he's great.
AAJ: Anyone else you'd love to play with that you haven't yet?
KS: Oh, I love to play with Chick Corea. I only got to play with Chick once or twice. I'd love to play with a lot of people—I mean, I want to play with Stevie Wonder, you know what I mean? Different cats. It's a long line—and not just jazz musicians.
AAJ: You're allowed to enjoy the afterglow of your last record a little longer, but what are you planning next? Any idea?
KS: It's not set in stone yet. It's still coming. They still want to carry on, the Oracle band, but do other things as well. So I have a lot of projects in mind, but what's going to come? You don't know. If you would have asked me what this next record was going to be that I was going to put out in 2019, I wouldn't have said, "it's called A Wall Becomes a Bridge, and this and this and that. So it's kind of just like, I can't really guess about what it's going to be at this moment.
AAJ: Last but not least, bringing it back to the present day. Music is obviously a universal language, improvised music especially. You travelled to Hong Kong to play with these cats that you've never met before, with very, very different life experiences, but with their own struggles right now. What can you learn from each other, and what can you communicate?
KS: Music is supposed to wash away the dust of everyday life. Music is supposed to be our getaway from all of these things, and jazz especially was created to communicate. Most of black American music was made to communicate. So in that same spirit of communication and of love, and struggle, we play this music to represent that, and to figure out a way to communicate beyond whatever's happening outside of the music, knowing at the same time that what we're doing is bigger than music. It's realizing that love and communication is bigger than any other type of thing that will separate us—what we look like, or who we worship, or where we live, or any of that. It's not about any of that. It's just about communicating through the music, giving all of yourself, being honest, being authentic.
