LYLE MAYS AT THE HORIZONS OF JAZZ WITH & WITHOUT PAT METHENY

By Ted Greenwald
July 1986, Keyboard

There was a moment during the mid-70s when stylistic tensions threatened to demolish the edifice of jazz keyboard playing.  The bebop revolution had spanned several major schools, represented by a number of great players. Coltrane’s modal intensity lived on in the massive stacked fourths of McCoy Tyner, while Cecil Taylor’s gestural fury continued to push the boundaries of the avant-garde. Keith Jarrett was laying a foundation of diatonic chord-structures on the hallowed ground of solo piano improvisation, but in doing so he renounced electric instruments.  In a more traditional vein, Oscar Peterson’s two-fisted interpretations of standards contrasted with the more reflective attitude of Bill Evans.  Meanwhile, Joe Zawinul espoused his pancultural perspective, and fellow Miles Davis alumnae Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock had embraced their mentor’s rock rhythms and electronic impetus with a vengeance.  On the other side of the fence, jazz influences were creeping into popular music through the work of such players as Donald Fagen.  There were many paths, but they led in many directions.

So dominant were these tendencies that younger players seemed bound to toe the line of one musical dogma or another.  Clearly a synthesis was in order, but it would take a player of enormous facility, taste, and integrity, one with an uncommon appreciation for the diversity of contemporary music as well as a great respect for the jazz tradition, to till the common ground through which these paths were cut.  The time was right; but right for what? In retrospect, the answer is clear. The times called for Lyle Mays.

Ten years later, Mays is emerging as virtually the only young player to tackle the full extent of bop’s aftermath.  There are a number of reasons why he stands out among the generation that came of age amid this wash of stylistic currents; foremost among them is the sensitivity with which he incorporates the directions of that time into a coherent, yet individual, whole. In the wide-ranging interview on the following pages, he comments on the relevance of bebop, religious music, and pop styles to his current work explains the relationship between the roles of performer and composer, and defends his use of drum machines, among other topics. These concerns are reflected in an impressive body of music, through which Mays’ most powerful asset—his fertile and uncompromising imagination—has moved steadily into the musical foreground.

The first Pat Metheny Group album, in 1978, introduced Mays to a large audience.  The music of this gifted quartet grafted the mellifluous Evans-influenced under-pinnings of Mays’ style onto a musical base that was neither jazz nor rock nor pop, but a spirited and pleasing amalgam of compatible elements from each, quite distinct from the Davis-inspired combustions of the fusion school.  The early Group’s highlight was the blending of Mays’ acoustic piano and Metheny’s vibrant electric guitar, with glittering flashes of dynamic accentuation from Dan Gottlieb’s orchestral drumming. From time to time, Mays introduced a melodic line with his Oberheim Four-Voice, or synthesized a rich backdrop while he comped behind Metheny’s solos.  Nonetheless, he always had at least one hand on the piano, and for his solos—having set the standard with the long dynamic gradient, which brings “San Lorenzo” to its joyous climax—Mays consistently chose to use the piano.  “I don’t think any of the electric keyboard or synthesizer stuff I do is dramatic; it’s mainly supportive,” he observed in his first Keyboard interview [October. ’80].  “I get all the drama I need out of the acoustic piano.” 

A gospel tinge in Mays’ phrasing and harmonic sense, reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s improvisations, helped to establish the roots-rock flavor of the following year’s American Garage—an influence which he attributes to the religious bent of the rather limited musical resources of his home town, Wausaukee, Wisconsin.  It was a 1980 duet with Metheny, As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, however, which finally revealed the daring breadth of Mays’ musical personality.  The evocative, panoramic synthesizer textures and open-ended compositional form of the title piece opened the door for a full-scale exploration of stylistic and technological materials, an endeavor, which led to the eclecticism of the Group’s Offramp in 1981. That album encompassed realms as disparate as classical/romantic influence taken to the brink of satire (“Au Lait”) and free blowing a la Ornette Coleman (“Offramp”). In addition, Metheny’s wholehearted employment of a guitar controller to gain access to synthesized sounds threw a slew of timbral wrenches into the Group’s carefully wrought guitar/piano textures, challenging Mays to develop new ways to incorporate his growing stack of electronic keyboards.

All of which leaves out a major portion of Mays’ contribution: his work as a composer.  Fully half of the first album was co-written by Mays and Metheny, and the keyboardist has had a share in just about everything else he and the Group have recorded since.  Two Metheny/Mays compositions from the first record, “Phase Dance” and “San Lorenzo,” virtually defined the Group’s characteristic sound, which continues to serve as the foundation, as identifiable as it has proven durable, for the far-flung compositions of recent years.

While Mays continues to profess his allegiance to the piano, his compositional work has been leading him in the direction of keyboard technology, including drum machines, samplers, and sequencers.  The tasteful application of these devices to the Group’s current blend of numerous jazz, rock, popular, folk, Latin, and “classical” idioms can be heard on their latest works, the masterful First Circle (1984) and the soundtrack to the feature film The Falcon and the Snowman (1985).  The dramatic exigencies of the latter work prompted perhaps the widest range of compositional demands Mays has faced to date, including the austere chorale of “Psalm 121,” some ominous orchestral underscoring and an anthemic collaboration with pop phenomenon David Bowie, “This is Not America,” which even occupied the AM airwaves during the summer of 1985.

Lately, Mays’ activities as a composer have led him far afield of the Group. During the past year he received a number of commissions from contemporary music ensembles, including Boston’s iconoclastic Composers in Red Sneakers and Primarily Percussion, in San Francisco. An excerpt from Mays’ original sequencer sketch for the percussion ensemble piece appears on our Soundpage this month (see page 78). “The stuff I’ve been writing for these concerts has been very difficult,” he confides, “because I have to define the grooves, the whole rhythmic element of the composition. It’s not like you can tell the drummer ‘I want a broken-eighth feel here.’ You write the whole thing out. That’s a discipline, which is really frightening and really demanding, and I’m inexperienced at it. Hopefully I’ll get better at it.” 

Both as a composer and as a keyboard player, however, Mays has found the prospect of making a solo record to be his greatest challenge.  Manfred Eicher, the producer behind the crystalline piano recordings of Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, among others, suggested as long ago as 1979 that Mays make his own album; Mays deliberated for some seven years before launching into the project. The result, Lyle Mays, is bursting with the composer/player’s euphonious melodic and harmonic sense, his superb technical command of the piano, his somber, introspective piano style, his soaring synthesized timbres, and an air of wonder that perhaps he could only achieve outside of the Pat Metheny Group. For this project he assembled a group of old friends: The seamless blending of Bill Frisell’s electric guitar and Billy Drewes’ saxophone highlight many of Mays’ soaring melodies. The big-Band Baroque of “Slink”’s three-part counterpoint intertwines guitar, piano, and Marc Johnson’s bass, propelled by the drumming o Alejandro Acuna. Nana Vasconcelos’ unique vocalizations populate the interminable aural spaces of the “Alaskan Suite,” and “Mirror of the Heart” offers Mays’ first recorded piano solo.  In its avoidance of established grooves and genres, the music conveys Mays’ efforts to make a contribution of his own, and to allow each new piece of music to speak with its own voice.

Even after five successful albums with Metheny, Mays saw his solo project as something of a nemesis. After considering and rejecting a number of concepts, he recalls, “I finally just decided to do it. I figures, “Okay. I’m going to do a record. If it’s bad, it’s bad; but I’m going to learn how to do it. I’m going to start making records, and figure out how it’s done.”

By almost anyone’s standards but his own, Mays’ first record actually came out more than ten years ago, in 1975, when the North Texas State University La Band devoted an entire album to his compositions and arrangements, as an album on which his playing is featured, and on which he shared production credit as well. That recording showcased a remarkably mature jazz talent, especially on the unaccompanied, Corea-inspired solo on his arrangement of Corea’s “What Was.” (As if to bring some phase of Mays’ development full circle, Marc Johnson, who plays bass on the new record, was in the Lab Band as well.) As far as he has come since then, Mays remains committed to growth, learning, and openness to new sources of inspiration. He is unrelentingly self-critical, and remarkably concerned with using his talents and opportunities in a responsible manner.

Incidentally, this was not the impression some readers got from the Keyboard interview in October, 1980, which prompted letters from North Texas State faculty members objecting to a quotation to the effect that Mays had been “virtually running the jazz department by the time he left. Six years later, Mays is still upset about the incident. “I was misquoted about my involvement with North Texas,” he explains, “and I’d like to apologize publically for whatever hard feelings happened because of that, and also set the record straight I never said that I was running the music department down there, nor did I ever feel that I was. I have very fond memories o my time there, and Leon Breeden, who was the band director at the time, gave me a lot of freedom and a lot of great opportunities.  I learned a lot from him. Rich Matteson was also involved in the music department there, as head of the improvisation program. Rich was the reason I went to North Texas. He put my hands on the keyboard and said, “This is how you voice chords.’”

The earlier years of Mays’ musical life are chronicled in the 1980 interview, along with his perceptions of the Pat Metheny Group’s musical at the time and his thoughts about his own playing. Much has happened since then, and this is reflected in his attitudes no less than in his tremendous growth as a musician. In establishing a direction, Mays has melded the lyricism of popular music over a bebop base, using his early big and experiences to integrate the new technology into his work, and continually testing himself as a composer and a player. The community of keyboard players is indeed very fortunately that Lyle Mays came along when he did.

* * * *

Back in 1980, you said that during a performance, 90% of the time you had both hands on the piano. It sounded as though you considered the piano to be your instrument, and felt strongly about that. Has that changed at all?

It’s a question of degree. It’s not 90% of the time anymore. The piano is still my main instrument, the one that I’m most comfortable with a feel the best about soloing on. That hasn’t changed at all, and I still think it’s far superior to any of the synthesizers. It’s the central part, the core of my set-up. At this point, my instrument has become this conglomeration of synths surrounding the piano. I’ll just go to whatever seems appropriate. I’ve gotten a few more synthesizers since then—I keep getting them with the idea that I’ll be able to replace one of the older ones, but I’ve never been able to do that because I like the sounds of the old ones, and I tend to find a use for the new ones. So the setup keeps growing. I would say that 90% of the time is a bit high, but the principle is still the same, and my feeling about it is still the same; I always go to the acoustic piano for the heart.

What is it about the piano that makes you call it superior?

It’s a superior instrument in terms of development. It’s been around longer. We’re talking hundreds of years, as opposed to two, five, or fifteen.  If a synthesizer is ten years old, it’s ancient. It’s a completely different time scale, and I think it’s going to take a while before these instruments even approach the sophistication of the acoustic instruments we have.  Electronic instruments are wonderful, and I use them a lot, but they’re young instruments.

If you were going to bring electronic instruments up to the level of the piano, what changes would you make?

First, I’d like them to sound across the frequency spectrum. I get frustrated with instruments that cut off below my ears. My ears can hear up there, and I want my instruments to play up there. The Synclavier does that; it’s a major leap forward, but it’s also a whole lot of money. It may come down as time goes on; at least the Synclavier is a start, and it’s very encouraging. In terms of sounds, it’s incredible. I would also like synthesizers to be as responsive to touch as the piano is. Again, the strides are being made, but we’re not there yet. I think one of the most interesting things about the piano, and other acoustic instruments that have a resonating chamber, is that if you plan an interval, it’s a much different sound than if you make a separate recording of each of those two notes. There’s an interaction that happens within the instrument, a richness and complexity that synthesizers haven’t dealt with at all yet. They’re still dealing with individually output notes, and if you play a chord, you just get four versions of that note. You don’t get the notes playing off of each other. Sounds need to be more complex. I think the ear gets tired of simple sounds. It’s like listening to a sine wave; after a couple of seconds, you say, “I got that.” There are no more surprises.

“Mirror Of The Heart” is the first piano solo you’re recorded. Is the entire thing improvised?

It’s based on a tune. I play through the tune three times, and I’m improvising on the changes. But there’s more of a compositional approach to it. Actually, it’s a very traditional jazz approach.

Do you consider yourself a jazz player?

I guess. I’ve been improvising for a long time, and I know the repertoire. Labels are funny. Jazz may mean different things to different people. I have my own particular notion of what jazz is. If it’s defined in political terms, a lot of musicians get left out. People who like the way James Blood Ulmer plays and call that jazz wouldn’t like the way I play, and wouldn’t call it jazz. Or the people who call the way I play jazz may not like—who knows? I don’t like to get into it. But insofar as the core element of jazz is improvisation, I’m very much into it, and very committed to it.

You’ve said that you still play a lot of bebop, but your style doesn’t seem to be bebop. You tend not to use so many altered chromatic tones. Having grown up with Bebop, how do you relate it to your personal style?

The burden is certainly on me to incorporate that. I don’t want to sit here and say, “You people just can’t hear it.” It’s been very difficult, frankly, for me to find ways of putting the more stylistic elements of bebop into the music that I’ve been doing lately. For me, there’s a lot of it in there, but it just doesn’t sound like bebop. And, actually, I hope it never does, because I don’t think that’s where I can do the most good. Put it this way: I wouldn’t sound the way I do if I hadn’t played bebop. I don’t think there would be as much coherence to my lines. For my solo on “Slink,” for instance, on the record, I’m drawing a lot on the bebop tradition; but it’s not a swing feel, there’s not a whole lot of triplets, and you’re not going to find Bud Powell licks in it. The bebop has been processed and filtered. I’m trying to improvise in the style of the compositions that I write. I’m more interested in having a consistency there, so it would just be counterproductive to make it sound like bebop.

Often your playing seems to come out of the Classical-Romantic piano tradition. Did you study much of that?

No, actually I didn’t. I’ve listened to a lot of it, and I continue to, but for me it’s coming from Bill Evans as much as anything. Maybe you could say that about him too, because he really did study Ravel and Debussy. He was seriously influenced by the classical repertoire, so maybe some of that is in my playing second-hand, because I’ve certainly listened to a lot of Bill. I never played the Emperor Concerto [Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5] or anything like that.

Do you have a consistent way of going about composing?

It’s hard to nail it down, because there are always exceptions. I try to go with my ears and instincts exclusively. I’ve never written according to a system, for instance. Basically, I do a lot of improvising and things will come out of that. If there’s anything good enough to write down, I’ll make sketches or make tapes, but those are just the germs of ideas, just a mood or something. With all this technology, I still sit down with a blank piece of paper, take out a pencil, and write down a motif. Then I look at it and try variations. It’s still a very traditional approach. It’s really funny—at some point I always do that. Maybe I’m old-fashioned.

Is that the same approach that you take when you write with Pat?

Yeah, I always end up writing something down, with pencil and manuscript paper. With Pat, it’s revolved to a place where one or the other of us will define the mood, the main theme, or the tune, or whatever. It’s become less interactive in a sort of note-by-note way. That didn’t work too well; we tried it a couple of times with some pretty notable failures. It seems like the music is stronger when there’s one mind setting the focus and defining the mood. Then, if we can both put our heads together and really polish it that seems to work. It’s like two editors working on a book that one author wrote. That usually works better than having two authors.

Does one of you write the changes and the notes as you go along, or do you keep them in your heads?

We start with something that’s written down. Changes get written down or, if they’re really simple things, we just talk about it. It gets discussed in rehearsal and memorized that way. Sometimes, if we’re dealing with a part that we want to put into a sequencer, we just change it in the sequencer, and that’s where it exists, rather than on paper.

What sequencers do you use for that purpose?

The Synclavier has become the main one. There are some new ones out lately, so I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. The Synclavier now has a MIDI option, which is going to open things up. It’s a great instrument. It’s the cream of the crop, as far as synthesizers go.

Do you tend to work with specific aspects of the Synclavier, for instance, sampling, or the sequencer, or do you find yourself using the entire instrument?

We’ve used all aspects of it. The sequencer has been really helpful compositionally. From a performance standpoint, the sampling is the most impressive aspect. The saxophone sound—it’s like a real saxophone, really high-quality stuff. The harmonica sound that I use on “Are You Going With Me” [from Offramp] is their original FM synthesis—the old fashioned digital way of making sounds, if there is such a thing. It’s all of two or three years old—traditional digital synthesis.

That particular solo is one of the few on record where you’re actually playing a pitch wheel, or messing with the sound, rather than just playing with your fingers.

It may be the only one.

Do you find yourself consciously staying away from the left-hand controls?

Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve beer used them. In that particular solo the pitch-wheel really wouldn’t work for the kind of thing I was doing. I programmed a long, slow vibrato that actually never gets through a whole cycle—it just gets through half a cycle, the down side of a cycle—and then I patched one of the pedals to that parameter, so I could kick in the vibrato or kick it out. When I put my foot down, the pitch would drop; when I brought my foot back, the pitch would go back to where it started. So I could do things where the pitches slurred into each other, which I don’t think I could do on a pitch-wheel. Maybe somebody can, but I don’t have that technique. It’s much more difficult to do it with a pitch-wheel, and it also has a different character. I’m really not a fan of the pitch wheel. It’s not for me.

Does that have anything to do with the fact that, in performance, often you’re playing the piano at the same time that you’re playing a synthesizer?

Originally it may have, but in the studio I can do anything with overdubbed parts. In any case, I could easily reach over and do something to the sound with my left hand if I wanted to. I just don’t hear it.

That harmonica solo is also the only synthesizer sound you’ve recorded which is directly imitative of an acoustic instrument in the earlier Keyboard interview, you said that imitative synthesis didn’t interest you.

I think the reason I said that back then is that the sounds I could come up with on those synthesizers, when I was trying to imitate, fell so far short of the real instruments that I wouldn’t even consider using them. That harmonica sound is very imitative, but it’s also different. I used it because it sounded good. It happened to be imitative, but basically it just satisfied the ear. I don’t want to seem dogmatic about it; I may have back then, but I don’t want to cut myself off from what’s available. The technology is getting to the point where something like that sounds good, so I’ll use it. These days I’m not limiting myself to any sort of theory or any sort of political position on that.

But when you program your instruments, you have to be taking some sort of direction. When you play a lead line on the Oberheim Four-Voice, it’s clear that you have a certain timbral repertoire for that instrument, and you tend to use it in a particular way. It’s harder to identify the ways you use other instruments, although you seem to have pretty particular uses for the Synclavier. Then again, we may be mistaking what instrument is doing what.

It’s very hard to tell what’s doing what these days, because you can patch things together with MIDI, and bring one up with a foot pedal, and load other parts into a sequencer. There’s no way to hear what’s going on, and it’s not much more helpful to go to a live concert to figure that stuff out. The Synclavier has worked real well for bright, sharp sounds, sort of in the marimba/xylophone family, but it’s good for so much more. I don’t think there’s any one thing that we end up using it for more than anything else. With my old Oberheims, it’s gotten to the point where there’s almost a single family of sounds that I use them for—that straight, sawtooth, old-fashioned analog sound. It’s so far that it sounds like a section. I’m not consciously trying to get a string sound, but I’ve got 16 oscillators firing on a unison note, and that’s analogous to 16 string players. The Oberheim allows you to have independent control of each oscillator and assign polyphony through a computer. It actually has the separate components for each oscillator, which makes it a very interesting synthesizer. So that use of the Oberheim evolved into that family of sounds, that sawtooth massed ensemble.

Your string pad.

I don’t think of it that way. From an orchestration standpoint it’s often more like a French horn section. Sometimes it’s a brass union. Sometimes I use it as a strong section, but I don’t think of it as strings.

You use the volume pedal a lot in performance.

Constantly, I’ve got volume pedals on all the instruments, and I rely on that a lot. For the Oberheim it’s essential, because it’s not touch-sensitive. If I’m going to get any kind of phrasing out of it, any kinds of dynamics, it’s got to come from the foot. I try to help that along on some of the sounds by having long attack ramps and release ramps, so that I can take my finger off the chord and it’ll start to go away, and depending on when I come back to it, it’ll ramp up again. Not all synthesizers will do that. Some just cut off the sound and start if back up, which is pretty unmusical. Maybe that has its uses, but I really like the way the Oberheim’s hardware is designed, so that just by programming a long release and a long attack I can get dynamics. It gets a little complicated—with all these instruments and only two hands and two feet, any trick I can use, I’ll use.

Do you practice your pedal technique, or is it something that developed naturally from having to do this on stage?

I set my instruments up in the same way at home as I do on stage, so when I’m writing, or practicing, or just fooling around, It’s still the same setup. I’ve never sat down and said, “Okay, for the next hour I’m going to practice pedal technique,” but a lot of hours have been logged in on it without my consciously practicing it.

Do you practice at all?

Oh yeah. It’s never enough. I’ll get out the metronome and just play scales and arpeggios, play “Stella” [“Stella, by Starlight”] for three hours—that’s still my favorite tune, I think. There’s no end to that. It’s actually frustrating, because the more you practice, the more you realize what you can’t do. And then you hear somebody else; I listen to a Herbie Hancock record, and I want to give it all up and practice for years. It doesn’t stop.

Do you read through any tunes, or read classical repertoire, or anything like that?

As a rule no. That’s in the category of “should,” something I probably should do more of, but that list would be miles long. Frankly, it’s hard for me. I never got into playing classical piano that much. I never got to be real good at reading through things and working them up, so it’s slow going for me. When I do read through something I get a lot out of it, but it takes a lot of time. I guess if I did more of it, it would get better. I don’t want to give the impression that I sit down and read through a fugue for breakfast. That doesn’t happen.

How about practicing synthesizer programming? Or reading manuals? 

I don’t think of that as practicing, but often I’ll devote a day or so to coming up with new sounds. I usually end up using what I come up with, or it’ll be used at some point down the road, so I wouldn’t think of it as practicing, but I guess maybe that’s what it is. I’ll still go back to the old synths, those ancient analog synths, and surprisingly, I’m always coming up with new sounds on them that are very workable and very useful.

What instruments are you working with? You’ve already mentioned the Synclavier and the Oberheim Four-Voice.

I’ve got an old Prophet-5, built before they started changing the original components. Starting with the rev 3 series they began to get thinner sounding. I use it for a lot of the ocarina-type sounds on the new record. On “Invocation,” the middle section of the “Alaskan Suite,” that Middle Eastern sounding melody is the old Prophet.

Are you using any of the left-hand controls for that line?

No. I programmed a trill, a very slow and out-of-balance trill based on a pulse wave that’s got a ration for something like nine to one, so the little blip at the end is just a very small component of the sound. I programmed three different sounds with different rates for the pulse, and I would just switch sounds as I went higher on the keyboard. In an ideal world, it would have been tied to the keyboard so it would have been more of a linear progression, but the Prophet can’t do that. Oddly enough, none of the other instruments I have could do that; I couldn’t get that much control over a pulse wave that modulated the frequency. The Prophet, with its—what do they call it, Poly-Mod?—with that feature, I could get that effect. Plus, I think the Prophet’s got a good sound for that setting. It can get a reedy, eerie sound that cuts pretty well. I was looking for something with kind of a plaintive cry, you might say.

It sounds, at first, like it might be an acoustic instrument, but then at times there’s a characteristically electronic aspect to the trill.

I was trying to help the trill by doing certain almost Baroque kinds of figurations, so the pitch is also being affected in ways that aren’t programmed. There is that problem; it’s built into the sound, so it’s going to be there a lot. But I was trying to disguise it a little bit by not holding the notes long enough sometimes, so that you wouldn’t even hear the trill, and other times doing a manual version of it, so that it happened at a different tempo or a different pitch. Also, I got the instrument to be sort of non-tempered by using the oscillator in not quite the normal way. It’s modulated by the other oscillator in a way that causes it to go out of tune—you’d call it out of tune, but for that setting if was better than something that was perfectly in tune.  I liked the idea that it sounded like a different temperament than we use in the Western world. It was sort of a fortunate accident. I didn’t sit down and map all this out ahead of time, saying, “This is the sound I’m going to create.” A lot of times fortunate accidents happen.

The wind sound is not a fortunate accident. You obviously had wind in mind.

Yea, it’s on the Chroma, and it’s just a standard sweet with white noise. I mixed in a little big of sampled cymbals, about three or four octaves down, so it wouldn’t all sound the same.

Do you feel at all self-conscious about making wind sounds on your synthesizer, insofar as that’s probably the first thing any kid with an analog synthesizer does?

It was based entirely on the composition, and it simply did what it was supposed to do for that composition. Obviously, I didn’t think it was hokey or I wouldn’t have put it in. It set the mood that needed to be set. If it were used strictly for effect, I would question it, but if it serves the larger musical purpose of the composition, then you can do anything. On Bob Moses’ record, he’s doing the story of Moses, and one of the sections is about the Ten Plagues. For the plague of files, I just took the cord out of my instrument and taped it to the jack so that we got a ground loop, that classic 60-cycle buzz that sound companies all over the world are trying to get rid of. I did it deliberately, because that seemed to fit with the other kinds of things that I was going for to sound like flies. I didn’t play the instrument at all. I didn’t even touch the keys. I just made it buzz. It served the musical composition.

What makes the difference between using a sound simply as an effect, and using it as an integral part of the composition?

I would like to think that it’s a matter of composition, that it’s really a compositional issue. As I get to be a better composer, I’ll make better judgments as to what’s an effect and what’s essential for the compositions. Five years ago I wasn’t making those decisions as well as I’m making them now, and I hope five years from now I’ll be making even better ones. And I think it’s unrealistic to expect a kid who just gets his first synthesizer to make profound compositional decisions. It’s just a question of time.

In the midst of all this you brought up the Chroma. What other instruments round out your setup?

I’ve got an Oberheim Xpander, and that’s usually MIDIed to a Kurzweil. I also have a JL Cooper box for the Chroma that allows its computer interface to be used as MIDI interface. Recently I got a Korg DW-8000, which is a surprisingly warm-sounding digital instrument. I don’t know if that was their intention, but Korg products have always been pretty warm sounding. Now, with MIDI, I can afford to have an instrument that I don’t really play, but just use the sounds from, and the Korg has worked out well for that. I’ve got a couple of organs, an old Yamaha YC20 that’s on all the records—it gives me that cheap garage-band sound—and a smaller version of that, whose model number I can’t remember. I think it was the last analog organ that Yamaha made. It’s tiny, only about 3-1/2 octaves long, but I needed something I could fit in the setup because I was running out of room I use an Oberheim drum machine, and there are also drum sounds on the Kurzweil and the Prophet. In the beginning of “Teiko,” for instance, those are mostly electric drums. There are a couple of different timpani sounds—one’s Prophet, the other’s Kurzweil, that sort of thing—mixed in with drum machine and real drums. On tour with the Group I used a seven-foot Hamburg Steinway, and at home I have a Yamaha G3.

Do you feel the need to explore the resources of each instrument fully, or do you find a specific niche for each one relatively quickly and just stick with that?

It takes me years to feel comfortable on an instrument. It’s only now that I’m starting to feel I know the Chroma a little bit. I’ve had it for over two years—but that’s a particularly complicated instrument. It’s one of those synths where you’ve got one window, and one slider, and some very complicated ways of patching things together. That’s wonderful from a synthesis standpoint, because you can do a lot in terms of routing the signal, but it takes a long time to get really facile with it. It’s been this way for me right from the start. It’s just taken me a long time. I’m not a real quick go-right-to-the-sound kind of synthesis. First, it takes me a long time to get to know the instrument, and then it takes a long time for the sounds to develop into what I consider good, usable sounds. But the positive side of it is that I’m still using all the instruments I’ve ever had. I still go back to them, and I still come up with new sounds. It may take me a long time to get into them, but they last a long time. I get a lot of mileage out of them.

Do you feel any pressure to stay on top of the latest technological trends?

I’m nowhere near on top, so I don’t feel the pressure. I’m always being asked about the latest this and that, and frankly I just don’t know. I’m still trying to catch up with instruments I got one or two years ago, and trying to write music in the meantime. It gets embarrassing, because there are all these kids who can read raw MIDI data, you know, and I’m just getting around to saying, “MIDI! What a concept!”

There are some drum machines on the First Circle and a whole bunch of them on The Falcon And The Snowman soundtrack. Using automated rhythms in the kinds of music you’ve been involved with seems like a major step. 

In the Group, we’ve been exploring technology all along. Just trying to get the acoustic piano blended with the electric guitar—that was kind of a technological issue. We had to deal with how to amplify the piano, and Pat was exploring what kind of sound to use on the guitar. He ended up with a couple of different amps—now it’s three, I think—with digital delays in between. He’s described it as an attempt to get an acoustic kind sound, or at least acoustic effect, where things are interacting with each other. He could explain it better than I can; I don’t presume to say exactly what that is. That was the technology back then: Digital delays were just coming out. MXR was pretty much it, and then you had the [Roland] Space Echo for your tape-slap kinds of things, and we were using all of that.  As things got more sophisticated, we’d use that, and now we’re dealing with sampling, FM, the latest digital reverbs. The Kurzweil is based on artificial intelligence techniques. I think we’re from the generation that isn’t afraid of the technology. We grew up with it, in a sense, starting with electric guitars. That was my first introduction to it, so it seems pretty natural to see what kind of music we can make from it. I think using something like a drum machine is, on the one hand, a natural exploration of the technology; but on the other hand, it’s a natural compositional extension, in that now we can write a clavé part that doesn’t tie one of the members of the Group down to just playing clavés, which is very handy during live performances. We can get the parts that we hear for the compositions without sacrificing in other areas. 

Drum machines aren’t real noticeable on your own record.

There’s a ton of them, but it’s good that you can’t hear it. I don’t use drum machines for an electric-rap-boogie effect. I’m still a fan of the orchestra. I’m still moved by that sound, and when my ear hears an acoustic instrument, it just lights up somehow. It’s just so interesting. There’s so much there: the overtones, the interactions within the various chambers that all the instruments have, the different playing techniques. I’m really attempting to make sounds that are of that quality, and I’m willing to put them on a record even though they fall short. It’s an attempt to use the technology to make really interesting sounds, warm sounds, sounds that bring the music alive. If that can be done with a drum machine, I’ll do it that way. If it could only be done by getting four Japanese drummers, I would do it that way. Also, on a certain level, I feel a little bit guilty about tying a really good musician down to playing some repetitive pattern, and only that pattern, and only that sound, and it only happens twice in the piece. In order to make sure the time is right, and it blends well, and the dynamics are right, you need to have a real high-caliber musician, and to have him just sit there and play something that deals with about 1/1,000 of what he can do is a bit of a waste. And it’s not solely the guilt factor of having great musicians play undemanding parts. Sometimes it’s possible to get sounds on synthesizers that you can’t get with acoustic instruments. That figures into it a lot, too.

Just like the drum machines, your use of samples doesn’t stick out. Is there any reluctance on your part to use them?

I’m using everything I can. If it’s hard for you to pick out what’s what, that’s good, because you’re hearing the music and the technology isn’t getting in the way. To me, that’s a successful use of it. Then I’m bringing the compositions alive through the technology, and not drawing the attention to it or using it for its own sake. I feel glad about that.

Are the pieces on the album, and on The First Circle, performable live as they sound on the records?

Pretty much. It gets very close because usually we work things out live, take them on the road, and let them evolve for a while before we record them. For the keyboard parts on The First Circle, I didn’t add things that I don’t do live. I might record them differently, in the sense that maybe I’d just play the piano on the first pass, and then as an overdub play some of the things that I would have played with one hand, just to make sure the dynamics are exactly right. I could get it more like I want it in the studio, while in a live situation there’s a slight compromise. But then there’s the benefit of just playing together; you feel the dynamics together in real time—that’s a benefit, too, and they almost cancel each other out. So between playing live and in the studio, the music ends up sounding very similar. We don’t add a lot of parts in the studio just because we can. We just put down the parts that the composition needs, and the parts that we’ve evolved on stage.

Are you planning to tour in support of this album?

I’m already thinking about the next one. A lot of the music for this record came from a solo concert I did at the Montreal Jazz Festival. That was a frightening prospect. I did it with all the synths, and it got me to deal with my setup as the whole orchestra, or the whole band. I came up with some material for that, some fresh ideas, and that led me to some other things that culminated in the music for this record. I’m hoping that a similar thing will happen with the next tour I do. Certainly we’ll do some of the stuff from the record, but I’m using a different configuration for it. We’re going to do a trio tour, with Marc Johnson and Alex Acuna, and I’m hoping that the configuration will lead me to write for that particular ensemble. That configuration gives us the opportunity to play “Stella” or something like that—after all, it’s a traditional trio, or it can be. On the other hand, we can kick in all the synths and the machines, and Marc can play a little bit of keyboards too, and now with MIDI you can have a Casio triggering a $10,000 Kurzweil. The possibilities really expand. And Alex is such a great percussionist, too, in addition to being a drummer. Just within the three of us, we’ve got a lot of different possibilities for ensemble sounds. So we’ll be doing some of the music from the record, but also some new stuff that features the trio, and is designed for the trio. I do want to do some gigs with the whole group from the record during the summer. That’s partly in support of the record, I guess, but mostly it’s an attempt to come up with new music. I find that tours are stimulating in that regard. It’s often hard to write while you’re on the road, but you can get excited thinking about the upcoming tour, and also reflecting on things afterwards. When you get back to the serenity of your own home, you can put the ideas into practice.

Were any of the pieces on the album performed during your solo concert?

Parts of them were. “Highland Aire,” the mood and the first theme, sort of the first section, was part of the concert, but it seemed to make more sense to develop it compositionally. Sections of “Teiko” were done on solo support keyboards. Also the last tune, “Close To Home,” and parts of the “Alaskan Suite”—that’s a fair amount of the record. They were not the completed versions; it was like the solo concert hinted at the tunes. It was like I was trying to draw them out. I got close, and I learned a lot about them by playing them solo, got insights into them. Sometimes with a composition—this has been said by a lot of people—it takes on a life of its own. You have to sit back and ask it questions, see what it wants, and sort of cater to it. It’s a weird thing. On all the pieces on the record, I really felt that the compositions themselves suggested the style. I didn’t sit down and write a samba, or a funk tune, I couldn’t tell you what the grooves are. They’re not traditional grooves as far as I know. We really tried to mold them around what the composition needed.

Over the past few years, from the expanded palette of As Falls Wichita, to the stylistic variety of First Circle, to the pop chorale on The Falcon And The Snowman, to your own album in which you’re establishing your own voice as a solo artist, it seems as though more and more has been demanded of you as a composer. Has that been occupying your attention at all?

I think so—maybe not always consciously, but the palette has been expanding and that has seemed to demand more responsibility from the composition end. I have gotten more serious about it. I’ve started to do that thing you always hear about: I get up in the morning and write counterpoint. I’ve gotten into studying scores seriously. Again, I’m not really quick about it. It takes me a long time, but I have gotten more serious about it. I really feel that there’s a responsibility to use this technology in the most musical ways it can be used. There are other ways of going about it—I could just as easily see somebody focusing entirely on improvisation, being facile with sounds, and developing a way of using them completely spontaneously. That’s just as valid. This is what seems most natural to me.

Did the chorale in The Falcon And The Snowman come naturally?

Well, that chorale goes way back. I was a church organist from the time I was six or seven years old until I got to college. I played in church every Sunday, and I’d improvise preludes in that style, so I got a good feeling for what the music was all about. I’d sung in choirs, so that was not foreign to me. That was actually a part of my background that I hadn’t really been able to use. I’d studied theory, counterpoint, harmony, and all that. Maybe that’s obvious from the other stuff we’ve written; we know about voice leading, and how to write four-part stuff, but seldom is that the appropriate thing to do. In that case it was great, because I could use all this stuff that I knew how to do, and that I’d never really had the opportunity to use.

How about the dramatic writing for the movie?

That’s somewhat similar. When I was in college I’d been writing for big band, but I found myself stretching the big band until finally I gave up because that wasn’t the ensemble I was hearing. It was counterproductive. I was trying to make it into an orchestra and it just wasn’t, or I was trying to make it into a Tower Of Power kind of horn band and it wasn’t that either. I spent a lot of time working out how to get those kinds of dramatic effects from ensembles, and actually I’m continuing to do that with synthesizers. There are times when my writing is definitely nodding more toward the orchestral tradition than it is toward Fats Waller or Duke Ellington. It was the first time that I’d really tried to write for strings in that way, but it felt natural. It didn’t feel awkward.

Does all this attention to composing have an effect on your self-conception as a player?

It’s actually helping me to figure out what I do best, because that’s what I want to focus on. Naturally I want to be well rounded, but I also want to put my energies where they’ll do the most good. And it’s making me realize that I am a player, and that’s a really important part of what I do, and that my compositions are better when I allow for my own playing, or for other good improvisers. I don’t think I’ll ever decide to quit all this and write string quartets. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but it’s a little bit of self-exploration. It’s helping e to figure out what’s appropriate, how I should approach music. Should I write everything out or should I write nothing out? Should I just use the piano? Should I use everything? Should I only use synthesizers? Should I not play at all, or should I use that discipline of having to decide what the notes ought to be, and then just live with it? Right now it’s exploration and definition, and I feel fortunate that I’m able to do it, that I don’t have to spend every night doing my gig at the Ramada Inn. It’s a luxury that’s not lost on me, and I’m trying to use it as responsibly as I can.

You mentioned your solo project in our 1980 interview. Why has it taken so long to materialize?

I’ve had a number of ideas through the past few years. I’d mull them over and start pursuing them, and I’d get about halfway into it and say, “No, this isn’t right. This isn’t really what I wanted to do.” There was an idea for a big band kind of record with some European players that I talked to Manfred [Eicher] about. We talked about logistics, and whom we’d get, and where we’d do it. And then I thought, “That may have been a good project, but it’s not right. That’s not what I want to do.” So I just backed out. It wasn’t at the stage where I really hung anybody up; it was just preliminary talking. For a while I was thinking about doing a trio record, and I got into that, and that wasn’t it either. It was really hard for me to find what I would do that was separate from all these influences I has had, and also separate from what I was doing in the group. It may have been obvious that I might do an actually solo album, but for me that’s the hardest record to do, and I don’t feel embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t do it. I was too hard. I wasn’t developed enough as a player. All I have to do is get out Facing You [by Keith Jarrett], and I say, “Keep practicing, Lyle, you don’t have it yet.” There have been some really great solo piano records, and I’m not about to approach making one lightly. And it seemed for a minute that there might be a solo record by using synths and piano. I did that solo concert and that was really fruitful, but when I sat down and really listened to the compositions, I finally said, “I know this is the music I want to do, and this is what would make it sound the best.” So finally the record got made. I was in a strange situation, in that I didn’t really have to make a record—there are a lot of people out there who do. It was a luxury to not have to make a record, because all the while I could keep writing, keep coming up with ideas, and they’d be implemented in the Group. It was a fantastic situation. I felt very strongly about the music we were making, and the growth that was happening there. And I felt fulfilled in a way so there wasn’t a backlog of material that was dying to get out. Some good ideas would come up, and the best of them would get incorporated into the Group’s music, with the greatest players, the best instruments, a great sound system, a great piano, enthusiastic audiences—it was a great situation, and it continues to be. But, in a strange way, that made it harder for me to figure out what I wanted to do apart from that. I guess on the one hand I was spoiled, having a situation where we could really work things out and get them right. It wasn’t frantic. The music never stopped short; we’d keep rehearsing it until it was what it should be, or as close as we could get it to what it should be. That alone, the fact that there’s a shared experience, and rehearsal time, and time to play it on the road, does something to the music that can be really good. You run into the danger of wearing something out, but as long as there’s a lot of improvisation and people are able to approach it with a fresh attitude, then that doesn’t have to happen. The other factor, then, became the pressure. After a couple of projects came up and I decided not to do them, and a few years went by, then suddenly everyone’s asking me, “Lyle, when’s your solo record going to come out?” That was another strange situation. A lot of people knew who I was through the Group, so it wasn’t like I had to make a record to introduce myself—which I’m thankful for. Had I felt that I needed to break from Pat, to establish myself, then the solo record would have been a completely different thing. I would have been launching something else. But I didn’t feel that way, and I don’t feel that way. The Group’s still going strong and I’m more excited about it than ever, so I could really afford to ask myself, “What kind of music do I want to play?” The people at Geffen are really open to what Pat and I want to do, and we have quite a lot of independence given that we have a production company, which actually does the records, so the situation was right for the record.

Was the taste of Top 40 stardom that you got backing up David Bowie on “This Is Not America” [the theme from The Falcon And The Snowman] attractive at all?

I don’t think we got any of that. I certainly didn’t feel any. It’s actually remarkable in that it seems like it didn’t change anything. We spent three months in London working on this score—that was really the focus for me—at the end, we spent a couple of days in Switzerland making a record with David Bowie. It was a nice tune, and we tried to come up with a good arrangement, to make nice sounds, and that’s it. We certainly didn’t see it as doing anything different for us, because we’re making the music we make, and we’re going to continue to do that. We’re really grateful for the number of people who listen to it, who come to the concerts and buy the records—that’s wonderful, but the only way we want to expand that audience is for more people to hear that music. If people hear the single and like and come to the group’s music, that’s fine, but I would hope then that they’d continue, and check out Ornette Coleman, and Bill Evans, and Miles. It just seemed like a couple of days we took off to do this thing with Bowie, and then it’s back to writing music and doing concerts and developing our stuff. Bowie’s very down-to-earth. He just came into the studio, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and did his part. There wasn’t any star trip, and we’re not the kind of people who would really be influenced by that anyway. It certainly didn’t change anything, and I don’t really see how it could, because I think this music that we’re making has its audience. It’s never going to be “arena jazz”—we don’t want to play for 20,000 in Madison Square Garden. That’s not really the point. We don’t want people screaming. We want them to listen, and maybe get something from it, and maybe get turned on to some stuff that we’re turned on to: Go back and check out the Beatles and Miles Davis. Or Milton Nascimento; there’s a lot of Brazilian influence in what we do, and Milton’s records are classics. I hope they’d get to that, too.

Interesting things have been happening, though, such as Sting using jazz musicians to make a pop album. The Bowie tune seemed like it might be part of that phenomenon. Do you think there’s any significance to it?

The significance of that is—well, there may not be any significance—but part of it is that, these days, jazz musicians seem to be the most well rounded musicians. If you get a good jazz player of this generation, chances are he’s heard the Beatles and the Stones, and has assimilated that. That broadens things. Chances are that he can improvise in more than just a bebop style. The appeal of it is good musicianship, not jazz. You mentioned Sting; I don’t think that project has anything to do with jazz in a traditional sense. He was using them just as a good band. It’s amazing to me to see him show up in the Grammy nominations for jazz artist; it points out what the whole thing is about. It’s pretty silly. It could be a trend. I don’t know how those things work, I don’t know how the “rock industry” feels about jazz, whether it’s going to be the new thing, or whether it’s going to help sell records. I don’t think it will, and if they’re approaching it that way, well, I hope it works. But I doubt it. We’re going to continue doing what we do, and maybe it’s up to other people to figure out the significance of it. We’re just trying to make the music sound right, and I can see that it gets into other areas, because we draw on things besides jazz; ethnic musics, folk music, country music, rock, pop, orchestral—you know, whatever.

You’ve been doing some sessions, too.

I just did some duets with Bobby McFerrin for his upcoming record. He’s one of the most phenomenal musicians—“singer” doesn’t come close to describing what he does. In his own words, he plays a concert. He does; he’s the whole band. So when he asked me to do some duets with him, naturally I was excited, and also intimidated because here’s someone who just opens his mouth and music comes out every time, and I’m worrying about my setup. Sometimes I have to take a half-hour to repatch and program this and that, which really gets in the way of spontaneity. It was intimidating, but we work out really well. We did some live, improvised, completely spontaneous duets that were really exciting, and the blend between the voice and the synthesizer was great—I only played synthesizers. I’ve already mentioned the thing with Bob Moses, who is not as well known as he should be. He’s a phenomenal musician, a very great drummer and a very creative composer, too. He’s coming from the Ellington and Mingus tradition, which few people do these days, and he understands it. The album I worked on is the story of Moses—the Biblical Moses. That was a great opportunity because I wasn’t involved in the actual band, the rhythm section kind of thing. I was brought in more for orchestration. When I was working on the part about the Ten Plagues, it was the first time I’ve been asked to sound like lice—or flies, or locusts, or hailstones.

We haven’t spoken much about your compositions for contemporary music ensembles.

I’ve been writing pieces that don’t rely on the jazz rhythm section. As much as we’ve stretched out into different styles in the Group, the music is usually founded on the bass player playing a bass part and the drummer playing a drum part. We may feel like we’re stretching way out, but I think in reality we’re still dealing with variations on dance music. A lot of our stuff is 4/4; it has a discernible groove. Occasionally we’ll do something like the version of “The Bat” that’s on Offramp, which is more like an adagio or a tone poem, using the instruments in a different way, but I think that we’re branching out into composing the grooves and the whole sound, not just composing on top of things. The stuff that I’ve been writing for these new music concerts has been very difficult because I have to define the grooves, if there is such a thing. I have to define the whole rhythmic element of the composition. It’s not like you can tell the drummer, “I want a broken-eighth feel here.” You write the whole thing out. That’s a discipline which is really frightening, really demanding, and I’m inexperienced at it, and hopefully I’ll get better at it. Some of the things on my record are pointing to that. There are sections where it’s all written out—every drum hit, every bass hit, every note—or stuff without bass or drums, just a compositional idea like the second part of the “Alaskan Suite.” It’s just a piece scored for synthesizers and acoustic bass, and the whole of the piece is defined by the notes. It’s a real exciting prospect, and I’m finding that it’s actually not too much of a departure for me to go further into the new music side of things, because I can use a lot of my knowledge of technology to great effect. I can deal with P.A. systems, and reverbs, and echoes, and sampled sounds on a very sophisticated level, and that’s getting more prevalent in new music circles. They’re drawing, in turn, on the dance music gradation: jazz, or rock and roll. Steve Reich’s music grooves. I hesitate to call it a hybrid, because I hate the term “fusion.” I hate simplifying things into just a simple marriage of this and that, because it’s really a new style. It’s just music, growing to keep up with change. I think it’s going to be reflected in my albums, and I’m sure to be reflected in my albums, and I’m sure it’s going to be reflected in the Group’s music.

How do keyboards fit in to these pieces?

For the most recent one [performed in San Francisco by Primarily Percussion, a contemporary music group], I used a synthesizer for sounds that were very similar to the marimbas but with longer decay times, so the keyboard player was doubling a lot of the marimba parts, extending the sounds. It was used for effects and blending. I didn’t write a separate synthesizer part where it was, “Oh, that’s a synthesizer.” I wanted it to be mixed in there, to be indistinguishable. 

Do you study any particular percussion repertoire to pick up percussion techniques, or are the compositional techniques straight out of your imagination?

It’s funny, I had written pages and pages of sketches, and it was really going well. I was excited—“This is great, this is fun, I’ll write more notes: xylophone here, woodblock there”—but I threw it all away, because it was like bad Varèse, or bad Crumb. It was an unprocessed version of people who have written for percussion really well, but it wasn’t me. So I had to start over from scratch, and I decided that I wanted to make the percussion ensemble sound lush. It’s too easy just to go for the effect I tried to just get a different sound than is normally heard from a percussion ensemble. So in some ways I was on my own; I couldn’t point to another piece. The Kurzweil helped a lot. It’s samples are close enough to the real instruments that you can get a real good idea of what things are going to sound like just by playing on the keyboard, so I could test various parts and come up with a rough approximation of what it would sound like. I wrote a lot of the piece that way: I would go with my instincts, and then test certain sections by putting them into the sequencer until I could feel fairly confident that it would work. Naturally, it doesn’t sound nearly as good as it sounds with real musicians and real instruments, but for the way I went about writing this piece, it was perfect. I could try something that I hadn’t ever heard, that I couldn’t go to a score to see how it was done, and let my ears decide whether it was working or not.

Do you use any other sampling instruments that way?

I’m sure that others would work that way, but the Kurzweil is the one I work with.

What other concerts have you been commissioned to write pieces for?

I wrote a piece for a concert in Boston, for the group called the Composers in Red Sneakers, a delightful bunch of people. They all wear red sneakers; they’re not afraid of using humor. They put on very good-feeling concerts, but it’s serious music. You’ll hear a string quartet, or a brass quintet, or piece for tape and dance, narration and strings—they run the gamut. They took a gamble on me. They said, “We think you can do this.” I said, “I don’t know if I can do this.” They said, “Go ahead, we think you can.” The same thing happened with this [percussion] concert. Barry Jekowsky, the musical director for the Primarily Percussion series, called me up out of the blue and said, “Would you write a piece for us?” So I’ve had some really fortunate experiences with people who have gotten hints of some other things from the Group’s music, and figured that I could stretch a little further. And it has stretched me—I’ve lost more sleep over those two pieces than I have over anything. It’s the hardest stuff I’ve ever had to write, and it’s also very difficult for me because I’m spoiled. I’m used to a situation where there’s almost unlimited rehearsal time, where there’s a shared understanding, a shared tradition, and also the fact that we’ve worked together for years. You don’t have that when you get a bunch of different players together from around the country for two days of rehearsal, and then you put on this piece. It’s a madhouse. One of my synthesizers didn’t show up, one that was integral to the piece. We didn’t get the players we thought we were going to get. We pulled it off; it was the best that it could be given the circumstances, but it still wasn’t right. I don’t know if it’ll ever get right. I’m realizing that to sit back there and be the composer, and not be involved in playing, makes me a nervous wreck. You start looking at players differently. You say, “Number two isn’t playing it right,” and these are brilliant musicians whose playing I’ve enjoyed for years! It’s really weird to stand there asking yourself, “Are they playing it right?” Of course, it’s easier in this particular case, because they did play it right, and they brought even more to it than was there. One of the things I think I’ll always do is write for good improvisers. The really good improvisers can improvise in such a broad range of styles. The piece I wrote for the Boston concert involved me playing on a scaled-down version of my setup, and I had another person playing a piano part, and another playing half of my synthesizers. So I could write for my sounds, but I split them up so that I could get more happening. We had an amplified cello, and I was playing a sampled cello off of that, and I had written a percussion part that was playing off of a drum machine and synthesizer percussion. I was using elements that I was familiar with, and also incorporating the tradition of pieces for tape and performance; there’s essentially no difference between putting something in a sequencer and having a tape play, in terms of how a performer deals with it. But I think the thing that made that piece work is that I could improvise in the style of that piece on my own on the instruments. At the time of the performance, I had the freedom to play something on the sampled cello that had just occurred to me, playing off of the real cellist. His part was completely written. If I do move further into that area, I’ll be bringing a lot of improvisational elements, rather than stylistic elements, with me. I don’t want to write for jazz drum set; that’s not the point. A lot of third stream music, I think, has had a big band rhythm section playing behind atonal horn writing—that’s a horrible, absurd reduction of it, and I don’t mean to put down the people who have done really brilliant things with that, but unfortunately, a lot of it has fallen into that simplistic style where all of the instruments haven’t been explored, just some of them.

Are there any special considerations when you’re writing keyboard music for other players?

The main consideration is that the way I hear sounds on synthesizers is different, so I have to really get specific with sounds, and pretty specific with instruments. You can’t get the sounds that I like to use on a DX7. I don’t have a DX, and I probably won’t get one. Everyone seems to have one; I seem to be one of the last holdouts. But there are things that the Oberheim Four-Voice can do that no other synthesizer can do, Synclavier included. If I hear it on the Oberheim Four-Voice, it’s got to be that. If you write for cello section, you don’t want it played on harp or kazoo. There are things idiomatic to cellos that can only be played on cellos. For the time being, I don’t know how I will have a piece that I write played anywhere else if I’m not there. It’s sort of not possible—but that isn’t so weird either, because for a long time Steve Reich wouldn’t let his music be played unless he was there. If it takes my instruments to make it sound right—or those specific instruments, which few people seem to have—then that’s what it takes. It would be very simple for me to write for a bunch of DX7s, because I could get those anywhere, but then it wouldn’t sound like me. It wouldn’t sound like the music’s supposed to sound.

Do you expect to get more of these kinds of commissions?

I’ve already got some. It’s hard, because it’s so time-consuming, and I want to make sure this is really where my time should be spent. I have a feeling I’ll do some more, but I’m going to choose pretty carefully. It’s not that I consider my services so valuable, it’s just that I really want to—I don’t want to have pretentions. It’s a strange trap, being the composer, for me particularly. I was brought up to think that Beethoven was God. There are a lot of trappings that go with that role, that have absolutely nothing to do with the music, and that I certainly don’t want to get involved with, so it’s weird to me. I have to find the right way to get into all that.

It’s surprising to hear you say that, having been one of the primary composers in the Pat Metheny Group.

That’s true, but the composing ran into the performing, which ran into the conception of the group. It was all one thing. It’s not like I wrote a piece for the Pat Metheny Group and sent Pat a cassette, and he said, “Yes, I like this piece. I think we can work out a performance of it.” It’s not that situation at all, whereas in these other circles, that is the situation. You sell your piece, and they’re also going to do pieces by other composers, and you’re just one small part of that. You don’t get to mold the ensemble over years. There are some severe constraints, and also some real exciting possibilities The sound of all those marimbas [at the Primarily Percussion concert]—that’s something I’m not going to forget. Actually, I hope that music moves into an area where all these issues become hopelessly blurred. It’ll make the critic’s job real hard, but I think it’s going to be great for the musicians. Maybe we’re already at that point; stylistic considerations are almost moot. Take the percussion performance, for instance. Dave Samuels and Dave Friedman play anything. They can play a free piece, and it sounds like somebody worked for six months writing it out, and got every note right, got the drama right, perfect balance, orchestration, brilliant writing for mallets—they just toss it off. They can also play a jazz standard as well as you’d ever want to hear it, right from the tradition, at the highest level. There are a lot of musicians like that lately. The musicians aren’t making those artificial barriers. I don’t hear musicians tell me I’m a fusion player. Those labels exist apart from the music. It’s something that the critics have invented, and it’s going to get harder and harder for them, and those labels are going to mean less and less, because musicians, composers, music directors, and conductors are all moving towards some more homogeneous place. It’s wonderful, and very natural. I don’t feel like any great innovator at all. I’m just picking up on what’s happening. It’s just natural these days to move in wider circles. It just makes sense.

Don’t you think that players, as well as critics, need to have a common understanding of some sort, and—music education being what it is these days—that the common ground often ends up being that kind of label?

I think you’re right. I think that’s also changing Music schools are expanding their programs and, if not actually encouraging people to be proficient in a number of disciplines, at least not busting them for it. I think it used to be and may still be that way in certain places; the classical guys would get upset if their students were playing jazz, because it would corrupt them. But I think that’s changing, though I would hope it would change even faster. It can’t help but change. It’s got to reflect what’s happening, or it’ll get passed by

Can you give us a projection for your next few projects?

The next big project will probably be a group album. We’ve taken some time off to do a few other things. I wanted to get the solo project done, and also try some sort of new music ideas I’ve had, and generally recharge the batteries and take another look at what we’re doing and what we can do, and also just catch up with the technology and with the writing. It can be stimulating to play concerts and all that, but it’s very hard to actually put the ideas into practice when you’re on the road. The gig is it: You get up in the morning and you’re aware of a concert that night, you go to the airport and get through that somehow, do the sound check—the full focus, from morning until evening, is on the concert. It’s a playing head: What will make me play good? What do I need to do? Do I need to be alone now? Do I need to practice? What’s going to make the concert be the best it can be? That’s such a different head from writing, where you really need hours of uninterrupted time, which there simply isn’t on the road. And when you do have hours of uninterrupted time on the road, your instruments are in a truck going to the next gig. Both Pat and I are taking a step back, trying to assimilate everything that’s happened in the last year: four big tours spanning the United States, South America, Japan, and Australia. It was a big year for touring, and there’s a lot to assimilate and a lot to reflect on, and also there’s a feeling like, “Okay what’s the next step? What do we do now?” It’s not “Okay, let’s do that again.” It’s time to move on.

(Courtesy of KEYBOARD MAGAZINE)