Courtesy of Kurt Rosenwinkel
A
FIRESIDE CHAT WITH KURT ROSENWINKEL
Remember the name Kurt Rosenwinkel. He will be dominating the music in
the very near future. With an album just released on Verve (a few years
in the waiting), Rosenwinkel is getting the attention he rightfully deserves.
Anyone who has seen him at Smalls in the last few years can attest to
that. So here he is, unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I got started playing rock and gravitated to more progressive
rock like Rush and then I got into jazz from there. I have just always
had a thirst for the depth and complexity of music and so it's just led
me through in jazz. I have been writing my own music since I was nine
years old and it just been, my tastes have just been growing since then
and my music has been growing since then. Now it is juts kind of where
it is right now.
FJ: It is surprising that at such a young age, you were already developing
an interest.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I got into jazz when I was in late high school, junior
year of high school, I guess, or sophomore year of high school. So I was
about fifteen, I guess. A lot of people get into it a lot earlier than
me. But I grew up in Philly, so there was a jam session, a jazz jam session
that happened that was really exciting because there was a lot of electricity
in the room. It was a local bar and it was very big. It was just an intense
scene there and it just activated the whole club and the whole club was
just transformed. I just love that feeling and I was a part of it. I just
got addicted to that feeling, that wonderful feeling.
FJ: It seems like you were quite the go-getter.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I organized a concert when I was about nine in the neighborhood.
We charged like a dollar at the door. Me and my friend had a band. It
was a dollar at the door and so we made about twenty-three bucks. I was
playing piano and he was playing drums and we just had our own tunes and
they were just really simple, bang them out on the piano tunes and no
words.
FJ: Quite the entrepreneur too.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Yeah (laughing).
FJ: When did you move to New York?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: It was 1991.
FJ: Was it a struggle for you initially?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Well, I didn't know very many people down here and so
the first year was kind of just getting my own stuff together and eeking
out a living. Actually, for the first few years it was sort of like that,
just meeting people and that's when I started playing with Jeff Ballard
and Ben Street and Mark Turner. When we got down here, we just started
working on our music.
FJ: How significant was the role that Smalls played in your development?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Fred, there is so much I can say about Smalls. It's
probably the only place in New York City that has provided musicians of
my generation a place where we can go and work on our music in the context
of a club. It has become a scene unto itself and there is always many
musicians who hang out there all the time. Two or three bands play there
every night. So there are a lot of ideas being bounced around there all
the time. There is a high quality of musicianship and a seriousness about
improvised music that is inherent in that place. It's been a real family
to me, a real community. And Mitch, the owner, that is his mission. That's
what he wanted to do and that's what he is doing. He struggles to keep
that happening against all odds. He's basically just running it by himself.
He's always been an extremely fair club owner. I don't even consider him
a club owner. He's Mitch. He's very fair always. He pays the musicians
well. He gives people like myself a chance to develop a band over the
course of years. He's given that opportunity to many other musicians,
who otherwise wouldn't have had a venue. I think that a lot of musicians
in my generation owe a lot of their development to that club, including
me.
FJ: Do you still maintain a regular gig there?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Well, he books now about a year in advance. We go through
the year and we book a bunch of gigs. A lot of times, I have to end up
canceling them because I have other work. We'll schedule a few months
of Tuesdays, every Tuesday, but that is getting harder and harder for
me to be able to do since I am starting to tour more now.
FJ: Let's touch on your work as a member of Paul Motian's Electric Bebop
Band.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Oh yeah, Paul had the idea to play bebop music with
electric guitars and so he asked Bill Frisell to recommend some guitar
players. Bill had just seen me play with a band called Human Feel, up
in Boston and so he recommended me to Paul and he called me. That was
about in '91, as well. I came down to New York and started playing with
that band. We've been playing ever since. There has been a lot of personnel
changes over the years and now it is at a more or less stable point.
FJ: Who is in the band now?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Now it's Steve Cardenas, Chris Cheek, and Chris Potter.
FJ: Chris is another focused, young talent.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Chris is a strong improviser and he is a commanding
presence. He's just an endless source of ideas. He just continually amazes
me with his improvisations. He is just very relaxed and very playful,
but very strong. He takes the band to some really high levels, so high
points.
FJ: Acoustic or electric guitar, do you have a preference?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I prefer electric guitar.
FJ: Why?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Because a lot of the orchestral sounds I hear in my
head, I can get with the electric guitar and also a lot of the linear,
high register phrasings, I can get with electric guitar that is very difficult
with acoustic guitar. That said, I love the acoustic guitar. I don't play
steel string so much. I play nylon strings and that is just a beautiful
sound.
FJ: Let's talk about your just released album for Verve, The Enemies of
Energy, a session you recorded four years ago. Why did it take such a
length of time to get it out?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Well, I made it myself and after I made it, I tried
to shop it to get a record deal and nobody picked me up. And then later,
after I had started working on a whole new repertoire with my band because
we recorded that music because it was the time to record it because we
were changing as a band. So we recorded that music and moved on and then
we got signed and then I made a record for Impulse! and that took a while
and then there was that merger between MCA and Polygram, where Impulse!
and Verve became one and Verve no longer wanted to put the new record
out. So there is one more recent, but they liked the one that I had done
on my own. So that is how that one came to be, which is good and I am
happy about it because I borrowed a lot of money to make it and now I
can, I was able to pay everybody back.
FJ: Is it an honest representation of where you are now?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Well, I mean, I am comfortable with it, but I have certainly
grown a lot since then. I wouldn't say it represents where I am at now,
no, because I have grown a lot. That said, I am really proud of it and
I think it's a great record. I'm totally behind it and I am comfortable
with that being the way people are hearing me now.
FJ: Has Verve expressed an interest in releasing the Impulse! recording?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I am not really pushing for it and it's already made
and I have so much music to make. I have got a lot of music and so I kind
of feel like my job as far as that record is concerned is finished. We
made it and I love the record. I think it's great, but it's finished.
We did it. As an artist, I feel the need, the necessity to record what
I am working on now. There is a whole other record with a whole other
thing to do. I think it will probably be released, assuming I am successful,
I think it will be released at some point anyway and I'm not really worried
about it.
FJ: Let's get into the members of your band, Mark Turner, who coincidently
just put out an album of his own, Ben Street, Jeff Ballard, and Scott
Kinsey.
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Right, the music that we have played as a band over
the past six, seven years has pretty much always been mine. But as we
have grown as a band, my music when I hear it in my head, before I even
write it down, I hear those guys playing it. So they are so much a part
of the music and in that sense, even though I am the writer, it is their
music too because they have inspired me as a composer to write a certain
kind of music. There is a real closeness and very deep closeness of the
heart between all of us with this music. Their specific playing on the
record is so present and it's played with so much care and wisdom about
what the music is. But in a larger sense, it was ours to begin with so
it was all of ours.
FJ: How extensive was your involvement on the Marcy Playground album?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I was playing in the band when they got signed. My friend,
John Wozniak, who is the lead singer and writer, and the drummer, who
was then the drummer, they were living out in the suburbs of New York
and they had this band, but they didn't have a bass player to play for
the President of EMI Records and so they called me up like out of the
blue and I came over there and then spent a couple of weeks learning their
music and then we performed for the President and we got signed for their
first record. They wanted me to be in the band, but I had my own stuff
going on and so I introduced them to their bass player now, who is Dylan
Keefe and then later they replaced the drummer with the drummer who is
with them now, who is Dan Reiser. And so I've been involved since the
very beginning with that band. When they went in to do the second record
(Shapeshifter), they had me come in and play with them.
FJ: Is there a big transition from playing jazz to playing with Marcy?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: Yeah, there is a different aesthetic. It's a different
kind of beauty. It's a more simple beauty. I am no stranger to rock music.
I grew up with it and I still listen to Led Zeppelin and Bowie. I'm a
Bowie fanatic actually. It's in me and so I can do it, but it is definitely
a change of mindset.
FJ: I know that Brad Mehldau has groupies, do you?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I don't know. I've got fans, yeah, nobody who really
follows me around. I don't think that they are going to go to Europe to
see me play. Yeah, people tell me that I definitely have a following.
FJ: What has been in your CD player lately?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: I'm listening to Miles Smiles. I'm listening to Bud
Powell. I'm listening to Elmo Hope, a record called Homecoming. I'm listening
to Bowie and the Police. I just got my record collection back from many
years and so I've got all these great old records. I'm just checking back
with Synchronicity and some Zeppelin and some Bowie. I'm listening to
some Keith Jarrett.
FJ: Has Verve given you the green light to do another album?
KURT ROSENWINKEL: We're not at that point yet. This record just got released
and we'll work at this record and we're going to do as much touring as
we can and basically, just get things started and off the ground. And,
yeah, at a certain point, go in and do another record and continue on.
I have been playing with some altered tunings on the guitar and improvising
in some altered tunings and so that is going to be part of the next record.
Fred Jung is Editor-In-Chief and the first Survivor off the island. Comments?
Email him.