ONCE BEST KNOWN AS THE TENOR SAXIST OF KURT ROSENWINKEL’S CREATIVE QUINTET, MARK TURNER HAS OVER THE YEARS BECOME ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF TODAY’S GENERATION. NOT ONLY BEING A PART OF THE TRIO FLY, TURNER HAS LED AND CO-LED A NUMBER OF SMALL GROUPS THAT MIX THE TRADITION OF JAZZ’S BEBOP WITH ADVENTUROUS EXPLORATIONS.
THE REASON FOR TURNER’S STANDING IS UNDERSTANDABLE. IN A DAY WHEN EVERYONE STILL FLOATS IN THE WAKE OF JOHN COLTRANE, TURNER HAS TAKEN A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ROUTE FOR INSPIRATION, NAMELY THE LENNIE TRISTANO DISCIPLE WARNE MARSH, WHO WAS AN LA FIXTURE FOR YEARS WITH SUPERSAX AS WELL AS HIS OWN CREATIVELY SWINING SMALL GROUPS.
NOW OVERLOOKED, MARSH’S IDEAS ARE GETTING RECOGNITION THANKS TO THE STALWART WORK OF TURNER, WHO HAS RELEASED RECENTLY ECM ALBUM (RETURN FROM THE STARS) IN ADDTION TO HIS OWN TRIBUTE TO MARSH WITH GARY FOSTER A FEW YEARS BACK.
WE RECENTLY HAD A CHANCE TO CATCH UP WITH MR. TURNER, AND LIKE HIS MUSIC, HIS ANSWERS WERE WELL THOUGHT OUT AND CREATIVE
WHERE DO YOU LIVE NOW?
Here in LA, for a year and a half. I grew up here, and then I lived in New Haven for 9 years, as my wife was at Yale, as well as 21 years in New York.
It’s interesting coming back; it’s a completely different city that I left in ’96.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?
In a whole host of ways, and all of them are better.
I mean, now you can see. Back then it was just a layer of smog everywhere. When I was growing up in LA it was like you couldn’t go out for recess when in was warm. I remember having smog alerts at least 3-5 times a month or more.
It’s incredible to be able to see the whole area and comparatively not have smog.
There’s also a subway now. It’s being built and there are more stations. I’m kind of into it; I take the subway and the bus. I’m into it-I support public transportation! (laughs)
People now walk and live downtown. That wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. I don’t mean to be mean, but it feels like a real city. It’s more dense, more international; it’s great! It feels like Brooklyn. I’m impressed.
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“There’s craft and there’s art; they are the two sides of one coin”
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HOW HAS THE JAZZ SCENE CHANGE SINCE YOU’VE BEEN GONE?
When I left, I was a teenager, so I didn’t know much about it. But coming back all the time I know about it from playing at the Bakery and asking.
There’s a scene of young scene of creative musicians who really want to play jazz. Not young musicians who want to only play in studios. That’s what it was like when I was a kid.
And, now the kids don’t go to New York. There are a few here that can really play, and ***they just come to LA, which I was completely blown away by. I used to think “Why would you stay here?”, but I can see why they stay. There’s something happening. It’s not the size and intensity of New York, but it is a scene, and it wasn’t there before as far as young people making creative music.
I’m sure it was there, as it always is in every big city, but there seems like there is more of it now.
YOU HAD A HARROWING HAND INJURY A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO. HOW HAS IT HEALED?
It’s cool now; it’s not like it was, but over the years the nerves seem to be growing back slowly. My fingers are slightly less sensitive to gold than they were before. I can play, and it gets better every year.
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“Playing forms but sounding like you’re on the edge”
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DID YOU EVER THINK THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE HAD TO CHANGE CAREERS?
While the rehab was going on I thought it was a possibility, and they told me that it was a possibility.
I worked my hardest to make sure that I did everything right. The rehab was about four months. It worked out, but that thought was always there.
WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE IF YOU COULDN’T HAVE PLAYED ANYMORE?
I probably would have ended up working at Target. (laughs) I can’t do anything else! I’ve put all of my eggs in this basket.
WHAT’S INTRIGUING ABOUT YOUR PLAYING IS THAT IN A DAY WHEN EVERYONE IS INFLUENCED ONLY BY JOHN COLTRANE, YOU ARE ONE OF THE FEW WHO’VE BEEN INSPIRED BY SOMEONE ELSE, WHO IS MUCH MORE OBSCURE AND UNDERAPPRECIATED, WARNE MARSH.
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“thinking about what my aesthetic is. What do I like? What do I not like? Why? What Am I going to do about it? How am I going to acquire the things that I like?”
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HOW DID YOU GET INTRIGUED BY HIM?
Warne Marsh is a big influence on me, and so is the whole Lennie Tristano West Coast School. That isn’t even accurate, as Lennie is from the East Coast; he’s just associated with the West Coast. Warne is the same way-he spent a lot of time in the East Coast, as also was Lee Konitz.
I first heard him in High School and was intrigued. I thought, “Who is this guy? He sounds really weird and yet interesting”. That’s all I thought. He was different from any other saxophone player I had ever heard.
5-6 years went by, and I ran into him again because I had some friends, a piano player Mike Kanan living in Boston who was studying with Harvey Diamond, a disciple of Lennie Tristano. Another friend, drummer Jorge Rossy (who used to play with Brad Mehldau) was playing with Mike Kanan, who was by then into that. I got reintroduced to it through him.
I was intrigued because I was transcribing a lot of saxophone players, and was trying to find something else, people who were playing from the seat of their pants in terms of improvising but who were also playing a very organized music. “Organized” meaning standards, chord changes, rhythm sections; not playing “free”. Playing forms but sounding like you’re on the edge.
I was thinking of things like Miles’ band in the 50s, with a piano player like Herbie Hancock. I was also listening to Keith Jarrett in the 70s, and Paul Bley. A lot of keyboard players at the time. But I wanted something a bit earlier, a bit more traditional from the bebop era, but not necessarily bebop.
So I went back to listening to the Tristano School of musicians, and of course I gravitated to Warne Marsh because he was a tenor player.
Then Mike lent me bootlegs, and I asked him questions about what he was studying, especially from Harvey Diamond and Sal Mosca (a Tristano student). I never studied with Sal myself, maybe because I was afraid to get too involved with it. So, I just checked it out by transcribing.
HOW DID IT CHANGE YOU?
A whole host of ways. It made me think about exactly what “improvising” is, what it entails, and how to go about it. They had their view how to go about it, and it affected me quite a bit.
Also, they affected in me the significance and power of melody and voice leading. That’s a big part from them, which I think is important
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“Play your instrument well; play in tune; have good time; have a decent sense of what a viable melody is. That’s the craft; the basic things about music”
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HOW DID YOU DEVELOP YOUR OWN SOUND?
Transcribing the masters, just listening. The majority is that. I did a LOT of transcribing.
Also, thinking about what my aesthetic is. What do I like? What do I not like? Why? What Am I going to do about it? How am I going to acquire the things that I like?
Being specific about that; not being intellectually lazy on the “art” aspect of music.
There’s craft and there’s art; they are the two sides of one coin.
I try to get specific about these things and then gradually mold them around over time. Through transcribing I get language, timber, tempo, time and sound; learning that from the masters.
The more people I transcribed, the closer I got to what I am doing.
It’s also important to listen to other kinds of music besides jazz. For example, I listen to classical music scores, and I might like the vocabulary. So, they might have melodies and chords for me to study.
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“They want to be expressive, be a star, sound like themselves in one year. (laughs) I’m joking of course, but how about just sounding good?”
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YOU MENTIONED THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRAFT AND ART. WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY IT?
I think the relationship is true for all art forms.
I think that all people who practice an art form, whether it is dance, movement , visual art, story-telling, writing, there is a craft to these things. You actually have to know how to write, for example. There’s a craft to music. There’s a craft to dance. You have to learn certain skills on how to dance well. There’s a craft to acting.
That is the technical part, which some people say, “learn the craft, and out of the craft comes art”. You can be a carpenter. Somebody can make a chair, but you can also make a beautiful chair.
There’s a difference between making something just functional and something that is aesthetically beautiful, and people are attracted to it. That’s the “art” part.
Most of us that are artists are basically “skills averse”. Most of the young musicians disassociate with the “art” aspect. 1704 Some only associate with technique and have almost no sense or a low sense of aesthetics. Some come in and sound like themselves already, especially with jazz. (There’s a whole different paradigm with classical music.)
They want to be expressive, be a star, sound like themselves in one year. (laughs) I’m joking of course, but how about just sounding good?
Play your instrument well; play in tune; have good time; have a decent sense of what a viable melody is. That’s the craft; the basic things about music.
People have been playing music throughout the last few millennia, and those are the basic things that they all know. Why would someone hire you for a wedding if you can’t play? They’re not going to say “Oh My Gawd” about the artistic portion but you can’t play the wedding tune, play in time, or if you don’t know any songs.
You have to know songs by memory. That’s part of being a musician; that’s part of the craft.
Out of that the art comes. You decide how you want your sound to sound. How do you want to play the time? What tunes do you want to know? How do you want to play them? That’s ***how the aesthetic part comes about. You then learn to express that musically on your instrument, so people will pay you to do it.
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“People have been playing music throughout the last few millennia, and those are the basic things that they all know. Why would someone hire you for a wedding if you can’t play?”
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YOU’VE PLAYED IN A PIANOLESS GROUP WITH KURT ROSENWINKEL, AS WELL AS WITH PIANIST BRAD MEHLDAU. HOW DID PLAYING IN DIFFERENT ENVIRONS SUCH AS THAT AFFECT YOUR APPROACH TO SOLOING?
I played with Kurt for a long time, and playing with Brad was in the mid to early 90s. There were about 20 of us musicians in Brooklyn in a certain orbit, interchanging in different bands.
Brad was in that, before he became Brad with a capital “B”. (laughs)
Playing with Kurt was primarily with his tunes. We rehearsed (Jeff Ballard, Ben Street and I) would rehearse once a week, playing at Smalls when we were in town every Tuesday. A lot of it was just figuring out our aesthetic while playing his tunes, trying to figure out how to put a language together that hadn’t quite been done in the past.
The main difference between saxophone and guitar, and with piano, is that the guitar is basically a non-tempered instrument. The intonation is a little bit different, and the chord voicings are different because usually there are fewer notes in them. It’s a little like playing somewhere like a saxophone trio with chords.
The other thing is the intonation issue. When you’re playing the melody with a guitar player, each string on an electric guitar is like a sine wave sound, so the margin for playing in tune with a guitar playing is very, very small. So, if you’re out of tune, you’re going to mess up the voicings, so you really have to be on point with that.
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“You decide how you want your sound to sound. How do you want to play the time? What tunes do you want to know? How do you want to play them? That’s how the aesthetic part comes about. You then learn to express that musically on your instrument, so people will pay you to do it”
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Piano is a bit different. The voicings are larger; there are more notes in them.
Most of the time, when you’re playing the melody, the piano player is not playing the melody with you. Your margin of error with intonation is therefore larger.
So if you want to vary your intonation for expressive content, you can so it with a piano. You can’t do it as easily with a guitar quartet so much. It’s a different vibe.
YOU’VE ALSO DONE WORK WITH TOM HARRELL AND JIMMY SMITH. WAS THERE EVER A GIG WHERE YOU THOUGHT “THIS IS MY BAPTISM BY FIRE”?
All of them! (laughs) All in a different way.
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“(Try) to be an “assassin” on stage. (Laughs). I mean in the Samurai sense. I mean that you don’t have to be loud, it’s more about content, phrasing and placement”
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Jimmy Smith was only for a recording. Yes, I can say “we played together” but it wasn’t like a successive set of tours.
I played a fair amount with Tom Harrell, with two or three bands over 4-5 years.
I learned a lot from Tom.
One thing was just trying to be an “assassin” on stage. (Laughs). I mean in the Samurai sense. I mean that you don’t have to be loud, it’s more about content, phrasing and placement. He was like a master musician from the bebop era, but of course a more modern musician.
He’s completely no compromise.
He’ll be on stage and if he doesn’t like what’s happening in the rhythm section or something, he’ll just stop halfway through the chorus, and that’s it. He doesn’t try to smooth anything over, or try to complete the form. He’s like ‘OK, I’m done’. There’s something kind of bad-ass about that. Everything has to be right.
I’m super into that.
He also doesn’t let anyone bully him on stage. He likes heat in the rhythm section, but whatever’s happening there, he sticks to the integrity of his line and melody no matter what. He just doesn’t waver.
I always believed that, but watching him really confirmed it, having a master do it right next to me.
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“(Tom Harrell would) be on stage and if he doesn’t like what’s happening in the rhythm section or something, he’ll just stop halfway through the chorus, and that’s it. He doesn’t try to smooth anything over, or try to complete the form. He’s like ‘OK, I’m done’. There’s something kind of bad-ass about that. Everything has to be right. I’m super into that
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WHAT’S THE BEST MUSICAL OR LIFE ADVICE SOMEONE HAS GIVEN YOU?
I haven’t got much verbal advice from older musicians; it’s always been through just playing with them. They just play and direct me from what they do.
Maybe some of the best advice I’ve got from playing with someone is to just the depth of the blues. Everyone I’ve played with, definitely from Billy Hart to Tom Harrell, and from playing with Paul Motian, or first playing with Rufus Reid when I got to play on tour.
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“(stick) to the integrity of your idea, and don’t let anyone push you around”
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WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A SAX PLAYER, AND WHAT IS YOUR PET PEEVE?
My pet peeve about a sax player is when they play too many extraneous notes. Overplaying; too many notes that have no melodic, harmonic or rhythmic meaning. I don’t like just filling up extra space just to be filling it up for a lack of musical ideas.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like “maximalism”. When it’s done well, I’m all about it. When it’s done because of a certain lack of musical ability, it’s just too much. And it’s easy to do on saxophone.
AND IT’S TEMPTING WITH AN OPEN GROUP LIKE FLY, BY YOU AVOID THAT PITFALL
I do my best.
What I look for in a saxophone player is melodic integrity; an allegiance to the melody, no matter what.
The masters knew how to play one great chorus; not ten mediocre choruses.
GIVE ME A FEW BOOKS YOU WISH EVERYONE WOULD READ
They are probably all going to be Sci-Fi books, because I love Sci Fi.
You’ve got to read Dune. I’d even go so far as to say you have to read the first three books of the Dune series.
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin. Also Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.
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“My pet peeve about a sax player is when they play too many extraneous notes. Overplaying; too many notes that have no melodic, harmonic or rhythmic meaning. I don’t like just filling up extra space just to be filling it up for a lack of musical ideas”
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WHY DO YOU LIKE THEM IN PARTICULAR, AND SCI-FI IN GENERAL?
One thing about Sci-Fi that is important is world building. It has to be credible, and you have to kind of do it in a way by telling a story without spending 100 pages on back story.
Dune is masterful at that. It’s kind of like The Lord of the Rings of science fiction. If it weren’t sci-fi, and the world were like that, if you read it that way it would just be a great novel.
World building, intricacy and the story of a hero.
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“One thing about Sci-Fi that is important is world building”
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WITH THAT IN MIND, WHO IN WORLD HISTORY, LIVING OR DEAD, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT DOWN FOR AN EVENING AND PICK HIS OR HER BRAIN?
I would want to talk to John Coltrane immediately
ABOUT LIFE, MUSIC OR SCI FI?
Do I have to make a choice (laughs)
I would talk to him about history, religion and definitely music. I would want to hear all of it; who is he, how did he make his decisions.
WHAT MUSICIAN WOULD YOU PAY $1000 TO SEE PERFORM?
Besides Coltrane, I’d love to see Warne Marsh.
I’d like to hear him live, and in the late 60s. If I could just be in LA for three months, or maybe early Warne in New York in the 50s. Oh, man! I could be all over that, when he was playing with Lennie Tristano! That quartet album with Lee Konitz at the Half Note, I’d have to hear that!
HAS THERE BEEN A PHILOSPHY, RELIGION OR TEACHING THAT SOMEONE HAS TAUGHT YOU THAT HAS INFLUENCED YOU?
Buddhism.
I like it because Buddhism is more of a practice than a religion. It’s less faith-based, and more practice-based.
YOUR WIFE IS A PSYCHIATRIST
Yes. She can prescribe meds, and that’s dangerous with a jazz musician!
HOW HAS SHE INFLUENCED YOUR PLAYING
She influences my life in general, which influences my playing. We’ve been together since I was 20.
WHAT MAKES A MARRIAGE WORK?
“Yes, dear” (laughs) Happy wife, happy life!
WHAT GIVES YOU THE MOST JOY?
Making other people happy
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE PEOPLE TO SAY AT YOUR MEMORIAL SERVICE?
Whatever they want! Funerals are for the living, anyway.
WHAT’S YOUR NEXT GOAL?
I have two projects that are done and will come out next year.
I was just listening to the rough mixes of Live at the Vanguard with the quartet that was on my last ECM record, Reaching for the Stars.
There’s a quintet record that is a suite written from a book called An Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. There’s music, and I’m reading from the book throughout the music.
WHAT WOULD BE YOUR DREAM GIG OR RECORDING?
I’m doing them now! I’m already in my dream
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“I’m already in my dream”
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THE KEY TO ALL OF US ON EARTH IS TO FIND ONE’S OWN VOICE. AND, TRUTH BE TOLD, SINCE THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, THE CHALLENGE IS TO FIND WHICH VOICES TO BE INSPIRED BY. MARK TURNER HAS TAKEN THE MUSICAL ROAD LESS TRAVELED, AS WELL AS THE SPACE TRAVEL OF SCI FI, TO CREATE HIS OWN MUSICAL WORLD. IT HAS NOT ONLY SERVED HIM WELL, BUT HIS LEGION OF FANS AND MUSICAL DISCIPLES>