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[ conversazioni ]
Trevor Watts, a free jazz king always in search of new musical realms to discover di Claudio Bonomi |
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You have had a very important duo with drummer Liam
Genockey but there are no recordings. Could you briefly describe that
experience?
I have recordings with the duo with Liam, and maybe
I’ll check through them and find enough to release. That was
a very important duo for me also in that it came out of Amalgam. Liam
had a strong rhythmic feel, but came originally more from Rock and
Blues so that duo differed from the two previous duos in that we left
the music very free and open, however it had a strong rhythmic/melodic
content but not as worked at and structured as the duo with Jamie and
not as abstract as with John. Somewhere in between.
How do you look back to the music you made with Spontaneous Music Ensemble?
I don’t really look back very often. I am the type
of player who likes to look forward. But that period of time was
important for all of us who took part in the SME in terms of finding
new things and experimenting and all the struggle and work leading to
individual voices like that of Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Paul
Rutherford, and I like to think myself also. There were many fights and
struggles, but birth can be painful sometimes.
Could you just tell us something about your absent friends, John Stevens and Paul Rutherford? I went to Paul’s funeral last year. It was very sad
to see how unhappy he had become. John was also unhappy in those last
years and somehow it seemed like the struggle had almost become too
much. John always pushed himself to the edge with everything he did,
and I almost felt he had a death wish in some ways. He seemed to live
with a lot of tension in his life, and Paul always suffered from
depression. In fact there’s a lot of musicians with problems
of one kind or another, and this in some ways is where their creativity
comes from.
Another key experience was Amalgam. How do you judge now that “free” and creative experience? Those free improvisational experiences, or in
Amalgam’s case, improvisation and freedom within a musical
structure, and also the experimentation of adding noise guitar (Keith
Rowe), with funky bass (Colin McKenzie) and Jazz & Jazz Rock
drumming from Liam with my voice seemed very logical at the time. I
still believe there are many ways to make music, and I still like
combinations outside of the conventional norm, or if they are
conventional combinations like sax, drums & bass, trying to
find a way of doing it in a more original way. So they were all
manifestations of my beliefs regarding putting music together. So in
that respect the earlier combinations have still a strong relationship
to what I do today.
You evolved from the free jazz ferocity of your first albums with Spontaneous Music Ensemble to the more controlled virtuoso explorations of your recent cds, eg. Ancestry with Jamie Harris. How have you changed you approach to improvisation? I have changed in this respect. When I was younger I practised
a lot, but I believed, in those more totally improvisational times,
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that I should start each concert with an empty head and relate to whatever comes up in that moment. The way I play now is still to practice, but to work at things I can work into the improvisation and get to understand everything around any structure that we decide to develop. When I look back I realise now that my attitude was quite rare in the fact that I believed on starting with a blank canvas, so to speak. Other musicians, even in the so called free improvisational World did what I am doing now. Worked at things that they could do within the improvisational context. I naively believed in a purer form. Consequently it then becomes harder for critics and people listening to actually know its value. You are a legendary pioneer of British jazz and you have had many musical connections with musicians from radical and mainstrean areas You have also played with many American jazz musicians as Steve Lacy, Archie Sheep, Don Cherry and others. Which artists have had the biggest influence on you? I hope that I am thought of at least as a pioneer of European
Jazz, not only British Jazz. An important connection was the group with
American trumpeter Bobby Bradford, who was the first trumpeter to play
with Ornette before Don. But by the time I played with all these people
my influences had already done their work. I was brought up on Jazz
since the 1940’s as my Father had lived in Canada &
The States in the late 20’s and early 30’s. In fact
he also had a Canadian passport as well which I have just discovered. So we had all those 78 r.p.m. recordings of Duke Ellington, Tex Beneke,
Artie Shaw, Nellie Lutcher, Bob Crosby, Art Tatum etc, etc. So I feel I
have lived with the music and now intrinsically understand it because
of this long exposure to it and involvement. So it is better for me not
to say one player influenced me, but the sum total of listening to
hundreds of players over all those years. I feel a strong affinity with
the music, but the music always said to me play your own way, sure,
study and listen to all the older stuff, but find your way. What can I
put in to the music, not just take out. This is strange given that
there is an Independent production company here now called Somethin
Else Productions who produce all the Jazz programmes for the BBC and
they have decided (in their wisdom) that my music no longer is Jazz??
So, in effect I am banned from the BBC Jazz programmes.
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