An Interview with Jacob Sacks by Jacob Garchik

skip ahead to
Education:
Early Years
High School
College experiences
After Graduation
Teaching
Current Projects:
Solo Piano
Duo with Yoon Choi
4inObjects
Morgan/Sacks/Weiss
Saxophone Quintet
Trombone Quintet
Motian/Maneri group
Sideman Work
Musical Concepts:
Practicing
Composing
Listening to Music/Influences
Interaction
Non-Musical Interests


Garchik: I’m Jacob Garchik. I’m here with Jacob Sacks, it’s January 31, 2006. We’re going to talk about Jacob Sacks, pianist, his music and musical background. You’re from Michigan?

Sacks: I’m from Monroe, Michigan, born in 1977.

G: When did you start playing piano?

S: When I was 2. The only way they could get me to stop crying as a baby was to put the crib up towards the piano, my mom would play, and it would get me to go to sleep, or at least get me to stop crying. And so when I could climb up on there, I started banging, and I’ve been banging ever since.

G: You had private lessons?

S: I started private lessons at the age of 5, with a teacher named Jean James and continued with her until age 12 or 13 and then I started studying with a guy named Mark Kieswetter, and that’s when I started playing jazz, and improvising, at least formally, as formally as you could do that kind of thing. That continued until I went to the Manhattan School of Music, 1995.

G: Was there a lot of music around the house?

S: My parents played. But they weren’t really professionals by any means in terms of musicians but there was a piano and my older brother and sister both played an instrument. My older brother played the cello, and my sister played the flute, and my mom and dad both played the piano, so people were playing.

G: Did they listen to a lot of music?

S: Sometimes. I had a little record player when I was a kid, so I listened to a lot of music. A little Sesame Street record player that was light green, and it had a built in speaker. I ruined my dad’s Erroll Garner record.

G: He had jazz records?

S: He had some jazz records in the house.

G: Do you think that was important?

S: Maybe, but the problem was that when that record player broke when I was seven or eight I didn’t really listen to any music until I was 13.

G: So you had that initial Errol Garner and then that was it.

S: I had that initial thing and that was it and I liked that record, supposedly, or at least I was told that I had that record.

G: But you don’t have it any more?

S: I think it was ruined by that, it was all scratched up. I didn’t really listen to music. My teacher, the classical teacher I had, didn’t really encourage that. I played the piano, and practiced, and pretty much hated taking lessons until I was 12 or 13, and I was told it’s ok to improvise and its ok to try to create your own stuff.

G: Did you continue classical music with your new teacher?

S: Not really. I was sort of disgruntled at that time with that. Nothing against the old teacher, really, I mean, she was fine, I was just, you know, not that receptive towards that kind of music at the time. So when I started studying jazz, I really just wanted to do that. I wanted to sort of let go of that prior experience. It wasn’t until I got to college, really, that I got interested in classical music, and I’m much more interested in it now than I was when I was 13.

G: Did you do some other music things in high school besides just private lessons? Did you play with the school band?

S: I played with the school band, I played with the jazz band. I played saxophone in junior high, which not many people know about. Quickly stopped that, hence my last name, I didn’t want to be a saxophonist named Sacks – a little redundant. But I played in the jazz band on piano, and I started playing professionally when I was 13 or 14, just all of a sudden playing little gigs. My teacher would let me sit in and eventually started subbing out work to me once I had enough tunes ready.

G: What kinds of gigs were those?

S: Oh, you know, just like background music gigs. And eventually when I was a little older, 16 or 17, I started to sub for him at the jazz clubs in Toledo. Sometimes I would play the opening set and he would take over when he got back from his early gig, or what have you.

G: How would you describe the style of music you played in those jazz clubs?

S: Very straight ahead jazz. It was local guys, who just wanted to play tunes in the keys that were in the books, on the way it was done on records.

G: Doesn’t Toledo sort of have a reputation for that?

S: Yes, it was very narrow in terms of it’s outlook. Things that were out of the ordinary were frowned upon. When I was about 17 I started listening to McCoy Tyner, and I got really interested in him, so I started trying to imitate him on gigs. People would complain about me playing like him. Because, in the words of one bass player, “Why do you play like that, why don’t you just play pretty?” So from early on I got used to being the guy who everybody complained about, causing problems.

G: So you were doing gigs when you were 14, and then your were doing actual jazz club-type gigs when you were 16 or so. By the time you were 18 and you moved to New York you already quite a bit of performing experience playing straight-ahead jazz?

S: On the job experience playing straight ahead jazz. I got to make all my mistakes on stage. Which was good for me. I thought it was more natural because the teacher I had was also much more of a natural kind of teacher. He would teach by listen to a record, and see what you can discern from that record: what are they doing, how are they reacting to one another, and how does that relate to what you’re going to go play with this person now. He also was the first person that said don’t simply imitate them. You should try to create your own voice, and not just be content to sound exactly like somebody else. He said that when I started playing like Thelonious Monk on the Thelonious Monk tune. He said, “Why do that, can’t you play it like yourself?” He was very encouraging that way. It was good, a good experience.

G: Then you came to New York. Did you know that you were going to come to New York for quite a while?

S: I didn’t know for sure until the spring of 1995, because that’s when I auditioned at Manhattan School. For me it depended on whether or not I got into school because my parents weren’t just going to let me just move to New York. I had to get into a music school for them to even consider that as a possibility for me.

G: Did you have other options, other schools?

S: No, I thought about New England Conservatory, they accepted me, but I really didn’t want to go to Boston. I knew this guy named Ron Oswanski, who also studied with the same teacher I studied with. He was having a great time in New York and I knew about that through my teacher and I also knew Ron a little bit. So it seemed like that would be the place to go if I was going to try and be a jazz musician, you know, see what it’s like.

G: So because it was in New York did that have a big bearing on your decision to go there?

S: Yeah, because from what I could gather at the time that was the place to be if you going to try to play jazz at all, if you really wanted to learn how to play it as well as possible, that was the place to go.

G: How did you find college; what did you like about college?

S: Well, I like the people I got to play with, like you and Danny (Weiss) and all the people we’re still playing with to this day. For me it was good, because it got my parents to let me come to New York. Concerning college itself, it seemed to put a damper on any kind of creative spirit. It seems like they want to turn out musicians who would make them look like great teachers or something, or make the school look great. They’re not really interested in, at least at that time, artists that bucked any kind of trend or encouraged really spontaneous playing. It seemed like they have the jazz thing figured out in this very narrow confine to perform very specific functions. Like if you’re a piano player, you must play like this, sort of. So in that way it was stifling but at the same time it was a good thing to try to rebel against and to work outside of. It was good to have that energy sort of thrust in your face. You had to deal with that, and trying to circumvent that. It was a good challenge. I think the real world is sort of like that too. You have all these challenges where people say, “Maybe you should play like this, or maybe you should play like this.” The answer is maybe you shouldn’t, and it’s tough to try to get around those roadblocks. I think school is good for forming that kind of energy, at least for me. I felt like I was able by the end of it to have come out of it relatively unscathed. But a lot of musicians, as you know as well, end up dropping out of music because of these great pressures. It wasn’t always very positive for everybody.

G: Can you talk about some of your teachers or classes that you did like?

S: Yeah, I studied with Gary Dial, who was really encouraging again, for me to create my own voice, and to try and find things I was interested in, and explore those. He also showed me how to fill in all lot of the gaps in my playing. Also if I was interested in something, how to be able to look at it in a lot of different ways, to try to figure out what was happening. It could be anything as simple as “What’s this person doing harmonically?”, and he would have a variety of ways to be able to look at that, and try to either gain knowledge so that you could reproduce it or sort of absorb it and go beyond it. He was very positive for me because he encouraged me. He heard me playing like another pianist and he said, “Isn’t it enough just to like that pianist. Why do you have to play like him?” So he also encouraged me to stop doing that kind of thing, to try and develop my own voice. He was just really good in terms of being supportive towards anything I wanted to try to achieve. If I was interested in a certain thing, he would say, “Yeah you should go check it out, see what’s happening there”. He also thought I should quit school, because I wanted to play. He said being in school might not necessarily be the way for you. I didn’t end up quitting, but he was trying to find what was best for me, which was positive. That was a good class. I had his improv class, and I also studied privately with him. Those were good things. I also had a great piano styles class with Harold Danko, who played a lot of classical music, which helped get me back into being interested in that. He also played a lot of world music, and different indigenous musics from around the world, which I thought was great, and also opened my ear to more than just jazz. In that way the school was good also. There were little pockets of creative people teaching and showing creative things that were outside of the jazz world. Other than that I think the main thing the school did for me was allow me to meet great musicians, who have had more of an influence on my playing than any record, really. Getting to work with people like you and Danny, and all these other people who we work with now, who aren’t necessarily from that school, but who definitely are in the spirit of what we’re trying to do, have definitely been as influential as any Bill Evans record or anything famous.

G: You came to school in 1995, right? While you were in school did you have some gigs in the city?

S: Not too many. A little bit. I played at Detour once. I didn’t really immerse myself in the jazz scene too much because I was too busy trying to practice and write. It seemed like when school ended I sort of tried to do that more. I got involved with Christophe Schweizer at that time. The summer of 1998 or the fall of 1998 is when I started playing with him. All of a sudden you have all this free time, you can rehearse and do sessions and do a lot of things.

G: Did you have specific things that you wanted to do in order to start your career when you got out of school.

S: Well, I wanted to try to pay the rent, that was number one, so I found a teaching gig which helped me to do that, but also helped me to become interested in teaching, which I think was really important at that time. Also I made a recording as part of my senior recital, with Danny, Tim Flood, Andrew Bishop, and John Wojciechowski, which eventually became a CD called “Region”. So that was a big thing for me was to be able to finish school and write music for a recording, feeling important about being able to do that.

G: You toured with that group a little bit?

S: Well, we played in Michigan. I wouldn’t call it much in the way of touring. We played in Michigan and we played in New York. That was about it for that band at the time. I didn’t know much about the business so I didn’t know about getting gigs very easily except in places I was familiar with. That kind of thing came a little later. Trying to learn how to book gigs in different places, working with other bands to do that.

G: So you had some sideman gigs right away, like Christophe Schweizer, you were recommended for that?

S: I was recommended for that, and that opened a lot of doors because he was already immersed in the jazz scene much more so than I was. Through him I got to play with Billy Hart, for instance. Through him I got to be seen by a lot of people, who then gave me work later. For instance we did a tour with him with Dave Binney, and that became a gig two years later. A lot of things really sprang from that experience, putting that kind of time in, I got to meet a lot of musicians who I wouldn’t have met otherwise. It’s very difficult to just go up to somebody in a club and meet them and all of a sudden be immersed in the scene. That really provided a conduit, a very important conduit, towards being accepted as a serious musician who is good, and opening doors and at least gaining some respect for people. Christophe’s music was very difficult and a lot of people respected the fact that anybody would work on it.

G: So it was like a rite of passage?

S: Yeah, rite of passage.

G: Besides playing sideman gigs and playing your own music, do you do other types of gigs? Do you do things like weddings?

S: No, I don’t really do weddings, or anything like that, unless it’s a friend or a student or a friend of a friend. At this moment, I’m so busy teaching that I would rather that any moments that I get to play are reserved for original music or playing with friends in a situation which doesn’t just fulfill that kind of a need.

G: How much of the week do you spend teaching?

S: Six days a week right now.

G: Students of all ages?

S: Students of all ages and all levels.

G: All pianists?

S: No, they’re not all pianists. I do teach one drummer. Not on the drums, but we talk about improvisation and playing together and composition. He’s a little more advanced. I teach improvisation to non-pianists. I have a couple of guitar students. I shouldn’t call them guitar students, I should call them improvisation students. I have one student who plays piano and sings. He’s also interested in jazz and improvisation. I have a lot of beginning piano students, of all ages, currently ranging from the age of 4 to the age of 65.

G: You enjoy teaching obviously. You do it a lot. Do you think that rubs off into you’re playing, into your own music?

S: I don’t know about that, too directly. Through teaching you get to talk about your ideas that you use anyway. If anything the things that I teach about are coming from the playing, more than the teaching is influencing the playing. At least for me. The teaching helps you to verbalize your ideas, and describe them, perhaps. I’m not sure if any verbal description is ever perfect, however. A lot of times when I’m teaching it’s easy just to demonstrate: “Watch me do it, and now try.” Sometimes it’s a lot easier to teach that way. Through teaching I think it’s helped me to be able to verbalize ideas, and maybe think them through a little more thoroughly, than I might just with the playing. Especially with beginning improvisers, to get them to have a certain openness. It helps to get you to examine your own openness, make sure you haven’t narrowed yourself too much to certain possibilities. It’s been important in that way. Each thing, playing and teaching I think serves each other in the end. But I would say that the teaching is coming more from my playing experiences and experiences interacting with other musicians musically and personally more than the teaching is going right to the playing.

G: We should give a plug for your new educational project.

S: Ah yes. Myself along with Bob Bowen, Khabu Doug Young, Brian Drye and Mike Mcginnis, have started a new school called the “Creative Music Workshop”. At the current time, we’ve just begun, we have fifteen students, meeting on Sundays in Midtown Manhattan. It’s an ensemble-based school. We’re doing ensemble kind of work and we’re going to do a concert coming up. It’s very exciting. Right now we already have a wide range of ages. We have a lot of teenagers but we also have a college student and we have a 40 year old bass player who joined us. We’re not using any age limits and we’re trying to break down barriers with improvising so that improvisers of all levels can learn how to interact with one another and create their own music and hopefully create their own styles eventually, and not just be like a “jazz school” per se that turns out people that sound like Louis Armstrong or something. Even though we don’t deny that those things exist, we’re trying to get the students to have a very open relationship with improvising and with music in general. It’s exciting. We all used to teach at Queens College, so we decided that that particular situation wasn’t conducive to some of the things we wanted to do such as getting them to make a recording, and do live gigs around town, and try to make a video about these students and what they’ve achieved. A lot of the students that are coming to the school right now we’ve known for many years. So it’s pretty exciting.

G: Let’s talk about your current projects. Have you ever played solo piano?

S: I have played solo piano, although I do it very infrequently at the current time. I prefer playing with people. I get bored with myself very, very, very quickly.

G: But you did have a gig at Elixir, right? Playing solo keyboard?

S: Yes, the most nerve-racking gig I’ve ever had in New York in my entire life. It’s much easier to converse with somebody and present that as music, for me, or improvised music, than to converse with myself, the sound of the room, and a bunch of people staring at me. I’ve never really considered myself much of a solo pianist in terms of doing gigs like that. However that experience has encouraged me to try to face it a little more. I’ve been thinking of trying to do a little more of that in the next few years to try to develop it because of the very challenge of having to be self reliant on your own imagination.

G: So you might do more in the future?

S: I would like to do a little more because it’s hard for me. I like challenging things that get me to grow as a musician, the things that I feel I need. The experience of that gig definitely showed me that I could use a few more solo piano excursions.

G: And you have a duo with Yoon Choi.

S: Duo with Yoon Choi, I’ve been doing for about five and a half years. That’s been a way of almost easing into the solo piano thing in a way because there are moments in that which become solo piano. That’s been a great experience for getting to develop my left hand a little further. When you play with bass players it’s easy to ignore your left hand or the lower part of the piano. So that’s been a great experience in terms of looking at the piano more orchestrally. And also being able to deal with words, and the sound of words, and the voice. I’ve never really done that prior to that project. I’ve worked some typical jazz singer gigs but it never showed me the possibilities of those. Those were very stylized and you sort of followed that style and the role that the piano would play in that. With Yooni, though, the two voices, both voice and piano, are equal. We worked very hard to try to make sure that it’s not just singer backed by accompanist but really a true musical give and take. It’s been very, very exciting to do that.

G: You guys have a CD out?

S: We have one CD out called “Soulmates”.

G: You’re working on another one?

S: We’re working on a second CD. We’re working on the music right now. It’s going to be a CD of the music of Joe Ripozzo who’s a great composer of children’s songs for Sesame Street.

G: You play once a month?

S: We play once a month with that with a special guest, here in New York. We’ve had many friends of ours each come and play as you know, you’re going to come and play with us this week. It’s very fun because we sort of leave it up in the air as to what’s going to happen. Not too much planning – sometimes there’s a little bit of planning. But it’s been very fun; we’ve had a lot of great musicians. It also gave me a chance to play with another pianist: we had Angie Sanchez come play the opening gig and that was very exciting for me because I don’t get a chance to play with a lot of pianists and interact with pianists on a gig. She played the Wurlitzer electric piano and I played the regular piano.

G: Who else have you had?

S: We’ve had Mat Maneri, Khabu Doug Young, we’ve had Ben Monder a couple of times, Andrew Bishop, from Michigan, played soprano saxophone, Judith [Berkson] has done it a couple of times, once with Mat Maneri and once by herself, you’re going to do it, and Mike McGinnis is going to do it in March.

G: Have you ever considered doing it with someone that you don’t know well as a guest?

S: Well, I didn’t really know Ben Monder very well. I knew who he was, but I’d never really played with him, so that was fun. I’d never really played with Mat Maneri that much before and I’d never played with Angie before. So there’s been some people that I’d known but hadn’t had a chance to play with. It’s been a really fun thing.

G: Also with Yoon you’re in the band 4inObjects, which I’m also in.

S: Yes, that’s a collective quintet where, as we both know, the music is very open and can go in any direction. We’ve been doing that know for a few years also. That’s a beautiful band with really great music, with such a wonderful conception of what could happen with the music; trying to switch roles and not become content with one solid performance leading to a recreation of the same performance over and over again. It seems like that band is great because we’re always trying to find a new way of doing things at all times, so it’s good.

G: There’s a new record out?

S: There’s a new record out, called 4inObjects. It has a seagull on the front of it!

G: We play some of your compositions. Are there some that you wrote explicitly for that group?

S: I can’t say for sure that I’ve ever really written explicitly for any one group. I tend to write if there’s a deadline: Oh, there’s a concert, we need some music, I’ll write a piece. That tends to be the way I operate. A lot of times the things that I write require me to work on them and learn them further so I don’t usually just leave them with one ensemble necessarily. I might take them out for a spin with other bands too. Especially since my pieces the way I write them are very open to interpretation. It’s exciting to hear other musicians bring something new to them, for me at least, and then try to see if the composition can become something totally different than I may have originally have intended. That’s always exciting. For instance with 4inObjects we played a particular mixed meter piece that I wrote for that band, but then I also played that with the trio that I’ve been playing with, with Danny and Thomas Morgan, recently.

G: With very different results, obviously.

S: With very different results. It’s really exciting to hear those results, and to hear how the music can change and be malleable to other peoples personalities, and their own experiences and what they bring to it. The notes on the page really do live and it’s not just a matter of playing them. They really can take on a totally different mood or meaning or speed or anything. A piece that might be in tempo might not be in tempo. Any element could be changed. For me that’s always really great to hear my pieces changed in that way.

G: So you don’t feel that they have to be played strictly according to what you wrote originally.

S: No, if anything, I’m hoping that they won’t be. Because, again, I get so bored with my own playing, seriously, that when I play them at home, I play them in one way and it’s like, “ok, maybe this will be fun,” but to me they don’t truly live until I hear others do something with them. It’s like hearing a great interpretation of Bach, not to compare myself to Bach, but the idea that that piece wouldn’t live unless the performer/interpreter brought something of themselves to it. Just notes on a page are going to sound flat and dead to me. The same thing with my own piece: I’m not so interested in hearing my own conception and proving that somehow that conception was the best possible conception for the piece. I think it’s really great to hear others bring their ideas and hopefully change it to somehow make better and more interesting.

G: You’re in a trio with Thomas Morgan and Danny Weiss. It’s sort of unusual because the trio does gigs playing your music and Danny’s compositions. You just did two records, one was all Danny’s and one was all yours. That record is probably going to be released in the next couple months?

S: My record will hopefully be released by the summer of 2006. I don’t know when Danny’s is coming out. A lot of that depends on whether a record company in this instance will put these out or not. For myself I know if I do it on my own it won’t probably be until the summer. But that was an interesting process because we tried to do two records in two days. It was very challenging, but it was good, very rewarding at the same time.

G: That group plays some compositions that were not written just for that group , right?

S: Yes, we played a piece of yours before. I forget the name of it offhand.

G: Probably didn’t have a name.

S: Might not have had a name. We play Strauss’s “Morgen”. We’ve played a Schoenberg movement from a piano piece, Opus 19.

G: And you did some of your older compositions, written for other groups?

S: Also some older compositions, exactly. Brought them in.

G: And some new ones too?

S: Yeah, definitely, and some older pieces of Danny’s and some newer pieces of Danny’s. A wide variety of pieces and again, trying to find different ways of playing them. So it’s sort in that same kind of vein were the piece doesn’t have to be just with one band necessarily.

G: That group was also the rhythm section for Dave Binney’s band for two years, right?

S: Yeah, that band grew out of being the rhythm section for Dave Binney, even though we had played before that a couple times. It solidified when we did that gig for two years. I decided to leave to pursue my own things. We found that we just loved playing together so much that we wanted to continue, and not let my departure from that band mean the end of the three of us playing together. Danny’s been booking the gigs.

G: You usually play at Detour?

S: We’ve been playing at Detour recently and we’re going to try to see if as a result of getting these CDs hopefully finished if we can find some other venues to play. It seems like its easier when you have a cd you have to present to get gigs.

G: You’re first record you had a group with two saxophones and rhythm section.

S: Yes, as I mentioned before with Andrew Bishop and John Wojciechowski on the saxophones; Tim Flood, who’s a friend of ours, from Michigan, who also lived in New York for a period but now is back in Michigan, on bass; and Danny Weiss on drums. That band came out of my senior recital. I chose that band to play my senior recital in school and at the same time we made a record.

G: Tim Andrew and John were all guys you knew from high school?

S: I knew Tim when I was in high school. I met Andrew just before I moved to New York, so I guess that’s true, I met him just at the end of my high school days. John Wojciechowski I didn’t meet until just before I moved to New York, literally three weeks when we found out that we were both going to the same school. What’s funny about that is we didn’t really get along at first, and then we got along very well. A great friendship ensued there and so I definitely wanted to play with him some more. He moved away from New York; he only stayed in New York for six months. He moved back and I wanted to do some more playing with him so that band was a way of playing both with Andrew and him again.

G: More recently you put together a similar band except with two trombones instead of two saxophones, with me and Ben Gerstein.

S: Yes, and hopefully that band will record this year I’m hoping, if I get the money together. Yeah, I want to do the quintet formation again. The problem with the two saxophones, obviously, John and Andrew, is that they both live in different places now. Andrew lives in Michigan and John lives in Chicago; it brings in a lot of obstacles towards continuing that band. Also Tim lives in Michigan as well. The notion of trying to do a quintet configuration and have plane tickets every single time for a low paying gig isn’t really an option right now. I’m really interested, because we’ve been developing our music with 4inObjects and with your trio and also developing music with Ben Gerstein’s Collective, that is seems like a natural fit to try to do some of that music again with you guys. I’m looking forward to doing more this year, hopefully.

G: How would you describe the music in that group? A lot of improvising?

S: A lot of improvising. Definitely loosely written structures to come from. It’s spontaneous, but not without something to start, usually. I would describe it as trying to be music that’s open enough so that everybody can bring, again, their voice to it, without being forced to much to any type of zone. It really can be free with the way that they might want to interpret it. It’s not highly specific music.

G: Would you agree that your piano trio is the most tightly arranged out of all of these groups?

S: Yes, I would say that that tends to be get into the most tightly arranged thing. But then again even that is open sometimes because all of a sudden one of us might decide not to enter into that sphere in any given time and the music might open up in ways that are unexpected. Also we tend to rehearse more with that band, so that might lend itself to certain arrangements being followed a certain way.

G: You recently recorded with Paul Motian?

S: Recently recorded with Paul Motian, with Eivind Opsvik. It was a project that Eivind and I wanted to do together. We were able to also invite Mat Maneri to join us. It was great. We wrote, again, some really nice music that wasn’t too complicated, because Paul doesn’t like to rehearse so we wanted to make sure that when we got to the studio, we could just play and not have things in our way. We didn’t want to have compositions becoming a crutch more than a help. We wanted them to definitely inhibit any kind of inventiveness that anybody might think of or want to play. So we had about ten pretty loosely written things that were very nice. Each had a definite direction. We got there and he was beautiful and wanted to know what each piece was gonna be. We basically did the ten pieces and played a free piece in about five and a half hours. We booked the studio for two days so we were able to take the second day and just mix it. It was great. He was really great and really positive and supportive. I’m also hoping that that will come out this year or next year at the latest.

G: You recorded that record without having ever played with him or done any gigs with that group.

S: Yeah, never played with him before but I always wanted to play with him. He’s definitely a hero of mine as far as drummers go in the jazz world. The other thing that helped is because I like his playing so much I could imagine playing with him. I couldn’t say that I could imagine myself playing with every drummer who was well known. But he’s somebody who I could hear myself interacting with well, and it turned out that way. It’s very nice.

G: DO you have some ideas about projects that you’re going to have in the future?

S: Oh yes, there’s a long list of projects yet to be done. One project, obviously, is to reinvigorate a Chamber Quartet that I once had, that also included you, and clarinet and bass. I’m thinking again of trying to do that. Obviously there’s the duo project with Yooni, the Joe Ripozzo record, the quintet project that I just mentioned, with two trombones, and several others. I don’t want to say for sure. Those three I can say will definitely happen, so rather than hypothesize about others that are on paper, I’d rather - those three will definitely happen in the next few years.

G: You do quite a bit of stuff as a sideman.

S: I do a lot of work as a sideman, a little less so these days. More freelance kind of sideman work. I don’t find myself being “the pianist” in too many bands. The exceptions are your band, Eivind’s band. I’m playing in a trio with Vinnie Spirazza and Dave Ambrosio, which is a project spearheaded by Vinnie. Those things are very regular at this moment. I’ve done other freelance work with people like the Mingus Big Band, occasionally they’ll call, when they need a sub. I’ve played with Adam Rogers’ band before. Things sort of trickle in like that. I also do a little bit of work with Chris Lightcap’s band, which was very enjoyable. It’s been good. I like being a free agent. I get to sort of get a sense of what other people are up to and join in with them. [Jacob also plays with the Ben Gerstein Collective, Pete Robbins, Justin Mullens' quintet, and Mike McGinnis's Between Green.]

G: Sample them?

S: Sample them, without having to be there full time, per se. Not that they actually need anybody full time, not a lot of those bands necessarily work every single week or something. It’s been really enjoyable to be able to come in and be welcomed into those bands. It’s been really exciting to be able to interact with musicians that I wouldn’t ordinarily interact with. So it’s actually been educational also.

G: Do you find that your playing is different when you’re playing as a sideman? Obviously when you’re doing something like the Mingus Big Band it’s a different style than you ordinarily do.

S: It’s true that the style may be slightly different. I try to see if I can still sound like me. If I have to bend halfway I will. I try not to sound like somebody you wouldn’t recognize. I try to maintain my identity even if the style is slightly different, while still hopefully not holding up what everybody else is doing. The one thing I try not to do, is simply bring out, like say in the case of Mingus, is bring out jazz pianist x’s style and play just like that person, and sort of put my own personality to rest. I try to maintain my own sound and rhythmic sense in any given ensemble. There are a lot of things which I’m interested in which sort of break away from the conventions of certain styles. I try and see if I can get away with some of those and still make the gig. Thus far it’s been pretty successful.

G: Are you a big practicer?

S: I used to be. I can be a big practicer if I get into it. The problem at the moment is that there’s not a lot of time to get into it. So practicing is sporadic at best, even though I have a list of things I’d like to practice.

G: Where do you practice?

S: I practice at home. I practice sometimes, if I get a little minute or two before the gig starts, I might practice something at the keyboard or piano or whatever’s in front of me.

G: You don’t have a rehearsal studio?

S: Not at this point. I would like to, but I’m trying to save money and that’s not a top priority for me right now.

G: Do you wish that you practiced more?

S: Yeah, I would like to practice more. For me practicing, I should say, the things that I’m interested in practicing are classical pieces. It has very little to do with my own pieces. Sometimes pieces of other people I’m interested in. Your pieces are challenging on the piano so I like to practice those sometimes. Also Danny writes pieces that are pretty challenging on the piano for me so I enjoy practicing those. But besides that my favorite thing to do is to try to play Bach fugues, try to play Schoenberg, those kinds of things. I wish I had more time to devote to that because I’d like to be able to play it, not for performance, but just for my own enjoyment.

G: Do you have a routine? A warm-up or something like that?

S: Well, not really. It depends on the given day, it depends on how my arms feel. If my arms are tense and tight then often times I’ll approach the piano very slowly and try to loosen those muscles so there’s no tension. I may practice single notes, single fingers. Sometimes I practice in ways to try to get myself to think in a way that I might not, for instance, it could be improvising, but maybe controlling what I might be improvising with. Maybe I’m improvising with one finger or a given interval or a given rhythm. I like to practice rhythms. I like to practice in two hands playing two different rhythms to try to create independence, not only in the hands but in my ear. I like the idea of working on I guess what you could call a rhythmic counterpoint kind of thing- being able to hear a variety of rhythms simultaneously, not just one rhythm.

G: So do you sort of improvise the excersizes using some of those rhythmic concepts?

S: Yeah, I might play in four in one hand while playing in eleven with the other. Something like that, for instance. It just depends on that given day because as I said, practicing these days is pretty sporadic. It just depends on where I’m at, and what I feel like. Most of the time though, the Bach is on the piano and I’ll get that out and try to get through those. I find that to be really enjoyable and a lot of fun.

G: How much time do you spend writing music?

S: Not enough. Again, that only tends to happen if there’s a deadline, if there’s a gig that I want to write for, of if there’s a rehearsal that I know that might happen maybe I can write a piece for that even though I’m not really wedded to the idea of needing a rehearsal to play a piece on a gig. So a lot of it is just what’s happening, you know, what do I need to write for. A lot of the writing tends to happen if there’s a recording session. If there’s music that needs to be recorded and I know it’s happening three months away often times I’ll write for that kind of a thing.

G: A good deal of the groups that your involved with play your original music. You’re not too big on playing standards.

S: Not as a general rule, no. I enjoy playing standards with the right people. I like to be able to approach them without having to be stylistic, necessarily. There are a few people I found that I really enjoy playing them with because I know we can be as creative with them and not feel history staring at us the entire time. With certain players you can be really in the moment and you don’t have to perform the way it was performed 50 years ago or something. So I don’t play a lot of standards anymore.

G: So you’ve got maybe 25 or 30 pieces that you play with various groups?

S: Probably something in that realm.

G: What was the last one that you wrote?

S: Probably one of the pieces that was based on the Emily Dickinson poems that we did with 4inObjects, one of which I thought was really good and the other that I wasn’t terribly happy with. But the one, we’re still playing, so - I like that one a lot.

G: What kind of things were you thinking about when you wrote that piece? It’s based on an Emily Dickinson poem?

S: It’s based on an Emily Dickinson poem, I was trying to see if I could create a sound that I thought served the words, which I’ve never done before. I felt that was a good challenge to do. Also I tried to see, if I recited the words, how the syllables felt rhythmically off the tongue, the way that you might speak them. If I could use melodies or at least use rhythms, that would adhere to what felt natural with the words. That’s at least what I tried to do. I’m sure some people try to go against that idea and that’s probably very cool as well. But in that situation I tried to see if I could get the words to feel as natural as possible and then with the music that was written around it, see if I could try to convery what I thought was the mood of those given words.

G: That one is, if I remember it correctly, a lead sheet, right? Just chord changes?

S: Yeah, it’s a lead sheet, chords changes, it has a melody.

G: But many of you pieces don’t have chord changes or they might have a piano part?

S: Yeah, or it might just be a melody, with no chord changes. Or it might be a piece written for the instruments at hand. When we did the two trombone thing, one of the pieces was just a part for two trombones, and the rhythm section had to improvise around it. And again even that was up for interpretation because you guys could have improvised as well. So it’s just a suggestion for how to get started more than anything else.

G: Do you have a lot of variety among all your pieces? Different formats?

S: Different formats but it seems like the variety tends to come more from the musicians than the piece itself, I mean, musicians bring again, hopefully, that open spirit and bring their own ideas to it so we can have a lot of variety within each piece too, it doesn’t just have to be what is on the paper. I get really excited by the idea that the improvising can lead you to places that you couldn’t have conceived upon on paper. A lot of musicians seem to write music which tries to put things that are better improvised onto paper and in turn make it very difficult to play. I like the idea more of suggesting a course to start with and seeing where you might end up.

G: Do you like to listen to records?

S: I do, again, when I have the time. I do enjoy listening to records.

G: Do you listen in the car?

S: Sometimes I listen in the car. The car is not always conducive to listening to some of the things I’m interested in these days. I’m interested in listening to some classical music and the car doesn’t always help with the sound.

G: Can you give me an example of what you were listening to recently?

S: I’ve listened to Schoenberg, Glenn Gould’s recordings of Schoenberg, because I was trying to play one of the pieces so I was listening to that.

G: Solo piano?

S: Solo piano. I recently listened to a solo piano record that Ben Gerstein gave to me for my birthday, which is solo piano works by Elliot Carter, and also a Ravel piece. One thing I should say about the things I do listen to, a lot of them, like the music I’m interested in or the things that I play, is influenced by the people I’m around. A lot of great records I’m turned onto by people I know, such as yourself or Danny or Yooni. Or somebody who’s like, “Oh, you gotta hear this.” And it’s like, “Oh wow, I never knew that existed.” I feel very lucky that a lot of my friends are always checking out music and they’ll say, “Oh you should hear this it’s really great” and then I get opened to that.

G: Any records that stand out as being your all-time favorites?

S: That I could listen to still to this day?

G: Yeah.

S: Well, I have an affinity for certain records that I liked when I was a kid. Certain jazz records, or certain artists, that I could listen to, I get to feel that first feeling I felt when I was first discovering it. So like, the first jazz person that I really got interested in was Tommy Flanagan. So if I hear a record by him, it doesn’t even have to be a specific one or a favorite record by him, it brings back warm thoughts of what I was studying at the time, and why I liked it. In the jazz realm I would say the records that have had that effect would probably be things like Ornette Coleman’s “Science Fiction”, Paul Bley’s “Turning Point”, again anything by Tommy Flanagan - probably the same kind of things that a lot of people listen to, I still have an affinity for. Glenn Gould, anything by Glenn Gould, because I like him so much. I don’t only listen to the records that I already like. Those things, I occasionally listen to them, and hopefully listen to new things. Because of these recording projects, I’ve been caught up with listening to myself, which isn’t that healthy necessarily, and so some of the time recently has been spent trying to fix things on certain records, or get the sound right. It’s actually taught me a whole new appreciation for how to listen to records in a slightly different way, and not just listening to the music but listening to the very sound of the record., the way the instruments sound, and things like that.

G: Do you have a big record collection?

S: Yes, very very large.

G: CD’s?

S: Lots of CD’s, hundreds and hundreds, stacked all over the house.

G: How often to you hear live music?

S: I used to hear live music all the time, when I just got out of college and I had a lot of time I would try to go out almost every night and hear somebody play. Recently, in the last couple years, it’s been curtailed because I’ve been working more and playing a lot, and I’ve been teaching a lot. So the time has been spent doing those things. But recently I’ve been trying to go out and hear some more music, and I’ve heard a lot of great things in the last year or so. I try and go hear my friends play as much as I possibly can. I’m really interested in what they’re doing, besides just things that we get to play together. I got to hear Slavic Soul Party, the Four Bags, I got to hear Judith’s solo project, I got to hear Danny’s “Indian tabla on the drum set” project; things like that which are really inspiring.

G: Do you go to classical music concerts?

S: When I can I do. They have a tendency to start early and I have a tendency to teach late, so I try to go when I can. I’ve seen some great concerts. I saw Christopher Taylor play the complete Ligeti etudes. That was a great, a wonderful concert.

G: Where was that?

S: That was at Miller Theater at Columbia University.

G: When you play do you feel like you’re making a lot of conscious decisions?

S: Sometimes. It depends on the situation. I find myself, if I make a conscious decision when I’m playing, maybe it’s because I feel for myself that the music is suggesting something to try, or maybe the music has saturated itself in a certain zone, and maybe needs something different for variety’s sake. But most often, it’s not very conscious all the time, I don’t usually approach it so “now I’m going to do this, and try and do it.” I usually try to see what’s going to happen naturally and then if I get going in a certain direction I might stay there, and if I get bored I might change it. That would be definitely a conscious decision.

G: What kinds of things that might happen on a gig are things that you don’t like?

S: That I don’t like personally?

G: Yeah.

S: I tend not to like the things that bring out the worst in myself on the gig, that I feel allow me to be uncreative, or allow me to rest on any kind of technique or any kind of skills that I have. I try to see if I can get to doing things, ideally, that are pushing me to try to play things I haven’t yet player. Things that are, I don’t want to use the word “easy”, but things that are overly repetitive, I find that to be a very simple way of approaching music, in terms of not having to think, or not having to react, or being able to go on automatic pilot. So I try to stay clear of too much repetition, although it’s very difficult, in our current climate, because a lot of people are using repetition to fill out their sets. They play pieces based on very little material and repeat it and have a ten minute song. For me I think it’s more of a challenge to try to see if I could be less repetitive, be more spontaneous with a given phrase, or a given texture. No matter what I’m doing, whether I’m soloing or accompanying, I’m trying to be really interactive, or reactive, and not just performing a function that a computer could do, per se. So those are the things, that that’s my main problem with myself, is that I don’t want to be uncreative, or allow myself to simply just get through the gig, and have it end and go home, and say “Oh yeah, we played a gig.” I would like to think that I attempted to get to something that I haven’t yet done.

G: What do you like to do besides playing music?

S: I like to read about politics. Very very interested in politics.

G: You mean the newspaper. Or books?

S: Newspaper, sometimes books. Mostly the newspaper. People’s writings on the web: blogs, people’s ideas about politics, in that way. I try to stay very informed about what’s happening on any given day in that realm. I usually wake up and I immediately am reading something about politics, a lot of times. Usually before I go to bed, the other thing I do is I am reading about politics again, so I’m very interested in that. I’m also very interested in food, and cooking and baking. Especially baking and desserts in particular, I’m very interested in that. Those have been sort of hobbies of mine currently.

G: How about art museums?

S: I am into art museums. Unfortunately again, like practicing, the schedule these days isn’t allowing too much time to go to them. I have a membership to the Museum of Modern Art and if I can go, I try to go. I’m a very, very amateurish painter, myself, and I’m always taken by great paintings.

G: Do you think that your appreciation of art bleeds into your music making?

S: I think so, definitely. Because I think it can inspire a way of approaching sound that you might not perceive of otherwise. I think you can see how an artist may use one element and go for broke with it and you could try to do that with music. I could see that with paintings that were pointillistic, trying to approach music in that way. Or Impressionism.

G: What about politics? Does that enter into your music?

S: Not so much, I haven’t thought about that too much. I talk about that enough without having to put it in the music necessarily. Although with the Mingus Band, that’s a very politically motivated band, and a lot of those pieces are very political, so in that way I’d say that playing with them is definitely a political statement as well as a musical one.

G: You never had any impulse to title your tunes with some political meaning?

S: I’ve had many impulses to do that. But then the question I always ask myself is, is that related to what I was writing about. Was I actually writing about that issue? The answer is usually no, I was writing for two trombones, or I was writing for piano, or I was writing for voice. There’s not a definite meld of the two. I figure that my vote counts a lot more a lot of the time rather than just titling the tunes. If the piece was inspired by an issue then I would definitely title it appropriately.

G: What about baking, does that enter into your music?

S: Chocolate cupcakes? I haven’t titled any tunes based upon things I’ve made.

G: Do you feel like making music is like preparing a cake?

S: I don’t know about that. Could be I suppose, I don’t really think about it that way, I guess. Baking to me is something I do that is not necessarily dealing with music. It’s like a totally other art and science all to itself. It’s fun. I suppose they could be definitely interrelated. Maybe they are.

G: Anything else you want to add?

S: Yes, I want to add one last thing, which is that. The thing that I can say about myself, because it’s been about 10 years in New York for me, I’ll be 30 next year and I’ve been playing music since I was 2: I’ve been very fortunate to play with so many great musicians. They’ve influenced me in so many ways that they’ll never quite know. All I can say is thank you to them, and to this experience, having been able to be part of this great musical community and hopefully add to it and not detract too much from it.