A Conversation with Dave Holland – HuffPost 10.11.13

Mike Ragogna: So Dave Holland, what inspired this configuration of players to come up with your album Prism?

Dave Holland: It started with me wanting to set up a situation for Kevin Eubanks and I to get back together again and do some playing. We’d been talking on and off for years and the time was just right for us to do it last year, so we talked things over and we thought we’d move ahead with it. I was thinking about how in addition to Kevin and I, I’d like to have a group and what kind of sound I’d like to produce, also, more importantly, who I’d like to do it with, because the players always come first for me. The instruments, of course, are important and that’s a part of the consideration, but it’s very much got to do with who I’m wanting to play with and explore music with. So these things came together thinking about the instrumentation. I thought it would be nice to have a band, for a change, without any horn players. If I’m thinking correctly, other than the flamenco album I did called Hands this is the first album that I’ve done without any horn players. I was thinking in terms of the size I’d like to have, not only acoustic piano, but also electric piano, which would give some changes of color for the group, and, of course, drums. Eric Harland, the drummer for the band and I have played together quite a few times over the last few years in projects that I’ve been involved with. I love playing with him and he was certainly the first person who came to mind for this project. He’s wonderfully creative and a warm, sensitive player; there’s a lot of fire to his playing as well and he’s a great listener.

For the keyboards, I immediately thought of Craig Taborn. I worked with Craig many years ago on a James Carter project. James was recording and I guested on a few tracks on that. That was my first project with Craig, but I’ve followed him closely and been a fan of his for some time and I just thought he would be a perfect addition. So that was how the personnel came together, and then the other part of this was also the idea of really representing everybody compositionally as well, because I liked very much each person’s compositional style. We each have a different way of composing and different ideas that we put out. I thought this representation of everybody in the compositional area too would give us a really nice range of music to work on and develop.

MR: Nice. While I wouldn’t really say this is a prog-type project, it does seem to cross over into the fusion category. Do you feel when you were recording that you were maybe revisiting a lot of the fusion experiences that you’ve had over the years?

DH: I can’t say I was thinking about revisiting, because that’s not really in my range of thinking. Usually, I like to think about things moving forward. As I said, it was just an idea that was based on people and then the music that would be appropriate for that and the sound of the band really developed from the rehearsals and the music that we brought in. I think certainly the instrumentation is one of those things that perhaps hints at that idea of it being someway connected to my earlier work, particularly with Miles. I think that’s more the instrumentation of the group. I like to think of the music as being “as-of-now.” That really wasn’t part of my thinking.

MR: When you have this configuration and you’re in the studio together, what’s the degree of improvisation? I’m imagining a lot of it is improv, but somebody has to come in with a composition. How does a session normally go as far as tailoring a song? Arrangement-wise do you write it down? Do you feel it and just keep rehearsing it and then record?

DH: The first thing we did is we had some rehearsal time. This was prior to doing quite a lengthy summer tour. As I’ve done with all of my recordings, I always like to actually put the music to work on gigs and have a chance to develop it. So it’s a sort of organic development of the music over a period of performances, and then I go in the studio and capture that and document the music after it’s already had a chance to be played and developed. The process that we used, everybody came in with their songs and each person would talk a little bit about how they imagined the piece. But I think we all write in a way that allows for a lot of room for input from the players. I think that part of the tradition of writing for a jazz improvisational context is that you don’t want to necessarily define every aspect. For instance, I don’t write the drum beats that I want Eric to play on the pieces. I might talk a little bit about the groove, but I let him figure out how he’s going to interpret that.

That goes for pretty much the way we approach developing the pieces. Once we’ve got a feeling for what the written material is, I think it’s a group process, really, with, of course, a lot of input from the composer. But everybody in the band is very open and it’s really an idea of developing it as a group. So in the process of then playing the composition, we see areas and we start to say, “Okay, well maybe we can open this part up and maybe at this point, the drums can solo over a riff.” We’ll come up with different ideas as we develop the rehearsal. Those things then get used in a gig and then maybe on the gig, you start to say, “There are some other ways we could do this, how about if we try it this way?” It’s an ongoing thing and, in fact, we’re still tweaking and changing the music. Sometimes an idea comes up, something will happen on a gig for instance, and you’ll say, “Hey that was kind of a nice moment, maybe we can develop that as part of the structure.” That’s something I always saw with Miles’ group. It was a work in progress. From gig to gig, the pieces would develop and take on new aspects and new moments would be created that might be then made a part of the form that we might use for the performances.

MR: Were there any surprises when you were recording the project?

DH: I get surprised every time we play. When you’re working with people of this caliber, they’re constantly pushing the creative edge of what they do and we’re looking to, of course, keep change happening in the music, keep it developing. It’s just a natural part of how this music’s played, I think, traditionally. You don’t go up and play the same type of solo every night. You might try and find different ways to cover the tune from one night to the next, so there are often surprises, yeah. The surprises are in the way an interpretation might go down. Kevin [Eubanks] might come up with an interpretation of the melody that hasn’t happened before and you say, “Wow, that really is cool, it sounds great,” or Craig [Taborn] has an idea of doubling part of the melody at one point or changing the octave; all kinds of things happen. This, to me, is part of the joy of playing music with such great players. It’s a thing where nothing happens the same exactly every time we play.

MR: You mentioned Miles a couple of times. I’m not going to ask for a complete history lesson, but I’d love to get your thoughts on some of the players that you’ve been a sideman to in addition to your other recordings, for instance, playing with Miles or Herbie Hancock or whoever.

DH: Yeah, and not all of them are famous people, because as a musician, you know sometimes it’s not always the ones that have got name recognition that can give you a great gift of teaching you something and showing you something. I was thinking back to my days in England and people who were generous and nurturing of my raw talent and kind of helping me learn the ins and outs of performing and playing and all the subtle things that you learn from players of more experience. As far as the people that are well known, of course, Miles was very important. As a twenty-one year old musician, to have an opportunity to play in a band that was playing on that level and with that degree of forward motion creatively and then to be standing on stage next to a group of players like Miles and Wayne and Tony Williams, and at the very beginning, with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea… But to be around those people and to have your creativity pushed to that degree is a great lesson for a young player. Watching Miles put the music together and the way he was able to, with a very light touch, often, just kind of shape the music but really give a lot of creative responsibility to the players so that they had a chance to really delve into what they could do and what they could bring to the music. These were all really important things for me to be around at that stage in my career.

Other players I played with, of course, I had a wonderful time with. Even before I came to America, I’d had a chance to play with Joe Henderson, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, several other great American artists as well as a lot of great English players. Just being around that amount of experience was fantastic. After Miles, I had appeared with Stan Getz, which was wonderful. It was quite a dramatic change of direction. I’d gone from Miles to a band called “Circle” that Chick Corea and myself and Anthony Braxton the saxophone player and Barry Altschul the drummer put together and we were together for about a year and a half doing very exploratory jazz and very exploratory improvisations. From that, I went to playing with Stan who is one of the great lyricists and an amazing player to be around and delving back into a slightly more traditional approach to the music. After that, I spent several years working both with Anthony Braxton and his groups and with Sam Rivers who was a very important person for me to work with and who just gave you a chance every night to completely do whatever was on your mind however you wanted to approach the music. We rarely used written music, so every night was improvisation. The challenge that brings to create logical form within a totally improvised setting was great.

I also had a period with Betty Carter who, for me, was one of the great experiences. She was an amazing artist, a great musician, a great bandleader, the way she nurtured the young players that came through her band and taught them the real subtleties of accompaniment and how to build and create the dramatic changes in the music as you play; she was really special. After I’d worked with her, we remained friends and she gave me really wonderful advice when I moved into being a leader in my own right in the early eighties and all the doubts and things that you go through when you make a big step like that. She was so encouraging and gave me such great advice and was really helpful, so I can’t say enough about Betty. She was a great lady and that was a great experience. Then I got back to playing with Herbie in the nineties and Wayne Shorter. Those two musicians, to me, are at such a level of creativity, and I think all of us who played with Miles all got fired up about that whole idea of just trying to keep developing, keep moving the music forward. Those two musicians have done so in such an incredibly creative and individualistic way, so that was a great experience for me. The list goes one. I hate to keep doing this because I’m leaving off people all the time that I care about.

MR: No, it’s cool, I insist!

DH: Jack DeJohnette was a great friend, right from the beginning. We met in England and he was kind enough to let me stay at his apartment in New York when I first came to New York and was somebody I could talk to about all the challenges that I was facing living in a new country, and all the things that were happening in America in the late sixties were very dramatic. Our musical relationship has just been a wonderful part of my experiences, playing with Jack. From the very first time we played together–the jam session in England, in 1967–it felt completely right. It’s like putting on an old suit of clothes; it just fits you perfectly. It felt right from the very beginning. So he’s been a very important part of it, too. Kenny Wheeler, a great Canadian trumpet player who lived in England for a long time… Kenny as a composer, an arranger, an orchestrator, wonderful big band writing… I learned so much from playing Kenny’s music as well and getting on the inside of it and seeing how he put it together. The list goes on.

MR: You mentioned Betty Carter molding you and giving advice earlier. May I ask what advice do you have for new artists?

DH: Follow your dream and realize that you’ve got to work really hard to develop your music and to maximize the potential in the gifts that you’ve been given as a musician. That’s only the starting point. You have to really be searching, be curious, be investigating the music and finding out the things that resonate with you. What makes your music strong is when it really comes from a genuine place where you’re passionately engaged in the ideas that you’re trying to develop. The other advice that I give is to get out there and play with as many people as you can. Certainly, as a young player, you have to get as much experience working with all kinds of different players, different kinds of music, different levels of playing. Learn to work with not only the players that perhaps are easiest to play with, but also find ways to make situations work that aren’t always so easy. Get out there and work with other musicians. It’s very important to be attached and be a part of a community of musicians, not just for what you’ll learn from that, but also the performance opportunities that come out of that. Finally, I would say that you’ve really got to take responsibility, not just for the music, these days, but also for pursuing outlets for what you do and creating a fan base, using social networks and all the things that are available to independent musicians now, which were not available when I was a young player that give us a great opportunity to deal directly with the people that might have interest in what we do. We have to take full advantage of that and be prepared to do some work other than just working on the music, to develop your understanding of how the business works, how the publishing business works, and that way, you can really maximize the potential that you have as an artist.

MR: Dave, you’ll be touring in support of the album. Do you prefer live over studio?

DH: You know, they’re two really different mediums. I have to say that there’s something about a live audience and the live situation that is energizing. No matter how much I’ve worked in the studio, there’s a sort of freedom that you feel when you’re playing live that is sometimes hard to reach when you’re in the studio. But on the other hand, I love the process of recording, of sometimes shaping the music in a way that is going to make sense for presenting it on a CD or vinyl format, considering how the tune might be structured to be more appropriate for that medium. So that whole thing is great and it’s really important to be able to document the things that you’re doing and to have a snapshot of the different stages in the music that you’re working on.

MR: What is Dave Holland’s life like this time next year?

DH: I’m doing more touring. This time next year, I’ve got three really main projects that I work on–actually four now–and I’ve got work planned through the end of next year with all four of them. Of course, Prism figures quite prominently on that list because it’s really my current project and we’re planning on a follow up recording so we’re going to be starting on some new material in the next six months or so. There’s a duo that I’m doing with the great pianist Kenny Barron that we started about a year and a half or so ago. We’ve done some touring and we’ve done some gigs with the duo. We’re planning a recording probably for December or January of this year with that project. The third project is the flamenco project with Pepe Habichuela, who’s really a great figure in flamenco guitar playing. He’s a Spanish gypsy. He comes from a long line of really wonderful players. We did one album called Hands and we’re working on material for a second one and I was just touring with that earlier this year. Finally, there’s the ongoing project which is very dear to my heart, which is the quintet that has been together for fifteen years with Chris Potter on saxophone, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibraphone and marimba and Nate Smith on drums.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne