Interview with Sam Rivers in the LA Times

[The Mule]

For Sam Rivers, both art and life are long

Nearing 80, the jazz saxophonist with an abiding passion for 'spontaneous creativity' opens at the Bakery.

By Don Heckman

Special to The Times

September 23 2003

Ask saxophonist Sam Rivers about his impending 80th birthday on Thursday and he just laughs.

"I don't think about it much," he says. "I'm feeling fine and my son is a doctor. That always helps."

Ask about his music, however, and the epigrammatic responses quickly expand into thoughtful explanations of his lifelong fascination with the improvisational processes of jazz.

"I've been through a lot of different phases," Rivers says. "I've played bebop and I've played avant-garde, and I'm still learning something new about it every day."

"Still learning" to the extent that the trio he brings to the Jazz Bakery tonight for a six-night run will incorporate sounds, rhythms and improvisational techniques stretching across stylistic boundaries, embracing every segment of his long career.

"Spontaneous creativity" is how he describes the music he performs with bassist Doug Matthews and drummer Anthony Coles (with each playing three or four other instruments). It is jazz in which preset harmony and melody have been abandoned in favor of completely spontaneous improvisation — jazz not based on anything.

"I've been doing spontaneous creativity so long that it's like second nature," Rivers says from his Florida home. "Basically what it means is that we create everything on the spot — the melody, everything, even the rhythms."

What is an audience to make of jazz without the familiar reference points of harmonies from standard tunes and the blues?

"At the bottom line, art is all about feeling and emotion," he explains. "In rock, they substitute volume for emotion. We try to do it with color, tempo and so forth."

The keystone of Rivers' fascination with spontaneous creativity is the '60s, when jazz — and popular music and the nation — went through a series of titanic upheavals. Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor and others proposed new ways of approaching jazz, often abandoning the art's long association with the process of theme and invented variations.

"When you think about it," he says, "[Charles] Mingus, Cecil and Ornette were already stretching out before the '60s. They really led the way into the rebellion and the iconoclasm in the music that happened in the '60s.

"Not only in jazz but in the other arts as well. Changes everywhere — painting, photography, writing, pop music think about Jimi Hendrix — directly reflecting everything that was happening."

Oklahoma-born Rivers was working with Miles Davis in the early '60s. By middecade he was involved with activities surrounding Bill Dixon's edgy Jazz Composers Guild.

"People couldn't quite figure out where I was coming from," he says. "When I came to New York, I was playing with Miles Davis. Then I went with Cecil Taylor, and everybody seemed to think that was what I did. Then, later, when I went with Dizzy Gillespie, they said, 'What is Sam Rivers the avant-gardist doing with Dizzy?' But I think I really benefited from the different things I did. I'm one of the few players who felt comfortable about crossing back and forth."

His own recordings began to be released in the mid-'70s, including the highly regarded "Fuchsia Swing Song." In 1970, he and his wife, Beatrice, founded Studio Rivbea, a pioneering location in the Manhattan loft-jazz scene that became a vital part of cutting-edge jazz for the balance of the century.

In the '80s, after returning from yet another lengthy tour — this time with Gillespie — Rivers decided he'd had his New York experience and began to think about moving. Serendipitously, he received an offer to move to Orlando, Fla.

"I was offered an orchestra to work with," he says, "to play my music, try new things, the sort of orchestra we'd had at the studio. And sure enough here I am, pretty much working with the same musicians I've had for more than a decade. They're all teachers at various universities along with some studio players and some musicians from Disney too."

"It's a good situation, very conducive to my 'creative posture,' " he adds with another laugh. "I get a lot of work done, I have a group of good players that play my music every Wednesday night and I occasionally get out on tour with my trio."

Given the effect that the '60s had on his creative development, has Rivers' comfortable life in Florida affected his interest in stretching the envelope?

"Not at all," he says. "The orientation may be different, but creativity is creativity. You start with nothing, no plan, and you make something out of it. Back in the '70s, I had a group — with [bassist] Dave Holland and [guitarist] Barry Altschul doing exactly that: performing 2 1/2 hours with no music, just spontaneous creativity, making cohesive performances. And that's still where my heart is. Sometimes I do it on the spot with the trio. Sometimes I write it down for a large group.

"After all," Rivers concludes, "composing — by any composer — is really a matter of writing down the improvisations that you hear in your head. And those spontaneous creations just keep on coming."

*

The Sam Rivers Trio

Where: The Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., L.A.

When: Tonight-Sunday, 8 and 9:30 p.m.

Price: $25

Contact: (310) 271-9039

[BruceH]

Thanks for posting that, Mule!

[The Mule]

And another interview in the LA Weekly:

Rivers’ Edge

by Brandt Reiter

Sam Rivers:

It's all about emotion.

Sam Rivers has often been called a giant of avant-garde jazz. Yet it’s hard to think of another living jazz figure of equal stature — and there are precious few — who has been so grossly undervalued. (“What did I do?” Rivers once mused. “Did I tell someone to kiss my ass?”) Born into a musical family on September 25, 1923, Rivers received classical training in Boston after World War II and honed his tenor-sax chops playing bop in the city’s clubs. Big-band and R&B gigs occupied him for much of the ’50s, but by 1959 Rivers was firmly under the spell of free jazz and has plied those waters for most of his career. (His four years with Dizzy Gillespie in the late ’80s is a notable exception.) A ’64 stint with Miles Davis led to Rivers’ first recording as a leader that same year, the hard-bop-based free-jazz classic Fuchsia Swing Song; recently reissued, it sounds astonishingly fresh still. In 1969 he toured Europe with avant piano genius Cecil Taylor, and in 1971 Rivers and his wife, Beatrice, opened the downtown New York performance space Studio Rivbea, pumping fresh blood into the new-jazz loft scene and influencing an entire generation of players. Now based in Orlando, the uncompromising Rivers continues to operate without major-label support and remains as adventurous as any player around. His current trio, with bassist-clarinetist Doug Matthews and drummer-saxist-pianist Anthony Cole (a masterful flautist as well as a tenor player, Rivers also handles soprano sax and piano), is one of the most fascinating in jazz.

Were you encouraged to pursue music as a career?

No, no. We were raised to be teachers. Learning music was just part of being a civilized human being. You were a preacher and a musician, or you were a doctor and a musician, or you were a lawyer and a musician. Music was never considered the main profession by my parents — ministry, yes, but music, no. I ended up being what they wanted me to be anyway. I taught at Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard.

Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Witherspoon, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King — you’ve got one of the odder résumés among free-jazz players.

Freedom is a state of mind for me. I can play out, or in, I can play my style within the blues, or I can play my style playing changes. A jazz musician plays everything. The people you hear behind Britney Spears, they’re jazz musicians. Behind the country people, behind hip-hop, commercials — all jazz musicians. They can’t do without us. We are so much a part of this society we’re almost part of the furniture — so dominant you don’t even notice us anymore.

When did you start playing free?

When I was in Boston. What’s called free jazz — we were doing it already in the classical. This goes back to the Dada. In 1911, 1910, people were throwing splotches on paper and playing that, tracing the contours of mountains and playing that. I was with a classical group — the leader was a classical composer, but he had a kind of disdain for classical musicians because they weren’t able to do anything but read their music. We’d go to museums — he was also an art historian — and just play the paintings. Later, when Ornette Coleman came along, for some players it was a shock, but not for musicians that had classical training, who had heard Stockhausen and Stravinsky. It didn’t hit me as hard. Coleman, even Cecil Taylor — I loved their music immediately.

I’m always struck by how accessible your free work is.

I really try. Music — art — is all about emotion. That’s all that’s important. If you have the brain thing too, well, that’s an added dividend. Listen to Dolphy, for instance. He’s the only musician in jazz I haven’t been able to analyze. I don’t have the faintest idea what his harmonic concept is. But I enjoy it so much.

When did you start writing?

Around 1958. That was one of the reasons that I moved to New York in ’64, because from ’58 on I had accumulated quite a few compositions. The musicians capable of playing it in Boston were busy. New York, there’s a lot of qualified musicians looking for adventurous music to play, even just to rehearse. It’s the same in Orlando, which is the main reason I’m here. The musicians here, they’re all very good, all college graduates, all professors of music. So I’m sitting here writing. They perform everything I do, and I have to keep writing to preserve their interest.

You know, we’re teeming with great players out here . . .

Hollywood was my second choice. I was looking for a place to live other than New York, because I was getting tired of cold weather. But a $150,000 house in Orlando would be a shack in California. That was a big consideration.

Your current trio — its range, the way you switch around instruments — I don’t think I’ve seen one quite like it.

I’m sure you haven’t. I haven’t had a trio that’s as talented as this in my entire career. We play changes, we play free, ballads — everything. We are the history of the music.

You’ve got another big-band album coming out.

Yes, Aurora. I’m bringing it out on Rivbea Sound, my own label. I’m following in the tradition of Sun Ra and a lot of other musicians who never did perform with a major label, but were able to distribute their records all around the world. I intend to produce a record a month for the rest of my life. The music is ready. All I need is pen and paper and someplace to sit. The ideas are still bursting out of me. I understand how fortunate I am at 80, don’t think I don’t.

The Sam Rivers Trio plays the Jazz Bakery and celebrates Rivers’ 80th birthday through Sunday, September 28.

[Simon Weil]

For Sam Rivers, both art and life are long

Nearing 80, the jazz saxophonist with an abiding passion for 'spontaneous creativity' opens at the Bakery.

By Don Heckman

Special to The Times

Thanks for posting this. It's great the guy's still going.

One minor point:

Back in the '70s, I had a group — with [bassist] Dave Holland and [guitarist] Barry Altschul doing exactly that: performing 2 1/2 hours with no music, just spontaneous creativity, making cohesive performances. And that's still where my heart is. Sometimes I do it on the spot with the trio. Sometimes I write it down for a large group.

Altschul is of course a drummer.

Also...

I did see this group, at London's Roundhouse. They played two halves. The first did seem truly free - and that was very good. The second half they got into a rhythmic groove, and though that was enjoybale for a while, after a bit I got bored. It did seem to me that they did make a decison about the two halves, so I'm not sure I'm buying the suggestion that they just went on stage and just interacted.

It might have been totally unplanned, that second half - But I didn't think so.

Simon Weil