“I listen to whatever catches my ear”
“Everything wasn’t different after ‘Trane. People were just … you know what I mean…because he was more of an extension of what Miles was doing as far as modal music, you the know modal way of playing. That comes from ‘So What’ and things like that. But Prez, Bird and Ornette – they changed everything.”
At the forefront of jazz for nearly six decades, Gary Bartz has helped create jazz as we know it today
BM: When did you know you were going to play Sax? And who were your earliest influences? I realise that you have an amazing bio so sorry the question is a little simplistic.
GB: (laughter) At the age of six when I first saw Charlie Parker and he and Louis Jordan were the first people that I really listened to.
BM: Right, that’s when you knew you were going to play Saxophone right?
GB: Yeah when I was six I started begging for a saxophone then. It took five years to get one (laughter) -– they didn’t buy me one until I was eleven.
BM: Coltrane has obviously been an influence with two albums under your belt now with the Coltrane Rules Tao of a Music Warrior volume series, which of course you’ll be performing in Melbourne. Can you tell us about his impact on your music?
GB: well, even though I did the Coltrane records, the two ‘Tao of a Music Warrior’ records , I had been doing his songs all along on many other albums and so I had been studying him in a sense. ‘Trane had a really big impact on me because harmonically he was such a forward thinker. Trying to keep up with today’s harmonies led me to really studying him. I don’t know if that makes sense.
BM: Yeah definitely.
You once mentioned in an interview that one of the good things about touring was the sense of community and that seems to be lacking nowadays. Do you still feel this and how do you think it will influence music in the future?
GB: Well the problem today is there’s no long standing bands where young people can learn to be a musician. The musicians, they don’t get a chance to play six nights a week, three/four months at a time, with the same bands, so the music cannot move forward without a working band, and it doesn’t bode well for the future because I don’t see any bands out there really. And in my time, a band was a commitment. When you joined a band that was a commitment. Nowadays younger musicians don’t commit, you know they’ll leave the band, they won’t even call the band leader, they just won’t show up, send a sub in, you know. We would never do that. If that was going to happen at least you’d go to the band leader and say “well look, I got this other gig, would that be ok?” and if it wouldn’t be ok you wouldn’t do it.
BM:– what music and musicians do you currently listen to?
GB: Well I listen to Barney McAll (laughter)… Ah no I would say I listen to everybody, you know because I listen to whatever catches my ear. When I listen to music sometimes, I don’t even know who it is. I have to find out if it’s something that I like. So I’m just open to all music. I don’t listen to any one person. When I’m studying someone I may tend to listen more to them. But basically, day to day, I guess you know, I listen to Frank Sinatra. That’s who I listen to most of the time(in the car so I listen to Frank. I listen to ..
Mary (Gary’s Wife): Jackie McLean dear
GB: Why you keep saying that?
Female: Because that’s what I have on Pandora
GB: Yeah but we listen to everything. I listen to everything.
we listen to Jackie, but I listen to Ornette, I’m really listening to a lot of Ornette these days.
BM: hmmm Ornette. I think it goes Bird, Trane, Ornette. I think in that order. I think it goes like that.
GB: No, no. It goes in this order – Lester Young , Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman.
BM: So Trane is an extension of Bird and between Ornette?
GB: Yes
BM: But he’s not a pivotal figure you don’t think?
GB: He didn’t change the landscape.
BM: Wow. OK.
GB: Lester Young changed the landscape. Charlie Parker changed the landscape. Ornette Coleman changed the landscape. Everything was different after them.
BM: Right.
GB: Everything wasn’t different after ‘Trane. People were just … you know what I mean…because he was more of an extension of what Miles was doing as far as modal music, you the know modal way of playing. That comes from ‘So What’ and things like that. But Prez, Bird and Ornette – they changed everything.
3rd June Melbourne International Jazz Festival
Perth International Jazz Festival
