Australian jazz musicians are living and working in all parts of the world. Where are they? What are they doing? And how are they faring? Jazz Australia put these questions to some of our leading expatriate improvisers.
In the first of an occasional series, Sydney composer, keyboard player and bandleader Sean Wayland describes the challenges and joys of living the York dream.
Jazz Australia: How long have you been living and working in New York?
Sean Wayland: I came here in 1999 thanks to an Australia Council grant . I spent 2003-2005 in Sydney and have been back here for a year now with my wife Qing. I spent a lot of time in Japan around 2002. I did the “lost in translation” gig in Tokyo with a singer from here, Arlee Leonard http://www.cdbaby.com/ cd/arleel.
I also did another gig in Japan with James Muller and his sister Alex. I got to sing Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” in front of a boatload of Japanese schoolgirls regularly .
JA: Could you describe the range of your musical activities?
First and foremost for me I write music. I write for all types of groups – jazz band, songs, orchestral stuff, big band. I write at the piano and often with my Yamaha QY70 sequencer. I notate with Sibelius software. I am constantly trying to think of new environments for improvising in. It’s hard work constantly trying to think of something new, especially after more than 10 years of doing it.
I practice piano at home most days. I work on learning tunes (my own and other people’s. I also work on my improvising. Sometimes I will improvise on a tune for a while. I will try and work “licks” into it sometimes. I also write my own licks (some rhythmic, some melodic ) and also borrow from my favorite musicians sometimes (like Kenny Kirkland or Allan Holdsworth or Herbie Hancock or even my contemporaries like James Muller or Geoff Keezer).
Sometimes I try and turn improvising into a set of little rules and work on that. I will, say, try and practice playing 8th notes , 5 notes up , then 5 down through a tune. I perform regularly as a sideman here with a bunch of different musicians, including:
David Binney – www.davidbinney.com
Madeleine Peyroux – www.madeleinepeyroux.com
Ike Sturm – www.ikesturm.com
Russ Nolan – www.russnolan.com
Moses Patrou – http://www.myspace.com/ cozymose
Dan Pratt – www.danpratt.com
I also lead my own band here, which includes musicians such as:
Will Vinson – www.willvinson.com
Jonothan Kreisberg – www.jonothankreisberg.com
Matt Penman
Jochen Rueckert
You can see video of this band playing in NY for free at my website www.seanwayland.com
I have recently been putting together an improvising orchestra with two pianos, two guitars, bass, drums, three brass, three reed and strings. I am hoping that some of the other members will also write music for it.
I have plans to tour Australia and LA in January and February 2007 and Europe in May. I may possibly play at Wangaratta next year also.
I have just finished a solo piano CD, which is available at my website www.seanwayland.com. I am also currently finishing off a CD with a larger band featuring musos from my current NY band as well as James Muller and hopefully Allan Holdsworth. You can hear it at my myspace page. www.myspace.com/ seanwaylandmusic
I have also been currently working on some more funky 16th based music, which I hope to record next year at some point.
JA: Does this constitute a living – or do you have to do other things to keep the fridge stocked with Bud Light?**
SW: I also teach a little bit – mostly at home – which I enjoy and I think is important. I also have a couple of violin students which is fun.
JA: New York has a formidable reputation and one assumes it takes a long
time to break into the/a scene. What was your experience?
People say it takes 10 years to get anywhere in New York. Will Vinson plays the beans out of the alto and he told me he didn’t work here for four years. Jochen Rueckert didn’t do a gig for more than a year, he told me.
I managed to get work straight away, partly because I was prepared to do anything in the beginning. I used to play in a lot of funk bands and with singer/songwriters in 1999. I had a lesson with Kevin Hayes who introduced me to Jesse Harris who introduced me to numerous songwriters. It was fun for a while, but didn’t pay any money. Around that time I started to play organ and back then I used to play a lot in black clubs with people like Gerald Hayes (brother of Louis), Bill Saxton and Eric Wyatt. It was tough work and I was a beginner on the organ, but I gained invaluable experience. Back then I used to work in a mental institution in Queens to make ends meet. It was a very tough life, dealing with disturbed teenagers in the day and carrying amps and keyboards around at night.
JA: Sounds hectic.
SW: Often my day would look like this:
-Get up
– Throw toast down throat
– 1.5 hours on subway
– Record rap songs with kids who had mental health problems
– Deal with stressful situations like the kids raping each other or trying to kill each other in my class (although I had some very positive experiences, too !)
– 1.5 hours on subway home, eating dinner on train – rice and beans
– Pick up keyboard and amp.
– Travel 1.5 hours to gig in Brooklyn ghetto.
– Four-hour gig struggling to play fast tempos on organ, often being yelled at by the rest of the band.
– Eat second dinner at 2pm
– Get home at 4am and get up the next day at 11.30am and do it all again.
My first gig in Japan was a good help to my abilities as an accompanist. My boss was very tough and difficult to work with. We played as a duo six nights a week four sets a night. The Japanese refused to let me drink ANY alcohol on the gig, even during the breaks. I really learnt a lot about accompanying other musicians.
In the early days I also struggled with poor quality and often broken equipment. I stuffed up some good opportunities because I showed up with a Wurlitzer that broke. I also remember a gig where I had a cheap USB keyboard that I had mailed to myself with broken keys on it, and the bass player showed up with Charles Mingus’s old bass, complete with gargoyles on it.
I made sure this time that I had enough money saved to spend a couple of thousand dollars in the beginning on decent gear. I have a Nord Electro keyboard and a good very portable bass amplifier which serves me well on most gigs.
JA: You have always been very resourceful and entrepreneurial. That must
have helped a lot?**
In the period 1999-2003 I didn’t play many gigs as a leader. I was focused on being a sideman. Being a jazz composer, however, forces you into being entrepreneurial. Since coming back this time to NY I have tried a bit harder to book my own gigs. I don’t think it helps as much in New York as in Australia, but it is necessary these days. Many of the musicians that inspire me in New York, like Wayne Krantz, have set up their own world outside of the mainstream of corporate music.
These days Sonny Rollins has his own website and label. It really is a very different world from the one that I encountered here in the 90’s where everyone was wearing suits, playing straight ahead and trying to get a recording deal with Blue Note. These days the music in NY is much more broad. The same guys that where playing bebop are now playing free jazz or funk for tips. In Australia, when I was coming up I had to be entrepreneurial to get to perform my own music. I promoted gigs just to get an opportunity to perform. I ran a Sunday night at The Basement, organized gigs at Café de Lane, and then finally started jazzgroove). These days in Sydney all the young guys just play at jazzgroove.
New York is very different, however. Everyone is an entrepreneur here! Club owners/bookers here are inundated with phone calls and emails. Getting to perform my own music this year has helped my reputation amongst musicians, but it hasn’t really made much of a difference to my career at this point.
JA: If you had your time again, is there anything you would do differently?
SW: I should have tried to play my own music in NY from the beginning. I would also have got myself decent gear from the start. I would have made sure that I knew the bridges properly to all the tunes that I told people I “knew” on the bandstand. I would have worried less about my own abilities as a player. I also would have been less concerned about “fitting in” with the crowd. In the long term having your own voice is definitely the most important thing.
JA: Is New York still the centre of the jazz/improv universe in your view?**
**SW:* No. It is a worldwide phenomenon. Most bands you see in NY at the big clubs are made up of musicians from every country. I see NY as a meeting place for international musicians. The difference now is that there is a lot of great music happening outside of NY. However, musicians in NY as a general rule have had more experience working with different players etc.
There are still more opportunities to play here than anywhere. The NY attitude could be summed up with the words “let’s play”. You generally meet about five musicians every day here. Whenever you do a gig, usually you have never played with half the band. Sometimes this means that the music in NY is less adventurous than elsewhere as people are very concerned with not making a mistake that would unhinge the other players. The advantage is that if you wanted to get a band together for one night to play a gig, this is the best place to do it. The level of musicianship overall here is still higher than elsewhere. That being said, playing your instrument well is not always necessary to make good music but it helps!
In Sydney there is great music happening I think. I love to hear a band like the Alcohotlics or Bernie McGann even though they don’t really compare “technically” to Adam Rogers or Chris Potter. Often I have to walk out of gigs here in NY because the music is technical and cold. For me the best music is when you get a virtuoso who also has a big warm spirit like Kenny Kirkland or Allan Holdsworth. There do seem to be less of those types of people in NY these days than in the past.
JA: What are the best things about living in NY?
SW: Meeting new musicians all the time. Being challenged. Feeling that there are opportunities and that next year might be better than last year. Being able to perform at a high level with great players practically every day. Being able to see great music every night of the week.
JA: And the challenges?
Coffee is very very, very bad. Food is overpriced and often not treated with respect. Restaurants here seemed to be judged by the décor and the size of the portions. There are a lot of very ambitious people here who sometimes aren’t very nice. The weather gets much too cold. The health care system is a disgrace.
JA: Do you have much contact with other Australians in NY? Is your Brooklyn floor constantly strewn with visiting musicians?
SW: We have a studio apartment so no visitors. I love to hang out with all the Aussies here. I can’t get enough of them. I like to see the ones that live here and also the tourists.
JA: Is race an issue in the scene now?
I don’t really feel qualified to answer since I didn’t grow up here. I do notice that New York is still divided along racial lines. It is interesting that black Caribbeans and Africans tend to live with African Americans in the same neighbourhood. Manhattan itself is becoming increasingly gentrified. Everywhere below 125 is becoming increasingly affluent and much less black and Hispanic. In the 1990s the east village was a real mix of cultures, but it feels like Woollahra (an affluent suburb of Sydney) these days. I had a regular gig there this year with Russ Nolan playing organ and the neighbours complained . In some sense what appears to me to be a growing gap between rich and poor has made things more segregated .
As far as the jazz scene is concerned I see less and less young black people interested in playing the music. People tell me that many of them (young talented black musicians) are going into contemporary gospel music which is big business these days.
I have a sense that there is much less money in jazz. I think it has made the scene a bit less competitive and friendly than before when there was money at stake. Previously the racial arguments in the jazz scene seemed to be about who was getting a record deal and what their skin colour was. These days mostly singers are getting record deals, so it is a non-question although the singers are predominantly young white girls. I still notice that if I play with one black person then usually the rest of the band is black too and I am the only white person (often in the room) . I do see that many of the top bands are mixed these days. Perhaps more so than before. I do see the popularity of violent and sexually exploitative rap music as a bit a sad reflection of a musical and social decline in the black community. I had an African American piano student this year who was about 30 years old and grew up in Bedford Styvesant during the “crack” epidemic. He told me that as a teenager he was afraid to finish high school because he thought that he would get shot dead by the thugs in his neighbourhood. I cried when he told me the story. Every week I also teach a family of kids who live in affluence in a two-bedroom apartment across the road from the Metropolitan Museum. If they chose, I am sure that these children wouldn’t have to work a day in their lives.
There is very little music education in schools here. Most jazz musicians these days here learnt to play at university, which is also where networking is done. Most bands here consist of people who went to school together. If a young black person wasn’t lucky enough to get a scholarship to the New School or Berkelee College of Music I could not see how they could afford. Even with a full scholarship I imagine you would need support from your parents to pay the rent. It is very different I expect from the old days when I talented young black jazz player could get a gig with Art Blakey and basically get paid to learn on the job without having to go to university.
JA: You have a presence on the key social networking websites, MySpace and YouTube. Is that a useful professional aid or more a way to keep in contact with friends?
Myspace has helped me make contact with musicians all over the world and I have got in touch with some old friends through it, which is nice. I don’t take it too seriously. Youtube seems to be the future of home entertainment. It is an amazing time. It boggles the mind being able to see Heifitz play, Coltrane play, and episodes of The Gong Show. Many of the clips were previously unavailable.
I think the musicians should be making more of a stand to get people to pay for this stuff. I think it is a bit of a statement about modern moral values. People should pay a monthly service to watch whatever they want on the phone or whatever, but some of the money should go to the copyright owners. It would be great if more musicians and music lovers were having this discussion.
Coming up: Interviews with Barney McAll and Kristen Cornwall.
