'We try to make different music every night'

Er Audy Zandri ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 12/07/2008 10:50 AM  |  Entertainment

Even when the Yellowjackets' show last week was halfway done, the entrances to the Tennis Indoor Senayan were jam-packed with people trying to squeeze in.

It was Dji Sam Soe Jakarta International Jazz Festival 2008's finale to wrap up the three-day festival, and people knew it wasn't one to miss.

(JP/Er Audy Zandri)

The Yellowjackets lit up the stage for two hours from nine that Sunday, rocking the jazz-crazed audience who hit the floor of the hall without mercy; we were blessed to be there.

Led by Russell Ferrante on piano and synths, the Jackets stormed in with their full lineup, including the left-handed virtuoso bassist Jimmy Haslip, EWI and tenor sax-giant Bob Mintzer and the powerful new young drummer Marcus Baylor.

They opened the concert with "Man Facing North", the same composition that opens their 1993 album Like a River. And after a career spanning almost 30 years, and with numerous awards including 13 Grammy nominations (the last two for their recent album with Mike Stern) and two Grammy awards to their name, the musicianship and precision they display is just not of this earth.

A couple of years back, an insignificant guy sent a letter to the band's official website, complaining about how short their concert was when they opened for Fourplay in mid-2006. On behalf of the band, Russell himself apologized in a statement.

For The Jakarta Post, nevertheless, it seemed like a good idea to send that same insignificant guy for a live interview with the band on their second visit.

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The Jakarta Post: Flashback to your last concert in Jakarta in August 2006: You guys didn't play that long compared to Fourplay, and it was Eric Marienthal playing instead of Bob. What happened?

Bob Mintzer: I had a previous engagement a year in advance to play in a concert in Australia, which made me unavailable. But the band wanted very much to come, so they asked Eric to fill in for me.

Jimmy Haslip: Regarding the short gig: we weren't expecting that too, they gave us the cue to stop and we had no choice but to stop playing. About Eric: back in those days, we also had gigs in Korea. So we had to actually ask for permission to see if we could still come but with a substitute sax player for Bob, and because we were having Eric Marienthal, who is a well-respected player in jazz, nobody seemed to have much problem with that.

Ferrante: Bob has a career of his own outside of the band, such as the big band and other side projects and as guest musician, so there will be situations where he's not going to be available for gigs. And Eric had played a number of times for the band in Bob's place.

And of course the crowd enjoyed it as much. What do you think about those concerts in Indonesia?

Haslip: It was great! We played some pretty big venues that were well attended, people were enthusiastic. And at the same time we performed with three local vocalists like Syaharani, Tompi and Diera?

Baylor: And D'Essentials, was it?

Maliq and D'Essentials, yeah.

Haslip: Right, so there were a lot of collaborations that must have been nice for the audiences here to watch.

But did you also get travel warnings? That it's probably best not to visit Indonesia during those times?

Ferrante: Not this trip we didn't (laughs).

Haslip: Every place is dangerous (laughs), you just have to make a decision of where you want to come to and be there. I mean, I'm aware that there's this crazy stuff going on all over the world, but if we let our fear take control and just stay in New York or Los Angeles then even in those places there's stuff going on, stuff we can't avoid, like fires and earthquakes.

The voice of the Yellowjackets has changed over the years, especially with the departure of Marc Russo replaced by Bob Mintzer. And with the coming of Marcus Baylor, what changes do you think he brings to the music?

Ferrante: Well. It has gotten a lot worse (laughs). No. Everyone of course brings their musical personality to the band and that's exactly what we wanted; we wanted the music to change.

Like when Bob joined in, we didn't expect him to play like Marc Russo and wanted him to express himself instead, bringing his musical personality in. You never know how that's going to work; there's a little bit of unknown territory there.

You hoped that you've made a good choice, that someone is going to really fit musically and personally, which is a very important thing because we spend so much time together. So you expect to get really good people that are accomplished and nice and considerate, and we've been very lucky in those terms with Marcus and Bob; we couldn't ask for better human beings.

Exactly how often do you practice together?

Haslip and Baylor: We don't practice.

Mintzer: Not too much. Only if new material for recording is involved or if we're going to play with guests, then we'd rehearse.

Ferrante: The main time that we do rehearse is when we're preparing new music to record. It can be either on the road while we're together, which we do sometimes in early sound-checks, or like the one with our new record in New York.

Jimmy and I flew out early to rehearse at the recording studio, which usually started with us sending the music sheets, charts and demo recordings to the rest of the guys to listen, absorb, and learn.

But nobody's dictating how some instruments should sound like, in terms of melodies and licks?

Mintzer: Occasionally, but just parts. It's more about the group's consciousness where ultimately you'd have to surrender your music to the consensus of the group.

Haslip: There's a song on the record that Bob wrote called "Yahoo" that's got some very specific parts. And these are excellent parts that don't require any changes. So we just wanted to learn that and to be able to perform that as perfectly as we possibly can; that's one of the songs Tohpati is going to play with us tonight.

Did you know Tohpati before? And is he going to play with you guys throughout the entire set?

Haslip: No, they said they have this excellent local guitarist, and they asked us to invite him on the stage to play with us. We sent two songs, he learned them and we're going to play them tonight.

And what will you play tonight?

Ferrante: We don't exactly know what we're going to play yet, but we've always tried to make different music every night, so we'll pick some songs and we'll include these two songs for Tohpati. (Besides "Man Facing North", the band also played the tender "Geraldine" from The Spin, and the straight ahead "Foreign Correspondence" from their Grammy Award-winning album Politics)

These next questions are probably a bit awkward but I'm going to ask them anyway. Do you think the global and especially the U.S. economic recession will have an impact on your music?

Mintzer: Not so far, but I think it might eventually impact on people not being able to buy tickets to our performances.

Ferrante: We played everywhere all around the U.S. last year and have done three different tours in Europe this year, including some live concerts in United States.

And maybe that helps, that if one place is doing poorly then maybe somewhere else is a little better. I think we're all concerned with the issue and have to see what's going to happen next.

And the change to digital format, including the Internet: It's so obvious it's not enough for musicians to rely on the sales of CDs these days.

Mintzer: Not so much though. Since I've been in the band, which has been around 18 years, the sales of our CDs have been nudged down incrementally by the number of downloads, free Internet access.

Haslip: But it's still healthy though, we've got iTunes and such, so things still come in; but things have really changed.

Ferrante: The thing that got better, and I think is kind of funny, is that for most jazz artists, the sales have gone down, but our performance fee and the amount that we're working on has gone up. So, it's okay, still working out. Playing live is still a vital aspect, of course.

Haslip: That's what most people want to check out anyway.

About your new album Lifecycle. How did Mike Stern get involved and how did things work out?

Ferrante: The idea started since our playing together in last year's Montreal Jazz Festival and because we wanted to give a different sound to our music, as we've been a solid quartet for the last 30 years, we decided to collaborate with him as a group. And the chemistry was great.

Haslip: He played seven tunes out of the 10, including some compositions that he specifically made for the album, but it's still pretty much the Yellowjackets' sounds in there.

Last question for Russ: If you were trapped on a desert island with only one Yellowjackets album to bring, what will you pick?

Ferrante: Hmm... That's a tough one... Greenhouse.

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The most glorious day in the writer's life to date is the day he found secondhand copies of The Yellowjackets' cassettes Like a River and Dreamland in the local flea market; he was in high school then and couldn't stop grinning from ear to ear for three hours.

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