Saxman with Chops All His Own - Saxman Joshua Redman, interview - Interview

If ever there was a player perfectly suited to the title of heir apparent in the world of jazz, saxman Joshua Redman is it. After listening to his music, you know intuitively that jazz is in his veins.

I'm not referring to the fact that the thirty-one-year-old Redman is the son of tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, well known for his musical fusion of blues, free-form, and hard bop. Joshua has chops all his own.

He won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition in 1991. He snatched up a recording contract with Warner Brothers and released his self-titled debut album in 1993 to critical acclaim. He was voted Rolling Stone's Hot Jazz Artist and was also dubbed the Number 1 Tenor Saxophonist Deserving of Wider Recognition by Down Beat's critics' poll that year. This year, Redman was named artist-in-residence and the artistic director of the San Francisco Jazz Festival's spring season.

Redman possesses an enviable passel of talents, including an intriguing composition style, an easy, flowing technique, and stunning dexterity.

As if those qualities weren't enough, his musical sensibilities comfortably bridge a variety of musical styles. Take his 1999 release, Timeless Tales (for Changing Times). He offers deft interpretations of songs from the canons of Cole Porter, Joni Mitchell, Irving Berlin, and Bob Dylan. On the record's first cut, Redman sends George Gershwin's "Summertime" through a dizzying array of rhythmic and harmonic changes that jump off as easily as fish in that easy-livin' season. Later he settles comfortably into Stevie Wonder's "Visions."

Redman's rise might be labeled meteoric, but his was not a straight shot. "My first experience playing instruments was at the Center for World Music in Berkeley in the early seventies," Redman told me during a recent interview. "I was three or four years old, and I messed around in a class-type environment with Indian drums. I played in an Indonesian gamelan orchestra, played a little recorder, taught myself guitar, had a few piano lessons, played clarinet, and finally the saxophone."

Redman says that his father had little to do with his decision to play sax. "From the time I started with the saxophone when I was ten, I always had a sense that if I was going to be a musician and have a voice through an instrument, it was going to be with the saxophone," he says. "Certainly, I grew up listening to my father's music and loving it and being influenced by it, but I didn't grow up with my father. He wasn't a father to me. My mom was my only parent. I chose the saxophone because it felt right, not because I was trying to follow in my father's footsteps in any sense."

Redman may have decided on his instrument at a young age, but he was still a long way from pursuing a musical career. "I basically never thought that I was going to be a professional musician," he tells me. "I didn't think I had the talent. I also realized that it was very, very difficult to remain true to your musical principles and to play exactly the type of music you want to play--especially if it's jazz. So, as far as a career, I decided that I would pursue other things."

He ended up at Harvard and thought about becoming a doctor. But then he got interested in "social change and activism through the law," as he puts it, and he was accepted at Yale Law School. Meanwhile, he was wrapping his ears around the music of some of the jazz greats of the post-war era and spending his summer breaks jamming with the jazz students at the celebrated Berkelee College of Music in Boston.

Before going to law school, he moved to New York--supposedly for one year. "I found myself immersed in the jazz scene and had a chance to play with some of the greatest musicians-young and old--in the world," he says.

That was it. Redman was hooked.

"I truly fell in love with the music," he says. "It's like, you may like Italian food, but you don't realize how much you like it until you've eaten it in Italy. For me, with jazz, I loved jazz music, but I didn't realize how much until I had a chance to play in New York with people like my father, with Charlie Haden, with McCoy Tyner, with Jack DeJohnette, with Billy Higgins. By the time I had to call Yale and tell them I was coming, I was ready to tell them I wasn't coming."

Redman has had no formal training on the saxophone. "I'm definitely self-taught," he says. "I feel like my teachers are the people I've listened to on records and in the clubs and the people I've played with. I've been very fortunate and have had a lot of opportunities that guys who have been playing longer than I have and are more deserving than I am haven't had. I'm sure there are some guys who aren't that happy about that, and I don't blame them."

Redman continues to develop his talents at breakneck speed. His newest album, Beyond, features all original compositions and expands on his unique rhythmic and harmonic styles.

The cut "Courage (Asymmetric Aria)," for example, is written in 13/4 time and begins with a captivating, angular bass line. "When I first wrote `Courage,' I didn't realize what time signature it was," he recalls. "I just heard this hypnotic, looping bass line with a very simple melody on top of it."

Joining Redman on Beyond are pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, who blend their musical colors with Redman's, sometimes stepping into the spotlight for evocative solos, other times dropping back into cooler, more contemplative supportive roles.

"It's all about camaraderie, chemistry, creativity, and commitment," says Redman in Beyond's promotional notes. "You can have the four greatest players on the planet come together, but if there's no empathy or sense of community, the music will sound uninspired. It was my goal to make [Beyond] a statement of our collective identity."

Nowhere is the quartet's collective identity better displayed than on Beyond's centerpiece, "Twilight and Beyond." Partly inspired by an Anna Devere Smith play about the Los Angeles uprisings in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, the eleven-minute track offers a surprisingly harmonious groove and calm, reflective repose in the light of the events of those chaotic days.

Throughout Beyond, Joshua Redman reveals how comfortable he is snaking through a melange of styles and tones.

"The Last Rites of Rock `n' Roll" begins with Redman in an Eastern tinged solo that may have listeners wondering if he is actually playing a saxophone. Soon the musicians are frolicking in an up-tempo jazz groove that samples many musical flavors but, considering the song's title, has little to do with the tastes of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis.

With so many complex and challenging tools at his disposal, Redman also understands the importance of not letting the compositional elements overwhelm his musical message.

"This record [Beyond], in particular, and the last one [Timeless Tales] in its own way, deals with a lot of unusual and uneven time signatures," he explains. "I've been experimenting with these things for a while as a player and as a composer in my band, and this is what's kind of naturally evolved. Complexities like weird time signatures, advanced harmonies--they're inspiring, they're interesting, but that's not ultimately where the value of the music lies. The value lies in the emotion--the soul and the spirit of the music. The best grooves don't make you count. They just make you feel."

Andrea Lewis is co-host of "The Morning Show" on KPFA radio in Berkeley and an associate editor with Pacific News Service in San Francisco.

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