Photo courtesy of the artist.

A native of Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, vibraphonist Nikara Warren grew up surrounded by many universes of music. Jazz was imparted to her by her grandfather, pianist Kenny Barron. Music of the West Indies, like Trinidadian soca, shown to her by her father. Hip hop, dancehall, and trap all resounded in the streets of the neighborhood. Warren’s music fluidly navigates these many cultures and sound worlds now present in Black American music.

Sharp, funny, urgent and engaged with the past and present of American cultural politics, Nikara Warren comes to The Jazz Gallery for her first bandleader residency here, spanning April 4th, May 10th and June 25th. The program includes two nights paying homage to politically outspoken musical greats and one night of her flagship band, Black Wall Street. We caught up with Warren to talk about putting her spin on iconic music, as well as blending both new and old musical sensibilities.

The Jazz Gallery: This residency at the Jazz Gallery is entitled the Political Gangster Trilogy. The first night, you spotlight Curtis Mayfield, Charles Mingus, and Marvin Gaye. The last evening focuses on Nina Simone and Meshell Ndegeocello. On the second night, it’s the Black Wall Street project. Is it a collection of music or a collection of musicians?

Nikara Warren: You know, It started as a collection of music, that’s how it started, that’s what the folder of music was called, but it became a band name. [laughs] Which was not really the intention. I originally would say, Nikara Presents Black Wall Street but everyone kept calling the band Black Wall Street, and then, well, you can’t really help when that happens.

TJG: I couldn’t help but notice that have a very joyful manner of singing to yourself when you are soloing. What is your compositional process? Do you sing a lot to yourself and vamp and develop it in your head, or do you sit down at the piano with a piece of paper?

NW: I think there are a few ways. I am no stranger to the voice memo. I looked through a bunch of them last night, there are lots of 4 A.M.: me being, like, yo, this melody is dope, and afterwards I can work something out with it. A lot of times, I think I probably hear melodically first. Basslines too. I work a lot in Logic, so I’ll just throw something down. It doesn’t always come out when you want it to, though, which is difficult thing about writing on deadlines, which I’m doing right now.

TJG: Deadlines for yourself?

NW: No, this is deadlines for the show. This is all new music—all of the arrangements for the Trilogy we have not yet played at all. They actually haven’t even seen the music at all [laughs] so I’ll finish that off, and then we’re gonna rehearse. It’s going to be a brand new thing! But you know when you have that feeling, that you got this show and you gotta get it down. It can be difficult to write, because you don’t have that free ability but then there’s the beauty of it, which is that I work well under pressure. And I always am able to get more done when I have to do it for something important.

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Photo by Amy Touchette

This Saturday, August 11, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and his group Triple Double return to The Jazz Gallery for two sets of music. Featuring brass players Taylor Ho Bynum and Ralph Alessi; guitarists Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook; as well as drummer Gerald Cleaver, the band has cut its teeth on the Gallery stage—they performed here before recording their debut record in 2016, and returned to celebrate the album’s release in 2017. Before their return to the Gallery this weekend, we caught up with Fujiwara to talk about the group’s methods of improvisational interaction, the process of recording their album, and the incredible mentorship of drummer Alan Dawson.

TJG: In the press release for the record, it states that “while these collaborative efforts could define and sustain him, a more ambitious musical intelligence emerges on closer inspection.” What does this mean?

TF: I think part of what was meant here was that, especially as a drummer, you’re very much pigeonholed into being a side-person. Sometimes, especially as it relates to getting your music supported and out into the world and getting opportunities to perform your music live, it’s a little harder than if you played a different instrument. I’ve been so fortunate to be involved with great musicians in their bands and projects as leaders—something I love doing and have no desire to do less off—as well as a number of collective ensembles, that those things could be enough to “define and sustain” me. I certainly don’t want to stop any of that activity, but for me, and certainly other drummers, I’ve made a conscious decision to step out as a bandleader and composer as well. That’s probably what the “more ambitious” part is. For anyone, taking a leadership role is a big challenge and requires a lot from the individual.

TJG: You’ve been playing with the individual members of Triple Double in a variety of arrangements for a long time. How did the Triple Double project arise and come into fruition? When did you first start working on its songbook?

TF: I have a trio with Ralph [Alessi] and Brandon [Seabrook] that I had put together a year before Triple Double. I was really enjoying the gigs we had done, and we made a live record (Variable Bets on Relative Pitch Records). With most of the ensembles I’ve led, from The Hook Up to the trio with Ralph and Brandon, one of my main interests has been new combinations of musicians. In the case of Ralph and Brandon, they had never played together before. There were members of the original Hook Up that had never played together before. So that was one idea behind Triple Double—these new combinations of people that I felt could work and that I was curious to hear how they would interact. Because I think that musicians, artists in general, are put into categories way more than they would actually like to be, and they have more diverse aesthetics than they’re given credit for. I know for myself, I love to get thrown into unusual situations, or situations where it’s not quite my comfort zone, or the usual cast of characters I might be playing with at that time.

So that was one thing behind it—taking the trio and thinking about it as a template for new combinations. Then, being a drummer, I’ve always loved the drums but also the sound of multiple percussion ensembles, whether it be two drum sets or drum set and any number of percussion instruments from around the world. I love the vibraphone, the marimba, etc. The album that first got me interested in drums was Rich Versus Roach, which isn’t quite a double drum album but a conversation between two drummers and their bands. Years ago, I toured with Stomp, which was essentially an eight person percussion ensemble, and it could be really fun when everything was really in sync and everyone was communicating and forming this unified voice. So that’s something that I’ve always been interested in doing something with two drums but, also, something with Gerald [Cleaver] specifically, who is one of my absolute favorites, and wanting to get in there and have a musical dialogue with him. With Taylor [Ho Bynum] and Mary [Halvorson], two musicians who I’ve played with and known the longest, we have so much history and such a rapport from all of the music we’ve played in various ensembles—I wanted to include them as well. It was really more about the personalities and a sonic idea, and then it took shape into these three duos, or two trios, and this mirroring effect in terms of the instrumentation. Taylor and Ralph had never played together, me and Gerald had never played together, so there were also a lot of first times, which was cool—to see those relationships develop over time within this group.

TJG: Where was the album recorded?

TF: Firehouse 12 in New Haven, CT.

TJG: The whole thing in a live room, everyone together?

TF: We had the drums and guitars in one room, and each trumpet/cornet isolated.

TJG: The reason I ask is because one of the things I really love about the record, and there are so many moments where one can hear this, is that the trios seem to be split symmetrically between the left and right channels. Especially on a track like the opening one, “Diving For Quarters,” one hears the interaction spatialized very clearly, with Mary Halvorson consistently on the left and Brandon Seabrook consistently on the right.

TF: Well, the credit for that goes to Nick Lloyd. It’s his label and studio, and he engineered the session, as well as mixed and mastered the album. He just knows the room and the board and the equipment so well, has an amazing ear and is great to work with. We certainly talked about the sound for the album but the majority of the credit goes to him in terms of getting these great sounds and really figuring out how we wanted these 6 musicians to exist in the space. In terms of the drums, we talked a lot about the sound, and it was about wanting to find that balance between these two distinctive drummers, but then also creating a kind of eight-limbed drummer, and I feel like he achieved that very well. Sonically, he gets the credit and did an amazing job.

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Photo courtesy of Pi Recordings.

Guitarist Brandon Ross and bassist Stomu Takeishi have been playing together for over two decades, first as members of Henry Threadgill’s band, then as an intimate duo, beginning in the year 2000. Honing their interplay over many years, the pair released their debut studio album in 2014, Revealing Essence, originally composed with a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant.

This Thursday, July 19, the duo returns to The Jazz Gallery for two sets. We caught up with Brandon by phone and email to talk about the duo’s history and his own evolving relationship to sound.

The Jazz Gallery: What is it like to have such a longstanding musical partnership with someone developing into such a personal, intimate practice?

BR: I think it’s an interesting thing. I mean, longevity in this respect is something you can’t know about till you know about it—until it happens. In that way, it’s one of these really wonderful surprises. We constantly refer to that period, that band—Make A Move—when we were in it, because it was such a pivotal moment for Henry [Threadgill] in his writing, and in his ensemble selection. He went from having bands that always had at least multiple horns in it and multiple strings to a band that had a form of keyboard, with the harmonium and accordion, and then one string, and then bass—electric bass, first of all—and drum set, and himself on winds. And then it was also the beginning, during the Make A Move era, of his evolving his compositional approach into the current intervallic system that he’s been developing for the last twenty, almost twenty years now. It was a seminal period for us—Tony Caesar, Jake Lewis, Stomu and myself—being involved in that.

And so Stomu and I have that as a reference point in terms of musical dynamics, musical language. What we have been able to distill from that experience at that time, and evolve and mature in the duo relationship that we have. Although, you know, the duo relationship was already present when I heard him play and I recognized him as someone that I would like to play music with, and I happened to do that in the context of Henry’s band—cause, y’know, Henry asked me to keep my eyes out for a bass player and a drummer. So that was J.T. and Stomu, so ultimately, in a way, was a band that I had yet to realize but wound up becoming so. And I guess the longevity of the language that we share and that we developed is something that is has a lot to do with the instruments that we’re playing—Steve Klein-designed instruments. They have such a particular character of sound production and the way they interact with one another – we just want to hear them! In the writing that we do, I just want to hear the instruments [laughs].

TJG: You’ve made note of how the compositions focus on balancing the weight of the two instruments, with Stomu on acoustic bass and you on either acoustic guitar, soprano guitar, or banjo.

BR: It’s a common compositional practice: you begin with a sound of some kind. Certain instruments, certain sounds send the imagination and the creative impulse in a particular direction as a response to it. That’s an interesting thing. This last set of music that I’ve written for us, for the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant that I got, and I incidentally happened to be playing a lot of nylon string guitar, and most of that music came out of that—being on the nylon string guitar. Stomu and I did a concert last weekend at the Guild Hall in Easthampton where we played a couple of those pieces. I was playing the steel string guitar and I really noticed how they felt very differently from being played on the nylon, and I was like, right, these are choices and musical circumstances and situations that came about as a result of that.

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