Photo by Lauren Desberg, courtesy of the artist.

Despite the pandemic performance freeze, vibraphonist Joel Ross has been able to forge a path forward with friends and community. Recently, Ross received a commission from the Jazz Coalition supporting his continued writing and playing, even while in lockdown.

Ross is an integral member of The Jazz Gallery community, having been commissioned and featured on-stage and in the blog many times. He spoke with us via phone in anticipation of a big event: The first livestream trio concert from the Gallery stage, which takes place tonight featuring drummer Jeremy Dutton and bassist Or Baraket.

The Jazz Gallery: Hey Joel, where are you living right now?

Joel Ross: I’m in Brooklyn, I’ve stayed here this whole time, from the start. I live with two other musicians, but they both left. My girlfriend Gabrielle Garo and her family live about ten minutes from me, so I’ve been staying back and forth between their place and mine.

TJG: I’m sure you miss your roommates, but it’s nice that you have some space.

JR: Exactly [laughs]. It’s been nice playing with Gabrielle, and being close with her and her family. It would have been a lot worse if I were alone.

TJG: Tell me a little about how things have been for you. Take me back to February, when things started to look shaky.

JR: My band Good Vibes was finishing an east coast tour, and in the last week of February I was in Slovenia at the Creative Jazz Clinic Velenje camp with Jure Pukl. The first week of March we went on tour, and when we got back I was supposed to have some gigs around the 13th, 14th and 15th. That was when Europe started to get crazy with the virus. My last gig was on the 10th–I was a guest with the Brubeck Institute, one of my alma maters–and after that, some of our gigs got cancelled. One was supposed to be in LA, where my girlfriend was recording. I still went out there, thinking I could just chill with her, and we were planning to spend a week there, but around the 17th, LA completely shut down. We saw that New York was about to shut down. So we hurried up and flew back, and have been quarantining in Brooklyn ever since.

Like I was saying, it’s nice to have another musician to play music with. Before this, we were so busy. I was always on the road, she was finishing her masters, and now this is a dedicated time for us to play with each other, work out some ideas. We’ve been recording some things, duet videos for some commissions, it’s been nice in that regard.

TJG: Did you have things on the schedule for these and upcoming months that you were looking forward to?

JR: [Laughs]… Oh, yes. In March, I was supposed to go to Spain, and Good Vibes was supposed to go to Africa, to Cape Town for the jazz festival. I was sad to see that one not happen. There were some other gigs cancelled, another tour cancelled… I was supposed to go back to Chicago for a few days for a gig with Vijay Iyer. Some recording projects were cancelled too.

TJG: But you’ve been able to fill the time with meaningful stuff?

JR: I’ve kept writing. These types of situation don’t change my need to keep writing and creating. In general I’m able to keep a good attitude about things, and it hasn’t altered my ability to put out music. I’ve written a good amount of music and arranged some things. I got a commission grant from the Jazz Coalition, and a lot of the music I’ve been working on has gone toward that. It’s been good to get things done and have something to work towards.

I did another project through the Gabriela Lena Frank Academy where a classical composer wrote a piece for vibraphone–I’m using it as a challenge, since I don’t usually like to do four-mallet stuff. I talked with the composer and told him I could do three mallets, and he was cool with it, so it’s been a good opportunity to do three mallet with my right hand instead of my left, which I usually do.

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Photo courtesy of the artist.

When Cuban drummer Dafnis Prieto moved to New York full time in 1999, he made an immediate splash. Seemingly overnight, Prieto began playing the likes of Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, and Brian Lynch, showcasing his ability to execute the knotty counterpoint of a full Cuban percussion section with a single drum kit. Since then, Prieto has released seven acclaimed albums as a leader, taught at NYU and the University of Miami, and received a MacArthur fellowship. Prieto has also developed a close relationship with The Jazz Gallery, performing on the “Jazz Cubano” series, writing commissioned works, and most recently, celebrating the release of his Grammy-winning big band album.

This evening, June 12, Prieto will guest on The Jazz Gallery’s online “Words and Music” series. Before joining the conversation, check out the following interview with Prieto where he remembers his earliest days in New York and his musical growth at the Gallery.

The Jazz Gallery: When you first moved to New York full-time, how did you go about meeting other people to play with? You started playing with Henry Threadgill and Brian Lynch seemingly overnight.

Dafnis Prieto: I got to New York in 1999. I already knew a few musicians there, like Brian and Henry and Steve Coleman. I had met them all over the previous five years or so on different occasions. I met Brian at Stanford University during a previous trip to the states for a residency. I met Steve when he came to Cuba in 1996. And I met Henry the previous time I had come through New York on a tour—Henry came to see the band. It was a band that I was part of in Cuba called Columna B and the members were Yosvany Terry, Roberto Carcassés on piano, and Descemer Bueno on bass. So in any case, when I arrived, because I already knew these musicians, I just called them up. Henry had expressed interest in working with me previously, as well as Steve, so I was looking forward to that.

I started playing around with other musicians, too. I think something that was really helpful was that I liked going from one genre to another, even in a matter of hours. Like I could have a more avant-garde gig, or a more straight ahead-jazz gig, and then four hours later had a gig that was completely Latin. I learned how to swim in different waters, and that helped balance my exposure, as well just make a living.

At the same time, in the early 2000s, there were a lot of other musicians coming to New York for the first time. I mean, there are always musicians coming to New York, but at that time, but I feel there was a particularly big wave at that time. One of those musicians was Yosvany Terry, who happened to be a good friend of mine. We had played together in Cuba a lot, and we kept doing that in New York. Yosvany started doing the “Jazz Cubano” series at The Jazz Gallery in 2000 and I played with him there. That was how I first got introduced to The Jazz Gallery and Dale Fitzgerald and Rio.

After that, I started presenting my own projects at the Gallery, too. One of the projects had Luis Perdomo on piano, Hans Glawischnig on bass, Ravi Coltrane on tenor saxophone, and Henry Threadgill on alto.

TJG: I want to hear that recording!

DP: Yeah! That was a really fun performance. And the relationship with The Jazz Gallery just grew from there. I basically debuted every project I came up with there. It really felt like a laboratory for the musicians, allowing us to experiment and bring things to life for people to experience in the audience. We were really blessed to have a place like The Jazz Gallery that was so open to different kinds of music. I think a lot about the quality with which the Gallery treated musicians. It really felt like a pleasant community, and I think that’s reflected in the quality of the music presented.

TJG: So the Gallery was clearly an important spot for you from the beginning, but you also mentioned that you would play a huge range of gigs. Were there other venues that you played a lot, or met future collaborators?

DP: One of the other big places for me was the old Zinc Bar on Houston Street. I used to play there almost every week, and sometimes two or three times a week! The music presented there was at a very high level. I met so many musicians who would come and hang out because it was one of the places that would stay open until 2 or 3 A.M. People would finish their gigs at 11 or 12 and then come over to hang at Zinc Bar.

TJG: Smalls wasn’t too far from there and stayed open late. Did you hang there as well?

DP: I never did that much at Smalls. I probably played there a couple of times. I mean, I played lots of different places. But in terms of places I would go to almost every week, either to play or check other people out, it was Zinc Bar and The Jazz Gallery.

TJG: I’d like to move on to your work as a composer. Had you written a lot of music before coming to New York?

DP: I had written some tunes in Cuba, and I played a few of them with Columna B. But I wasn’t fully into writing music. I was more into playing drums. When I got to New York, the city really invited me, or challenged me, or inspired me because of the amount of different music happening. I started feeling a sense that I needed to create my own music. I needed to express myself not just in my own drumming, but in composition. I don’t think I would have developed the music that I make now without the New York experience. It helped me believe that I could write music of my own, have great musicians play it, and have it be personal and different.

I was developing that voice through the drums, but I wanted to go farther than that. When I visualize what I wanted to do, I see it as creating my own water to swim in. It became a necessity for me, and it grew more important. New York was the perfect scenario for this growth because I had met all of these great musicians who were willing to play my music.

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Photo courtesy of the artist.

While Marcus Gilmore is perhaps best-known as the go-to drummer for the likes of Chick Corea, Vijay Iyer, Mark Turner, Ambrose Akinmusire, and many others, he has in recent years cultivated a fascinating solo drum practice, often incorporating electronics. Jazz Speaks recently caught up with Gilmore to discuss these solo projects, his broader view of percussion instruments within music as a whole, and his thoughts on cross-collaborative art. 

The Jazz Gallery: Have you found yourself more or less incentivized to make music during the coronavirus shutdown?

Marcus Gilmore: I have been continuing to make music but I am not necessarily making more music. Normally, I would be playing gigs but, obviously, I can’t do that right now. So, there is definitely an overall decrease in quantity. But I am still continuing to write and record music. It does feel like I might be recording a little more than usual. There hasn’t been a full album recording session, at least not yet. Instead, it has been singles and songs for different people. Projects that are more singular, not like 10 compositions to make a complete album. 

TJG: Many people are familiar with your work as a sideman but you also have some interesting solo drum projects like Silhouwav or your version of David Virelles’ Excerpts of Nube, often also incorporating electronics. What has inspired you to take this less traditional route?

MG: I guess it is a non-traditional route, but there is quite a bit of history of drummers doing solo works. Max [Roach] was doing it in the ’50s and ’60s. At that time, it was even rarer. But today, there are so many different elements and components you can add to any particular instrument or setting. There is a lot available to musicians to allow them to add additional elements to our music or our concepts.

I have done solo performances previously, but adding electronics has taken them to a whole different place. The electronics came from working with a friend of mine who is also a drummer. I’ve known him for years; we went to high school together. He is behind the company that I like to use when I incorporate electronics with my solo performances or even performances with ensembles. Anyway, he reached out to me several years ago to tell me he was going to start a program for drums and asked if I wanted to be a part of it. As soon as I was able to try out his program and investigate it, I saw how I could incorporate it into my music.

I never have a shortage of musical ideas but that doesn’t always readily translate to reality. This particular set up and machinery make it possible for me to do a lot of the things that I had imagined for a while. Once it became an accessible instrument to use, I kind of jumped right on it. At some point, I realized that these different elements could sometimes make it sound like I was playing with a much larger group than just myself. So I became really curious about how to emphasize this aspect in my solo performances.

There is no Silhouwav album per se that I plan to release. I do have an album coming out that has a lot of different things on it that I have been working on in the last few years. There are a lot of people involved and it is not just one ensemble. It takes ideas from my solo works, but there is no solo album in the pipeline. I did do a tour about a year and a half ago that wasn’t exactly Silhouwav but a combination of things.

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