Anthony Wilson Interview Notes

Guitarist / Composer / Arranger Anthony Wilson sits in with Vince Outlaw on The New Jazz Thing, Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 6 pm PT. Here are some notes put togethe for the interview. They rely heavily on A Conversation with Anthony that Fred Jung had at http://AllAboutJazz.com in November 1999 (2 years, 3 months ago). It was an excellent interview that prompted more questions from me, which we'll try to talk about. Also, it makes a good 'point in time' from which Anthony and I can see where he's at now.

Anthony was preppin' for a show at The Atheneum Studio on Saturday, February 23, 2002.

"I think I got started by virtue of the fact that I loved music so much when I was a kid, meaning like three years old, four years old. Music was filling my head."

Who was doing the filing? Were there other family members that were listening to music in the house?

How much live music was he hearing? Mostly his Dad's shows?

"I was too young to like jazz." (prior to Junior High School, age fourteen)

What does that mean? What does it take to like Jazz? Can children get it?

How would you teach a child to appreciate Jazz?

"About fourteen or fifteen, so then when I started to listen to it, I actually started to get something from it. I started to feel something and it was something that I wanted to join in. I liked the spirit of improvisation, that things were always different. I liked to hear a solo go from beginning to end. I thought that was really interesting."

The 'always different' thing seems to be the essence of Jazz. What makes this so appealing to him and other Jazz fans?

"A lot of Miles Davis, what else, Dexter Gordon records, I liked the Dexter Gordon things on Blue Note, Eric Dolphy, none of the really old stuff and not much big band, mostly kind of bop. I liked Charlie Parker at that time and Coltrane. Coltrane has a way of really getting into you right away. I liked Coltrane at that time a lot."

How was he getting exposed to this stuff? Who else in the family was listening to it?

"Then my mom told me to listen to Wes Montgomery, so I did. It was about that time that I started to listen to some Wes Montgomery and that was a big eye opener."

"It was just the fluidity. The way that ideas just rolled, one after the other, in a very logical and easy going fashion. It was nothing forced and it's always swinging. It was a good feeling. It was a nice rhythmic feel and just that easy going effortless thing that he has that there have been hardly any guitar players who have had that certain thing, that effortlessness that he's got."

Does he have any Wes Montgomery suggestions that illustrate this?

Does working with an Organ trio kind of help bring some of this out in your playing? Seems to me that people that work with organ players tend to have a more soulful, swinging sound. Something about it.

Mom seems to be a big influence on growing musically. How much so and what in comparison to Dad did she give him?

Anthony was in a rock band before getting serious about Jazz. Did he do any writing for that band?

How did playing rock music influence his writing and playing of Jazz?

Mom suggested the T Monk competition in 1995, which he won (for "Karaoke", which appeared on his debut CD).

"I wrote it in, sent it in and the great thing about winning the thing was it sort of suddenly hit home for me that I had kind of forgotten about jazz and I wasn't really doing it that much. Why not? It got me thinking, why am I not doing this? This is something that I have a real talent for and I do it and it's natural for me and why not do something that's natural to me. In that sense, it kind of was a wake up."

Seems like a turning point, in the writing sense. One of those things where recognition spurs you in a direction that ends up being a good one. Positive peer pressure.

Can he tell us something about "Karoke"?

(Maybe play "Karoke" here.)

"I think in the beginning, I kind of envisioned it as like more of a blues based kind of a band than a real serious jazz composition vehicle, which is what it turned into after I did the first record, I started to see that there were so many possibilities"

"Anthoy Wilson" was nominated for a Grammy in 1997. (Didn't he have another Grammy?) How did the Grammy nomination hit and affect him? Seems like a big honor. He's also won other awards (TMonk '95, NYJazzAward nomination '98, Downbeat Critics Pool #1 composer #3 arranger 2000)

"And then when I did this album that's just coming out, "Adult Themes," (1999) I decided that it would be much more about, it would be less about exploring things purely musically and more with trying to delve into what personal feelings I could express through the music. It seems to be more of a dark sounding album."

How do you translate your emotions / feelings into music? One of those questions that Jazz lovers (who wish they could play) want answered.

Does Anthony write words? Lyrics? There's a "Written Word" section of his website that's begging for some words.

(Look for liner notes on "Adult Themes" for any words to explain the tunes.)

What are some of the emotions he was trying to get to on "Adult Themes"?

Is there a particular tune from "Adult Themes" that he would like talk about (and we can play)? Might give a good comparison to his early writing on something like "Karaoke".

"Every record that I've done, I can hear myself trying some different things, trying to open up the improvisational areas of the pieces that I write so that it starts to become really integrated with the rhythm sections and they're seamless things that go on and I can hear that that's getting much stronger, whereas when I was starting more long form tunes and I really considered them as tunes. Now I consider the whole thing as a composition, the orchestration, how the choruses are voiced, and where the improvisation comes in, where it goes out, who is soloing when, what the instrumentation is on a piece, all of that is part of the composition."

Can he explain the different between 'tune' and 'orchestration' a little more? How's the structure different? Is there more going on in an orchestration?

"Both the other two points in the triangle are on this record that I just did. It's a Hammond B-3 organ, guitar, and drums trio and Joe Bagg plays the organ and Mark Ferber plays the drums. Mark is working with everybody right now around here. He's just a great drummer. We started that band in order to play at Lucky 7 every week. That was back in February [1999], I think. We played there for four months. It was just so great because for me, I had been concentrating so much on writing and writing and writing that this was one place I could go and not have to care about that."

Longevity of this trio. Working for 3 years together.

Does he feel he's done more growing as a guitarist staying with the trio?

How often does he play with the large band now?

"When you listen to Duke Ellington, you really get a sense of a real complex character and a person with different kinds of concerns. The title of his tunes talks about his concerns and the way he writes for the members of his bands talks about his concerns. It's a very personal thing you get from him or Gil Evans or whoever."

What are his concerns?

What are his interests ouside of music? Or in other areas of music he hasn't had a chance to explore yet?

Are there artists he would like to work with or write for that he hasn't had the chance to yet?

Are there projects that he has in his head (or in early stages) that he can tell us about?