It’s September. The crowd is endless and dense, and I’m
beginning to fear that I may never be siphoned out of the huge venue and back
into the cool, spacious fairgrounds of the Monterey Jazz Festival. I shuffle
through, however, to the outside, drop my beaten backpack in the grass and take
a deep breath when bing—my phone
sounds. I see on the screen a vaguely familiar name: “Josiah Boornazian sent
you a message,” it reads. I skim it, curiously: “Hello…your blog…whenever you
get the chance…interview me?” Someone
wants me to interview him? It didn’t take much internet sleuthing to
discover what a unique opportunity had just been handed to me. Within minutes
of talking to Josiah, it became apparent that he is not only one of the most successful
young musicians of today, but one of incredible ambition, vibrancy and
joviality, who happens to also be making significant strides in the realms of music
education and visual art.
Josiah
Boornazian achieved 1st place ensemble and solo awards at the Reno
Jazz Festival and the Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival while studying
Jazz Saxophone Performance at the California State University at Northridge. He went on
to attend the City College of New York, where he graduated at the top of his
class, and will be starting a doctoral degree at the University of Miami’s
Frost School of Music in the fall of 2016. Josiah has proven himself to be a
highly creative mind, active in the spheres of electronic, classical and jazz
music. He has performed at venues such as the 55 Bar, the Jazz Gallery, the
Kodak Theater and the Baked Potato with artists such as Drew Gress, Chris
Potter, David Binney and Ari Hoenig, as well as toured California in 2010. Josiah
is a member of John Daversa’s New York Contemporary Big Band, which has
received national acclaim. He has served on faculty at The City College of New
York, and authored a book of saxophone etudes which will be published April
2015 by Saxophone Today. Additionally, Josiah is a prolific painter, inspired
primarily by twentieth-century
modernism, whose visual art has most recently been used as album artwork for
Karl Lyden’s latest CD release Undercurrents.
Where did
you grow up?
Ridgecrest, California. It’s just a little town built around
the China Lake Naval Base in the Mojave Desert. My dad worked there in the
Department of Defense. He did crazy stuff actually; he designed the computer
software that monitors self-guided missiles. He designed the computer software
that trains pilots. You know the movie Top Gun? Well that’s based on a real
thing, and my dad was a part of creating that on the base there. It’s a weird
place to grow up because it’s a small, desert town with only one high school
and about 24,000 people. Lots of meth problems. There was only one big band in
town, and my stepdad actually played in the big band. So I expressed an
interest in learning an instrument pretty early on. I wanted to play trumpet
originally, but my stepdad was a woodwind guy so I picked up clarinet at
eleven, and then saxophone a couple weeks later. And just a little while after
that I was playing in public at my elementary school at an American Revolution
event. Within a couple years, I took over my stepdad’s spot playing in the
local big band. He had to back out of playing in the band because he went back
to school to get his doctorate. At about that time, I started driving down to
LA to study with Bruce Babad at Fullerton College. That was great for a while,
and then I moved to Bakersfield. So I went to high school in Bakersfield and
studied with Paul Perez. He’s probably best known for playing with Tower of Power;
he was in that horn section for a while. While I was in high school I was
playing professionally a lot in Bakersfield, playing with the Cal State
Bakersfield Big Band and other small groups, including their classical wind ensemble.
After that, I went to Northridge for my undergrad as part of the class of 2011.
Your first
couple albums are purely instrumental, very much on the jazz spectrum. How did
you make the transition from that acoustic sound to the electric sound you’re
experimenting with now?
I don’t really think of it as being a transition, I really
think of the two as being the same thing. The so-called “jazz music” that I
make is the same as my electronic music, but through a different medium. In one
case I’m using an acoustic instrument to express what I’m feeling and in
another case I’m using a computer with an endless variety of synthesized sounds.
And I’ve blended the two as well—I’ve done jazz gigs with my laptop and mixed
in some electronic stuff with what I’m playing. It really is one world for me.
If there was a transition, it would definitely just be me finally getting down
to the business of teaching myself how to use the software. I’ve always had an
interest in electronic music, and I’ve always had an interest in blending
different styles in various instrumental groupings.
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Mars by Josiah Boornazian |
I’ve been
looking at your paintings. You said that acoustic and electronic music are part
of one world; would you say that your visual art is part of that world as well?
Absolutely. It all comes from the same aesthetic. If you had
to put a label on what I do, my music and my painting would probably be
considered “modernist.” There are certain parallels that you can easily draw
between the style of my painting and my playing. My painting is mostly abstract
and works within a geometric context—in the case of Mars, I was working with a very monochromatic color palette and
using paint mixed with water. It creates a more naturalistic vision on the
canvas.
The more
geometric paintings I saw appear to have been made using something other than
soft brushes to create the sharp effects. How do you do that?
Some of them are freehand using just a brush, but for some of
the larger ones, I use rulers and stencils to mark out areas that I intend to
be a certain way, and then use tape to seal those areas off. Canvas is a very
uneven surface, so using tape lets me create a more dramatic contrast where I
want it, but it still requires a lot of free-hand touch-up and finishing.
|
World Cup II by Josiah Boornazian |
I went on
your City College website and read your course description and a couple of your
song analysis essays. I noticed that you put a great emphasis on critical
listening and interpretation; how would you say this approach helps you and
your students?
That class I was teaching at City College is designed for
both music and non-music majors. In general, the skills that are required for
somebody to listen critically to a piece of music, analyze it, react to it,
discuss it, write about it—these skills can be applied to anything that you do.
They are very useful skills, and they seem to be rapidly disappearing in our highly
technological world that rewards and reinforces short attention spans and
doesn’t make you focus on any one thing for an extended period of time. In this
age, most music is treated as this background color that simply accompanies
some other activity—in a film, while you’re out for a run, while you’re
shopping, etc. Listening is a skill I try to develop with my students because
it’s so vastly applicable. If you want to be a musician, obviously it really
helps when you’re improvising to have that level of focus and to train your ear
to be able to focus on the details of your ensemble.
Technology is a blessing and a curse, of course. I was part
of the so-called “Jamey Abersold generation,” meaning that I grew up practicing
with play-alongs. In a sense it was great because opportunities for young
musicians to play in public are absolutely nil these days compared to what they
were sixty years ago, which we can tell from studying jazz history. Guys were
playing five or six nights a week; they were playing gigs, going to jam
sessions. Now it’s difficult for people to get to play with others period, let
alone in public in front of a live audience. So having these tapes to accompany
you while you practice is a good way to get to experience with a rhythm section
swinging along behind you. But the danger is that practicing too much on your
own and playing solely with tapes develops in a lot of people a self-focused
habit. You’re just listening to yourself. And whatever else is happening is
unchanging, it’s not going to react to what you’re playing, and that can be a
very dangerous thing when it comes to playing with other musicians. A lot of
young musicians have been conditioned to only pay attention to what they’re
doing and not to reach out with their ears and their creative consciousness to
experience what is going on around them. There’s a delicate balance that needs
to be found.
In addition
to being an adjunct faculty member at City College in the past, you’ve also published
a book of saxophone etudes. You’re very involved in music education. What is
important for young musicians to know before entering the field of music?
The most important thing is, and this is true in any
profession, knowing that it won’t be easy. Going into music is no easy task. You
really have to want it. You have to want it so much that there’s no choice. You
have to do music or you will die, practically. If you don’t feel that strongly
about it, I’m not sure that you’ll have the right mentality to make it. The
people I know who are successful have that mentality. They are able to balance
their lives, take care of their bodies, and maintain a good social life, but
mainly they have that drive to play—and for the right reasons, too. That’s
critically important. The people who are successful in music have something inside
them that they need to express. Be it a certain perspective on life or a
collection of experiences or some deep beauty they need to share—they all have
it.
|
Josiah Boornazian (left) and
Matt DiGiovanna (right) |
I feel like a lot of people get into music for the wrong
reasons. Fame, money, an easy life—these are the wrong reasons to get into
music. The most important thing for students to know is that you have to be
passionate, you have to be disciplined and patient, and you have to be good at
time management. A lot of people ask me how I get so much done in so little
time. I could give a list of reasons, but ultimately it’s because I’ve learned
to manage my time effectively. And this is true for every successful musician I
know. People do everything themselves nowadays—they do their own booking, they
compose all their own music, they’re making their own records, etc. And with
these responsibilities you still need time to practice and have a social life
and sleep, most importantly.
But beyond that, beyond being passionate, disciplined and
efficient, you just need to know your fundamentals. Musically and socially.
Learn how to take criticism gracefully, listen to music all the time, talk about music. Surround yourself with
people who are playing at least as well as you are, if not better. You really
want to surround yourself with people who are better than you are. Be
challenged regularly. Play whenever you can—play with different ensembles in
different styles and with people from different cultures. And the rest is all
hard work! Transcribing, practicing, repetition, ear training. It’s a great
deal of constant, repetitive effort, but it’s effective. It’s important to know
that you’re going to have to work hard. That’s just a reality of our culture
today.
How does
our musical culture compare to those of decades past?
I’m sure you’ve heard tales of these incredible musicians who
were also drug addicts, alcoholics, and somehow managed to make a living
playing music. Charlie Parker comes to mind, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill
Evans. They spent their lives playing, doing drugs, having crazy escapades with
women. And that lifestyle was maybe sustainable then, but our culture just
isn’t like that anymore. So there’s that, and you can’t be a jerk, either. There are too many good musicians out there for
you to be a jerk and expect to get work. It’s all part of being professional,
you know? Hardly any good, working musicians I know have any connection with
drugs whatsoever. It’s an expensive, unhealthy, dangerous and illegal habit.
Although it has historically been a large part of jazz and music as a whole,
it’s just not sustainable anymore. I don’t believe there is a great tolerance
for those habits in today’s professional culture.
People like
to point to jazz and claim that it’s losing its relevance with most of the
public; but from the musician’s perspective, jazz music and jazz education seem
to be extending onto new grounds and making massive strides. Can you comment on
this discrepancy?
That’s a big question that I believe the jazz culture has
been dealing with for quite some time now. I talked about this a lot in my
introductory jazz course at City College, and basically, jazz has had an
interesting progression in which it began as this very outside fringe, obscure,
cultural music that basically grew out of brothels and bars and drug dens in
New Orleans, and within 40 years or so became the most popular music in
America. As an extension, in a way, became the most popular music in the world,
and then only 10 years after that, it fell back into obscurity. And ever since
then, this argument has been going on - since the 1940’s. If you study the
history of the 1940’s, the popular big bands and dance bands declined because
of World War II, for various reasons—musicians’ unions strikes, the draft,
people dying, and so forth. The economy being a wartime economy. Big bands
declined. Jazz split off into bebop and more traditional jazz, and during the
next few decades, pop music and rock and roll came to the forefront of our
culture. And from that point on, jazz was never as relevant as it had been, if
you define relevance as popularity.
I do believe that the jazz world is self-obsessed, which may
or may not be a good thing. The jazz world is notoriously factious, and you can
really see that in New York. There are all of these different groups of people,
and we all live in this incredibly dense environment, and yet it’s very
cliquey. You can play with all the musicians in your clique and never interact
with musicians just a couple miles from you, or a couple blocks from you. And
yet you’re both playing this thing that’s called “jazz.” The biggest challenge
is realizing that jazz is making huge steps forward in the academic world, and
is being recognized as a legitimate art form that is on the same level as
classical music. We must realize that it is worthy of being studied and
recorded and subsidized by universities and by the government. It’s an
important cultural legacy that stands up on its own in terms of musical merit,
and also in terms of its need for conservation and preservation.
But the problem is that jazz, inherently, is meant to be
innovative, to always be evolving and moving forward. And that’s why I think
the factions started to form. There are people who value innovation as the
prime thing that makes jazz what it is, and then you have people who think that
tradition is what makes jazz what it is. In the jazz world, it’s this thing
that’s been happening since jazz mixed with fusion in the 60’s. And maybe even
before that. People used to believe that if something didn’t swing, it wasn’t
jazz. And, even before fusion, the third stream music began mixing classical
music with jazz, creating a lot of jazz that was through-composed. Then we
asked ourselves, is it really the presence of improvisation that makes jazz
what it is? It’s incredibly difficult to predict where jazz is going, or even to
grasp where it is right now. Jazz is having an identity crisis, in terms of how
it defines itself, which has been going on since the 40’s.
Jazz, in its broadest sense, is not dying and will never die.
There is a huge group of young people playing music that is called “jazz,”
music that is innovative, and uses improvisation, and is in a swing feel, and
is incredibly inventive and uses vocabulary from the jazz tradition. Jazz
programs are sprouting up all over the country – compare that to the ‘70s or
‘80s, when getting a degree in jazz was practically unheard of. In the past 20
years, jazz has developed so much that nearly every self-respecting collegiate music
program in the country has some kind of jazz credential available. Ultimately,
I believe the jazz world will find a way to balance tradition with innovation.
We will always be able to push the music forward in ways we can’t even imagine
right now. There are young people coming up from all over the world, studying
the music, getting degrees, exploring new musical territories. And they’re
getting recognized. The big argument now is and has been an argument about
semantics.
At the
Stanford Jazz Institute last summer, Patrick Wolfe played us a recording of
King Oliver’s Jazz Band in Chicago right before we went to a Fred Hersch
concert. Afterwards he asked us how those two things, those two polar-opposite
approaches to playing music, can be kept comfortably under the name “jazz?”
And that’s not even the most disparate example! This argument
has really been going on since jazz first came out. When the term “jazz” first
started being used, you would find marching bands playing these tunes with a
“raggedy” feeling, in detached, uneven time. Now this later-called “ragtime” is
not what most people would now consider to be real jazz—it doesn’t have a modern swing feeling and much of it
didn’t include improvisation. But of course all of this was revolutionary at
the turn of the 20th century, when jazz was first being developed.
When jazz was called jass.
Yeah, with two S’s, or an S and a Z. “Jasz.” It was variously
printed with all of these spellings.
As I was
looking at your website, I found an album called New Amsterdam—is that a current project of yours?
It is still in progress, and it’s actually an interesting
story because it’s a classic case of my production skills not being quite ready
yet. That record is an electronic record. I finished the compositions a couple
years ago and even started to lay down some of the vocal tracks, because some
songs have singers on them. However, because of issues with
my software, I ran
into a wall during production and ended up just releasing some of the tracks as
individual tracks on my SoundCloud. Then I performed the project live a couple
of times with myself, my laptop, my saxophone and a drummer. That’s definitely
a side project right now and I’m hoping to get my software skills together to
make it work or hire a production guy who can master and produce it for me.
Do you have
any other current projects?
I’m always writing music, either revising old pieces or
composing new ones. I’m playing around town with my group, and we play mostly
original compositions. I’m going to record an album over the next two years. I
might wait until I move to Miami to do that.
You’re
moving to Miami?
Yes, I will be going to get my doctorate down there starting
in the fall of 2016 and will be recording albums down there as well. And also,
you mentioned this before, I just finished writing a book of saxophone etudes.
Right now I’m in the editing phase, getting feedback from a lot of professional
saxophonists with whom I have been sharing the book. David Gibson is publishing
it with me through his online magazine Saxophone
Today. And at some point in the next couple of years I’ll get back to the
electronic stuff. So, a lot of long-term projects. I’m staying busy.
Why did you
choose to move to New York after graduating from CSUN?
I had always been attracted to the idea of New York. I think
that my interest in New York really goes all the way back to high school when I
picked up Miles Davis’s autobiography and I would read all of these stories
about New York and the history of the music there. New York has been widely
known as the Mecca of jazz since the 1940’s and perhaps even earlier. I started
saving up money from playing and teaching, and when I was about 19, came out
here cold, checked out the scene, and spent a lot of time with my mentors Dave
Binney and Chris Potter. They kept saying, “Come out here, check out the
scene!” So I finally did. I knew I wanted to teach full-time at the university
level at some point in my career, so I knew I was going to have to continue
studying after my Bachelor’s degree. I thought it would be perfectly logical
for me to come out here and start graduate school, and I’ve had a great run out
here so far. I got my Master’s at City College and half way through my degree I
was hired there to do some teaching. And then I’ve had a great experience with
the New York scene, been able to play a lot and with some of the best players
out here at the 55 Bar and other places. Since John Daversa created his New
York Big Band I’ve been in that, too. The alto section is basically Dave Binney
and me.
And that’s another really important thing, going back to the
idea of jazz education: the tradition of jazz education is that of a one-on-one
mentorship. That model really allows young musicians to understand the music
and flourish. That’s how you form connections, not just with the music and your
instrument, but with other people. I’m fortunate to have formed such a great
relationship with Dave [Binney]. He travels the world, and tells me that , in
clinics, he actually uses me as an example of a good, up-and-coming musician, somebody
who’s young and accomplishing things in the music scene in New York. That’s
done wonders for increasing my name recognition in the scene. Having that kind
of a mentor is really important, and I’ve had a number of those mentors. Gary
Pratt is another huge one; he’s influenced me so much. And definitely Matt
Harris, Gary Fukushima, John Ellis, Tony Malaby, Steve Wilson, John Patitucci, and of course, John Daversa
and Rob Lockart. Chris Potter has given me guidance over the years as well, and
he suggested that I go to New York. And it’s been great! I still believe that New
York City is the music capital of the world. Often, you see a lot of West
Coasters coming out here, at least temporarily to form a base in this city.
But, of course, the music industry has changed so much that I
don’t think New York is going to be “the place” that everybody has to stay
anymore. I still think that it’s great for people to come here and experience
it, but the way technology is right now, and the ease of travel, there’s no
reason for musicians to be geographically tied to any one place. John Daversa’s
a perfect example of that. He runs the Jazz Department at the University of
Miami, and he still has a regular New York big band and a regular LA big band.
There are so many ways to build a career and sustain yourself financially and
artistically without being stuck in one place. And because New York is so
expensive, it’s not really the place for young musicians to stay anymore, maybe
like it was thirty years ago or so.
So you
mentioned that New York is a great place for West Coasters especially to live
temporarily. Having lived in both LA and New York, how would you say the
cultures differ?
They’re different in a lot of ways. Some of the stereotypes
are at least partially true, for instance, New York compared to LA is much more
high-stress and fast-paced. There is more diversity in New York—not to say
there isn’t diversity on the West Coast—but in New York, as segregated as it is
with its nearly all black, nearly all Asian, or all rich white neighborhoods,
is so incredibly dense, that it doesn’t even matter where you sleep at night.
If you live in New York you are constantly surrounded by people who do not look
like you, who do not speak like you and who might not share the same values
that you do. Everybody takes public transportation, people walk on the street
everywhere, and the neighborhoods are all within five or ten blocks of each
other. You can walk from one neighborhood to the next and see the demographics
changing before your eyes. That cliché cultural “melting pot” idea in New York is
America at its best.
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Dave Binney Quartet with Josiah Boornazian at the 55 Bar |
And the other thing is that New York is the Mecca for
everything, practically. It’s the financial capital of the world, the artistic
capital of the world, some of the greatest universities are here cultivating
the brightest young minds and making this city an intellectual capital as well.
All the people who come here are driven - they know what they want to do and
they’re some of the best professionals in their fields, be that architecture,
finance, business, education, and any number of things. It’s a great place to
come and really get your ass kicked. There’s a wonderful sense of history in
New York, with the architecture and the neighborhoods. I feel like a lot of
cities on the West Coast are missing these things, or are at least falling short
of these things when compared to New York, these key elements of a culture that
give it so much richness. And in LA you’re in your car all the time! So you’re not
really forced to interact with people on the same level that you have to in New
York.
And it feels like many of the daily activities you take for
granted in LA are incredibly difficult here. Going to the grocery store, for
instance. Most people don’t think about how to successfully go the grocery
store without a car. You have to carry everything that you buy. You have to
carry it no matter the weather, and you might live on a fifth floor walkup in a
110 year old building with no elevator (like I do)! It’s a lot like that Frank
Sinatra song, you know. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere.
Your music
is unique, and definitely contains shades of the urban environment you live in.
How do you describe your music—you the composer, you the performer?
I believe that my music really speaks for itself. To describe
it, I would have to rely on terms that are somewhat loaded. That being said, my
music has a strong classical influence. I study a lot of classical music, and
sometimes steal, borrow or rework ideas that I’ve heard in various pieces. But
I’m also very into pop music, and I grew up playing rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’
roll, funk and country music. In college, I threw myself into jazz. All of
these things come together in my music. I suppose my tastes can be described as
“modernist,” if you will. I definitely tend to lean toward complex, rich
harmonies and complicated textures. But these things being said, it’s all tied
into concrete melodies, things that can be sung and understood. In all of my
compositions and arrangements, there’s almost always something catchy that acts
as a “hook,” which is influenced by both pop music and the music of the people
I listen to and play with. I’m very attracted to the combination of tangible,
discernible melodies and emotionally varied and complex layers of rhythm and
harmony.