Interview with Josiah Boornazian

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's Website

Book: 20 Modernist Etudes for Solo Saxophone

Listen: BandCamp

Listen: Sound Cloud

Josiah Boornazian achieved 1^st 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.

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 20^th 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. 

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.