Interview with Matt Leifer

This interview has been awhile coming. I usually try to interview the newbies and old guys. But, since Matt has been such a reliable fixture in Black House I forgot all about what a great interview subject he would make. Drink it in...

What groups do you play with?

I play with saxophonist Steve Lambert in his quartet with pianist TJ Martley and bassist Seth Lee. We just released the album "Subject to Change" in January, consisting of all original compositions by Steve. TJ leads a trio that I'm a part of as well, with bassist Bill McKemy. From time to time we expand to a quartet and bring Matt Otto in to play tenor. Seth and I also play in Nick Rowland's hard bop quintet, Sansabelt, with Rob Whitsitt and Nick Howell. Sansabelt hosts open jam sessions the second and fourth Sundays of every month at Take Five Coffee Bar at 151st and Nall. I'm a full time member of Clint Ashlock's New Jazz Order big band which I love. Aside from occasional gigs at the Blue Room and various other venues we play every Tuesday night at Harling's on Westport and Main. New Jazz Order frequently collaborates with singer Megan Birdsall who is one of the finest in town. I play quite a few gigs at various venues with Megan under her own leadership and they are consistently some of my most enjoyable gigs. I am the regular drummer for Greg Carroll's Midnight Blue Jazz Quartet. Greg's band plays infrequently due to his primary responsibility as the CEO of the American Jazz Museum, but when we play it's always a blast and it's always a high profile event. Fellow Black House participant, trombonist Ryan Heinlein leads his own group that I play for. The Project H is another all original group with an extremely diverse book from straight ahead jazz, rock, fusion, reggae and music undefinable. Last but not least I am the drummer for Tim Doherty's 9+1 which is a 10 piece band somewhere in between a combo and a big band. We play very contemporary charts for a unique instrumentation including notables Roger Wilder, Brad Gregory and Todd
Wilkinson. 9+1 has been performing every Monday night at Intentions live music and sushi bar in downtown Overland Park, 80th and Metcalf.

What don't you like about jazz?

Well, I don't want to go into the common things we musicians like to complain about. I don't want to make self serving claims about what is wrong with clubs who don't book me or musicians who don't hire me. (Most of the time those are either a cop-out or a defense mechanism.) I do tend to think that locally we set the bar a little low for what passes in clubs both musically and in terms of professionalism. Everyone in town, myself included, could stand to shed harder and lose the on-stage form rundowns, sheet music fumbles and cross-talk. On the whole I think we tend to get too comfortable.

On a broader scale I think that jazz is both benefiting and suffering from the gradual move to academia that's happened over the last several decades. It can't be all bad. After all, I am a product of this system, and academia has been kinder to me than I deserve. The growing number of music students is of course simultaneously providing a great marketplace and over saturating the profession with players who tend to play superficially. It's easy to imitate what one hears on the surface and practice what is taught in class while forsaking the tradition, culture and lifestyle that gives the music meaning. If the term gentrification can apply to music, that is what I'm talking about. It has taken a deliberate effort for me (along with some really great role models,) to step outside the academic world and get in touch with the essence. Yes, this involved stepping out of my musical and social comfort zones, staying out until 6am, developing a thick
skin and embracing second hand smoke. Yes, I even think this applies to Black House.

I find your concept of jazz "gentrification" pretty interesting. Athough,I did notice that your example of "leaving your comfort zones" seems to just mean "go to the Mutual Musicians' Foundation." I've never understood why so many jazz musicians get obsessed with trying to adopt the lifestyle of their heroes. Isn't it enough to study their work and lives?

The short answer is no. I think much of this ties into my answer about tradition. Studying is a mental process that is important of course, but not in touch with the true nature of music of any kind. Studying
helps one hone their craft, but craftsmanship is only half of the equation, the other half being the honest expression of emotion and spirit and the evocation of that from the listener. I also find that many instrumentalists who study jazz listen to surprisingly little of it. Many claim it is generational, or like you said, that they can't relate to it personally. To me, relating to it was a process that took work, but was ultimately rewarding in a huge way. I think there's no way to really take one's jazz playing to a high level without being obsessed with it and making it part of your daily life. If you treat it like homework you will never relate to it. Obviously I don't advocate adopting entirely the lifestyle of my heroes. For example, it's not a good idea to use Heroin in order to relate to Coltrane, Miles or Bird. Also, society changes and it is not possible to experience what musicians from bygone eras experienced nor is it practical to live like they lived. I wasn't specifically referring to the Mutual Musician's Foundation, though in many ways it is the best local embodiment of what I've been talking about. To put it another way, what I really mean is playing with attitude, feeling and context.

For example, if I listen to Mingus, I hear just as much raw attitude as I hear in any James Brown record. Something about it just makes you feel like a badass, even as a listener, and it makes you want to move.
It is the intention of the music, and I mean that in an abstract way, not to be confused with an agenda. That is lost completely in Jazz education, unless you're really lucky. I do feel like I have been lucky here at the Conservatory. Bobby and Dan are great role models and they do a really good job at including the holistic approach into the more rigid academic setting. What I mean by leaving your comfort zones is directed more to someone from my background or probably yours. Socially I came from a place that was outside of the type of community and context that Jazz thrives in. My path was through academia. It takes effort for someone from my background to move beyond that into what is important. What I mean by making yourself uncomfortable and developing thick skin is being able to adapt to the new paradigm. I had to learn to step into the spotlight at a jam session and be confident and assertive in what I play and what level I'm at in order to say something honest. It's a process that is ongoing for me. I hate seeing suburban white kids like myself eager but musically passive and socially timid. I hate seeing it because I can relate to it. What I had to learn was to grow some balls and put myself out there, musically and socially. This is particularly important in the typical jam session situation to which I've heard you refer to as a "cock waving contest." I think historically, jazz has included this kind of thing and that's ok. It is not the ideal
situation for a deep, sophisticated, spiritual creation but it's part of the culture and not to be shied away from. It builds character, and chops.

Why do you keep doing Black House?

I keep doing Black House for a lot of reasons. First off, it's fun as hell. Kansas City is real swing heavy, and while I absolutely love to swing and play Bebop I think it's really healthy to put myself outside that box as often as possible. It's a very different mentality for me. Playing straight ahead never gets old for me but it tends to require less interpretive decision making. The potential for originality in improvisation is still endless, but it is within a familiar context. With Black House it's a totally different process, to take something that's just an undeveloped idea, that almost never falls into a traditional jazz structure, and make it work. Often the composers don't have anything specific in mind, or if they do it isn't coming from an area of drum expertise so it's my job to put the pieces together and make good decisions as to what is both functional and new sounding. Aside from being happy with what I decide to play, it has to keep things together while the band works out the often brutally difficult arrangements. Much of the music explores less common meters, (I hate the term odd meter,) which is always entertaining for me. All that aside, I also do Black House because it's an incredible opportunity to meet and collaborate with new musicians, or some I've heard for a long time and never had a chance to work with. Lastly, thanks to its affiliation with The Charlotte St. Foundation and your relentless blogging, Black House is a pretty high profile ensemble
that reaches a lot of people in town, particularly those from other parts of the artistic community such as visual artists, dancers and thespians, existing outside the common jazz circles. My time with Black House has led to several highly rewarding collaborations with both other Blackhousers and a dance company.

 What do you think needs to happen for the Kansas City jazz scene to keep
 growing?

Well, I really like what is happening right now. The scene here is really developing, not just musically but in all the arts across the board. Kansas City is becoming more cosmopolitan every year. Again, I offer no criticism of the club scene or local business owners for doing what they have to do financially to keep their doors open in hard times. There is plenty of that dialogue going on all the time.

I think that aside from the established "jazz adults" (I just made that term up,) who have been here for years doing great things, there is really a surge of young talent among the Generation X and Generation Y musicians. I have tremendous respect for what guys like Hermon Mehari, Mark Lowrey, Brad Williams and Brandon Draper are doing, and you too Hunter. Black House and the Charlotte Street Foundation are doing invaluable things for building a better scene and nurturing more adventurous music than has been common in the past. I think that even though there is a lot of contention and economic struggle the creative direction of the Kansas City scene could not be healthier.

That said, I think the most important thing that we can do for the scene here is to STAY HERE, and cultivate for the future. Kansas City jazz seems to have always been a "farm club" of sorts, like the Royals, for developing musicians who end up leaving to seek out bigger and better opportunities. I sympathize, as I have always regarded my time here as transitional. I am still on the fence as far as my
decision to move to New York, which has always seemed like a rite of passage to me, but with every passing week I become more inspired by my peers and more optimistic about the future of our scene. Aside from that, there is a real strong sense of fellowship and community among musicians here (even as we compete with each other for gigs.) You can't get that in New York or anywhere else. So, what needs to happen? We need to stick around, support each other, keep the faith and work to cultivate a bright future and I think we're well on our way.

Oh yeah, most importantly, GO TO YJ's and spend money.

What is this jazz tradition I keep hearing so much about?

Usually when I'm referring to that I have a few things in mind. Part of it is a way of viewing one's place withing the art form, and it's place within society. First off, I'm not a historian, but this is my understanding: I think that it is misleading to consider Jazz as something that was born as popular music and slowly deviated from that. The brief period in which Jazz was truly mainstream pop music was short and it was part of the evolutionary process but not the beginning. This is an important distinction for me in terms of the music's social context. Unlike most of today's music, it is not a commercial product, but a folkloric music. I'm not saying that nothing else is high art, because that's not true. I think most art, even great art can and does exist withing the commercial realm. It's how artists maintain a livelihood. Even at the turn of the 20th Century, North American and European music was tied to the industry of mass producing and selling sheet music. Jazz was born before the era of audio recording, yet due to it's improvisational nature, wasn't practical for that market of sheet music sale and pre-dated most of the Great American Songbook. This is huge and it ties into the folkloric context which can be traced back to New Orleans, slave spirituals and back to its African roots. One can see the roots of Jazz club culture in the original performance venues: brothels, parades, funerals and celebrations. What socially is borrowed from those origins is the sense that everyone in the community is familiar with the music, engaged in it on a holistic level and participates in it. Trace that forward in time and the ideas of knowing standard repertoire, jam sessions, community standing, mentorship and respect for elders (what you've referred to before as "hero worship") begin to make sense, despite the brief periods of jazz popularity and the assimilation of the Great American Songbook. I feel like a lot of Jazz finds a niche outside this context, and more often than not it is lacking for it. Even among jazz musicians with great commercial
success, most of the ones who I find artistically valid or inspiring understand this context, respect it, and have embraced it, then moved beyond it. This is, of course, in contrast to many who try to bypass
it altogether.