We’ll start our batch of interviews with Black House newbie Ashley Hirt. Ashley has been a bit of a surprise in that she plays the euphonium quite well AND is a musicologist at the same time. Now that I think about it, there are no less than three musicologists in the ensemble this workshop. This is a disturbing trend. You can follow Ashley's musical perspective here.
Where are you from and how did you end up at KU?
I am Kansas City born and Kansas City bred. Well, to be more specific, I grew up in Overland Park. Please don't throw anything at me. After high school I did a number of different jobs before being sucked back into music almost against my will, and did a Bachelor's degree in music at Pittsburg State down in southeast Kansas. After that, I had an itch to see a new part of the country and so I did a Master's degree at the University of Idaho. It didn't hurt that UI has a pretty great music school, the Lionel Hampton School of Music. After getting my Master's, the doctorate was a logical next step and so I returned "home" to the region and wound up at KU.
What are you impressions of the music scene in Lawrence in comparison to Kansas City?
I am ill-qualified to answer this question, as it has been a decade since I was in my going-to-concerts-every-night stage. I will say that jazz performed by individuals not somehow affiliated with KU seems to be difficult to find in Lawrence, but there's something like 80,000 Yonder Mountain String Band concerts in this town. Maybe there's some really awesome stuff going on in Lawrence and I sound completely ignorant, but Kansas City is where I go to get my live jazz fix. I do appreciate that Lawrence is something of a haven for alternative acts who are trying to get noticed, as the vibe of Lawrence seems to pivot on this axis of cutting-edge musical thinking - the people seem to enjoy nurturing new music. At least that's how it was back when I lived in the area. Keep in mind I lived in the Pacific Northwest for a while. I'm sure someone will write you and tell you that I'm a moron for saying this. C'est la vie.
What exactly is a musicologist?
Someone who wants to know why music makes them feel the way they do. We look at culture, context, social change, gender, race, etc. all through the lens of music as this abstract collective experience. There are of course the names and dates of great masterpieces and famous composers, but in the last 20 years or so there has been an increased focus on vernacular music, the musical experiences of minorities and women, and the commodification and capitalism surrounding music. Basically, we are musical anthropologists; we dig up dirt on what it might have been like to be in the audience at the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or how Wagner's mental illness contributed to his legacy or how Charles Ives made his music over-the-top dissonant because he thought dissonance was masculine and consonance was feminine.
For me personally, it's a discipline that allows me to ask really difficult questions, like "Why did people call Ellington's Cotton Club works 'Jungle Music?' What about the music planted that particular imagery in the heads of the audience?" And then I study the cultural attitudes of the day and I can start to unearth an answer.
Who are your musical heroes and why?
First, because it's fresh in my mind, I have to go with my dear friend Jenny Kellogg, who is currently in a graduate program at the University of North Texas and plays trombone in the pretty-damn-famous One O'Clock Lab Band; she also writes tremendously creative jazz compositions that will hopefully make her the next Maria Schneider or Darcy James Argue. It is rare that you meet someone with that level of natural musical skill who is also a gracious, humble, lovely human being. I wish I could borrow her ears and hear the world with them for a day.
Secondly, I'd have to go with my high school jazz band director, John Selzer. He is a consummate educator, terrific mentor, wonderful person, and absolutely burnin' trumpet player. I learned how to improvise from Selzer, and we did it like this: He played a lick on his horn, and we all played it back. No notation involved, just listening. He took a chance on me, a green, completely self-taught trombone player, and allowed me to play in his band and discover that my musical identity SWINGS. I had a rough time in high school, as many of us creative types do, and Selzer was the primary reason I didn't drop out. I played in a jazz festival several years after graduating high school, and he pulled me aside after the performance to tell me how proud of me he was, and I cried like a baby. Having his respect meant the world to me.
I have a couple of others, but those are my main "I hope I can be that awesome when I grow up!" heroes.
How much jazz experience do you have?
Um, lots, I guess. At least 12 or 13 years' worth, if you're looking for a concrete number. I taught myself trombone at age 15 so I could play in jazz band, and it's been a part of my life ever since. I've done combos, big bands, tuba jazz quartet, all kinds of interesting stuff. And not just playing - I'm really into jazz as an academic subject so I love to nerd out on recordings and force myself to do the Leonard Feather Blindfold Test. I want to be a jazz scholar who can play so I'm actively cultivating both of those sides of my musical personality. I think I can hold my own with "real" jazzers. It's a weird place to be because I'm sure no one considers me a jazz musician, but in my mind I am one because I can swing.
And I don't solo often, but when I do, I can really only solo well over ballads. Giant Steps would give me an aneurysm. I'm not a technique superstar. As verbose as I am in writing and in conversation, when it comes to improvisation I am a woman of few "words."
Where do you see yourself going with your music?
The answer to this question changes on a regular basis. I used to want to be a straight-up musicology professor and read books and write articles for a living. Then I hung out in Denton, Texas with my supremely gifted friend Jenny and went to several of her gigs and met her jazz circle and I am starting to lean more towards "musicology professor who directs a big band and plays in a combo." I try to weasel out of playing my horn and I just can't ever walk away completely. I periodically get reminders like that - that I HAVE to play or at the very least direct.
Actually, I'm a candidate for a job teaching music history in a Recording Arts program at a fairly prominent university. I would adore that, because I would be teaching students within my area of expertise (American popular music since 1950) and rather than it being an abstract "Gen Ed" concept, I would actually get to see them implement the things they learn from me in the recording studio. I love being around working musicians and collaborating with people who play, so that is highly appealing.
Why the euphonium?
Million dollar question! Haven't you heard? Euphonium is an ancient Greek word meaning "unemployed."
It's insanely versatile, it's fun to play in nearly every setting (band, occasionally orchestra, jazz), and it sounds good. No, really, euphonium is Greek for "beautiful sound." I was kidding about the unemployed thing. But it is a reality that we deal with because the euphonium was perfected long after the other brasses and doesn't really have a "niche" in ensembles. Orchestral composers don't use it; I can cite the rare exceptions to this rule off the top of my head, because there are so few. It's used in the wind band, but the modern wind band is barely 60 years old and there just hasn't been enough time for the euphonium to find its permanent, respectable home.
The technical capabilities of the euphonium are vast, as you might expect given that it's essentially an overgrown trumpet. But since the bore is shaped differently, it has a rich, warm, velvety tone color that lends itself very well to expressive playing. (And ballad soloing in jazz. Cough.) To relate the euphonium to the jazz idiom, I usually tell people that it is like a large flugelhorn - mellow but can still bite.
The short answer to that question? Because I am an emotional person and euphonium is my preferred method of emotional expression. It's like a brass cello - lyrical and passionate.
Does jazz have to swing?
Ask Nicholas Payton this question. #BAM. Haha. I crack me up.
There is no easy or short answer, so hang on.
When I was in my undergrad, our jazz band opened for the Count Basie Orchestra at a jazz festival. We played a Gordon Goodwin chart that started with an intense, unaccompanied saxophone soli. (The chart is "Hunting Wabbits," by the way.) I'll never forget it - the bass player for the CBO was standing in the wings watching our sax section warm up on this soli, and he was shaking his head in disgust. He looked at me and said, "That ain't jazz!" Which was a perfectly acceptable thing to say - at that moment, there was no jazz going on, just five saxes playing something that sounded like French chamber music - but he was making a distinct value judgment on the chart, implying that we were not real musicians because that section of the chart wasn't jazz. He was pretty grouchy, if I recall correctly.
I really don't like putting music in a box by making value judgments about the elements it does or doesn't have. That kind of conservatism just makes no sense to me, when I see music as this fluid, organic, constantly evolving thing that sort of reacts in response to what the world broadcasts to it. So I think having rigid parameters for what is and isn't a particular kind of music can be rather damaging in the long run. The bass player's comments certainly made an impression on me, as I was still pretty new to this "modern big band' thing at the time (2006). That same gig, we played one of the Bob Curnow arrangements of a Pat Metheny tune. Did it swing? Yes. Have you heard Curnow's stuff? MY GOD. That chart ("Minuano 6/8") changed my life.
That said, the swing IS the thing. In our modern culture, the lines between musical genres are blurrier than ever and the line that separates "art" music (what the rest of the country refers to as "classical music") from "pop" music is razor thin. And I think to an extent, we NEED to preserve swing as part of the jazz identity. If you examine the historical roots of the music, swing is the heartbeat and people have been trying to notate it and describe it for decades and no one has been able to do that accurately in all this time. Swing is something that requires an emotional engagement, and an understanding that it came from human suffering and it can be a rhythmic element of lamentation, prayer, joy, whatever - it can be all of these powerful things at once. It's not something a robot or a machine is EVER going to be able to replicate. You need a pulse to do it, and you need to be in the right mindset. I don't think you can truly call yourself a jazz musician until you can swing, but not every chart has to swing, if that makes sense. It's a hallowed individual experience.
This is an inherently muddy issue, which is why guys like Nicholas Payton get so worked up about it. He's pissed off that jazz has become so commercialized and that there's this garbage out there called "smooth jazz," and that impostors are playing this music with no relation to its heritage and meaning, but that's a discussion for another day. Shit, there's a reason they call it "roots music." Know why it's called the blues, for god's sake.
Short answer: YOU, the player, have to swing. In the final analysis, music is music, man.
What made you want to come do a Black House workshop?
I was pretty stoked to get an opportunity to check out what the KCMO music scene is all about. I'm proud to say that I'm a Kansas Citian and I've been sort of waiting to see if there is a musical Renaissance waiting to happen in KC. It's a cool time to be a musician in the area, with the Kauffmann Center opening up and there being a growing demand for new music. And Black House is obviously open to experimentation and using unusual instrumentation, which I find pretty appealing. I enjoy trying on different sets of ears. I also think that every gig you take has something to teach you, and that we never stop learning to be musicians. That is why I will take gigs for no pay if I think they are exciting or have something really awesome to teach me.
That, and I love nerding out on music with complex textures, and the incorporation of the gamelan into the group just sounded too cool to pass up. Like I said, this is a great time to be living here and getting the opportunity to take musical risks with people who will prop you up.
Comments