Interview with Jim McNeely
(by Frank Tafuri)
Tafuri: A lot of people know you as an arranger, and some people know you as a pianist with some of the groups you've worked with, but I don't know how many people think of you as a composer.
McNeely: There are people in Europe that do. I have a reputation in the Rhine Valley in Germany that's unlike any other perception of me anywhere [else] in the world, because I did so much composition for the West German Radio.
Tafuri: There was that album on Lipstick...
McNeely: Yes, with John Scofield, but I did a lot of projects. I was going over once or twice a year. Most of the time, I had carte blanche to write what I did, whatever I wanted to. Some of the projects were with particular soloists like John or [Dave] Liebman, and some of them were just my own thing. I got to cover a lot of ground and a lot of bases, and I knew there were people who were coming to those concerts who just wanted to hear what I was writing.
Over here [in America], because of the Carnegie Hall stuff, I got a reputation as an arranger. I was writing down, a few months ago, a list of everything I had written for Carnegie. I probably wrote about 40 arrangements for them, and only one of them is an original composition, the rest of it was all arrangements of things. And then Lickety Split is mostly composition; that was probably the first American release that really showed the big band composition that I do. So, that's a side of me that's probably not so well known over here in the US.Tafuri: How do you compare arranging and composing?
McNeely: Well, obviously, there's a lot that is similar, and certain "arrangers" —like Gil Evans or Bob Brookmeyer —had the ability to blur the lines between the two; they'll do an arrangement which really sounds like their own composition. But to me, an arrangement is a process that's done to a song. I think of the song as the main character of the whole play, and your job as an arranger is to present that character and, by the end of the arrangement, we have some insight into the tune, into the character.
A composition might have a song at the heart of it, but it might not. A lot of Bartok's music or Stravinsky's are not big melodies, but a series of ideas that are churned around and worked over. A lot of the compositional stuff I do —especially very lately —tends to be done along those lines.
The things on this album Group Therapy represent my most recent thinking along those lines. There's a little bit of melody here and there, but it's more that the plot is the progression of the piece. It's not about presenting a melody that you come away with saying "What's the main theme here?" —that's not the point. The point is that it's a plot, it's motion towards some kind of conclusion.
Sometimes I use what I call "disposable melodies." It's like that from time to time, everyone [in the band] agrees to make a melody together, and then it goes off. Sometimes they might agree to make that melody again, but sometimes they just say "Aw, forget it," and they abandon that, and they go off into something else.Tafuri: It's interesting to hear you talk about not necessarily developing a grand theme and working it, but using a variety of themes. There are several pieces on the album that are episodic (for want of a better word). They really are like a story like, for instance, "Cranky Takes a Holiday."
McNeely: Well, originally I wrote [a tune called simply] "Cranky" back in around 1990 for Dave Liebman and the West German Radio Orchestra. I came up with this tune [sings the opening theme]. So, that was "Cranky"; I did a whole arrangement on that. When I was writing music for the ten-piece group a few years later, I knew I wanted to do that tune, but I thought "Hmm, well..." And my wife (she didn't come up with the name of the tune, but she) was telling me that when I was writing that piece for Dave, she said, "You know, you get awfully cranky when you write music," 'cause I snapped at her about something. So, I thought, "Aw, 'Cranky,' that's what I'm gonna call this." Now in my head, there's this character "Mr Cranky." So, when I did the arrangement for the ten-piece group, I thought 'Well, it's time for Mr Cranky to lighten up and go to the Caribbean for a little bit.' I can see, in the next ten years, doing another episode in the life of Mr Cranky —"Mr Cranky Gets a Day Job" or "Mr Cranky Goes to a Disco" —I don't know.
Tafuri: Oh, I didn't realize it was part of a potential series...
McNeely: Part of a potential series, I mean, it may be the second of only a two-part series ... but there may be more life to Mr Cranky. Who knows?
Tafuri: Well, you have another piece on here —"Lost" —that's episodic. There's a theme that runs through that, but there is also quite a variety of other things that happen in that piece.
McNeely: That started out as a small-group thing that I wrote, actually, for Phil Woods' group. Again, when I did it again for the ten-piece band, a couple of things entered into my mind. First, when you have all these other potential forces and when a guy's playing a solo —[like] if Dick Oatts is playing a solo —you've got six other horn players just sitting around just lookin' at the ceiling. So, for me, there's this "social" aspect of a band, where you get everybody involved playing, and there's the sound of the full band playing, doing what they're doing. So, the solo becomes one element of that overall texture, then the background material starts to come in and lift the soloist. So, when I'm writing for a bigger group, the tendency is for the piece to get more episodic, because you have more forces to express form and shape and a plot. And the drum solo thing is, well... When I write larger-ensemble things, when I write a drum solo, I like to give the drummer something to play off of, number one; it gives him something to grab onto, rather than just play a generic, open drum solo. And then, the other side, traditionally when the drum solo starts, the band leaves the stage or else they're just sitting around lookin' around, so I like to get the band involved with the drum solo, as well. What, to me, is funny is that it's second nature to write backgrounds behind horn solos, but, when the drummer comes along, everyone stops. I like to get the band involved, too, so I came up with these little motives. I just conduct each motive as a number; I hold up fingers showing the numbers, and it comes off different every time we do it.
Tafuri: So that wasn't actually notated that way?
McNeely: There are about six little motives notated on the page, with a number on each one. The drum solo starts, and I hold up [fingers to indicate] which one we're gonna play, and I give a downbeat, then I cut 'em off. Sometimes I might hold up one number, then give a downbeat and cut it off, then give a downbeat, cut it off, go to another one, then downbeat and cut it off...
Tafuri: How interesting!
McNeely: So it comes off different every time.
Tafuri: And it keeps people on their toes.
McNeely: It keeps people on their toes. The guys that recorded this wouldn't do this, but the bigger the band gets, there's this kind of "Rehearsal Band Syndrome" where guys are just sittin' around and just wanna play a little bit. One of the reasons I picked the guys whom I did on this recording is that they're all real players, and they just don't want to sit around either; they want to be involved in the thing.
Tafuri: Speaking of "the larger the band gets," how did you arrive at a tentet, the ten-voice thing?
McNeely: Between the Vanguard Orchestra, which is sixteen [pieces], and the Danish Radio [Orchestra], which is twenty [pieces], and the Metropole Orchestra —that's a much bigger thing —65 with strings...
Tafuri: That's including the strings...
McNeely: Yeah, if you strip away the strings, I think it's a seventeen-piece big band; it's a very good big band, but there're other forces with it. So, normally sixteen to twenty pieces.
There are a couple of reasons why I picked the ten-piece thing. First of all, as far as I was concerned, the world doesn't need another big band. Maybe some day, I'll put one together, but I do so much work with existing bands, and I really get a lot of satisfaction from that. (There are limitations —in some bands there are certain players you wish could be different, but, in general, I'm satisfied working in that kind of situation.) I wanted to have my own band that was larger than a trio or quartet, but I wanted to have —I mean, the phrase that always comes into mind is "lean and mean" —something that's a little more flexible. It's like the F-16 versus the F-14; the one is smaller, and you can do more manual stuff with it, but the bigger one tends to be a little more clunky and mechanized. Not that I'm saying that big bands are clunky and mechanized, but I wanted something that had a little more of a streamlined quality to it. The thing with ten pieces is that when you want to make it sound like a big band, you can get pretty close to that, and that's one reason I wanted someone like Tony Kadlick or Greg Gisbert to play lead trumpet: I wanted a person with real lead trumpet experience to do that when it had to be there, you know?
But then, at the same time, there's a challenge writing for this kind of group because you can never just kick back and say "Well, I'm gonna write a five-part saxophone solo here," which is easy because you just figure it out at the piano and you just write it out for the five saxes. Here, in a group like this, you're always having to think about blending different instruments; there's not five of any one thing. So, I have three saxes, but if I want four or five parts, well, I've gotta think about how I'm gonna blend maybe the French horn and the trombone in there. If I want a six-part brass thing but I've only got four, I've gotta think about how I'm gonna blend a couple of saxophones in there. If I'm using a trumpet doubled with a flute, well, that takes one of the woodwinds out of the picture, so you have to think. Like moving chessmen around the board, you have to think about how you're allocating your people. I like that challenge, and there's still a lot of colors you can get from it. All the bands I work with regularly —as much as I like working with them —none of them, unfortunately, has a French horn player in it. And, to me, I've noticed that you put a French horn in the middle of almost anything, and it sounds better.Tafuri: It's a different thing.
McNeely: Yeah, it's a different thing, and it sounds better. And like we were talking about at the mixing session, in "The Fruit," I wrote a couple of these little Tadd Dameron kinda tooties. [In] one of them, there's no French horn —the first one; in the second one, the horn's in there, and it really has a rounder quality to it. And then to have someone like Tom [Varner] who, besides dealing with the instrument well, is also a player, you can turn him loose. I mean, I had one guy some years ago that, in the sections where he would play solos, was playing Till Eulenspiegel.
Tafuri: [Laughs.]
McNeely: He was doing orchestral excerpts, because that's all he knew. He wasn't really a jazz improviser. With Tom, you get a guy who's not only an improviser and who can play on changes, but he's also got that kind of wacky edge...
Tafuri: And he's a composer himself...
McNeely: Yeah, he composes, so he has that kind of head. So, to have him in there, you get the French horn sound plus you don't have to compromise and say "Well, I got a French horn player, but he doesn't really play jazz." Here, you get a French horn and you get a real improviser, too.
Tafuri: Well, how did you come up with ten, though? Did you just say, "Oh, I'm gonna have so many reeds and each guys gonna double on this and that..." I mean, why not nine or eleven?
McNeely: My short answer is ten is smaller than eleven and bigger than nine, but that...
Tafuri: [Laughs.]
McNeely: First of all, I thought I wanted three saxes.
Tafuri: OK.
McNeely: Because I wanted, at least, the ability to play a triad in the saxophones without compromising anything else. Then, in terms of putting together the brass, I knew I wanted two trumpets, and the question was: 'What else do I use?'
Tafuri: I gotcha.
McNeely: I could've gone two trumpets and trombones, I could have gone trumpet, French horn and trombone, but I wanted four brass for the fullness I could get if I had to use the brass just by themselves. With four, that's enough to be full; with three, it wasn't quite enough. And, I have to say, [Ed] Neumeister's the only one who's played the trombone book in this band and, one reason I like Ed, is [that] he's played enough lead trombone that he can do that kind of thing. But he's also been a section player.
Tafuri: So, he can lay back.
McNeely: Yeah, the trombone writing in this book goes all the way from pretty high to almost what you would write for a bass trombone. I've thought, for some time, what would the next two or three instruments be that I would add, and they'd probably be a guitar player/percussionist —first of all, non-horn kind of stuff —and then I'd add something like a tuba or some other really low brass instrument, 'cause when you fill out the bottom, it really helps fill out everything. But that's somewhere in the future.
Tafuri: And then you have the French horn that can have a warm, sort of woody quality to is as well...
McNeely: Yeah. It's no coincidence that one of the instruments in a woodwind quintet is a French horn. It really bridges the gap. Although it's a brass instrument, it's got such a different sound, it can really blend really great with saxophones, it can blend really well with other woodwinds. It's a very flexible instrument.
Tafuri: One of the tunes I really like on the record —and I think it's gonna surprise people a little bit —is the Bud Powell tune you mentioned earlier, "The Fruit." When we were talking about your conceptualization —how you work motifs and so on —it sounds like you were working out some motific stuff here.
McNeely: I had this idea ... a couple of things. First of all, there was a subtractive process to the way I did the melody: I took the melody and then I just started taking notes out, and then I reversed the process. Let's say, every eight bars I took more notes out, then I just reversed it. So, what I ended up —the real sparse thing —is how we start.
And then there's this little phrase in the bridge. Sometimes what I like to do [when I arrange] —and I do this in my own writing with my own tunes —is that some little phrase that goes by and you hardly notice it —it's in the middle of a line or something —all of a sudden, you latch onto that, and it becomes a key pivot point or a real strong structural device. And, with "The Fruit," there was this little [sings opening phrase, minus last stinger chord] —it's part of the bridge, the second half of the bridge —and I thought [repeats the phrase with the stinger chord] kind of sets the tone. It starts off with this kind of bebop line, and then you get this tremolo in the bass and the French horn note. In fact, I was playing it for my wife when we were going up to Vermont, and she hears [sings opening phrase with stinger, into the tremolo], and she starts going toward the CD player saying "Is the CD player stuck?"Tafuri: [Laughs.]
McNeely: "What is that?" "No," I said, "It's a bass." She thought it was tracking wrong. So, the idea is to start of with just a lick and then boom, as if to say "You thought it was gonna be that, but now check this out." And then you get this kind of deconstructed version of the song that eventually takes shape. Then I wanted to have a thing where everybody got a little bit of a solo statement, rather than really long solos from everyone. So, I constructed this thing where there are just little fragments of the melody, and each little fragment of the melody is a send-off for each little solo.
Tafuri: Yeah, that's very hip...
McNeely: And wherever the little fragment ends, I'd come up with a chord, the harmony of which has nothing to do with the original tune. Wherever the melody would end, I'd find a chord that would work under that, and then the next player would play over that for eight bars or sixteen bars. Then another fragment would come in, and someone else would play. It's kinda like "Meet the Band" —here's everybody.