Hey, welcome back.

This is the get you some productions podcast.

This is the third.

I don't know what number episode this is.

We might be.

We're so close to episode 100.

And when Dan and I started this, we.

We.

We were going under the assumption that you don't even have a podcast until you get to episode 100.

That's like a thing.

You get a free car, though, right?

No, I didn't get a free car.

I did get a car.

I bought it from Dan.

I was just telling you.

So funny you should bring up getting a free car.

You get your official podcaster card when you get to episode 100.

I don't think.

We're damn close.

We're damn close.

It would be nice, actually.

You know what?

We can rig it so that this episode is episode 100.

Cause that would be very.

That would be awesome.

Before we start.

Oh, yeah.

So get you some productions podcast.

We're a podcast covering all things from music related to music production, from the first note to the last fan.

We talk about all music stuff Dan and I often do.

Dan will be joining us any minute, I expect.

We often do actual business meetings between Dan and I on the.

Live on the show.

So you can see us building a podcast, you know, in.

In full public view.

But.

But our favorite thing to do is interviews.

This is episode three of our series with John Esposito.

And John has been a formative figure in Dan and my lives because we study with you in 19.

I want to say 98, 99.

2000.

2001.

Somewhere around that time.

Yeah, I think I started teaching at bard officially in 2000.

Okay, so that's when you were already.

Midway right through your college.

That's the year I graduated.

But I.

And then we.

I stuck around an extra year, and I think I continued to do the.

The workshop at your house.

Yeah.

So.

And Dan is joining.

So we.

So yeah, so John.

John was a formative figure in our life.

Hey, I just started.

I did the intro.

We just literally just started talking about where we left off.

Hey, Dan.

Hi, John.

And we are.

So we've been featuring John's life in music, which is a very long.

You know, you don't mind talking about your age.

So you've been in the business for a long time.

You've had a lot of experiences.

If people want to hear some crazy stories, they should go back and start with two episodes ago and listen to all three.

And John's a great storyteller.

So we've actually.

We've actually had it's been taking a long time to get through each sort of era of the John Esposito life cycle of music.

So.

But now we're up to about the year 2000.

And we were just talking about your project.

What is it called?

It's a Book of Five Rings.

Book of Five Rings, right?

Yeah.

Now, wait, so this is.

I also wanted to ask you because I just got started getting into martial arts.

I know you've been a martial arts guy for a long time.

Is the Book of Five Rings that's related to that?

Right?

That.

Wasn't that a samurai thing?

Yeah, yeah.

It was written by the.

He's called the Sword Saint of Japan.

He's kind of like Coltrane is to music.

Miyamoto Musashi.

So Musashi, I think he died in his mid-60s and the last four or five years, I.

I believe he retired and he lived in a cave with his, I don't know, assistant and wrote this book and with his.

His secretary and he.

He wrote this.

I like the characterization of.

He lived in a cave with his assistant.

He's a samurai.

But, you know, they had one teletype machine or something.

Yeah, yeah.

Somebody had to answer the phone.

So.

So, you know, this is 1500s, right?

Mid 1500s, I would think.

Pardon me, Japan.

If I.

If I have your history wrong.

Seki Gahara, I think is 1500.

So, you know, probably 1560, something like that.

Anyway, he.

This book is a book of strategy and it's, you know, about swordsmanship, but it's used in Japan from.

For business, for many other things.

And it has.

And it's written water, fire, earth, air, void.

And those are the five elements that make the earth that make reality.

So, you know, like earth, wind and fire.

Like those guys.

Yeah, they were astrological.

Yeah, Earth, wind and fire.

So this is kind of more elemental.

Elemental.

So, you know, at the time I.

I was reading that book, I.

I take it out from.

From time to time to kind of refresh my memory on it.

And I.

I don't do Japanese martial arts.

It's Chinese and it's.

It's called Fujiao Pie, which is a tiger Crane style compilation of old styles that was put together, I think, when the person who brought it from China arrived here in Chinatown, New York.

So I've been doing that for, I don't know, 40 years.

Something.

Something like that.

40, 40, 45 years.

I don't know, as long as I've been alive.

Yeah, something like that.

So it, you know, it's been a very good Way like playing music to connect the mind and body and to arrive at a kind of calm center and also break people's noses, you know, so it's, it's a com.

It's the perfect combination.

I found it really helpful.

I don't want to talk too much, but I do think that the spiritual connection to music and the martial art, spiritual connection is significant.

But I also think that men.

Part of our spiritual journey is actually the capacity for violence.

Not that we would choose to do that, but there's something.

And maybe it's not spiritual.

I think it might be genetic anyway.

Yeah, I mean I, I grow up.

I grew up in pretty fairly violent.

Well actually a very violent household and just community.

And so in order.

I realized at one point in order not to continue that because it just brought on happiness that I would have to do something.

And eventually I, I settled on that at about age 29 or 30.

So it was in place of a therapist.

You know, it, it really.

It worked for me.

But you know, it's every, every.

Everything is different for everybody.

So.

But it worked for me.

So.

Yeah, so the, the.

That particular band, because it has so many elements to it, I always think of it as, as my kind of every, everything band.

I kind of go wherever I want with it.

So.

My partner Laura Steele is a photographer and video artist.

So we, we work together with that occasionally.

The first gigs were in New York for ESP Records.

And did I, did I do the ESP story in Woodstock?

I don't think.

I don't think so.

Okay, so this will be the, the compressed version worked with a flute player named Jana Nelson who would hang out.

There was a, A jam session that uh, drummer Pete O'Brien ran at the uh, at a cafe in Woodstock, New York.

And I was living there, had a place there in the late 80s 90 I was there and this guy kept on coming up to me.

I would sit in.

This guy kept on coming up and saying, I really love your playing and everything.

I'm the A R guy for ESP Records.

And of course I know ESP has been out of business since like 1973 or something like that.

So I figured he was mentally on another planet, which he was.

But I get a call and it turns out he is actually the A R guy for ESP Records.

I, I hadn't realized that ESP had changed hands.

The owner's Bernard Stolman wife was given the label as part of a divorce settlement and it had actually been re.

Released on ZYX German label.

And it Was active again.

And she asked me, do you want to do something on esp?

You know, And I said, sure, you know, and she was like, you know, Esposito, esp.

It's perfect, perfect fit.

So.

And it's Woodstock.

So I said, yeah, I love to.

She said, well, it'll be in about a year or so.

I said, great, I'll be, I'll be around.

I get a call two days later.

Do you still want to do that project?

Yeah, sure.

Can you do it a little earlier?

Sure.

This is like Tuesday.

Sure.

When do you want to do it?

Friday.

So I had to put a group together for Friday and she didn't want a trio, she wanted a big bigger group.

So three horns, three rhythm sections.

And then it turns out that the Smithsonian Institute was coming to town to, to check out her operation, which was non existent, but they, they wanted to meet the artists of Woodstock.

So we're at the recording studio, there's a tent outside with free food and drink and every musician, artist, grifter in Woodstock is there.

And they're all like wandering through the session as we're trying to rehearse this music, which I had hurriedly written that week.

And so we eventually I locked the doors, got the.

Got maybe 40 minutes of music recorded three long, three big pieces.

And that was the beginning of a working relationship with esp.

She ultimately gave me the tapes and then I got a call that there was a festival at the.

In New York City and ESP was being featured at the Knitting Factory.

And I was, I guess I was the only working band at the time.

So we went and we did a couple days of rehearsals and two nights of performance.

And that group, I think had about nine, eight or nine musicians in it.

That became the first.

I ultimately released that as a record, One of the Nights.

It was just called A Book of Five Rings.

Later on, when I moved to this area, ran into some people who have a giant space in Hudson called Second Ward.

And these are two guys who are art collectors and they, they collect giant pieces of art and they also video.

And as I said, my partner is a video artist.

So we, they wanted to do some kind of performance thing.

And it was a raw space and we agreed to do it.

They made the space unraw.

They did a beautiful job in it.

And so it was like a High School, 1920s High School Auditorium with a stage on one side and factory windows in the front and then blank walls.

And so Laura Steele did video, 14 monitors.

And then the, the stuff scrolled around the Window scrolled onto the other.

We had done a performance like this at Bard a couple years before but this was like a huge space and was absolutely fantastic.

So that I, I had.

What year was this?

Oh, that's ten years ago now.

Oh, it's just coming out now.

Yeah, she would.

Yeah, she was like six months, seven months pregnant.

Seven months.

I think at the time on ladders.

It was scary.

So.

So that, that way of playing, it's like some, some through compose some pre recorded electronics that we play with and interactive stuff with the video and you know, not, you know, not jazz, you know, not Rick, you know, kind of jazz.

The musicians in that band are like really like run kind of the gamut.

So Pete O'Brien, drums.

I also play drums in that band and keyboards and electronics.

And it is.

I have to try to remember the.

All of the musicians but.

Emma Alabaster, bass.

Hill Green, bass.

Rosie Hartline, violin.

Mitch Kessler, bass clarinet and flute.

And Greg Glassman, trumpet.

And Stacy Dillard, saxophones.

And then Laura Steele, live video mixing.

So that's kind of an extravaganza band that I can't do all the time.

It's like really expensive and complicated technically really complicated to do.

But we're.

I'm working on another.

Doing that again hopefully this year.

So that's one project, that album which looks like that.

That's what the video looked like from outdoors looking in on the windows.

That's cool.

Yeah.

And I don't know if I.

Yeah, I do.

I do have kind of a.

I.

Don'T know how visible that is.

Yeah, there you go.

You can kind of see the space.

Is that visible?

Yeah, yeah.

So that's not your jazz club, not your average jazz club thing.

And then so that's.

That's one kind of major project for me that.

That's ongoing.

I continued.

Franklin Kiermeyer, I was working with a lot in.

In the 90s and we kind of took a break the beginning of the 2000s.

But we've started working on some creative projects again.

He's in Norway.

Back and forth between Norway and New York City.

Usually comes visits a couple times a year and so we, we do some trio playing without a gardener.

We're working on or planning a record and I'm kind of going through archives of stuff we did together some years back.

There's stuff with Farrell Sanders and Sam Rivers and Dewey Redmond and other people.

So I'm seeing what's there with an eye to maybe releasing something.

All this comes out on Sun Jump.

Yeah.

Yeah, at this point, I have 22 records out.

Two more over the next few months.

The saxophone is from Second Sight, Jeff Marks, who passed about six years ago.

I guess it is something like that.

Six or seven years ago.

I have a couple of recordings of his that are unreleased that are really great.

One that was.

The one that's coming out now is called Treading Air, Breathing Fire.

Jeff Marks played tenor, soprano, and this other kind of.

Not alto, but mix between tenor and alto.

I forget what he called it.

You know, interesting composer, really great, great player.

And he was in the.

Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, kind of back and forth.

And so I worked with him for, you know, for years and years since.

Really.

Since the 85.

And we did a couple of trio records in addition to the Second Sight stuff, we did a couple of trio records with drummer Jeff Siegel, no bass.

And then we.

I did a quartet record with him with ira Coleman, Peter O'Brien, who I worked with a lot over the years.

So that's coming out, and that's this studio project with some additional tracks that there was a limited Release probably in 2005, something like that.

And it'll be.

Be coming out again with additional tracks, plus a whole other night of music, which was a concert the.

The night before the session, which I'm really happy about with that music.

So that's another.

Another project.

And then since the 90s, I've been working with Eric Person, who, you know, we.

We have a project.

I'm waiting for him to get it out that we did together.

It's a quartet and he's involved in a couple of.

Of current projects.

So I have a.

Right after Covid, I forced myself to record which.

To kind of get back in the saddle.

And there.

This is a sextet record.

Let's see if I can actually get it in front of the camera aura.

And that's as you see.

Chris Payson, trumpet.

Eric Person, Saxon flute.

Phil Allen.

It's.

It's trombone, but it's a valve trombone.

Yeah.

They call Lazy Man's Trombone.

Ira Coleman, Pete O'Brien.

I want to see if it's trombone.

I want to see this.

Yeah.

If it's not doing that, it's.

I feel a lack of commitment on the part of the artist anyway, actually.

But I've heard.

Oh, God.

Do you know, I think he lives up by.

Or he lived up by you, but Dick Burke, you know, Dick Burke, he had a band with two trombonists who had valve.

Both played valve trombones.

And I don't agree because those dudes played.

And it might have been this guy.

I played the shit out of those.

I've never heard trombone like that.

Like playing trombone playing, like legit bebop lines.

Lots of.

Lots of notes.

Yeah, it's a bass trumpet.

Basically.

It is a valve instrument.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought it was kind of badass.

Yeah, yeah.

This guy, Phil Allen is a really great big band arranger.

So, I mean, great enough that I actually played in his big band for half a dozen gigs.

I hate playing in big bands because I spend the whole time picking the music up off the floor because it's always like eight pages and so the whole.

Your part.

Your part is just.

Bing.

Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah.

So anyway, so.

So, yeah, Phil.

Phil was terrific.

What else?

We did a trio record the same day.

I have a habit of.

This is constraints of time and money.

The time being that people are busy and, you know, Ira Coleman and Peter Bryan are gone a lot.

Well, Ira is actually teaching at McGill now in.

In Montreal, but they're gone a lot.

And so when I can finally get them together to rehearse and then do the session, usually it's like, okay, we have two days.

And it's like, okay, well, I have two projects.

So we're trying to do like two records in two days, which essentially is what we did.

I did this Laura, and then this trio project, which is not visible.

There you go.

And those were done.

Like, we did the.

The sex tat stuff on a Monday, I think we did a concert here at the house, which I try to do a couple times a year in this studio.

And all the doors and windows open, so there's.

And there's kind of beautiful landscape around, so we invite people and people hang out for the day and.

And we play music.

And so we did a concert for that, and then we recorded on Monday, did listen back and did fixes on the horn parts.

Tuesday morning, went to lunch, came back and started the trio recording 4:00 in the afternoon and then came back the next morning and finished up.

All these things.

You're holding up CDs, but they're all available on streaming too, right?

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

The CDs are just because I'm old and I need to have something in my hands that told me that I actually did something.

Do you.

Do you.

Do you.

Oh, I just lost my.

My train of thought.

Oh, who.

Who distributes you or how do you distribute?

I'm just doing the electronic distribution.

Anybody who wants an actual CD has to email me and I will send It.

But yeah.

How do you get your stuff to streaming?

Oh, it's.

It's Disc makers.

Has a deal with CD Baby.

CD Baby, which connects you with.

Got it.

We use CD Baby too.

Yeah.

So it's curious.

25 different.

Yeah.

Electric electronic distribution sites.

Yep.

So, yeah, so it's easy to get.

All the music is easy to get, and it pops up on YouTube, is one of the distribution sites also.

So you can.

If you do.

My name, John Esposito, Jazz.

Because the other John Esposito there.

There are two others.

One is retired head of Nashville's.

The Nashville offices of Sony.

And he's like a.

I think a country western guitarist or bassist or something.

And then the other one is an expert on the Middle east at Washington University, Washington, D.C.

so during the Egyptian revolution, I was getting emails from Egypt, from people asking me to help them, and I did send them copies of the cd.

I don't know how helpful it was.

But foreign distribution.

I think you did your part.

I did my part, yeah.

Yeah.

Actually, we did a record called Tahrir, which kind of addressed some of the stuff that was going on at the time, further confusing my identity with the John Esposito Middle east expert.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to.

I'm trying to think of what else.

Some other things came came to mind.

Well, actually.

And also I wanted to go back because.

So when I.

When.

When I knew you and you and Dan and I were studying with you, I think you had just.

Well, Eric Person had just released the CD with E.J.

strickland.

Yeah.

And I can't remember who was on base.

Carlos something.

Carlos Henderson had him, like.

Was that the COVID where he's, like, in Times Square?

Yes.

It was like a.

Stop.

It was like a.

It was.

It was him standing in an intersection and there was like some, like, really slow, like, long aperture, like lights and stuff around it.

Yeah, that.

That sounds right.

Cover.

But yeah.

Yeah.

So that was around that time.

And when did you release.

So you had that.

One of my favorite records of yours is the.

The trio record with the reimagined.

2000.

Yeah, that was 2006.

Yeah, that was the first.

You know, I had created sun jump in 86 or 87, but we did, you know, a couple.

We did one record of our.

Of ours and we promoted a couple other people's records.

Three.

Three other.

Three or four other peoples.

Yeah.

We released Mark Vanion, who's a vibes player, Jose Chalice, guitarist, and another group, which.

I'm blanking on the Name on.

But anyway, Dave.

These were projects that Dave Douglas was involved on and, and brought them in.

But I didn't really have money or wherewithal or was, you know, stable living situation, etc.

It was enough just to be able to play.

So 2003, I decided to revive the label.

I started recording.

So I recorded that in 2003, the end of 2003.

It took almost two years.

It took two years to get everything out.

I recorded again.

It was like within a week I recorded that trio record, plus the Blue People, which is a quintet.

I, I remember that record too, because I, I, I listened to that one as well, the Blue People, because I think I emailed you around that time because I think you played the Blue Note.

Yeah, I played the Blue Note with Eric a bunch of times.

Yeah.

I came to see you one time and I can't remember.

Tyner tribute or Eric's music or.

I don't recall.

Yeah, it was probably Eric's music.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Most of them were Eric's music.

And I remember doing one one.

McCoy.

Yeah.

You know, which is daunting.

Wait, McCoy.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, trying to do justice to the music you're, you're faced with.

If you don't, if you don't.

Yeah.

If you don't mind me saying, actually, the pianist that I often think of when I hear you're playing is actually McCoy.

Sure.

Yeah.

McQuai, Art Tatum, Herbie, Hancock.

Yeah.

You know, your elements of those, probably elements of Bill Evans occasionally.

Yeah.

Korea.

Yeah, I definitely, I remember seeing you play and it was, it's your comping behind other solos really reminded me.

I heard that.

Herbie.

Herbie in there and anyway, yeah, yeah.

Those, those were when I was a teenager, that music was happening.

Yeah.

And that was.

Although I later went back and did a pretty thorough analysis of stride piano, which I still play, and bebop, which is kind of, you know, the standard when anybody called you for, you know, to play with a singer or something like that.

So it was that, that language.

But I was most interested in pianists who were, you know, contemporary, late 60s, early 70s.

So that Cecil Taylor and.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think that if you don't mind, we've let you talk for like four hours straight with the last two episodes, so.

You want me to shut up?

No, actually, so.

Well, you've done a wonderful job of just like, you know, telling all the stories, but actually, I feel like maybe we.

I would actually like to ask you a few questions.

Sure.

Like, specific questions.

One Question I guess we could start with is, where'd you get the name Sun Jump?

And was there an inspiration?

Or what does it mean?

Because I always.

I feel like as an artist and all artists, you don't just name the things for no reason.

There's always some kind of inspiration.

I feel like it's always meaningful for me.

It is all.

You know, generally I don't just name things randomly, so.

You mind talking about that a little bit?

Yeah.

I was reading a lot of Zora Neale Hurston and her.

There was something her grandmother said which was, jump at the sun, child.

You might not get there, but you'll get your feet off the ground.

Which I thought was one of the most intelligent pieces of advice that I've ever heard, you know, so.

And that's what I felt like at the time.

So that that was the source for that.

That's like you reach for the.

Aim for the moon, you might reach the stars.

Even though from an.

From a astronomical standpoint, it should be the other way around.

Yes.

The moon is technically a lot closer, but you take the point.

Yeah.

So I remember when we used to play in the.

In the workshop, you put a lot of compositions on the music stand, your own compositions on the music stands.

And they were always.

At least at that time, because, you know, I assume you've been through many phases of the compositional process, but in that time there was a lot of meter changes.

And not just meter, time changes, but like time transposition, things like that.

Well, I remember the darkest light.

Remember the composition of the darkest.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Changing things.

And then you were also trying to show us metric modulation at the same time.

Yeah, yeah.

So that was based on two against three.

So if you're in.

If you're playing something in three, say it's written in three that you put a duple against every three.

And then that's your new quarter note.

You play in either three or four.

Four at that pulse level.

And then you can do that.

It's pretty flexible because you can be like the Coltrane band.

They can be playing in four, but every three beats, they'll.

They'll put two up against it.

So they'll super, superimpose two against three every three beats, even though they're in four.

And so if you.

So if you're looking at an eight bar phrase, there's 32 counts.

How many threes?

Ten threes and a two.

And then you're putting duples against each three.

So it's five duples.

And then.

And then the, the two beats, right?

And they do it much longer.

You know, the record trans transition go, you know, 64 counts or, or longer or sometimes they just go on and on and it usually comes out.

Occasionally somebody will get lost.

You know, that Chim Chim Cherie has.

I think Elvin does some of that at the end of a phrase and loses everybody.

And the first, first eight bars of McCoy's solo is actually six bars before they all crash and start again.

But that, that's fine.

I mean, it's got nothing.

It doesn't hurt the music in any way as far as I'm concerned, you know, that's it.

I like that insight actually, because I didn't.

I don't know, you know, sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I listen to music, especially stuff like that, and I think, where is the time?

Did they miss a beat or am I just an idiot?

And this for the past 20 years, 25 years, I've just assumed I'm the idiot.

But maybe I need to re.

Listen and think, oh well, maybe they did miss a beat.

Yeah, you have to remember that things that, you know, we're speaking about so glibly.

Oh, it's just duple against, you know, they were inventing it, you know, they were figuring it out because it's not just playing rhythms, because you can find that in any African diaspora music.

You know, that happens in a lot of places.

But you know, they're coming from song form, you know, where it's like there's an actual eight bar phrase, you know, and African music doesn't happen in measures, you know, so, so that's a different story.

That is a kind of interlocking, layered flow that happens.

And you don't have to be concerned about.

There's a, you know, a song in there with chords.

And that's what they were contending with, was starting from that place, you know, eventually by, you know, if you listen to First Meditations or Sonship, they let that go.

And the, the flows and the different layer, the different layers are happening all at once.

You know, nobody's totally.

They're not committed to, to one pulse level.

There are multiple pulse levels going on.

And so, you know, it's easy for us to talk.

Talk about.

But they, they had to do the pioneering work on it, which is, is pretty courageous as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I think so.

I think, I know this might be too much of a question, but maybe you can sort of like talk about it a bit.

I mean, you can Answer it however you like, but I'm curious.

So we like to talk about compositional process.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's like some people, you know, dream about a song, wake up, and then, you know, hum it into their recorder.

Some people have, like an algorithmic process.

You know what I mean?

Or like 12 tone rose.

Some people are listening to their favorite song and get inspired and write something similar.

You know, there's a million different ways to do it.

Can you.

So this is why I said this might be too big of a question.

Can you talk about your compositional process?

You could talk about what.

What it is now, but I.

I'm actually curious about how it's evolved over the years, too.

Yeah.

When I was starting out and I was trying to learn how to play composing with.

I didn't have much in the way of performance skills, you know, technical skills on the piano, and I didn't read very well.

And so.

So I composed a lot.

And the compositions were a means of figuring out, you know, oh, if I do this, it sounds like Herbie Hancock.

If I do this, it sounds like Keith Jarrett.

And did I mention this?

I'm teaching.

I have Keith Jarrett's granddaughter in one of my classes.

Right.

Did I mention that before?

Yeah, yeah, you told us that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's.

I.

If I go back and listen to recordings from those times, it's like, oh, I was like, really was thinking about Keith Jarrett, you know, at that point.

And when I.

And I also hear all of those other influences and in a less absorbed feeling fashion, you know, I think I've, over the.

Over the years, absorbed all of those ways of thinking about the piano and thinking about harmony and composition.

And I.

People tell me, and I.

And I.

I think I would agree that I've arrived at something that sounds like me, the process.

Sometimes it's technical where I'll start.

Start with a basic idea.

It might be.

Often it's a melody or a rhythm, which, to me is the most important part of music.

When earlier on the songs on the record Lyra, which.

That came out in 2018, but most of that was written between probably 80, you know, 85 and.

And 2000, I was coming to conclusions about harmony that had to do with chord sequences, symmetrical sequences, and two different sets of progressions.

You know, chords going in different directions at the same time, and have the bass player moving down in minor thirds or whole tones, and the piano chords moving up in those directions.

Those are things I was doing with Second Sight.

A lot of it was Just things that.

When I was playing with Arthur Rhames, we improvised a lot of those sequences.

And then after I was done working with Arthur, I started thinking about those, the implications for that compositionally.

So I got a chance to work out a lot of those things with second sight 85 to 90.

And I had players, Dave Douglas and Jeff Marks, who, totally undaunted by that, you know, so it was easy to hear it get it played.

That wasn't probably common, right?

Like you.

You would get players who would come in and, you know, maybe struggle or something.

Is that, Is that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think I, I might have said I.

You know, I was auditioning trumpet players before Dave Douglas, and there were people who were either in the Lincoln center or, or Benny Carter's Carnegie Hall Band, and they all would come in and warm up in the same Lee Morgan solo and then proceed to write in two fives on.

On my charts, which had nothing to do with two fives, you know.

So, yeah, that, that, that's a problem.

I mean, it's just.

That's just the current academic kind of an academia, jazz in college problem.

You're kind of stuck with what your.

How your teacher thinks.

That's what they're going to pass on to you, and that becomes your, Your methodology.

So you're.

So you're better off if.

If you have a really broad range of professors, of teachers who think very different ways, because it makes you more flexible and it kind of gives you permission to figure out your own way of doing things.

So I was fortunate I didn't have professors.

So I.

So I just figured out my own way I was responding to the people I was playing with and the scenarios.

So I think at this point, you know, I hate to sound cliched with this, but, you know, I'll joke when I'm having.

I'm sending charts to Phil Allen, does my Sibelius work, because I'm too lazy to do it.

And I'll.

I'll write something and kind of get it set and then send it off to him and he'll send it back to me all nicely printed, and then I'll play it for a while and then I'll maybe make a few changes and then send it back.

And occasionally it will be like a lot of changes and I'll be back and forth or drive some nuts, but often it's just there, it's just done.

And so I will, I'll just.

When he says, you know, Jesus, you're changing this a lot, you know, and I say, I.

I'm just.

Whatever they're sending, I'm writing down, right?

And he would say, well, who are they?

And I said, I have no idea.

I don't want to jinx it.

They keep sending it.

I keep writing it down.

So it feels more like that now, which I'm sure is just.

Who knows?

But probably just my subconscious at this point is organizing from, you know, 50 years of writing, and I trust it.

You know, occasionally playing something for six months, and I go, oh, yeah, jeez.

This measure is what was I thinking?

And I'll.

I'll change it.

But often there's not a lot of.

Occasionally there's struggle and a lot of rewrite and rethinking and before I figure out what I was trying to do.

But I trust.

I trust my intuition.

I.

You know, I.

I mean, you.

You know, my teaching, everything.

So I'm very organized, you know, harmonically organized, rhythmically organized or anything.

And I can talk about all that stuff because I've been doing it for a long time, but it's really not how I think.

I just let it happen.

And I think the sense of organization just.

Just comes with it.

I don't know if that's.

Yeah, there was something you said, actually, that.

So I think so.

Yeah.

So when you touched upon some of the compositional elements that came out of the Arthur Reims thing and things that.

Certain harmonic sequences that you improvised, and then reflecting upon the, like, the dog.

The dogma of, you know, the institutionalized jazz, that made me think of the Bruce Lee quote for some reason, where it's.

I.

And then you said, oh, well, it's good to have teachers that come from different places so you can be more flexible.

And I thought of something interesting that I.

That Bruce Lee said.

I think he said, it's attributed to him where he said, I don't fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks.

I fear the man who practiced, who practices one kick 10,000 times.

And then I was talking with Dan and his wife at dinner last night, and we were talking about spirituality.

And I said, you know, I don't know.

I'm coming to my spirituality now, and I'm testing all these things out.

And she said, you might want to.

And even Dan said, the paths are many, but the truth is one.

And you might find.

Or it might be better to choose one.

I don't know, one path, and then through that path, you.

It.

You can expand out.

So actually, I'm sort.

I think what I'm doing is actually sort of Playing a little bit of devil's advocate on writing those two fives in.

Oh, yeah.

Well.

You get deeper digging one well than digging many, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

I think everyone's different and you should do what works for you.

I used to work with J R Montrose, right, who's a tenor player who's.

He's on Mingus, Pithecampus Erectus.

Right.

It's the first free music recording and mid-50s and, you know, great tenor player.

Worked with him for years.

But we had this one gig that was like a.

Just over a year at one club in Albany before I moved to New York.

And the repertoire was probably a dozen tunes for a year.

And, you know, he would do theme for Ernie.

It's a ballad.

All the things you are, blues things, things like that.

And the solos would be almost.

Not the same solo, but the same general frame framework of the shape, but the.

The nuance of it and the detail would just get deeper and deeper and deeper.

That was him.

I could, you know, and he's from an era where, you know, my first gig with him, this happened over and over again with guys who came out of bebop.

They would come up, come here, kid.

Don't play nothing.

They pick the two.

Two middle op octaves of the piano.

Don't play nothing below that, don't play nothing above that, you know, and don't play any chaos.

I don't want to hear no chaos behind me.

So they.

They needed the chords indicated somewhat in sync with the snare drum.

And not a lot.

Not a lot of notes, not a lot going on.

And they had.

Prefer.

They preferred a particular voicing system which is, you know, typified by.

But.

But Powell, or even better Hank Jones, Red Garland, you know, like much.

Not a lot of piano center.

Succinct.

So I endured that.

That's not my personality, but I.

I endured everybody that I played with, I just thought of it as well, you're going to learn a point of view and you're going to learn to work within that particular framework, which is ultimately not what you want to do, but it will be a small element of what you want to do.

It's going to give you range and it's also going to give you a deeper understanding of all the possibilities.

So I.

So for me, I would.

I saw value in playing with, you know, somebody who.

His first gig was Christmas 1929, and who played in the big bands in the 30s and 40s.

I saw value with playing with people like Nick R.

Which Was like core changes, a million notes, you know, aggressive, fast tempos, you know, and then J.R.

montrose, the opposite.

Very laid back, spatial, emotionally, very committed.

You know, it was all, all of that was really useful for me.

And then I played in rock bands and, and fusion kind of jazz things.

To me, it was all useful.

Playing with singers was really useful.

And they're.

And they're not all great players.

I mean, some of, you know, some of them were, you know, kind of average, and some of them were fantastic, occasionally terrible.

But all of that to me was useful.

Now that's me.

And I have friends that I work with who think I'm crazy for having done that, because they, their idea is you discover what it is you're trying to do, and you do that one thing.

So that's Junior Montrose, Franklin Kiermeyer, whose work I love.

You know, I mean, he's done earlier.

You know, he did regular straight ahead gigs and all that, but boom, you know, he knows what he's trying to do and everything is focused on that.

And I admire him for that focus.

And I love the music honor to work with him.

You have to, you have to work the way that you.

That works for you, you know, and, and it might be really different.

People might be in the same band and they just are very different in how they work.

I agree.

I thank you for that.

I think it comes down to something that I've always reflected upon that I feel like, I think I actually got this from you, is that music inherently is formulaic and styles are formulaic.

Yeah.

So if you.

There, you know, it's like if you want to play bebop, there are certain things that you have to.

It's not hard and fast, but if you, if you.

There are rules to bebop.

Right.

And if you follow them, 70% of the time you're playing bebop.

But if you start to find yourself drifting into the 50% of the time or even lower, you're just not playing bebop anymore, you know?

Yeah.

And so music is like that.

And so, you know, anyway, so that's kind of what I took away from it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it really depends on your, your, your, what you're trying to accomplish.

So now it's very typical for.

Because again, jazz in college, it's very typical for people to be very doctrinaire about, you know, the style that they choose to play.

So if it's bebop or if it's swing or, or Dixieland, whatever, whatever it is, or an amalgam of those, they, they're very specific and they're very specific about what needs to be left out because it's not valid or part of the style or not valid, which is another kind of weird thing that musicians do.

But I always regard it.

It's.

Music is a language.

And like language, when you're talking with people, you.

If you talk with them enough, you know who they are.

And some of it is because they tell you who they are right out front.

And some of it is you gather from the underlying feeling of what they're saying, what their worldview is or what their politics are, or, you know, what, how they feel, what they think about gender, or what they think about work, or what they think about the country or, you know, or what they think about music or art.

So language conveys that and music is just a language.

And so it's, you know, slightly more abstract than verbal language maybe, but it's as revealing or, and often more revealing than verbal language.

So if you.

My feeling is something might not speak to me, but it's.

It is, it's the real expression of who the person is that's making the music, whether I like it or not or whether I think the quality is, you know, awful, mediocre, great, whatever.

I think the quality, you know, just my assessment of the quality, I usually don't care.

But if you hate people, then you hate what they say, you hate their ideas and you hate what they say.

If you are more accepting of people, then you're generally more accepting of what they say.

So I tend to be, you know, there are musics that I don't spend a lot of time listening to.

Like a lot of, you know, like a lot of contemporary hip hop I only listen to in passing because I have a 10 year old.

So whatever she's listening to, I'm.

I'm hearing.

And I tend to not have music on all the time because I'm leaving space for myself.

But she listens to a lot of music, so I hear, you know, I always end up hearing a lot of contemporary music.

And when she gets older and stops listening, I'll have another baby so that I can just kind of keep.

Keep up with what's going on musically.

I like, you know, I don't, I.

I can't condemn a genre or condemn a group of people, which is the same thing.

If you're condemning who people are creatively, you're condemning who they are.

And I just can't do that.

Other people seem to have a real easy time doing that.

So it's just the way it is.

All right, so here's a.

Here's something that I think is going to be.

Hopefully this is going to be the last question, and I think that this is going to be interesting for somebody coming from somebody like you, because you've done a lot and a lot of different things.

So.

But, you know, it's like as, you know, as artists, we're always looking to the future.

I think so.

And I kind of want to get, you know, we want to.

The question, on the face of it is this is the last question we always ask every guest is, what are your plans for the future?

But if you don't mind, I think maybe hearing from you is like, what about what are your plans for the future?

Just musically, but also, what are your plans?

Like, what do you get.

Do you.

What do you get excited about musically especially?

Hopefully they're the same thing, or maybe they're not, I don't know.

But that would be interesting to hear because I feel like you've done a lot of different things, you know, so it's like, where.

What are the.

What are the, you know, uncharted, I guess, you know, in your opinion, know, uncharted lands of musical expression.

At ease.

A layup question.

Yeah.

Well, I started writing for, you know, other instruments I haven't written for before, so started working with a.

With a group which I hope did record this year, also called A Piece of String Ensemble title.

And it's Eric Person is playing a lot of flute and soprano in that band.

And Rosie Hartline, violinist, terrific, amazing violinist.

Gwen Laster, viola, also great.

And Aua Dixon, cello, who I learn a lot from.

It's Otto Gardner, bass, who I've been working with for years, and Peter O'Brien, drums, same deal.

And I wanted to write for strings but not have it sound like European classical music meets jazz.

So I think it.

I think, you know, I listen more to you ever.

You ever listen to the show Afro Pop Worldwide?

Oh, you check it out, it's National Public Radio.

Never heard.

His name is George Colony, Afro Pop Worldwide.

And it's.

It's been on for like 30 years, probably.

And this guy collects music from everywhere, African diaspora and, you know, so music from here, from South America, but it also be like, you know, there's this group of villages in Tanzania that have this particular style of music that nobody's recorded.

They record locally on cassette.

And this guy gets the cassettes, you know, and we'll play them or he'll do historical, you know, here's contemporary Nigerian rap groups or whatever.

But here's the background with Nigerian high life and what came before that.

It's just like, amazing.

So I listen to that whenever I get a chance.

And they have great.

They have everything archived.

So the string group, I'm thinking more Malian, Senegalese string parts, string instruments, which is very kind of layered.

At the risk of sounding like I'm doing, you know, exotica movie soundtrack, which is always, always an issue, but I'm exploring.

I'm exploring that, making these kind of interlocking parts with.

With the strings, you know, music with not a lot of chord changes, a little more primal.

When you say interlocking parts, like, is it.

It's written out, or there's like, themes and then they can.

Is it improvisational?

Or how does that work?

Everything is.

The.

The parts for the string players are all written.

Okay.

But occasionally it will be like, you know, aku, would you do an introduction on cello to this piece for a few minutes?

And then, of course, the solos within the pieces are.

Are all improvised.

So that's.

That's a group that I'm really interested in expanding on.

You know, the last gig we did was six months ago, so I have to get doing other projects, so I have to get that one up and running.

Right now I'm trying to book little tour for Trio for June and July.

So I'm in the middle of that.

So there's a lot of music there.

I've written a bunch of 10 new pieces that I'm interested in developing for that.

Yeah, that.

So those are.

Those are the main things.

And then the, The.

I, you know, I don't know where it goes.

It's just when I play.

When I write and when I play the pieces enough, I get a sense of, okay, well, that's enough of that particular thing that you've been doing a long time.

You know, Tom Waits credits his wife with that.

She writes something and she says, oh, you've been writing that forever.

You know, get rid of that.

You've been writing that forever.

And I.

So I have to kind of do that for my.

Myself where it's like, okay, you've written that enough times, and it needs to go somewhere else.

And where can it go?

What's the next thing that comes from that?

You know, or maybe you need to jump off a cliff altogether.

And it's not.

It has nothing to do with.

With that, you know, so that's just kind of a constant process.

I'm not writing all the.

The time.

I have a Lot of other irons in the fire, you know, and.

And I.

And I do pay a lot of attention to the rest of my life between teaching because I.

Because I feel responsible for the people I teach, many of whom are as miserable as I was when I was 18.

So, you know, so I feel like there's some value to me to be being supportive of them in addition of their creative process and getting it together that as much as, you know, teaching them theory or beat out rhythms or whatever we're doing, and then I have a family, you know, and that's central.

That's the most important thing in my life.

So I don't want to miss seeing my daughter grow up.

So I really try to spend as much time as I can there.

And then the, The.

The.

The Plant, you know, I'm playing.

I mean, I'm playing with people and my own.

You know, I'm fortunate that people call me to play their original music.

Sometimes that's on record, sometimes it's.

They're just little gigs here and there.

Working a lot with Bobby Previt, drummer, composer.

Really interesting writing.

He was in the city the same time I was, and he used to do the.

The Brew Monday night at the Knitting Factory, which he still occasionally gets.

You know, I think he just got back from Buffalo, where they.

They called him to do that.

But we play every Sunday.

This place called the Avalon Lounge in.

In Catskill, kind of a hipster joint with.

Downstairs is kind of electronica and upstairs was kind of a club with, you know, so that's.

That's real interesting.

His.

His stuff is great.

Keith Prey is a saxophonist in that band and he has a whole body of work, a bunch of records.

So that he's really good writer.

So he calls me occasionally to play his music.

Matt Steckler, New England Conservatory guy who's.

I think he's in Vermont.

I get calls to play his, his music, you know, just here and there.

You know, we play with Franklin.

We're usually making it up on the spot.

There's no charts.

There's no charts at all.

You just kind of go.

We just go.

Yeah, we had a great time.

His piano player was the name.

I'm sorry, it's early in the morning for me.

Davis Whitfield is Mark Whitfield, the guitarist.

His son Davis.

Terrific piano.

Mark is great.

Yeah, really great piano player.

And so he's in.

In Franklin's band currently.

And he's usually a changing cast of characters, but those are the.

The two core people.

And so.

So this summer Franklin came up to visit with his family, as he does, and, and then he said, oh, you know, can Davis come up?

Yeah, I would love to meet Davis.

Davis came up with his girlfriend and we played two pianos and drums, which was real interesting.

So that, you know that.

But that was just go, you know, and even play trio with Franklin with Otto Gardner, who lives close by.

Coincidentally, Otto was with Franklin's band for a number of years also.

So we get together and boom.

I mean, it's like we played together long enough that we know what the vibe is.

We know, you know, how to get out of the way, how to assert whatever needs to be done.

So that's a great, that's a great way of, of playing, you know, and, and that's it.

I mean, I play with other very good people, you know, whether they're singers or instrumentalists.

Occasionally get, you know, Eric Person will get together and do something.

He's still writing great stuff, you know, occasionally.

Rosie, Rosie Heartline comes up from Staten island and we'll, we'll play something.

She's fantastic.

Singer, violinist.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know her harmony stuff between her voice and the violin.

She's a poet.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, she's, she's terrific.

She lives right over the bridge from me.

I didn't.

No.

Yeah, she's, her partner is by Keita Carroll, the trumpet player, composer.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we've worked together for, for years and years.

So.

Cool.

She would be an interesting person for you.

You interview.

She has a lot of great, great stories.

I met her through Howard Johnson.

She moved over from, from, and Howard Knewer from Germany.

He played with the Radio Humber Radio Orchestra there a lot.

That's where she was living.

But, but really interesting.

Interesting.

Great expressive player.

Cool.

But yeah, so that's kind of what I'm doing.

It's just, it just.

You're as busy as you've ever been.

Yeah, pretty, pretty much.

Pretty much less traveling.

I've really not pursued traveling because of, I wanted to be around.

Yeah.

For my daughter.

But, you know, she's old enough now that she can come, so, you know, this California thing will probably all go out there.

Cool.

I'll lose a lot of money on it.

Of course I'm playing, I'm playing at Cellar Dog with Greg Glassman.

Yeah, I remember Greg.

I, I, I knew him as well.

You introduced me to him.

Yeah.

So we're all going to go down for a couple days and, you know, do stuff in the city.

Play the gig.

Yeah.

Actually, so that that sort of brings us to kind of like the final, you know, order of business with respect to podcasting is that I think what we'll do is you already sent me a bunch of stuff, but I think what we should do is, you know, let's get.

I want to get organized about how to promote your stuff on as the show, as we're, you know, preparing these shows to come out and then promoting the shows.

But, you know, we'll do it offline.

Just say this Sun Jump.

Just say all your, like, website socials where people can get your stuff or reach out to you if you want them to say that stuff.

But of course, we're going to post it.

So the links.

But then we'll do, you know, you and I can work behind the scenes to figure out how over the next, you know, whatever couple of months as these shows come out, we can promote all your stuff in a mindful, a thoughtful way.

Yeah, I have a short distribution story, but sunjump records.com got it.

And sunjump gmail.com will get to me.

Got it.

And the sunjumprecords.com is kind of a dual site.

You can click on SunJump Records and it'll be, you know, music, all the.

All the records I've released by my own projects, but other people's projects like Mitch Kessler and Sangeeta, Michael Berardi and Bob Murad and others.

Arthur Reams will be coming up, an Arthur Rhames project.

Or you can click on my name and it'll just have my projects and a lot of bio and stuff, stuff like that.

But yeah, so the distribution, the European.

My European distribution, we were.

We were in.

My partner and my daughter.

My daughter was five.

It's five years ago already.

We're in Barcelona.

And I had been warned.

Jeff Seagull said, oh, watch for the mustard trick.

Do you know the mustard trick in Barcelona?

Okay, so basically, what you're walking, somebody comes up to you and they spray some mustard on.

On your shirt or your backpack.

And then somebody comes up and stops and says, excuse me, you have some stuff on your.

Your back there and let me help you clean it and everything.

And then they kind of maneuver.

Maneuver you to a place where they can rob you, right?

And so we're leaving Barcelona, getting ready to go to south of France and Italy.

And we decide.

We're at the.

Decide to walk to from where we were staying, the old city to the train station.

It's about an hour walk.

And it was like insanely hot.

Right.

And we got backpacks and we got the kid in the stroller.

And we get about three quarters of the way there, we stop in a park, relax, come out.

Guy comes up to me, excuse me, you've got some stuff now at this point, I'm like out of my mind, you know, barely standing, right?

And so I'm really not paying attention.

And the guy starts talking to me.

And so, you know, I can clean that off.

There's a store over here.

Let's go over.

I go over to the store and basically he was trying to get me to go in the store so he could isolate my partner and steal whatever wallet or backpacks or whatever.

Okay?

So I go, I go in, but I'm like watching him because I feel I don't like this guy.

And grab a bottle of water.

And as I'm coming out, the guy grabs this bag and runs.

And I look and I see what it is.

And Laura is like, he took something, you know, what did he.

What did he take?

What was in that back?

And I'm laughing.

Okay.

The bag was.

We, we.

When we flew out, we stopped at her parents.

We flew out of Boston, we stopped at her parents house and I said, oh, I need to get a little.

Just a little carrying case.

I have a couple of novels and, you know, I'm gonna read on the plane and.

And some CDs and stuff, you know, hand out to people.

So I'm gonna go to cvs.

Oh, no, no, no, Mom.

No, no, no.

I have bags.

And so she comes down and she gives me this lovely bag, which I got off the plane.

I felt like an idiot because it was like, okay, I read these really too bad English detective stories and.

Which I'm gonna dump, I'm gonna throw away.

And then there's just a couple of CDs, and then.

So I'm gonna be carrying this around, right?

So I'm carrying around because I fig I got to bring her back the bag.

So I had it on the stroller.

The guy grabbed the bag, you know, and she's.

What was in the bag?

What was it?

I said two really bad English mysteries and a couple of CDs.

I'm gonna regard this as European distribution.

There you go.

Music out there.

He did you a favor.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

So that's the Mustard Scam.

So even when you know it's going to happen, if you're not paying attention.

Yeah, yeah.

I would suggest that Mustard Scam is a great name for a band or a record, but maybe for A different type of, you know, maybe if you ever were in like a novelty, like rock, like heavy metal rock, you know, heavy metal rap group or something.

If you ever join a band like that, you can call it the Mustard Scam.

That and the TES.

My daughter, my 5 year old at the time, was trying to figure out why they took, you know, took something from us.

And we, we explained it's.

Those are Thieves Teeps.

So that's a potential band name also.

The Tees.

Perfect.

All right, man.

So look, we could not be more grateful to you.

Thank you for your interest.

No one's ever heard of me or heard my music, so this will be a first.

I think this is.

I mean, I don't want to oversell it or overstate it, but I know Dan feels the same way.

You were very influential on our musical development.

Oh, thank you.

And it, you know, and we really appreciate it.

And, And I.

That's not just knowing you as a person and.

Because I also felt like this is one of the classic examples of who's the best musician, you know, that no one's heard of.

You know what I mean?

Like, that's kind of the.

That's how I think of you.

It's like, how could this per.

And I don't want to.

You know, you probably think, oh, I'm just me, you know, I'm just John Esposito, and I shouldn't.

But.

But I think of you as like a musical genius.

And it's like to me, it's one of those things that's just how jazz is, you know, I can say great.

Musicians that, you know, I.

I can think of so many great musicians that people haven't heard of, like Arthur James and Clyde Crawford and then ones who, you know, like Woody Shaw, who.

Great.

But most people don't know who that is anymore because he's not here, you know, so.

Yeah, so.

Of course.

So, you know, it's.

It's absolutely our honor to have been able to do this with you.

And I'm so excited to just, you know, promote this.

And then, you know, hopefully, I mean, hopefully it comes up, something comes of it, hopefully you get some streams or who knows what.

But, you know, or maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe, you know, maybe you'll get called for a very high profile gig.

Like something, you know, like.

I mean, I don't know if you want to get called, honestly.

No, I'm always happy.

I'm always happy to work.

What if Witten calls, you know?

Yeah, well, maybe not sure.

I'm sure he has already, but.

Come on.

Come on.

You don't have.

You.

You didn't block his number.

I know you didn't.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

So that's the bottom line is, you know, we really appreciate you spending.

You spend a lot of time with us, and, you know, it's.

And you told a lot of great stories, and we really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

And just to back up what he says, thank you for spending time with us, and thank you for being who you are in that you are a mentor to so many people, and you're continuing that, and we appreciate it.

And I know that the.

The youngsters you're working with now do, too, so thank you.

Thank you.

Yep.

All right.

All right, guys.

We'll talk.