JazzCore2/part three

JazzCore2/part three

Willem von Hombracht played some choice notes in JazzCore2/part one.  Now hear him stretch out in this second JazzCore2 profile.  Let us hear you, too:  Comments invited.

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For artist and audience alike, it can be a profound transformational experience when the normal boundaries between them melt away, and they seem, as Denny Zeitlin puts it, to merge with the music, in effect, to ‘become the music.’  From John Coltrane’s standpoint, an audience member who was as deeply moved as the players was ‘like having another member in the group.’  Coltrane regarded listening itself as ‘an act of participation’ in the music.

     --Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz (1994)

Willem von Hombracht

When I’m playing my music, for the most part I’m trying to create something that sounds beautiful and hopefully something that has an impact on somebody’s experience and they remember it…. When it's done well and when I'm playing with good musicians, playing jazz is…fun and exciting and beautiful.  I try to avoid playing things that I already played.  If I hear myself repeating something too often, I'll make a point of not playing that.  I'll play something else to see where that goes.

You grow by practicing at home by yourself.  That's one activity.  Rehearsing with a band is a different activity.  And performing with a group or by yourself is a different activity. They all have their own challenges, and they all have their own rewards.

     --Willem von Hombracht

Listening to bassist Willem von Hombracht talk about his life and his art, I am struck by his rich boundary crossing:  He defies categories.

Take his family origins and early life.  He was born in San Francisco but moved with his family to the Netherlands when he was 11.  He lived and went to school there till he was 30 and returned to the U.S., finding his way to St. Louis soon after. 

Yes, he recalls, “Emigrating to another country was a big adventure,” what with leaving behind his friends and his childhood home, and “there were some troubling things happened here and there, but I came out of it pretty well.”

For one, he kept his American citizenship during his stay in the Netherlands, and, he says,  “I found out later on that I actually also have Dutch citizenship.  By Dutch law, you have the nationality of your father.  So I'm Dutch by their part of the law, and by US law I have the nationality of where I was born.  So I'm what's called dual-national.”

Moreover, he moved to Europe at an age when, he says,  “it was still easy to learn a language.”  As a result, “I speak English and Dutch fluently.  Plus, I spent time travelling in Europe, so I get by pretty well in French and German as well.”

Willem’s world-citizen status goes deeper still.  In the United States, he says, “I’m generally perceived as a white man, but actually I have mixed racial heritage.  My father's father was Dutch, but my father is from Java, and his mother was a full-blooded Javanese. So I'm 1/4 Javanese.”  Adding to the blend:  “My Caucasian mother is from California, from French-and-Irish background.  So I'm of mixed race.”

2

If you’ve listened to jazz in St. Louis during the last 20 years, you have probably listened to Willem.  Among local players, “I work with a lot of musicians,’” Willem says, but “there's a circle of people I have worked with more often than others.” 

An impressive circle, indeed. Since moving to St. Louis in 1995, in his thirties, he has played bass with some of our most-listened-to musicians:  Willie Akins (from 1995 till 2004), Ptah Williams (2001-2006), and hip jazz luminaries such as Jeanne Trevor, Freddie Washington, Mae Wheeler, Paul DeMarinis, Gary Sykes, Kenny Rice, Rob Block, and Dave Black.

You may also have listened to Willem play other kinds of music because he considers himself multi-lingual and mixed—a boundary-crosser--as a musician.  “I never say to people, ‘I'm a jazz musician.’  Other people call me that.” Indeed, he says,  “I'm often disappointed when I find out that people in other areas of music who are looking for a bassist didn't think to call me because they think I only do that.  I say I'm a musician or a bassist.”

In fact, Willem explains,  “I think I can say without exaggerating that I've played more kinds of music than anybody I've met.”  The list is remarkable:  “Every style of jazz--from Old New Orleans style to very modern, open stuff”-- plus “classical music in orchestras and chamber-music groups, lots of different styles of rock bands and blues bands, church music and Cuban salsa, Caribbean calypso and Brazilian bossa novas, folk music from around the world, tangos, Peruvian music, Mexican music, traditional Persian music, West African music with West African musicians.”

What unites these, Willem says, is that “Most of them involve improvisation.  I've found that the practice we now have of playing classical music without improvising is a very rare exception in the world of music.... I've found that just about every style of music around the world has some element of improvisation.  Some of it has a large element of improvisation.”

3

A key component of improvisation is listening.  Listening is a way of crossing boundaries, of connecting to what is outside of ourselves and therefore of learning, and experiential listening more than academic study has propelled Willem’s learning to play music and growing as a musician.   As he says, “Somebody's sound or style of playing develops over the years--from assimilating things that you hear and like, leaving out things you hear that you don't like.”

That deep listening began early—“when I was a child”--and on a small scale, but the process of learning from listening to many kinds of music was beginning to express itself.  Willem remembers that “my parents had records of a lot of different styles of music.  We had classical music and country-western and jazz records…. Not a lot of records, but we had a few records of all these different things that my parents liked--from folk music to Louis Armstrong.”

The listening was fundamental but rudimentary, partly conscious, partly subterranean, yet all of it seeding the ground for later growth: “I heard those sounds even before I was playing, and even before I was really aware that these were different styles of music.”

That listening bore first fruit after Willem and his family moved to Nijmegen in The Netherlands.  In an early, mysterious expression of the process of listening as learning that has since defined Willem’s life as a player,  “When I was about to turn 16, I suddenly told my parents I wanted a guitar.  I didn't really care for guitar that much…. I have no idea why I suddenly decided that's what I wanted.  I was as surprised as my parents were.

“My father said, ‘Are you sure you want that, son?"  I said, ‘Yes.’  ‘Okay.  Let's go get it.’  So he gave me a guitar when I was 16.”

Listening and learning continued. “About a year later, I decided I wanted to play bass guitar.  That came about gradually.  I was singing with a choir -- the youth church choir—and I started messing around with a bass guitar that they had.

“I noticed that I was playing guitar and playing along with the records that I liked, and that a lot of times I was playing bass parts.  So I thought, ‘Maybe I should get a bass.’

“So then I said, ‘I want a bass guitar.’ So my father bought me a bass guitar.”

Now learning by playing with—and listening to--other musicians emerged. Willem, who was out of high school, “pretty quickly started playing bass in local bands—rock bands first, blues bands next.”

Then, when he was about 21, listening to music took Willem in another, powerfully-important direction—toward jazz and the process of discovering how best to learn to play it.   He listened first to “some friends I knew” who told him about a playing opportunity at the music school in Nijmegen: "’We have this jazz workshop…, but there's no bass player.  Why don' t you come and play?  They need a bass player, so they're not going to charge you.’"    

“That sounded fine to me,” Willem recalls, “because having already been working and performing out, I thought I was above paying to play anywhere, including at the music school.  That was really my introduction to playing jazz myself.”

It was learning by doing, learning by listening--to himself, to the other players--and experimenting, a rich learning process: “It was kind of like, ‘Jump in and do this.’  Like figuring out how to play a walking bass line.  Figuring out how to read chord changes.  Figuring out…oh, one of the tunes they gave us was Dave Holland’s ‘Conference of the Birds.’

“It has a chart written out for the two saxophones or saxophone and flute.  Then it has some chords.  It's in 5/4 time.

“At the top of the page, it says, ‘Intro, Open Bass Solo, Dm.’ I said, ‘What does that mean?’  The guy said, ‘It means you play whatever you feel like in D minor.  That's the intro to this song.’

“So it was like, ‘Hmm. Just do it.’” 

  

4

Willem’s music life now moved forward on two tracks, a process that would teach him more both about playing jazz and about how he best learned to play it.  

Track one:  Jazz gigs of all kinds began to come his way. Nijmegen was “a small city with a fairly small jazz scene.  So pretty soon, people started knowing that I was a bass player and started calling me to play.  I went to some jam sessions, and that's kind of how I got into it.” 

He “started getting calls from some of the older players and started playing a wide variety of music from straight-ahead mainstream jazz to some of the older guys that asked me to play in a Dixieland group.  Then some of the younger guys asked me to play free-form jazz…. So I was doing all that stuff at the same time.  I never thought of them as separate, and I still don’t.  They're just like different inflections of the same thing.”

Track two: “People talked to me about going to study jazz at the conservatory in nearby Arnhem.  My first thought was, ‘I can't do that.  I can't even read notes.’  The jazz department was pretty new then, in the early '80s.  I realized that a lot of these people I'd been playing with at jam sessions and otherwise were going to the conservatory to study jazz.” 

Once he realized "I can play as well as they can, I went to school.  My first real lesson on the double bass was at the conservatory.  That's when I was 23, which was about five years after I got my bass guitar.  It took me that long to save enough money to get one.”

So Willem joined his musical mates and went to Arnhem to study jazz.  “We got jazz history.  We got jazz theory.  We got jazz arranging.  All these different things.”  The conservatory had a full classical-studies program as well as a full jazz-studies program, so Willem, already a versatile player, also studied classical-music history,  “just because I wanted to.  I didn't get credit for it, but I was interested in it.  So I took those classes.  But that was strictly my choice.”

Willem studied formally at the conservatory for four years.  The first of those four was a preparatory year.  “What they said to me at the school was, ‘We can tell that you have talent and potential, but you're not quite ready for the freshman year yet.’"  So he took a year of jazz theory, bass lessons, and jazz ensemble, after which he was deemed prepared to enter the official first year. 

Willem was also learning more and more about how he wanted to learn as a musician. Yes, he “worked really hard and practiced all the time.  I played in all the ensembles and made sure that I kept up.  That was good.”  But there were limits. “I did three years of what was then a 5-year course.  Maybe if it had been four years, I would've stayed around.” 

He recalls “there were a couple of very good teachers, including his bass teacher, but  “there were also some teachers that I wasn't really that thrilled about.”  He was listening:  “After a few years, I think I knew what they had to say.  So I didn't finish school.”

“Actually,” Willem says, “I really wanted to go to California..”  So at age 30, he moved to Los Angeles.  “I wanted to meet some people to study with there.” He did very well, “studying privately with two bassists who were both in Los Angeles at the time:  Charlie Haden and Buell Neidlinger,” both players of multiple styles.  “I studied privately rather than in schools.  So I don't have a degree."                                                                                           

Willem later played with and learned from a diverse mix of other luminaries, from Petula Clark, Herb Jeffries, and Don Preston to Richie Cole, Billy Higgins, Andrew Hill, John Hicks, Howard Johnson, and Vinny Golia.

  

5

Five years after his move to L.A., Willem moved to St. Louis.  Learning to be versatile and to cross boundaries remained central, and he continued the process of mastering and playing in many musical styles--especially jazz--and of learning by listening.

 

“If I want it to sound like bebop or any particular style, I'm familiar with all these different styles, and I can move among them.  I've played and listened to enough music that if somebody says, ‘This is kind of like a 1950s hard-bop-style kind of song,’ I know what that means.  I can play something that fits with that.

“Or if somebody says, ‘I want this to sound like Cecil Taylor is doing it,’ I have an idea of what that means.  I can play it like that.  Or ‘This is supposed to sound like Louis Armstrong.’  I've just assimilated all these different styles throughout the history of the last century. I can move within those styles.”

Yes, Willem says, “That's the kind of thing that comes up in academic circles.  Especially if we try to illustrate to the students the various periods in jazz history.” 

But “it seems like when you're playing in a group and the group is playing its own music, that kind of thing is really less relevant.  Somebody brings in a song, and you try to work it out.  You try to give the song a shape as a new thing--regardless of what influences you might have.”

Process matters more than category, and listening is key: “That's the essence of it.  Listening to the other musicians is the majority of what we do when we're playing, if we're in a good [playing] situation.

“The best music I've played has been with groups of people in which we don't really have to think about what we're going to play or talk too much about what we're going to play.  Because everybody's listening, and the act of listening draws out the right things from each of the musicians.”

6

Yes, “Listening is a guide, but you can't completely not think at all.  You have to have some awareness of what's going on and what you're doing.” For example, “if it's a song I've just learned, I have to pay attention and think more.  That means listening less.  You have to think more about remembering the right sequence of events.’

Stage fright is a problem precisely because of its impact on focus.   Willem rarely has stage fright, but when he does, “It's a distraction.  It makes you stop listening.  If you play a wrong note, you start worrying about that.  You can't think or you can't listen for the next thing.”

Indeed, Willem says, “it's just as detrimental to the music if you think, ‘Wow!  That was really great!’ Because the same effect happens:  You stop listening, and you start thinking about something that's already happened.”

Often, Willem says,  “I'm playing in situations where people aren't quite listening as intently as they could.  We still play good music, but it's not at the same level of creativity.” 

When it does happen, “Listening that intently together is very much like a meditation.”  And “that level of listening and group communion and coordination can happen when you’re playing any style of jazz or music.”

7

For a student of jazz who was learning more and more by listening—playing the music with others and for others—Willem could hardly have found a better luthier than Frenchman Jean Auray, who made a bass for him in 2011—the bass he plays today—and built it on listening.

“What's exceptional about that bass maker is that not only has he mastered the craft of making an excellent instrument, but he also makes instruments for specific players.  That means he listens to how you play.  He listens to your sound, and he makes an instrument that brings out that sound.”

He builds it to stay that way, too.   “Another thing that's remarkable about him and the way that he builds instruments is that he does it very slowly.

“You can build a bass in about a month.  But he only builds three instruments a year.  So he takes about four months to build it.  Because every time you do something--even if you have a tiny play in it--you shave a little piece of wood off…  The wood changes.  It moves and reacts to that.

“So he'll work on an instrument for about a week and then he'll put it away and do repairs on other instruments and things like that.  People bring him other instruments to work on.

“Then after sitting for a week, he'll pick it up again and do the next thing.

“He builds it very slowly and in stages.  The result of that is, after each step, the wood can move and respond and do what it does.  When he's finished with it, that means it's very stable.  Because it's already finished responding to the manipulations.”

The result: an instrument that teaches you about your sound and hearing your sound.  “I've played on quite a few instruments that he made for other bassists, and they're all very good, but some of them speak to me and some of them don't.  When I hear those instruments played by the owner, they're all brilliant.  He listened to how I play and made a bass that suits my sound. Playing it is beautiful.”

8

Willem’s musical life today is a blend of playing and teaching.  “My income is all either playing or teaching.  So I'm glad I can do both of those things, because neither of them is always enough.  I'd like to be playing more, for sure. That makes almost everything easier.  Just for the simple reason there's more money coming in.”

Willem’s teaching includes student bassists and jazz ensembles, mostly at Webster University, where he has been an adjunct faculty member for over 15 years, but before that at Lindenwood University and at community colleges in St. Charles and Jefferson County.  “All those places, I said, ‘I don't have a degree.’  ‘Oh, no.  You're highly qualified.’  I've never asked for those jobs.  They've always invited me to come and teach.”

No surprise that Willem focuses his teaching on improvisation and listening.  “A lot of times, the first thing I'll do is to make them aware of the fact that they're improvising all the time.  If I say I'm going to go outside and get some coffee, that's improvising.  Because I don't know where the coffee shop is.  We improvise every moment of the day.  That's why it's so distressing when I hear people say, "Oh, I hate to improvise.’  Because it's kind of like you're stifling your nature.”

“So then one of the next things is to try to revive that sense of exploration and curiosity.  Realizing that the piece of paper with dots on it is not music.  It's just a visual representation of the music.  And a poor one, at that.

“The music is sound.  The sound is your medium.  You have to do it with your ears -- not your eyes.  You have to listen.”

Yes, part of that is listening to the tradition, the legacy:  “If you're going to improvise and if sound is your medium…most of the time we're improvising within the context of some kind of tradition.  If you’re improvising in a jazz idiom, then it's important to learn what are the characteristics of that idiom, traditionally.  That basically simply means. ‘What did some other musicians before us figure out that they liked to do?  What worked for them?’”

Listening is the foundation:  “If you want to play in a baroque style, you have to listen to how people play baroque music.  If you want to play bebop, you have to listen to how people played it—a lot of listening to recordings as well as live music.”

And all for the end result:  “When I'm playing my music, for the most part I'm trying to create something that sounds beautiful.  Hopefully something that has an impact on somebody's experience, and they remember it.”

  

 9

Willem’s playing schedule is “completely erratic,” with sometimes as many as four jobs weekly, sometimes one or none—mostly jazz, mostly “small night-club type things” but private parties, too. 

“Usually when people hire us, they'll know that they're hiring a jazz group, although sometimes we can expand it without too much trouble, with some pop or blues tunes.  I guess it depends on which people we're playing with.  Some people are just as comfortable as I am moving between styles, and other people are not. Then from time to time, there are also performances at various schools.”

Regardless, playing well matters, which doesn’t necessarily mean showing your technical facility.  “I never thought of myself as a ‘fast’ player,” Willem says. “I never really was that interested in speed.”

Yes, it can be  “fun to play fast sometimes, and sometimes it's appropriate, depending on what song I'm playing.” But, he says, “I've always been more interested both as a listener and a player in other aspects of playing.  Sound.  Harmony.  Note choices.  Energy.  Interaction between the players. 

“Even if we're playing background music for somebody's dinner, I'd still think that we should try to play something that's worth listening to and worth our trouble of playing.  Otherwise, you might as well get a different kind of job.”

“When you're present at the creation of the music, it's really exciting.  Not only that, but what a lot of people don't realize is that the audience is part of the creative act.  There's energy and a response going back-and-forth between the musicians and the audience.  The audience's response…has a direct impact on how you play.”

Jazz clubs are not necessarily the best places to make music worth listening to and playing, Willem says—“even in some of the places that are really serious jazz clubs, where they say, ‘This is a listening room.  Please keep your conversations to a minimum.’

“Without fail in all these clubs, 20 minutes before the end of the set, everybody gets their little book with their check.  As soon as that happens, you can immediately hear people stop listening.  The energy completely drops.  It changes.  Because now everybody is suddenly looking at their bill and starting to calculate their tips, running their credit card. The focus shifts. 

“That means that even though it's what we call a serious listening room, it's really not.  It's still a nightclub or a bar or restaurant or whatever.  The primary focus is not on the music.”

 10

No wonder Willem enjoys playing concerts.  “If we're playing in a concert setting, that’s much more comfortable, because we can do what we like to do.  We can assume that most of the people who've taken the trouble to come out will enjoy it.”

Plus no food and drink:  “When we go to a concert hall, we'll hear music.  Jazz at the Philharmonic.  That idea.  That's the only time when we actually have a real listening room.”

And no surprise that Willem embraced the title of a StoryCorps collection of transcribed narratives: Listening Is an Act of Love. “I think that's very appropriate to music, too.  It's giving up your ego for the group.  That gives you the most intense and most pure music.”