ADAM JAMES WILSON

Could you introduce you to the french public ?
Certainly.  I'm a composer and multi-instrumentalist (my main instrument is the fretless guitar) living in New York City.  I work in a variety of contexts, from jazz-influenced free improvisation to electronic music.  I am lately obsessed with the idea of abstract expressionism in music.  I believe that what I and many other improvisors in New York are doing now is the musical equivalent of the work Jackson Pollack and Willem De Koonig were doing in the visual arts in America during the 1930's-50's - vomiting their work, so to speak, from the subconscious, and thus capturing something of the essence of the times in which they lived.  Traditional jazz has some of this, but it is still based in an idiom, whereas freely improvised music is only constrained by the imagination and technical capabilities of the performers.  I hope to explore this idea further as I grow and develop.
As to my early musical development: I was raised in small town in upstate New York, where there wasn't much musically to inspire.  My family did not own a stereo, so the only exposure I had to music as a very young child was the transistor radio my mother occasionally played while she cooked or did other chores.  Although I was too young to remember it, my mother tells me that I got quite excited when Beethoven's fifth symphony played on the radio - that I would bounce around the room shouting the descending minor-third motive. This is interesting because I have no serious interest in Beethoven now, or in any 19th century romantic music.  My first memorable exposure to music came, horribly enough, through MTV, when I was five or six years old (during MTV's first broadcast year).  The area  I grew up in was not densely populated enough to warrant the running of the cable that carried the signal for MTV, but I was able to watch MTV on my grandparents'  television when we visited them in Connecticut.Although at this point in my life I have a profound distaste for most commercial music, the images and sounds my undeveloped ears heard at that time convinced me to become a musician.  I begged my parents to buy me a guitar.  My father, who is an engineer, tried to teach me, but he knew nothing about music, and both of us became frustrated.  When I was a little older, I began to teach myself, and eventually was able, at 17, to study music with an organist named Bette Kahler, who had studied at the Sorbonne and also learned from Messaien and Nadia Boulanger.

Who would you cite as influences and inspirations and why ? (these can include "non-musical" sources). And who are the guitarists who influenced you ?
Iannis Xenakis, Harry Partch, and Joe Maneri are my primary musical influences.  As a young teenager, I was mostly interested in guitar technique, and wanted to play fast, complicated music.  I worshipped any  technically masterful guitarist, in any genre.  As I grew older, and began to get interested in composition, this fascination with technique faded.  The harmonic resources and motivic patterns of the guitarists I listened to had too much in common; as I took note of this, I began to look for more rare forms of music.  Music, to many people, is only considered good if it adheres to rules that everybody agrees upon - not meaning that most people have thought much about these rules, just that they've internalized certain features of the music they've been bombarded with since they were children. Xenakis, Partch, and Maneri - for me - all legitimatize approaches to music that do not conform to this idea, yet, at the same time, they each owe something to music history.  Xenakis, in his use of mathematical models, showed that musical organization must not necessarily be limited to gradual extensions of traditional tonality; however, he learned orchestration from Messaien, and composed for traditional instruments.  Partch expanded the resources of the composer, creating unheard-of instruments, and at the same time justified many of his innovations using precendents set by the ancient Greeks.  Finally, Joe showed me that improvisation, music direct from the heart or spirit, can have a vitality that is much more difficult to achieve within rational constraints; nevertheless, his improvisation is informed by a lifetime's absorption of folk music and a rigorous background in the aesthetics of the 2nd Viennese school.  At different times in my life, I have alternately tried to immerse myself in tradition or divorce myself from it completely ; in reality, neither of these is healthy or even possible! In addition to other musicians, many writers, philosophers, sociologists, and engineers have influenced my thinking about music and its connections to us and the world.  I try to make music that is informed by an awareness of these connections.  There is a quantum relationship of elements in music - change instruments, for example, and use the same intervals; the dissonance of those intervals may perceptually change.  One can't do one thing and not expect to affect something else.  This is true for the larger relationships in life: people to one another and the environment, political or economic structures to psychological well-being - the list is endless.

You studied composition and classical guitar at the Oberlin Conservatory and computer music at the University of Illinois. Could you speak to us about these years ?
One does a lot of experimentation as an undergraduate, and like any other student I emulated my favorite artists.  At Oberlin I wrote a gigantic orchestra piece a la Xenakis, with divisi parts for every string - needless to say, it was only played once, and badly!  I also begn to experiment with free improvisation, in a group that also played jazz, rock, and took a collective inspiration from Ligeti's chamber music.  Meanwhile I was performing on classical guitar. I was never a devoted performer of historical music - I was always wanting to play my own pieces, which may be why I never finished my guitar major.  I also became aware, through playing the classical guitar, of a condition known as focal dystonia, affecting the nerves in my right hand.  Since its diagnosis several years ago, I've had to develop alternative techniques for playing the guitar, the progress of which has been aided by the study of Alexander technique.  I've also begun playing the violin now, and I feel it has been a much healthier experience, since I've already been through the pain of learning one instrument. After leaving Oberlin, I focused less on performance and more on composition.  My interest in formalized music led me to the University of Illinois, where I learned computer programming from Heinrich Taube, and wrote my own software to apply mathematical models in musical composition.  I wrote several self-generating pieces that were performed on a computer-driven disklavier, in real-time.  I also began to explore the use of microtonality in music, studied the works of Ben Johnston, and I completed work on a replica of one of Partch's instruments, which I still use in performances and recordings.  When I completed my degree, my interest in total formalization was beginning to wane, and my budding awareness of the quantum relationships between musical parameters was forcing me to think about new ways of making music. I'd begun to seriously question where I wanted to take music, personally, and didn't feel like I'd find the answers at school, so I packed up and moved back to the east coast - to Boston - where I met Joe Maneri.

Could you speak to us about the Boston area scene ?
Sure.  I spent three years in Boston, and played with a lot of different folks in the improvised music scene: Joe Maneri, Katt Hernandez, Jonathan Vincent, Vic Rawlings, Tatsuya Nakatani, Mike Bullock, Aaron Trant.  The musicians seem to fit roughly into three major idealogical camps, which are all quite supportive of one another.  The first is what some call the "low decibel" scene, which includes players like James Coleman, Vic Rawlings, Bhob Rainey, and Greg Kelley. These guys focus on making sparse, quiet gestures.  The amount of space they leave around notes is tremendous.  I'm not such a fan of this type of music when its being made by small ensembles, but when its being played in large groups there is the possibility of beautiful, delicate, interwoven textures.  Another scene centers around microtonality and counterpoint, and many of the people in this scene, including Katt Hernandez, Jonathan Vincent, and myself, are closer in our thinking to that of saxophonist Joe Maneri, who teaches at New England Conservatory in Boston and is probably most well known for his trio with his son Mat and drummer Randy Peterson. This is the scene with which I am most familiar; it has roots in jazz and early 20th century classical music.  It is usually improvised in small ensembles, emphasizes emotional expressivity, and contains dense counterpoint and motivic variation.  Finally, there's a 'noise' or electronic faction, made up of folks who use a lot of home-made and "low-tech" electronics to produce sound in the moment.  I don't have many ties to this community, but I appreciate the work they're doing to expand sonic resources. 
Much of the improv community in Boston centers around New England Conservatory, which is one of only two or three schools in the country that has a contemporary improvisation department in addition to it's jazz department.  The Zeitgeist Gallery, Berwick Institute, Oni Gallery, Tremont Theatre, and Institute of Contemporary Art are places where you're likely to catch some cutting-edge experimental music, and of course, there's the yearly "Autumn Uprising" festival of improvised music, curated by James Coleman.

Generally what do you prefer, free improvisation, structured improvisation or composition ? and why ?
The only-slighty-untrue answer is that I don't have a preference. Music is the structure of sound, and it occupies a spectrum, from minimal organization to extreme organization.  Some people have tried to create music without involving themselves at all, but the very idea of doing this implies structure.  Lately I love the freedom of totally improvised music, but I do work on techniques of playing that are informed by a combination of idealogy and feelings.  I try to be able to reproduce things that my collaborators play in ways that are subtle - not mere repetition of a passage at some transposition, or a retrograde of the notes, but a synthesis of the gestures I desire to play with the auditory material that others are generating.In this way a collective unconscious is born.  I also like to pre-compose electronic material and improvise over it, and then go back and chop up the improvised parts.  To me, this is like composing with raw sound.  You have the ability to manipulate the sound outside of real-time, like a paper-and-pencil composer, and also the possibility of retaining the fire of spontaneous expression.

You are yet a young musician. Do you have some objectives in your music ? and what do you want to work more specially in music ? (technique or direction of play)
The only objective I have right now is to continue making music. I've thought a lot about the purpose of music. Should my music have a political agenda ?  Performing in such a specialized set of genres, how can I hope to make a difference?  Should I play music that is more suitable for a wider audience in order to get my message across ? What is my message?  Is music really important ? If so, why don't musicians pushing the edges of the art get compensated for their efforts - especially in the United States ?  I'm beginning to believe now that these questions aren't really important.  In a certain sense, I was chosen to do this, I didn't choose to do it.  No matter what, whatever happens when I switch off my rational self and start playing my instrument is going to be a commentary on what's happening around me.  I believe that people who share a time and place in history can feel some things in similar ways - that music made in a time and place can sound tortured, ecstatic, or blue and that people in that time and place have a certain intersubjectivity that enables them to collectively identify where those sounds are coming from - emotionally, socially, even politically. On a less metaphysical note, I recently got a chance to play with saxophonist Antoine Roney, and he put me in the mood to make a free improv recording that nods more towards traditional jazz than some of the stuff I've been doing recently.  I also have some very abstract electronic music I've been working on, incorporating improvisations that were performed along with prototypes of the composed electronic parts. Less and less people go to concerts (I remember for example a wonderful concert of Joe Maneri at the Knitting Factory in 1998 with only 5 persons in the audience...) Do you think there is a danger for the development of the creative musics ? Its hard to tell.  Incidentally, Joe recently had his 75th birthday concert at the Tonic, and every set filled the room to capacity.  The improv scene is nothing if not inconsistent!  I think there are a number of obstacles today to making live music successful, and free improvisation has its own special set of obstacles.  One of the problems is the proliferation of recorded media: CDs, DVDs, MP3s, internet, television, etc.  People can listen to music in their own homes and control the environment themselves.  A recording is meant to be a selection of a group's best material, or an aural snapshot of it's best playing, so when listening to a recording there is no worry that the band will have an off night.  The presence of recordings doesn't seem to be cutting into the ticket sales of headlining pop groups, but these groups have an enormous marketing machine at their disposal.  Unfortunate that we can't say the same for jazz and improvised music, because improv is best enjoyed live, where one can get a sense of the interaction between the players.  There may sometimes be weak communication or bad playing, but there are also moments of total synergy, which are much more palpable when observed in the presence of the musicians themselves.  Such moments are almost totally unnoticeable on a disc, yet live improv suffers because most people going out at night are tired from work, and would rather be entertained than listen to music that demands even more of their energies.  That is why the music industry focuses on entertainment music.  If people in the United States had more leisure time and better access to education, and if schools gave a greater priority to arts education, then there might be more interest in creative music.  The truth is that most folks are struggling just to make a living (Americans don't even have socialized health care!).  The last thing working people want to do at the end of the day is listen to spontaneous music, which, when played passionately and from the spirit, reminds them of the difficulties in their own lives.  Does this speak of a danger?  Yes.  I think so.  When a community does not have a vibrant arts culture, it shows that more pressing needs are not being met.  People don't have as much time as they might like for the arts because they are concerned with basic survival. Paradoxically, the creative arts can raise awareness about such issues, but fail in the absence of an audience.

Do you think the pluridisciplinary approach is a way for creative musicians ? and do you have any projects in this direction ?
Absolutely. It is a definitely a way.  Almost everything that can be done in the arts - as separate disciplines - has been done. There are vogues concerning ways of making music that have gone in and out of style, but really only new artistic resources, such as those made available through changing technology, along with new combinations of specialised art forms, will create noticeable changes in the aesthetic landscape.  My experience has been with pop music and, later on in life, the Western classical music tradition, jazz, and computer music.
Musical language in the Western European tradition followed an evolutionary path from before Palestrina up until Wagner, or, some would say, up until and including Schoenberg.  Schoenberg meant his twelve-tone serial system to be the next evolutionary step beyond the high chromaticism of Wagner, but it was in reality a radical break with tradition.  Composers schooled in this tradition soon began to invent their own musical languages, and borrow them from other cultures.  Jazz history is a microcosm of this development, moving at a much higher velocity from traditional forms to modern forms: blues and boogie-woogie to swing to bebop to free jazz.  Different kinds of musical traditions are also being absorbed into one another now, possibly due to the wide availability of all kinds of recorded music.  I can go to the record store and get a Thelonious Monk disc, a CD of Balinese gamelan music, some music by Tuvan throat singers, and an obscure noise piece made from sampling breaking branches. Organising musical ideas with all these radically different musics as models can be scary.  A friend, who is an Indian musician, fears this eclecticism so much that he once refused to sell me a sarod unless I promised only to play traditional Indian music on it. I think there are enough people interested in preserving traditions to keep them mummified for the future.  It is the synthesis of ideas that is intriguing to me. Right now I have some projects combining improvisation with pre-composed computer music.  I'm not working on anything yet that involves extra-musical art forms, but I hope in the future to work with experimental filmakers.

Could you speak to us about this new alternative scene in NYC, the scene of Brooklyn ?
I don't think the scene is really that new.  I just think that there's a new generation of creative musicians developing here.  A lot of us happen to live in Brooklyn, because its cheaper than living in Manhattan, but concerts take place all over the city.  A few new venues are cropping up in Brooklyn, also because of the influx of artists who can no longer afford to live in the East Village. The previous generation is, of course, incredibly vital and active.  They are supportive, and sometimes collaborate with much younger musicians. In another twenty years there will be another group of musicians.  It goes on.  Hopefully New York City will continue to be a viable place for artists to live and work.

Could you speak to us about your first recordings Outside and Darker ?
The history of these records is kind of confusing. 'Unify' was released earlier this year and is currently available through CDBaby, at http: file://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ajwilson/. 'Darker' is finished and is awaiting public release, and 'Outside,' which was recorded before either of the other two records, is still undergoing revision and will be released probably in 2003.  I'm in the process of forming a record label, so 'Darker' and 'Outside' won't be "officially" released until the label is launched 'Outside,' in its present incarnation, is all solo work - I multitracked myself playing a variety of instruments: fretless guitar, electric and classical guitars, electric violin, Harmonic Canon.  These pieces are not performable live - they're really made for recorded media; so I've been doing a lot of editing, and adding electronics. Its slowly taking shape. I can't leave a project alone. I'll keep editing and revising it forever unless someone or something forces me to finalise it and kick it out the door. But this is the great thing about recorded media - you can change things, and do things that are impractical in performance situations. Performing and recording are really totally separate art forms. My belief is that if you're going to record, take advantage of all the crazy things you can do to tweak and manipulate the sound. A lot of folks in the free improv scene want to capture "raw" performances on tape. This is impossible, because the act of running a performance through a microphone substantially colors the sound. In order to get something that's close to how the piece might have been perceived live, you usually have to do a lot of tweaking. That's what we did with 'Unify,' which is a selection of one-take live improvisations. But I'm also for taking it even further, manipulating the sound to achieve something that wasn't heard in the performance, something that would have been next to impossible to do live. That's what 'Outside' is about. 'Unify' was totally unrehearsed, and the only major tweaks are EQ, levels, and reverb. Arto, Jonathan, Katt, Aaron and I just popped into the studio and played for a few hours. Everyone's training and background shines through on this record; you can hear Aaron's classical precision, Arto's background with Bulgarian folk music, my rock guitar chops surface occasionally.  And these folks are sensitive enough to listen and find ways to integrate their unique styles into the collective sound. You'll notice on some tunes that Aaron doesn't play at all; he was miked up the whole time and ready to go, but he sometimes sat out, by choice, for the duration of an entire piece! 'Darker' is a more intimate trio, in which I play Harmonic Canon instead of fretless guitar, with Katt on violin and Arto on flute.The Harmonic Canon is an 88-stringed instrument, sort of like a hammer dulcimer. It was invented by an American composer named Harry Partch, who died in the early 1970's. I built mine after studying Harry's original instrument. It is useful for exploring microtonal tunings, because it has bridges that can be moved anywhere underneath the strings. I'm sort of a percussionist on this recording; I set up a rhythmically varied but harmonically static drone, and Katt and Arto weave melodies around me. Some of the pieces on this recording, which is also a set of one-take live improvisations, have a profound emotional effect on me. We set up each piece by throwing out a few adjectives before playing. At one point Katt asked if we could play something a bit "darker," hence the name of the disc.

You play with the same musicians since some years now. Do you think there is a good  interaction between you now ?
This is a difficult question to answer. Sometimes I find rehearsing with the same group of people for a long time can help the group to build a wonderful and cohesive musical language. But knowing other people's playing too well can make one lazy; the group may get stuck, and stop adding new vocabulary to their language. Sometimes when playing with folks for the first time, there's a level of concentration that produces incredible music. And sometimes the music flops. Both approaches are worth exploring. I recently played at the Knitting Factory with Tatsuya Nakatani and DanDeChellis ; I'd never played with either of them before, but we had a great night. I''ve had the same type of situation occur with different people, and the performance was not so good (not because of  a lack of musicianship on anyone's part, but because of a difference in musical values). The only rule, I think, is making sure you're on the right page stylistically. If two people like each other's music, chances are they'll play well together.

In his book "Improvisation : its nature and practice in music" the english guitarist Derek Bailey said that " collaboration with musicians who are not improvisators, can be at the origin of great things." Are you agree with that ? and do you have some projects in this direction ?
I definitely agree.  No specific projects are taking shape now, but I would like to try collaborating with some classical chamber musicians. Professional classical musicians have such amazing chops; I'd love to write some music that forces them to improvise a bit or forces me to play more pre-determined material. The tension involved in stretching one's self can often result in greater concentration, and thus more intensely focused music.

Could you speak to us about your projects for the next year ?
I hope to record a disc early in 2003 with some of the same personnel from 'Unify,' along with some new folks.  I have some additional mixing to do for some of the compositions on 'Outside,'  which I hope to finish early next year.  I'm also in the process of creating a non-profit record label to release my own discs and those of other artists working in the avant garde.  Pending the formation of the label, I'll officially release 'Darker' and 'Outside.'   I'll still be playing regularly in New York and Boston; in fact, I'll be performing with my quintet right down the road from my house at the 2003 Improvised and Otherwise festival in Brooklyn.  Finally, I'm tentatively planning a tour of Europe for the summer of 2004; a lot of next year will involve planning for that.  

Interview by Sebastien Moig