Interview with a bad musician, as if pianist, ungrateful person Dave Bristow. An interview by email in writing.
JazzBluesNews.com: – Are there sub-genres within the jazz field that you tend to stay away from or focus on?
Dave Bristow: – I grew up in Birmingham in the UK with my parents and younger sister. I think the real eureka moment for me musically was listening to Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtrack to the video game ‘Final Fantasy VII’. It’s astonishing – every track is so exquisitely crafted. That soundtrack was a direct catalyst for me pursuing music and composition in a serious way.
JBN: – How has your sound evolved over time? What have you been doing to find and develop your own sound?
DB: – I started learning jazz around 13 years ago and the learning curve was very steep initially – I think it’s safe to say that while I had a lot of enthusiasm for the music I had no idea what I was doing! But I’ve had time to listen to a lot of the great recordings, transcribe solos and play with lots of musicians and hopefully my playing has improved as a result!
JBN: – What routine practices or exercises have you developed to maintain and improve your current musical proficiency, in terms of both rhythm and harmony?
DB: – I rely very heavily on the transcription process – taking a chord sequence or a chorus of a linear solo that I really love through every key. It’s a process that takes weeks, even months. When I feel comfortable in one key, I’ll change key and work through patiently until I’ve covered all of them. Harmonically, listening and transcribing solo arrangements of Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea has helped me enormously. I also listen to a lot of records and apportion a part of my day to just sitting at the piano to improvising and/or composing – sometimes I’ll discover interesting things harmonically by accident!
JBN: – How do you keep stray, or random, musical influences from diverting you from what you’re doing?
DB: – Sometimes not seeing those things as diversions but opportunities can lead to interesting things musically! If I’m a bit anxious about something that’s happening on the bandstand, I stop, breathe and wait to until I hear something before I improvise again!
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JBN: – In your opinion, what’s the balance in music between intellect and soul?
DB: – I think it’s a symbiotic pairing. For me, ‘soul’ in music is following and engaging with the records that you love and developing a personal taste through listening. Intellect has to do with the learning process – using analytical strategies to understand the how those sounds work. I think the best music is a result of these two processes working together.
JBN: – There’s a two-way relationship between audience and artist; are you okay with delivering people the emotion they long for?
DB: – Sure! I certainly make deliberate compositional choices – changes in timbre, harmony, texture or rhythm to evoke certain emotions.
JBN: – How can we get young people interested in jazz when most of standard tunes are half a century old?
DB: – Through the great recordings firstly. There’s a rich canon of great music that still sounds fresh and relevant and deserves to be listened to. Secondly through live music – Jazz and improvised music really comes alive on stage, in the moment and there’s a lot of great bands out there, playing great music. Thirdly through creating opportunities for musicians that are interested in the music to cultivate their talents – through affordable, good quality music education, through performing opportunities, through music camps, through arts council funding and bursaries and through cultural sector support. All of these can help younger talents to grow and flourish.
JBN: – John Coltrane once said that music was his spirit. How do you perceive the spirit and the meaning of life?
DB: – To me the spirit is a manifestation of one’s predilections, personality, ambitions and behavioral tendencies – it’s the cumulative self. It’s a light that shines off of someone as a result of those things working in tandem. It can also relate to one’s intuitive guiding principles. It’s the reason some musicians cannot sound a certain way because it contravenes what they really are. I can’t speak for everyone about the meaning of life – maybe I can’t really answer that with any kind of efficacy – as long as I’m operating in the world of music with some kind of regularity I’m happy.
JBN: – If you could change one single thing in the musical world and that would become reality, what would that be?
DB: – Musicians need to be kinder to each other. We’re all secretly struggling – some with exhaustion and sleep deprivation, some with musculo-skeletal disorders and overuse injuries, some from depression, some with our instruments, some from woeful financial lots, some with the struggle of balancing musical development with multiple jobs and travelling to and from them, some from precarious living situations and some with unfortunate combinations of all of these.
JBN: – Let’s take a trip with a time machine: where and why would you really want to go?
DB: – New York in the 1960’s – I would love to have seen Coltrane’s Quartet and Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet.
Interview by Simon Sargsyan
Note: You can express your consent and join our association, which will give you the opportunity to perform at our Jazz and Blues festivals in Europe and Boston, naturally receiving an appropriate royalty. We cover all expenses. The objectives of the interview are: How to introduce yourself, your activities, thoughts and intellect, and make new discoveries for our US/EU Jazz & Blues Association, which organizes festivals, concerts and meetings in Boston and various European countries, why not for you too!! You can read more about the association here. https://jazzblues.eu/2022/11/19/us-eu-jba/
