• news & bio
• discography
• tour schedule
• photo gallery
• articles & quotes
• contact info
Excerpt from All About Jazz New York, interview with Tom Harrell by Laurel Gross, April 2009 published in All About Jazz http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=32416:
Gross:
You've been playing, composing and arranging music for about 40 years. How do you keep things fresh?Harrell:
I pretty much go by my own feelings - how I relate to the sounds in my mind. I also like to relate it to dance rhythms, which makes it contemporary. I also like to relate things to a kind of meditation, a spiritual kind of awareness...But I guess the main impetus is rhythm. It's the most important element. And if you can take out a fresh harmony and an interesting kind of melody and a new type of rhythm, you can have a lot of impact. One of the ways to compose is to see how you can modify and extend your own perceptions of the moment in addition to interlocking these elements in a fresh way.Gross:
Where do you go for inspiration in terms of dance rhythms? Is it an instinctive kind of rhythm or do you work from rhythms you've heard before in some other forms?Harrell:
The quintet I have now (saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Johnathan Blake) gives me a lot of inspiration; they're really exciting players. I basically try to relate the rhythms to the clave and to African music and latin music. It has a pattern that I think is related to the universe itself, the yin and yang pattern. I believe that each person's body is like a microcosm of the universe - a kind of untoitself - so when people dance or do yoga, it reflects that. When I excercise or take a walk I try to find a tempo that feels natural to me. Whatever i write also has to feel natural to me. I wouldn't want to write something that feels unnatural. At the same time I want to write compositions that other people can relate to.Gross:
"Organic" is a word that some people have used to describe your compositions.Harrell:
yeah, that's a good word. I try to create a feeling of flowing. That may be the hardest thing - to create a feeling of flowing in the melodies, the harmonies and the rhythms. As a composer, I sometimes think of it as a stream-of-consciousness style, the way a writer may tell a story. Basically you tell a story when you compose, the same way you would when you are improvising a solo or talking in a conversation. It's storytelling. Charlie Parker once said he would try to translate beauty in music. So in a sense I think that's a pretty good description of what a composer does.read the full interview• "A brilliant trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer."
–Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker
• "There is no one in jazz today writing with more intelligence, depth and heart than Tom Harrell."
–Bill Milkowski, JazzTimes
• "The premier trumpeter of his generation."
–David Hajdu, Entertainment Weekly
• "A master of melody."
–Tom Masland, Newsweek
• "One of the top trumpeters in jazz for the past two decades and one of the music's most prolific and gifted composers."
–Joe Cooper, New York Observer
• "He is that rare improviser who never resorts to cliché, a talent who seems to have an underground reserve of melody."
–Tom Moon, Musician
• "His playing is sublime, with a dark warm tone and a poetic sense of melody...his music makes you ponder the heart."
–Chris Norris, New York