The second Q and A for the Sofa Series brings pianist Liam Noble into focus
katan500: Favourite colour?
Liam Noble: Orange;
my family say I'm lying. I say I like it because I think not many
people choose it, and that it's the same reason I used to support Aston
Villa at school (in Bromley) instead of Liverpool. (katan500: Hmm... a sort of underdog colour....)
Katan500: Jazz is... In 150 characters?
Katan500: Cats or dogs? As It's Christmas... artificial or real Christmas trees?
katan500: What do you want for Christmas?
Liam Noble: I honestly don't know. I like to just stop everything and get drunk, joke about the company of in-laws and then quite enjoy it anyway. I see it as a recharging thing before the trials of attempting to play the piano with cold, January hands.
katan500: How do you relax?
katan500: Who is your ideal partner (however you choose to interpret)? Did you see Alex Hawkins (that other pianist) avoided that one...
Liam Noble: Yes, he’s no fool! *Laughs* Musically, sound is the most important thing. I like to play with people who have a sound that then dictates how they choose their materials (notes, noises, melodies or words). The rudiments of music are important, but only as ways of applying a sound; and some people find they have a sound that resists whatever those current rudiments might be, so they have to modify them or look elsewhere.
Katan500: Tell me something about yourself (your instrument, your relationship with it...etc)
Katan500: Why did you choose the piano?Liam Noble: Are you attracted to any other instruments... in other words, would you be unfaithful to your piano?
Liam Noble: I
love the guitar; you can put your fingers on it and come up with things
that would never happen on a piano, and that sound different. A lot of
jazz musicians tried to emulate other instruments, Earl Hines doubling
right hand lines in octaves to emulate Armstrong's trumpet sound, Bud
Powell and Parker, Paul Bley and Ornette...I think Bill Frisell found a
way of playing the guitar like a piano, and yet it's so specific to the
guitar too. So, I think it's a rich vein. I used to play the clarinet,
but left it on the tube. Those cases are so
small....
katan500: If you weren't a musician what would you be?
Liam Noble: I think I might have done something to do with writing. Even more chance to hide away after the deed!
katan500: I think you'd make a great writer *gushing*. You've taken to blogging like a fish to water, the last piece I read Gaku Self Help was so beautifully written. I'm so jealous. What got you blogging?
Liam Noble: Well, that was weird...I put it on a grant application for the Arts Council, that I would blog to attract new audiences. A tour blog, you know, charting the trials and tribulations of a band on the road. Except we weren't really. So what came out was just stuff that was littering up my head, thoughts on music and life really. But the interesting thing was, I'd get these things down, and then I got fascinated about how best to articulate them. So it was like composition, the idea comes out in 20 seconds, the composing of it takes all afternoon. I enjoy it, like a parallel activity to music, but without the training and knowledge...
katan500: How do you describe your musical style and where do you position yourself?
Liam Noble: It always feels incredibly pompous to talk about oneself like this, especially using "oneself" as a word. Still, I've been thinking a lot about it recently. With the recent passing of Stan Tracey, I've been watching a lot of his stuff on YouTube. There are some videos where you just see his hands; it's really quite remarkable how he "drums" the instrument, and I feel a real affinity with that. Monk and Ellington did that too, and they were my earliest heroes.
Katan500: What would you say your musical influences are?
Liam Noble: Well, they are many layered, I think, for anybody. Ellington was my first love, just as a prescence in that band, the power of the piano to cut through, but only by reducing the amount of notes horizontally and concentrating on vertical sonorities. (Stravinsky's music has that too, and that points to all manner of other areas of music). There's a pressure to be "burning", to be "able to play" that means that anyone who reduces their note output is making a brave decision. I try and aspire to that where possible. Of course, through Monk you get to Bud Powell, and into the "burning" stuff...Herbie, McCoy, Jarrett, all deeply ingrained influences. But then there are those influences I have sought out in order to freshen things up. Through John Zorn and Naked City I discovered Frisell, and also Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb, a husband and wife who's compositions have influenced me enormously but who are tucked away on the periphery of jazz. New things come up all the time; playing withTom Rainey influenced the way I thought about rhythm as well as ways of applying those ideas to free improvisation. There's also the type of situation where you "do the gig"; going with the flow of what's around you can be immensely rewarding, and in that sense the more you've music listened (and to some degree applied to your instrument) the better armed you are.
katan500: If you weren't a musician what would you be?
Liam Noble: I think I might have done something to do with writing. Even more chance to hide away after the deed!
katan500: I think you'd make a great writer *gushing*. You've taken to blogging like a fish to water, the last piece I read Gaku Self Help was so beautifully written. I'm so jealous. What got you blogging?
Liam Noble: Well, that was weird...I put it on a grant application for the Arts Council, that I would blog to attract new audiences. A tour blog, you know, charting the trials and tribulations of a band on the road. Except we weren't really. So what came out was just stuff that was littering up my head, thoughts on music and life really. But the interesting thing was, I'd get these things down, and then I got fascinated about how best to articulate them. So it was like composition, the idea comes out in 20 seconds, the composing of it takes all afternoon. I enjoy it, like a parallel activity to music, but without the training and knowledge...
katan500: How do you describe your musical style and where do you position yourself?
Liam Noble: It always feels incredibly pompous to talk about oneself like this, especially using "oneself" as a word. Still, I've been thinking a lot about it recently. With the recent passing of Stan Tracey, I've been watching a lot of his stuff on YouTube. There are some videos where you just see his hands; it's really quite remarkable how he "drums" the instrument, and I feel a real affinity with that. Monk and Ellington did that too, and they were my earliest heroes.
Liam Noble: Well, they are many layered, I think, for anybody. Ellington was my first love, just as a prescence in that band, the power of the piano to cut through, but only by reducing the amount of notes horizontally and concentrating on vertical sonorities. (Stravinsky's music has that too, and that points to all manner of other areas of music). There's a pressure to be "burning", to be "able to play" that means that anyone who reduces their note output is making a brave decision. I try and aspire to that where possible. Of course, through Monk you get to Bud Powell, and into the "burning" stuff...Herbie, McCoy, Jarrett, all deeply ingrained influences. But then there are those influences I have sought out in order to freshen things up. Through John Zorn and Naked City I discovered Frisell, and also Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb, a husband and wife who's compositions have influenced me enormously but who are tucked away on the periphery of jazz. New things come up all the time; playing withTom Rainey influenced the way I thought about rhythm as well as ways of applying those ideas to free improvisation. There's also the type of situation where you "do the gig"; going with the flow of what's around you can be immensely rewarding, and in that sense the more you've music listened (and to some degree applied to your instrument) the better armed you are.
In
the end, honestly, I don't see it as my music, I see it as a compendium
of "found sounds" that come out in particular ways for reasons unknown
to me.
katan500: Who do you admire (alive)?
Liam Noble: That list is shrinking all the time....
Katan500: Who do you admire (dead)
Liam Noble: I'm not sure about admiration as a concept. I like some things, not others. I admire the musicians that kept going in the face of far greater adversity than many of us will ever face. As to my favourites; Ellington, Monk, Stravinsky, Miles, in many ways the usual suspects. And I admire Brubeck, he dealt with his popularity on the best way he could.
katan500: Is jazz dead? What do you think this means?
Liam Noble: It means cheap, lazy journalism. There seems to be very little writing about jazz that attempts to capture it's feeling, the sensations of what it means to be around it or in it. Maybe it's hard to tell the difference between dead and alive with jazz. Maybe jazz is like a cat, sometimes just sitting immobile waiting for things to settle down.
katan500: Who do you admire (alive)?
Liam Noble: That list is shrinking all the time....
Katan500: Who do you admire (dead)
Liam Noble: I'm not sure about admiration as a concept. I like some things, not others. I admire the musicians that kept going in the face of far greater adversity than many of us will ever face. As to my favourites; Ellington, Monk, Stravinsky, Miles, in many ways the usual suspects. And I admire Brubeck, he dealt with his popularity on the best way he could.
katan500: Is jazz dead? What do you think this means?
Liam Noble: It means cheap, lazy journalism. There seems to be very little writing about jazz that attempts to capture it's feeling, the sensations of what it means to be around it or in it. Maybe it's hard to tell the difference between dead and alive with jazz. Maybe jazz is like a cat, sometimes just sitting immobile waiting for things to settle down.
katan500:Tell me about your last tour...anything amusing happened...
Liam Noble: We are all such serious minded and intense people that nothing funny happened , we just are really into the music and that's all (*mock earnest tone*). My favourite moment was in Birmingham, in the interval before the second half of the "Brother Face" gig, announced thus: "Take your seats for the second half of Liam Noble's Brother's Face" (katan500: HaHa. Well that's funny. But how did you arrive at the name Brother Face?). Ah, this was via a Robert Creeley poem called "Histoire De Florida", it's one of the lines. I love the idea of looking into the mirror and seeing someone else who is, in fact, you. Weird, I watched a documentary on Henry Miller yesterday where he describes exactly that feeling, via a shaving mirror. (katan500: *wonders how much time Liam spends looking in the mirror*)
katan500: Which piece of your work do you like the best / has special meaning for you?
Liam Noble: I
try to avoid having favourites, it's like having children. Some albums
are quiet and thoughtful, some are boisterous, some eat too much
chocolate and then feel sick. By the time most albums come out, you're
so sick of hearing it your head is in the next one. But I like
everything I've ever recorded; you just have to put off listening to it
long enough so you can't remember having done it. In general, I regard
my inevitable failures to achieve what I wanted to do with a genuine
affection.Liam Noble: We are all such serious minded and intense people that nothing funny happened , we just are really into the music and that's all (*mock earnest tone*). My favourite moment was in Birmingham, in the interval before the second half of the "Brother Face" gig, announced thus: "Take your seats for the second half of Liam Noble's Brother's Face" (katan500: HaHa. Well that's funny. But how did you arrive at the name Brother Face?). Ah, this was via a Robert Creeley poem called "Histoire De Florida", it's one of the lines. I love the idea of looking into the mirror and seeing someone else who is, in fact, you. Weird, I watched a documentary on Henry Miller yesterday where he describes exactly that feeling, via a shaving mirror. (katan500: *wonders how much time Liam spends looking in the mirror*)
katan500: Which piece of your work do you like the best / has special meaning for you?
katan500: Tell me something about the new album...
Liam Noble: Well,
the first thing is that I don't know what form it will take. It's a
recording of our recent gig at the Vortex, and there's a lot of music to
sift through. I am thinking of putting it out as a downloadable file
which, when you put it through a 3D printer, makes life sized origami
effigies of the band who then play to you personally. There’s a variety of
approaches in the writing, but mostly I tried to avoid the hard bop template of
“tune/solos/tune” whilst trying to preserve the idea of melodies that have some
kind of air of familiarity somehow.
Everyone in the band has a very distinctive way of approaching their
respective instruments; a lot of strong characters together, and so there are
some pile ups that occur which are great fun…I prefer that to anything too
precise. There are some clips of our
Brighton gig on YouTube
katan900: Er... Shabaka is without head (*gestures decapitation*) and Chris Batchelor looks a bit vertically challenged...
Liam Noble: Apologies. The sound is good though...
katan900: Er... Shabaka is without head (*gestures decapitation*) and Chris Batchelor looks a bit vertically challenged...
Liam Noble: Apologies. The sound is good though...
katan500: When is your next gig?
Liam Noble: Sunday 15th December at Cafe Oto, I'm playing solo, then Chris Biscoe, Roger Turner and John Edwards play as a trio (there's three "sound" players!), and then all four of us.
katan500: Did I ask you what you want for Christmas?
Liam Noble: Sunday 15th December at Cafe Oto, I'm playing solo, then Chris Biscoe, Roger Turner and John Edwards play as a trio (there's three "sound" players!), and then all four of us.
katan500: Did I ask you what you want for Christmas?
Liam Noble: Yes... but I guess in the time it took me to answer
these questions I could have changed my mind. Can I have a 3D printer?
Babel releases with Liam Noble include:
Let's Call This (with Ingrid Laubrock)
Romance and Revolution (Christine Tobin)
Tatterdemalion (with Rachel Musson, Mark Sanders)
http://www.babellabel.co.uk
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