Modus operandi: self expression and the past as a legacy
Interview with Peter Broetzmann
Milano, May 8, 2011Interview with Peter Broetzmann
Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi
Artwork: Peter Broetzmann
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| Black Split, 1964, wood and oil on canvas |
Now, would you like to talk about or describe some of your works I took from your website? Because not that much people usually ask you about this other aspect of your art, and I want you to talk about it, freely …
[he takes in his hands the pages I printed from his website, with his artworks and pictures, and smiles] These are really early works …
If you want, we can talk about more recent pictures or sculptures, and then I’ll look for them on the internet, to put them together with the interview …
Well, what can I say? It doesn’t matter if it’s older or newer stuff. Before I started to see the music as a kind of a profession, my main goal and target was being a painter. And very early, when I was still studying at the art school had my first exhibitions, in Germany and Holland, and at that time I didn’t like the people I had to deal with, the people coming to my exhibitions, all art business; I always was glad when I could go on the road with the guys, playing music, away from that; so, in all these years between the very early Sixties and let’s say until I started exhibitions in, let’s say 1974 or something, the first big one, there was not a break in producing, but I didn’t do exhibitions and all that because I was much more happy with the music, being on the road, seeing other countries, finding a much more interesting and open audience than in the art business. Art business, if you take it serious, it has lot to do with money, with this personality shows and things like that, and that’s what I hate, I hate personality shows, really, I like to work, we can talk about that, but all that producing yourself … I don’t understand … And that’s why I could develop my little art production independent from all this influences. I’m famous enough with music, I don’t have to care about anything that’s happening in the art business, I have a gallery, not an important one but one in Chicago, Corbett vs. Dampsey, they let me do what I want to do, they get me no pressure at all, and so I’m at the point or I always was at the point where I just did the things that I wanted to do, and that includes very normal oil paintings, it comes to objects, it comes to woodcuts again, what I did as a schoolboy, and so on. I have had an exhibition in my hometown running, we just had a meeting a couple of days ago, and as far as I can see, there’s a huge interesting people that are coming really. From far away, maybe connected with the music too, but that’s interested there, so I’m just happy when the things on the wall or in the room they just look good. I like them, and I’m very happy if I hear from people, "oh I like that, or that, or liked all". So, I will continue … time is my problem, being on the road, on tour, leaves you very last time.
To develop your own things …
Yes, but it has to do with getting older a bit; I would like to spend a bit more time in my studio and just do what I like to do, and yes … what I hate with the art is that is really a business for the galleries and for the big artists. For the rest is suffering. I mean, all the names you know, because I’m the same generation as Georg Baselitz, Edward Lupper, the famous Germans at the moment, I quite rank in the top ten, and they make millions, and sometimes I think, ‘shit, if I would have a little part for it for the Tentet, for the music, it would be nice’. On the other hand, we are just living always on the edge, always trying to survive, always fighting for a little progress keeps music alive, and that’s why I still want the music, and I need the music for myself too. It’s not the same on the art sight, I would say, but it’s just another facet of what I like to do. I think is quite a good equivalent between being on the road and being alone in your studio and have kind of a quite good time and get free of troubles travelling, stucking the cello and the bass in to the aeroplanes and shit like that; the two hours on stage, it’s a whole days just trouble. In the field of music, just improvised music, you have a couple of guys even a little older than I am, like Ornette, that is just ten years older, I really admire and respect him; or Sonny Rollins, I saw him last summer again, and played great music, the band was not so good but he himself was great, and he has physical problems with his body. Next morning we had the same flight to Oslo, and he was in the wheelchair … and Ornette this summer cancelled some European engages because he’s not in his best shape, but I have this feeling that the music of those, let’s call them heroes, are dying out, it’s just people like me, like the young ones, it’s just artwork …
It’s music you can’t develop staying on your own … You can work on your own style, you can work on saxophones sound, but without a human exchange, is very difficult to develop thing. To see people like Sonny Rollins playing … it’s a shame for the younger musicians; but maybe, not developing things being inspired by him, they will also develop in other ways …
I mean, whenever I talk to Ken .. Ken is thirty years younger than I, or twenty five or so, and I tell him stories about the old times; I have seen all the bands: all Miles Davis bands, Coltrane with Dolphy, I spent a night with Dolphy in a bar in Wuppertal, and Charlie Mingus with all these guys, I met Coleman Hawkins and Bud Powell, and the young guys even can’t imagine was that was, was that meant to me …
… and what could that mean to them, also …
Yes. In the Tentet I had to tell, ‘man, listen to Sidney Bechet’, or ‘listen to some good old Louis Armstrong records’. I mean, these guys was playing crazy shit, it was really incredible …
… or Billie Holiday that, as far as singing, can be compared to an avant-garde artist …
.. for example. At that time you have some voices too, and you don’t … I could name any important voice, I think the last one that was connected with all music was Jeanne Lee …
… there is one record out now, by Anthony Braxton, from 1972, issued by HatOlogy, it’s good too have her back again …
… yes, she was a great singer; at the times I was working with Last Exit, I did know there was Diamanda Galàs in these years ..
… yeah …
But since she brought her tight to Aids, since that time, she’s just back to very meditative solo shows, I don’t think she’s interested in playing again with all the guys.
In this moment she’s very busy with her recital, voice and piano.
But she has a voice, I mean, that Greek scraming woman, that was really … I like her very much.
In her very early years she was experimenting with voice and microphones, and did very great things …
Yes, and so, about musical perspectives, I don’t think about myself too much, I’m thinking about the development, and the scene, the situation for the younger musicians, it’s not getting better …
Do you think that people is working hard on what to do, but not that much about the meaning of what they are doing?
Yeah, and I know these guys coming out of these music schools, of course they can play on, of course they know about counterpoint, harmonies and scales; whatever you have to know, they know; but I have the feeling that most of them don’t know what to do with it, they just organise some nice aesthetic images and works: I miss personalities. I was one of the first to play with Peter Evans, the trumpet player, when he wasn’t famous at all: a strong guy, a strong horn, and it’s a difficult horn, that’s why you don’t find many of them. But I think he’s getting too fast in a kind of night after night step success. That’s fine because I’m making money with that, but if there is no time to find out what you want for yourself, if all this business around put you further and further, the danger is at least that you’ll never find out what you really want to do … for me music is not the same in five or ten years, music is a lifelong story, and at the end you’re still not where you want to get … I think that people should make experience, and best experience is that connection between yourself, the audience, being on the road, and bands don’t tour so much anymore, because have no chances to play anymore. One summer I was on the road with Gunther Sommer in Italy, we started somewhere in Imola and we ended up in Bari and we played in little Unità festivals and people were so fantastic, the food anyway was unbelievably good, and it was communication, in the best sense. That’s what I’m missing for the young guys. Look at Germany, the number of clubs I’m playing there from time to time.
Usually the clubs, in Germany or elsewhere, are looking for a wide range of music styles, or are they close and faithful to a particular style, in order to be recognized?
I’d say that the good ones, and still the working ones, are working on quite a wide range of music; the other ones, very narrow minded, that put on one music, they don’t work after a while. The point is of course to run such a place you need support, culture without support doesn’t exist anymore.
Related links:
Peter Brotzmann official website
Catalytic Sound Peter Broetzmann, Mats Gustaffson, Ken Vandemark and Paal Nilssen-Love new cooperative resource
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