You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Christian Sands Interview: Part 2 - #15

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

Today, Peter continues his discussion with pianist, Christian Sands. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Oh, I forgot you're not here. Well, we do have a replacement today, Christian Sands. So let's dig into part two of our co-hosting experience with pianist Christian Sands. This is the You'll Hear a podcast, Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you. I want to play a track, but I just kind of want to ask you a question first. Sure. And that is, like, you cover a lot of styles on this album. like genres and I think you do it super successfully and at times you do it very abruptly

which is a cool thing and it's a little bit unusual because a lot of times people you know musicians artists want to say well you know this is all part of who I am and of course for I think for all of us you know all the influences in music but you do some very deft and skillful kind of jumping back and forth between styles and so if it's cool I was just going to play a little of the beginning of yesterday and then just get your thoughts on that nice oh sorry i should have had a slicker fade there but you know but i could listen to this all day um so i love that like you know you got a couple different things happening and and i just want to say to all the like jazz piano nerds check out the way christian is playing the left and right hand right at the

beginning like he basically you you've created like like you're playing with a different kind of touch and sound with that left-hand quarter note going, and then the way that you're playing the melody. And that's really what I think of as voicing. And I think there's a lot, you know, you guys can check that out and kind of try to emulate some of that stuff and use it in your own way,

but that's just incredible pianistic skills. So my hat's off to you for that. Thank you. But yeah, so you're starting with kind of like, you know, old school solo piano kind of vibe, and then you go into, you know, of course, with the trio, you got the gospel influences happening, but you go straight from that solo,

piano feel. I don't know. Is that correct calling it solo piano feel? Yeah, you can call it that. Yeah. I mean, that could be anything, I guess, but you know, but then you go right into like, you know, the backbeat with, you know, that sharp nine and stuff. So was, as you put this arrangement together, like, was that kind of intentional or was it just sort of what you heard and you put it together as an arrangement? It's basically what I heard. You know, I wanted it to groove. and I really got the arrangement from listening to a lot of Errol Garner lately. I'm the creative ambassador of the Arrow Garner project now, which is wonderful. And so going through archives and listening to Errol's music and some recordings that have never been released and some practice sessions and things like that, you know.

And so he has a version of yesterday. And, you know, I mean, Arrow is straight up swinging all the time. For the most part, you know, about 90% of the time Arrow's going to swing. But then there's these other times where he does these different grooves and like maybe a Mambo thing or a swinging mombo here and there or something like that. So Arrow what I came away with was Arrow was a big fan of groove. And if Arrow was around today, like how would he play music? I mean, he was still swinging course, but like what else would he do? He might be up in the club and we don't know.

Exactly. No idea. You know? Club Onyx featuring Arrow, you know. So I want to kind of do an arrangement based off of the music that I was listening to with Errol. And so the beginning with the quarter note in the left hand, that's kind of the echo of an Erle Garner-esque kind of vibe, you know. And then going into the groove, what I liked about Arrow was that every time he would start an intro, you would never know what it was. until he started the tune.

You know? And so I kind of took that idea and said, well, I'm starting the tune in the arrow way. But now where can we go or we can make a surprise? And it sort of just from just naturally going into, I like the groove and I mean, we all like to groove. So kind of just naturally going into that, it kind of worked, you know,

it kind of changed some things around. It kind of gave it a little pick me up. And then I decided to stop it. So it was kind of just kind of of this play with the audience, play with the listener of, okay, when is this going to happen? When is this not going to happen? So instead of just constantly changing, you know, chords around and reharms and doing the things that pianists can do, you know, let's just specifically just mess with rhythm and

stop it. And, you know, let's mess with, you know, fading and doing different things. So that's really how this arrangement came about. Oh, it's great. And it's actually some of the analysis we did on Rebel Music yesterday. We kind of talked about some of those same ways that you use that compositionally and the arrangement of how you put together. And I can really, you know, with things going back and forth, like a lot of times,

it's great lessons for like we have a lot of younger and like students listening to the podcast that I've met. For you guys, it's a great thing to think about the drama, you know, how you can break that down with the architecture of a tune or an arrangement. And it doesn't have to not only be the typical ways, but it can be abrupt, you know. I mean, this arrangement does not come across sounding random, but it's abrupt at times. And as you say, you're able to kind of play with the listener, and that's the drama of an arrangement that keeps people enjoying it, like, oh, what's going to happen? Or is it going to go back? Even if they don't know or thinking about consciously what's going on, they remember that.

Right, like, exactly. You know, and I'm a big fan of art, you know, visual art too. so I'm a big fan of Picasso. And I like how when you, especially his cubism phase, where it's really, it is exactly, you know, if you're looking at a person, right? And it's really a person that you can tell it is because your brain is making that. Your brain is seeing these shapes and it's saying that this is a human being. But then the nose is not where it's supposed to be and the eyes are not where it's there supposed to be.

So there's this little trick with your mind, too, that kind of questions that what am I really looking? at even though you kind of know that this is a portrait or a self portrait or something like that you know so i kind of take those ideas of of just different art styles and kind of put them in my music too yeah great stuff man great stuff um so let's just talk i'd love to go through like this whole album and i want it if you're cool if and have you back on the show because there's a lot of any time yeah man a lot more stuff we can dive into but i was just you know it's uh yes yesushi Nakamura and Jerome Jannings, which is your regular trio. That's right.

For a while now, who's kind of the backbone of this album. You've got some great other guests and bringing in the horns and the percussion, some really cool. I wasn't familiar with that guitarist. Who is that? Oh, Kyle, man, he's killer. He is killing. Yeah, it's funny.

I actually was introduced to him by my younger brother, Ryan Sands, who, so those of you that know, he's an amazing drummer, fabulous drummer. And he went to Right, shout out to Ryan Afro Samurai You know And he went to NEC New England Conservatory

And so DiCio And so they were like great friends Like best friends You know And so he had called me up one day He was like man You gotta hear this guitarist man You know like we're playing tonight

So come up to Boston And I was like all right cool So I just had nothing to do So I drove up to Boston And Checked it out And this cat was like Extra killer

You know, the tunes that he wrote were like amazing. His touch, his feel, everything was tasty. Everything was like, you know. And so, but he was doing really modern, modern music, you know. And so I talked to him afterwards. I was like, man, you know, where are you from? You know, he was like, yeah, I'm from São Paulo. I was like, oh, killing.

So, which also meant that he had all the samba and all that Brazilian stuff, too. You know, and so I was looking for a guitarist for this gig. And I usually used Ghalad Hexelman. He's on my last record. And so Galad couldn't make it. And so I was like, well, let me call Kyle. Let me see if he's a brown. And so we all went to Canada and we did a little tour.

And it was absolutely amazing. And everything we did, I mean, from playing obscure music to playing Brazilian music to play. I mean, you know, I love different styles. So whatever I wanted to do, he was really down to do it. And did it well. Yeah. And things that he didn't know, he went back after the gig or whatever and checked it out and did all his homework. And then the next day, I mean, it's like he knew everything.

So he's a really special musician. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to hearing more from him. And even though he's just making appearances here and there on your album, I mean, he hit a lot of, well, like a lot of great Brazilian musicians, a lot of people don't realize they can generally play many different styles well, especially the guitarist, you know. Right, right, right. I mean, blues. He got some rock stuff. Exactly.

You know, we would sit down and talk about like progressive rock, like dream theater. And then we'd sit down and talk about some, you know, some scratch guitar, you know, talk about Wawa Watson. I mean, like, he knew all of the styles. Yeah. And so he's a hip musician. Well, it definitely comes through on your album. So hats off to you for placing him at some really interesting places. One other thing was like, I noticed you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you,

hit a lot of style. I mentioned this earlier, but you hit a lot of different styles and genres. And normally, I'm not big into like, oh, you're, you know, this is a polka on this too. This is a reggae, whatever. But you do have some overt references at times and because you're able to kind of very definitely and abruptly move from different things, I think in a really interesting and seamless musical way that they are noticed. So I'm hearing for sure gospel, obviously, big influence there. Jazz, of course. To me, jazz is really the. umbrella with which you're kind of painting everything. Reggae, you definitely hit on some nice reggae grooves in there.

Funk, for sure. You know, the Arrow Garner solo piano and some other solo piano, you know, influences. Then you got the roads, you got the organ going. There's some rock stuff happening with those guitar lines on something I heard. But like was, did you have like a checklist? I know you didn't. But I'm just wondering, because some people think that that's the way this work. Oh, was this just like, when you're,

you were writing, you would hear different things like, oh, okay, I'm going to put a little bit of a reggae vibe in here because it feels right. Well, you know what it is, is that I'm just a composer at heart, you know? And if I can just write tunes for people, I would just do that, you know. I love performing, but I also love to write, and I've always been like that as a kid, you know, and I would always write tunes just for people, you know, just for, I'm going to write my tune for my aunt or write a tune for my dog or like, you know, I was always writing stuff. You know, and so as an adult, I'm still writing for different people.

I write for different musicians and I do collaborations. And so with that, you know, kind of comes the love of different styles of music and different, in ways to express yourself. So, you know, I like to express myself in different ways musically and stylistically. So I don't really think of styles when I'm writing it. I really think of the song and what best can tell the story, you know. like on Sunday mornings, you know, Sunday mornings, I remember the whole story is me waking up with my brother going to church on Sunday mornings and there was three services, either 7 o'clock or 9.30 service or 11 o'clock service, you know, and I've been to all three throughout my life, you know, so either you go to 7 o'clock

because you're with your aunt or you go to 930 because you're with my mother or you go to 11 o'clock because you're older and you were at the club the night before, so now you've got to wake up. You know, so there's these different experiences that I've had that helped me tell the story. And so Sunday mornings, for example, is something that reflects that experience. So it's not really, I wasn't thinking like, okay, I want to do a gospel tune. It was more of like, this was in my life. So what best helps me with that? And then the reggae that goes into that is a service or a song that we sung in church where had a reggae feel to it. You know, anytime you hear like, you know, you listen to a Kirk Franklin or Thai tribut, they also have these different sounds within their music too.

Yeah. Well, they always have like the drummer, they always have a rhythm section that could like play any style, just instantly groove, you know, and ready to do it too. Exactly. So all of that is kind of in my music. So my music is really just all of my personal experience that I'm sure that many people have also experienced. And if they haven't, then they're experiencing it through my music kind of secondhand. Oh, that's great. I love that too. I was. just talking with another jazz musician about, you know, how kind of our job we forget sometimes with all the C-7, Sharp, 9, and reggae groove or whatever, but our job is really to look at the world and our experience it and then express it in this music and present it to people.

I mean, that's kind of our thing. Right. And I feel like we get lost in that because, you know, especially lately, we have a lot of musicians that come out of conservatories, and that's not the focal point. The focal point of conservatories is to give you the fundamentals and make you a person who can play, you know, really like anything, if you get it in front of you, you can read, you can write, you can do all this stuff. But then what do you do with that?

Like, where's the humanity in that? Right, right. It's just that's the jumping off point. Right. And, you know, that I think separates great musicians from just musicians. you know, where you just kind of regurgitate information versus like now what can I do that information that reflects my life or what I've heard or reflects your life, you know? So that's really what it's all about.

That's great. Okay, so sometimes I misinterpret songs. So Sunday mornings I was thinking, as I listened to it, it was about going to Cracker Barrel. Okay, now I know it's about going to church. Well, it kind of is about going to Cracker Barrel too. You know, we went there after, you know, that or hometown buffet or. There you go. You know.

Good stuff. Well, Christian, thank you so much for being here for doing this as the official first ever guest co-host. Thank you for having me, man. Yeah, this is going to go down, go down in history. And if Adam doesn't make it back from the Jen conference and you're looking for something to do for like 12 minutes every day. Hey, I'm down. We can hop on the phone. You know, we'll see how that goes.

I'm ready. But I want everybody, all our listeners, to go out and check out Facing Dragons. It's on Mac Avenue, right? Yes. Yeah, Mac Avenue label. available on all the streaming platforms. But you know what? This is a good one you might want to pick up on CD,

or you could sit and stream it, but like I said at the beginning, like take some time, maybe, you know, open up a nice bottle of Barolo or something. And this is a fun way you kind of listen to from beginning. We also have vinyl too, so it's also on vinyl.

Oh, come on now. I'm going to put my flannel shirt on and put a hat and grow my beard and bust out my vinyl. I'll do it. I'll do it. Right. Come on. Let's do it. No, it would be a great one on vinyl.

I'd love to hear that. Yeah. So the way we normally end this is one of us says you'll hear it at the end. And like the other one says something kind of funny. So I'm going to say something funny. Are you ready to say you'll hear it? Sure. Okay.

So, all right. Well, until next time. You'll hear it.