Artist Interview by: Susan Frances
Since Tony Bianco’s father put a set of drumsticks in his hands, he has adored them with the enamor a boy has for his Tonka toys, or a girl for her Barbie dolls. Banging on the drums was a way for tike-sized Tony to form a bond with his Dad and feel just as tall and strong. “My father, being a drummer, put drumsticks in my hands before I could walk,” he recalls. “My father and I used to trade fours and eights while watching TV at night. I was very lucky. It was all unconscious."
Bianco has come a long way since those days growing up in New York City with just him and his Dad answering each other back with percussive impulses. Today, he is playing with a whole host of jazz musicians at his home in London, England and recording a slew of solo albums. His latest release Monkey Dance with long-time friend and saxophonist Dave Liebman, guitarist Eric St. Laurent, keyboardist Adam Lenox, and balaphon player Ali Keita incorporates many unconventional techniques with melodic vibrations. Making solo albums has become a means of survival for Bianco whose penchant to experiment with time signatures outgrew the bands he played in over the years. Bianco’s imagination continually moves outside of the mainstream. It is a skill which his father showed him from the very beginning.
He reminisces, “My father and I used to wait for my mom and my brother to go out, like on a Saturday. We’d set our drums up, get high and play all day, answering fours and eights or just dialoging back and forth. We’d get a lot of complaints from the neighbors but we always thought they were wrong. It was great fun. My father would do club dates and the dates he couldn’t do, I would do. I would sub for him.”
This caused Tony’s Dad to put a great deal of pressure on his oldest son who had to be better than just good. After all, this was a gig in New York City, the capital of many great jazz musicians. “My father was very strict with his lessons. Many lessons resulted in us arguing. I guess my father wanted me to succeed where he didn’t. It was a lot to go through as a little kid.”
He expresses, “It was when I was about 9 or 10 years old that a teacher asked me to play snare drum and cymbals in a school play. My Mom told the teacher that I played drums, so this was my first public performance. The play,“ which he thinks was called The King And The Nightingale, “went on for a few weeks, so the kids and teachers saw me as a drummer.”
Afterwards he noticed, “I started to get these opportunities to play in different situations. I started a band with some friends and quickly saw the advantages of being a musician - girls like you.” he smiles.
He remembers, “At that time also, I remember my father bringing home a record by the Don Ellis Big Band. It was fantastic. All these different time signatures. The band formed with my friends was now subjected to them, having to copy the sound of Don Ellis. We did ‘Indian Lady’ in 5/4 - an Ellis classic. I was ruthless.” He describes, “We would also just make up tunes with different time signatures. I remember at that time, I was always practicing. I’d come home from school and play with all these different records. My favorite was Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin records.”
He muses, “There was a lot of music in my house. My Mom also loved jazz. Music in my house was about love. My Mom and Dad’s favorite shared record was the Basie/Sinatra record. It was played all the time. My grandfather loved Django. However, the more I fell in love with music, the more I became intimidated by it.” He says, “I mean my father just made these guys beyond human.”
He chronicles, “I remember my father taking me to see Dizzy Gillespie at the Village Gate, also, the Don Ellis Big Band, Count Basie Band, and of course, The Buddy Rich Big Band and Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band at the Village Vanguard. My father was a big band fan. He studied with Cozy Cole so this was his love. It was also the time he grew up in. My grandfather just took me to baseball games. My grandfather played guitar. He’d always tell me about the time that he took my Dad to go see Django Reinhart play in the Duke Ellington Band. How Django showed up late for the gig and how Duke was yelling at him. I’d always laugh at that story. I guess we were three generations of musicians - grandfather, father and me.”
Bianco was also enamored of jazz artists played on the radio. “Every evening, WRVR jazz radio in New York City featured a great jazz artist,“ he recollects. “They would go through the history of that artist and his discography. It was great stuff. It was required listening in my home. I think it was the Ed Beach Show. There was also a jazz show on TV every Sunday night hosted by a Catholic priest, Friar O’ Conner. It was great, he would have a different legend on each week.”
He explains that making music takes a different kind of thinking from being a fan, and for a while he did not believe that he had it in him to actually make jazz music. “Music doesn’t speak to you with words. It’s a language all its own. I was actually quite confused. I really didn’t want to be a musician. It seemed such a daunting task,” he admits. “There were such fantastic musicians out there and I didn’t even know what to listen to. I didn’t think I belonged until one day I heard the sound of John Coltrane. I mean, I must have heard him before with all the music in my house, I know my father talked about him. I must have heard him on the radio. I remember that day, what was being playing was ‘A Love Supreme.’ I mean, I must have been ready for it. It just blew me away. I heard purpose. I heard that love that wasn’t just mere sentimentalism. That language, I belonged to something. I knew I could do this even if I died trying. I told my father what I heard. He just said to me, ‘why didn’t Trane play out like Dexter, you know, just open the chords. Why did Trane change the rhythm section’s role?’ I knew my dad and I were in different generations at that point. I also knew where my heart was. It does take me time to warm up to other musicians. I mean music is very personal.”
Listening and playing jazz became an integral part of Tony‘s life. “I think at 18 years old, I started to take more formal lessons with a drum teacher in New York City, Sonny Igoe. I learned in a more formal way, you know, reading and snare drum techniques. I think Sonny worked on the Ed Sullivan Show so he had that kind of professional confidence and I learned a lot from him. I liked Sonny. He was a good guy. At that same time, I was in Lehman College trying to major in music. I only stayed for maybe two and a half years because I started to work in these horn funk bands. I would be driving back from these gigs and get an hour sleep and then have to get up for class. Then do the same thing the next day. It was too much, besides I liked working more than going to school. But I think that schooling is helpful to you because you share knowledge and get another perspective.”
Tony Bianco also had the bonus of his grandfather teaching him a little guitar to broaden his perspective. “My grandfather used to come over and teach me chords on the guitar. He had this great old Gibson L5. He used to do little radio shows in his day. He gave me that guitar and like an idiot I sold it to go to Berlin. I sold it for a lot less than it was worth. What a jerk!” he rues.
Tony Bianco’s relocation to Berlin, Germany in 1991 came some time after being fired as the drummer for the house band at the now defunct comedy club in New York City called Catch A Rising Star. “It must have been the weirdest gig in New York City,” he guffaws. “Sonny Igoe got me to sub for the drummer there. I remember doing my first gig there and laughing hysterically all night. Richard Belzer was the M.C. It was a different take on everything. The greatest comedians in the US passed up on that stage. I would be hanging out with them before they were famous,” he lists, “Chris Rock, Larry David, Gilbert Godfried, Jerry Seinfeld,” in which he goes into, “Jerry and I would talk about yoga. He was into yoga and so was I.”
He resumes, “Robin Williams,..The list goes on. I noticed that comedians had to have nerves of steel. I admired that. It also made me see the entertainment business. I always experimented with my drums there and many times I was told to stop. It wasn’t really a good gig for music. The band used to open up the show and sometimes I would take these drum solos, but I never took it seriously and neither did anybody else. It was a comedy club. It was always tongue in cheek for me, even though nobody ever noticed. The gig was a gig where I made some bread and didn’t have to think too much. I remember at that time, I was reading a lot of books about metaphysics, yoga, spiritual writing, etc. I met my first wife there. The gig was a few blocks from my apartment and I was allowed to use the club in the daytime to rehearse and do sessions. I used to try to practice in the club each day. I didn’t think I really was playing anything then. At one point, we did get some better players to play and it did bring the level up. I think actually that Catch A Rising Star was a kind of special place because of the owner Rick Newman. There was a kind of family vibe there, sometimes very sweet. The bass player on the gig, Lloyd Mair was a good guy. After the gig was over each night, he would always play all this great experimental stuff. I guess in that way it was a creative gig. We did experiment.”
He deduces, “I knew it was time to move on when they fired me. It seemed that when I broke up with my first wife, I also lost the gig. It’s funny that it was like that, but so be it. I was always looking for other opportunities because I wanted to play with players that I could learn from and play gigs that were great, but now because there was no bread coming in, there was more intensity. Around the end of my stay at Catch A Rising Star, I had done some recordings that some of the guys thought were hip. This, at least, kept my belief up about the direction and ability of my playing. If you’re meant to do it, there’s always something to spur you on, even if you make it up yourself.”
He professes, “At some level at least, we create our own destiny, however small. I had some friends at that time that helped also. I always stay in touch with these guys even now and even though we’re in different places. I wasn’t always easy to get along with. Musicians and their mentality will always baffle logic.”
He endorses, “I always try to keep the fires burning about what I’m doing. Sometimes burning myself and sometimes burning and getting burnt by others. When you realize you have no choice about the musical life you’re living, you become another kind of thing. You invoke a concentration and a purpose that you’re committed to, all on your own. You’re by yourself. The great thing about music different from artists and writers is that we perform with other musicians. It’s kind of a brotherhood, even if it is dysfunctional at times. Sometimes, you get by with a little help from your friends.”
Before voyaging off to Berlin, Bianco got a gig through his friends to play in Mike Gillis’ jazz band for a 3-month tour of Japan in 1990. “Japan was great for me,” he beams. “I was having a really hard time in New York City, living out of my car at times. I must have been crashing at a few different places. Basically anywhere I could sleep. Joe Donato called me, he lived in Miami and asked if I could do three months in Okinawa, Japan. It wasn’t for much but I went anyway. I did it also because Joe said Mike Gillis was doing it. Mike taught at the University of Miami as did Joe. I heard about Gillis. It was a gig in this hotel for three months with these great guys. When I went there, I was determined to have a good time. This wasn’t mainland Japan, this was Okinawa so this was a different thing. I spent a lot of time in the saltwater. The people were great to us. I felt very happy there. I remember that the band, after we played our gig would go into Naha, the capital of Okinawa and see what kind of trouble we could get into. We’d sit in at the jazz bar and the people would go berserk. I remember the owner drunk on the floor, laughing and babbling. The bass player and I would be out checking out the town way into early morning. It was great working with Mike Gillis.”
He relates, “The people there had this endearing innocence that was beautiful. They already liked jazz and were very familiar with American culture. We were having a great time, however, a girlfriend I met there, Naomi did remind me that the Japanese were conservative people and that I was just seeing a different side to them. I remember hearing some of the Japanese musicians there and was amazed at how well they can duplicate the playing styles of the West. They have great ears. I remember while I was there that September, Mile Davis died. They made a great deal out of it there. It was all over the TV for days. They had a great respect for him and for jazz. Yeah, I really dug Japan.”
Shortly after the tour, Bianco moved to Berlin in 1991 with support from his friends. “When I came back from Japan, I really didn’t know what to do.” Returning to the States, he met up with his musician friend, Mack Goldsberry who hooked him up with jazz musicians in Berlin. He recounts, “I met Mack in this band called Friendship. It was this guitarist Ted Clancy’s band. Mack was like my older brother.”
Goldsberry was instrumental in introducing Bianco to many other musicians including Bob Lenox and his son Adam who became pivotal in Bianco’s life. “It was actually a very important time for me for some reason. We all became close friends. Mack had moved to Berlin months earlier and Bob and Adam also moved there. Bob had lived there earlier in the sixties and was well connected in Berlin. Before he moved to Berlin, Bob was living in Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania, where I also lived for a while and met Dave Liebman. I guess everybody thought they would do better in Berlin, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Because I was born in New York City, I had a lot of stuff in my head. To go outside of the US, I might find myself. Somehow I thought yeah, maybe that’s true. I guess that’s what made me decide. So after borrowing money and selling my grandfather’s guitar, I was off to Berlin.”
He gleans, “I was lucky that Goldsberry and Bob and Adam Lenox were there. I started to get gigs as soon I got there. They weren’t great gigs at first, but they paid for things and of course I needed the money. I was still basically clueless in that I had no idea who was who. There seemed to be this little scene going on around this club in Kreuzberg called The BeBop. The owner of that club now runs the A-Trane in Berlin, but at that time things were a lot more innocent and totally unpretentious. It was great. I even got my phone calls from that club. If I didn’t have money, I could get a bear or a meal. It was beautiful. I think it might have been one of the happiest times in my life after the crap I went through in New York. I didn’t have anything but I felt great. Everything was very supportive to me playing jazz. I started to work with this great guy, Jay Oliver who played the bass. A little time after that Aki Takase called me for a gig. I worked in some of her bands.”
He enthuses, “Aki’s great. A really beautiful and glamorous Japanese woman who can play the sh*t out of the piano and married to one of the most legendary artists on the European improvised scene, Alex van Schlippenbach. Alex then called me for some gigs. We would do a night of Thelonious Monk. I was always learning. Aki got a gig together with Gerd Dudek, a brilliant player whose sound was so fluid. I was, of course, the American working with these great German players. I loved it. Aki and Alex treated me like family.”
He tells, “Alex von Schlippenbach invited me to see some of his bands play. I saw his band with Steve Lacy and Kenny Wheeler. I also remember seeing his trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens. I really dug this band. I liked how Lovens played. He wasn’t doing the swing thing that most Americans do with improvised music. He was more influenced by the modern classical genre. It made me feel more of that direction. Also their instincts were in a different place to the American sound. Their quickness and sharpness. It wasn’t just coming from the bebop and swing tradition. I heard this was because of East Germany’s reluctance to sound like the West because of the communist divide. They were encouraged to have there own sound for political reasons. Alex would tell me about the tours that would take place in East Germany quite regularly. I think it’s very interesting.”
“Looking back,” he reflects, “I can see that I was always trying to search out this sound that I was hearing in my unconscious. I might have been trying to experiment on those gigs. This might have caused some problems in relations to the other musicians. I don’t know, but one doesn’t know till one tries.”
He took his stay in Berlin with stride, adjusting to the new culture. “When I went to Germany, I realized how bold Americans are,” he observes, “at times, it’s cool but then you realize you need to balance this. I didn’t speak German so I guess I made up for it by acting more American than I had to. I learned little German because the Germans spoke English so well. There was a greater sense of freedom in Berlin. As an American, I had to get used to nude sun bathers appearing as soon as they felt the warm sunshine. It was their sense of themselves that was different. Germany lost two world wars and at the time, I was there in ’91, the Berlin Wall had come down so there was this newness in the air.”
He comments, “Also, I realized that unlike American musicians, the German musicians specialized more. They didn’t play all kinds of gigs for the most part but played a particular style or sound. For instance, Aki Takase would never do an R&B gig. I also saw that improvised or free jazz gigs were more predominant then in the US. Jazz musicians were not a dime a dozen. Things weren’t as materialistic as in the US. It was a culture that had gone through a lot of pain so there were some inner sensitivities that were truthful. On some levels, they were more accepting, but there were some things there that were very negative too. Sometimes it can get very depressive there, way beyond normal. But the thing I think was the most different is that you might be able to live an artist’s life there and get away with it. At least this was true for me in ‘91. I heard it’s a little different now. The Germans, of course, have that tradition of great classical music. Their appreciation of music in general is a lot more refined than the average American. There were some great audiences in Germany.”
There came a point when Bianco felt he went as far as he could in Germany and caught the sail to London, England in 1996. “When I came London, I didn’t know anybody. I came here because my girlfriend at the time, Mary, now my wife, came here. I came here with enough money for one month’s security and a phone in a bedsit (loft) in North London. It was pretty grim. What was I thinking?” he chides.
“We were like soldiers,” he assesses. “I didn’t even have a drum set. My brother-in-law is a saxophonist and had lived in London years before, and he knew this trombonist who knew this trumpeter. This trumpeter hooked me up with a drum set and some gigs. I wasn’t aiming high at this time just trying to survive. Sometimes it’s a matter of conserving your energy for what you consider important. Pretty soon I somehow hooked up with Elton Dean. We used to get together regularly in a quartet with Alex Maguire on piano and Italian bassist Roberto Bellatela and play in this tiny bedsit.”
“We recorded a record called The Headless Quartet,” he mentions. “Elton commented that there was another space he played in, so I started to explore just straight improvised gigs here while also playing straight ahead jazz gigs. I was also trying to write more and work out my rhythm concepts through my compositions. This seemed very important to me. The British scene is very hard to break into. There are a lot of reasons for this. The history of the improvised scene here is seen as important as the American scene in establishing a distinct original sound, yet the American history seems to have more clout. This has to do with the cultural differences of each country. In other words, I’m saying there’s competition. I worked a gig here with a saxophonist, John Rangecroft and he said to me ‘you’re probably better than the drummer I usually use but I knew this guy for twenty years. That’s the way we are here.’ Reggie Workman had told me ‘The British don’t let anybody in their scene.’”
Bianco reconciles, “But at the same time I kinda was in their scene, although not to the degree that I would have liked. I did do some great recordings here and got some records out on a good label as leader. Elton would call me on my birthday so I knew there was some heart here, but London is a hard place to get to know people. However, in London, I had the fortunate situation arise of finding a flat where I could play my drums. This is supposed to be very hard to find here, because of this happening I made my biggest strides in understanding my instrument and my musical visions. I could work on this every day after falling out of bed. “
He conjectures, “In Berlin, I would write these pieces of music but didn’t know where to go after stating the head. In London, I found out where to go. This was a big thing for me. I said to Evan Parker, one night that when I came to London things came together for me in my mind. For me, there was something in the atmosphere. I said to him there’s a sturdiness here that I found stabilizing. As far as being accepted in the scene, well when I first came here I didn’t have any profits at all. Now, I have a bit of a profile even though my phone never rings. Maybe they think I’m from Mars. Unfairness is everywhere you just gotta be really strong.”
Like Bianco mentioned before, “Music is very personal” and decisions made by the people in the industry are very personal too. Bianco is a musician who thinks outside of the box and in a world where familiarity breeds content, he has needed to carve out a niche for himself so people can become familiar with his work. “I’d like people to see me as an innovator who has respect for the past but sees new freedoms for the future. If you know what I’m not saying,” he remarks.
Tony Bianco accomplishes this task through his solo albums which allow him to fiddle with different time signatures while exchanging impulses with other musicians in a cooperative setting. “I always liked different time signatures,” he recognizes. “Time signatures could be thought of in different ways. If you look at the way different cultures play different time signatures, for example, some of the Turkish 9/8 or the Iranian 7/8 or the way African music plays their 6/8’s. There is a different way of emphasizing the one or downbeat. In my understanding of time signatures, I used the approach of a drummer keeping a momentum. In Berlin, I worked with some interesting versions of time signatures. There was a stick player/bass player, Hans Hartman who had an interesting version of things. He could play, let’s say a 5/4 bass line and then play a very rhythmically complex melody over it on his stick. I somehow picked up how he could be so precise and yet fluid.”
“The human ear is an amazing organ. Sometimes you’re thinking differently than what you’re hearing.” He correlates, “I also worked in Berlin with a Turkish percussionist, Mesut Ali. He had some great versions of 9/8’s he could play. The thing about understanding rhythm is its phrasing. There’s always a question and answer. Always a beginning, middle, and end. You never put the downbeat in the middle. I also worked with bass player, Jay Oliver. We would do, let’s say a 7/8. He would keep this up in the bass line, then he would drop a beat here or there and we would improvise through it ending up in the same place. I learned to hear better.”
He cherishes, “Elton Dean said to me it’s very hard for musicians to phrase outside 4/4 or 3/4. In other words, it’s hard for musicians to phrase without time signature. My understanding of rhythm started to take a different turn during the end of my stay in Berlin. I started to get a lot of flack because of it and ostracized. Alex Schlippenbach says I have this forward momentum to my playing. To add to all the mathematics of time signature study, there’s also another concept to me that is the drone or the OM. Time is usually thought of as linear, I.e. 1,2,3,4. But it is also a vibration. If you were to subdivide the sixty seconds to the minute you would eventually have a vibration. To me, the understanding of rhythm has to do with combining the linear concept study with the drone study. It can get metaphysical. It can make the role of a drummer shamanistic. These concepts take time to study and have to be accepted in the unconscious.”
Tony Bianco sees music as a way to challenge his mind similarly to the jazz musicians who were his heroes while he was growing up. He defines, “A hero is someone who overcomes great obstacles. This actually happens in many areas of human endeavor. My father, because of his love for jazz, turned me onto the plight of jazz musicians. Look at the life of any of the great heroes. Look at Charlie Parker, his innovations, how he came to it, and his commitment to his own thought despite the obstacles. There are many examples. Look at the courage of Beethoven, his overcoming even deafness. When a musician innovates, he has no one but himself to guide him. An independent thinker is a rarity. Developing your own voice in music is a rarity.
He remarks, “Of course Charlie Parker and Beethoven are well known. What about all the unsung heroes?” He ruminates, “Musicians and artists and really anyone who opens up different doors of perception are always at war with the mundane mediocrity of their contemporaries. These obstacles shouldn’t be taken personally but as the duty of the hero. Obstacles to be overcome, not done for the artist himself but for the people. Look how jazz opened the doors of respect for the black man in America. Jazz has in it, the spirit of freedom and truth. One of the great heroes of jazz, Sonny Rollins called another great hero, Miles Davis a seeker. For people to aspire to be seekers of truth and freedom is of great value to this planet. This doesn’t just have to do with jazz music. We all know that John Lennon was a ‘working class hero.’”
Maybe it’s that working class hero aptitude of the British people that draws Bianco to England, but whatever it is, it is the place that has nurtured him as a solo artist and released one of his first solo efforts Utomo Trio. “I think I always wanted to make albums,” he affirms, “The Utoma Trio with Paul Dunmall and Simon Picard is actually the 2nd attempt at that trio. Martin Davidson, head of Emanem put it out like that. I guess I was developing my own sound and Martin doing that for me was what I needed. Martin’s a good guy. Of course Dunmall and Picard are monsters on that record. Becoming a solo artist means you gotta get your own work. That could be a drag. You’re looked at with more expectancy. I had to develop my business chops. But at the same time I was developing musically. It’s like cooking - you have to wait for it to be ready to be perfectly done. The Utoma Trio was an extension of the Trane/Ali thing. It’s a sound that’s part of me. I’m happy it was well received.”
An important album for him was In A Western Sense, which was inspired by recording artists Steve Coleman and Dave Holland. “When I first heard Steve Coleman and Dave Holland’s thing I really dug it, as did many. Of course, we all dug the time signature thing. Taking that concept from a drummer’s point of view is what I was doing. All my music is written in 4/4 except the last bar may have a bar of 3/4. Western Sense is my rhythm concepts coming to fruition. It’s also combining free improv with the rhythms as motifs. Hearing a distinct pulse without a time signature. Dancing with free improv. In A Western Sense, I’m surmising my experiences so far. It’s significant to me that my father died soon after recording this. It’s the only recording of mine he ever liked. We did the recording very quickly. All 11 tracks in one day. I didn’t have the money for more time. The band had about eight rehearsals. I wrote for the band as they came to rehearse. Half the record is this, while the other half is songs I’ve been playing for a few years.”
“I’m always writing,” he confesses, “it’s what keeps me in shape when there’s no gigs around. A book that inspired me in terms of melodic concept is the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns by Nicolas Slonimsky. I’d open a page at random and mess with a particular scale or whatever until it sounded like something. Of course, there would always be times where melodies would just be in my head. I’d usually write a bass line first, then find a melody or write a melody first then write a bass line. The thing is this happens very quickly. I usually know right away if it’s working. In the title ‘In a Western Sense,’ I’m trying to express the western world’s eclectic ways. We combine not exclude. We bring together and make new, like jazz. In our most positive sense, we see harmony where there is disharmony. We see peace. This record was recorded just before the beginning of the Iraq war. I really wish we didn’t get into that war.”
Bianco’s following album, Steamroom Variations, branched off into more acid/club jazz tones. “Magnus and Jair-rohm are the guys who set it up to get outside of the jazz thing. They’re into the electrics with pedals and stuff. Those guys know what there’re doing. Sometimes the role of an instrument can change when you realize why that role was being used in the first place. I consider myself a jazz musician but sometimes other music can expand your jazz vocabulary as long as you don’t lose your focus. I think this recording also explored the drone in a different way. The electric sounds kept breathing waves and waves of drone. You had some quick rhythms on top while having slowness below. Webs of moving sound.”
The English landscape also gave Bianco inspiration to play in new ways. “The Vortex in Hackney, London is where I go to see jazz. It has a mixture of everything and isn’t afraid to put more improvised or free jazz on. England, in general, is a very conservative place. Traditional jazz/Dixieland here is very popular. The bigger clubs like Ronnie Scotts seem to have the more commercial and name acts while some of the smaller clubs like Pizza Express try for the same but maybe a notch below. I have a gig on January 27, 2008, with Evan Parker and Dave Liebman at The Vortex.”
He surmises, “In general there’s this fear of real jazz here. There’s also a club in North London, The Red Rose that sometimes has great improvised music concerts. A great bass player, Paul Rogers that I’ve made some records with here says that there really isn’t any scene here for real jazz. Paul is British and now lives in France.”
“In the U.K. pop music is very popular,” he acknowledges. “There are schools that specialize in teaching pop music, while jazz is regarded as too non-profitable. Because of these attitudes towards jazz here, the guys feel oppressed. There are a lot of imbalanced feelings. Expression is blocked. There’s a difference in Europe because the pop thing doesn’t have as strong of a hold on the people as it does in the UK. There’s major clubs in mainland Europe that would put on a band with Liebman and Parker.”
His good friend, Elton Dean joined Bianco on his album Freebeat - Northern Lights, which was widely celebrated. Dean recently passed away but not without imparting some wisdom on Bianco. “It was how he was,” Bianco relishes. “Nothing fazed Elton. Paul Dunmall and I talked about this. Like I said at his funeral, he knew that you can get damaged living this music life. He could see your damage and make you feel better. If you felt bad, he would say something good. If you felt good, he would say something bad. It was brilliant. Lose your concepts. He was never bitter about the unfairness of it all. He was positive without acting or saying anything positive. He was never corny. He could see the truth in people. In his playing he would never posture an emotion but really play it. We would get together at Marcio Mattos house regularly and play. They were some very memorable afternoons. He was a truthful person, unpretentious. He encouraged me and because of him the other cats here showed me respect. He believed in my rhythm concepts and told me I was the real thing. He showed me how to be strong and that there’s nothing to defend so have a good time.”
He shares, “Basically he blessed me as all good friends should do. As Jim Dvorak said ‘Elton wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea.’ He didn’t try to please anybody, but above everything, Elton really, really loved music. No egotism, I dug Elton, man. We were together on New Years Eve, 2005 at Marcio’s, just before he died. He knew he was going. It was sacred.”
For Bianco’s latest album, Monkey Dance, he rendered the services of his long-time friends Dave Liebman (saxophone) and Adam Lenox (keyboards), along with Eric St. Laurent (guitar) and Ali Keita (balaphon). “I consider Dave an elder. Like I said, he’s somehow been around for years ever since I played with him in this avant-rock showcase with Adam Lenox in New York City. I would always send him stuff and see what he thought. I didn’t hear anything from Dave until one day he leaves a message on my phone machine asking me to send him more of the stuff I had sent him. He said he played it so much the tape broke - I used tape then,” he intones.
Dave Liebman came to London to record on Bianco’s album as Bianco transcribes, “When Liebman came to London, I met him and he’s telling this guy I write music that reminds him of Miles Davis. Dave says, I have that slippery bass line thing like Miles.“ This would become the foundation for Monkey Dance. “The difference in the Monkey Dance recording is that the piano chords are sequenced with the bass lines. In other words, Monkey Dance has more of a form.”
He explains, “I sent both Adam and Dave my home version of the Monkey Dance tracks, i.e. me playing drums to the bass and chord changes. I then went to Berlin and recorded over the bass and chords that I had given Adam. Adam shortened some of the lines and put a good bass and piano sound to the tracks. Ali Keita came in the next day and did his stuff and both Dave and Eric came in the day after and played over the tracks. We also recorded all together on some of the tracks on the last day. As far as I could remember, everything was 1st takes. That’s how it was done, but I can’t explain the uncanny quality of the whole thing. That’s what I like about it. Adam didn’t intend for that version to come out. He wanted to do this whole production thing to it, but when Trevor Taylor from FMR heard the tracks, he far preferred the raw tracks that I then cleaned up with the help of Jon Wilkinson. What Monkey Dance is are the raw tracks that I brought home from Berlin as proof that I did do something out there.”
He reveals that the tracks for Monkey Dance were influenced from spiritual ideals. “When Adam asked me to write for the session, I just went into my usual trance and started writing these lines. I’d write them and just name them anything and store them onto my floppy disk. However, when I wrote the bass line and chords to the title track, ‘Monkey Dance’ immediately came to me, so I called it Monkey Dance and I immediately thought of the monkey god, Hanuman. At the time I was writing the tracks for this record, I was reading ‘The Ramayana.’ I like this story. The images are ancient but convey some really contemporary issues. I also dug the primitive sensuality as a backdrop to high minded spiritual ideals. This Epic is full of images of primeval understanding, native intelligence. For me, jazz always contained these elements. The story also contained these obstacles to overcome, a righteous battle,” he declares.
“I was always interested in Miles Davis’s love for boxing,” he draws in, “how he thought jazz was somehow connected to this artistry. I guess in Monkey Dance, I’m trying to convey the sounds of the different scenes from this Epic. When Trevor Taylor asked me to clean up the raw tracks, I just named them and put them in the order of what some of the Ramayana was about. Somehow it worked out, as if I planned it like that, but I didn’t. We just seemed to have that sound anyway. There are some dark and mysterious feelings on the record and if you read the Epic, you can feel them there also - the primeval, the mystical, the sensual, and the Blues.”
People will be able to experience Tony Bianco’s music live as he confides “There is a tour being set up for this coming spring, 2008.” His wife, Mary is also excited about her husband going on tour as she reveals that playing shows and traveling around the world has a positive effect on him. Unlike many musicians who burn out from tours, Tony Bianco becomes more energized from touring.
She cites, “The musicians tell a joke - if you want to give a musician a problem give them a gig, which is funny because it holds so much truth. But someone like Tony, who is perpetually and visibly processing the rhythms of the world around him and even dreams music is in danger of blowing up if he does not work off some of the immense creative steam he builds up. A tour playing the right kind of music, that’s a cause for celebration and not just because I get a bit of space. Ironically, Tony has not had that many opportunities to tour since coming to London almost eleven years ago, but the great thing about life is things can change in a minute. When we first came here, his creative mission felt impossible. He sounded so completely different to everyone else. That’s probably the burden of the innovator, but now he’s influenced the sound so much that everyone’s sounding like him."
Familiarity breeds content in this world, and for Bianco his solo albums have been a way for him to allow people to become familiar with his style which is eclectic and seems impossible to follow. But alas, his eclectic songwriting does make sense and has a lot of soul in its chord movements, impulses and arrangements. As a listener, all you have to do is see his compositions the way he does, “an innovator who has respect for the past but sees new freedoms for the future.”
For more information: www.tonybianco.net
Photo by: © Contributed by Mary Ramsay-Bianco
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