Biggi Vinkeloe: I have always liked to improvise, I like the challenge when you start up something without knowing what the outcome will be. I play music since i'm 5 or 6 years old. since then, I wanted to become a musician and i worked hard on getting there. I got my first lesson in classical flute at age 14, and at 15 years old I met 2 bassplayers in the school orchestra, they invited me to join them - we had different groups and performed quite soon. I also started to go out and see a lot of different concerts, everything between classical music, folk music, rock, heavy metal, jazz, improvised music, at least 2 or 3 shows every week.
So when I first played improvised music, it was with the flute. when I thought that I had too much trouble to hear myself, I decided to buy a saxophone and i spent hours and hours practicing. today, I play as much flute as saxophone and feel comfortable with both instruments.
A lot of european improvisers have like models, on one side the afroamerican free jazz players, on the other the classic contemporary music. Which one of these experiences is closer to yours? Oh, i like so many different music styles... I still listen very much to giants like charlie parker or john coltrane of course, and glenn gould, igor oistrach, rostropovitch... I can't name evrybody here, but what i can say is that i like to listen to any musician who plays with his/her heart and is honest within his/her art.
You met Cecil Taylor in Berlin, for the FMP clinic I suppose. How important for your style was this meeting? The first time i met cecil taylor, it was for the clinic. but i did one more project with him, in kassel at the Documenta (a very big art show over the entire town, with contemporary artists from all over the world). we had one week of intense rehearsals for many hours per day and then a 3 hour performance for about 1000 (thousand!) people. i should do a third project, but it was when my son was born, so i could not be part of this project (the birth was also a wonderful experience, of course...).
I wanted to do this clinic because i wanted to experience cecil taylor's work, his approach to music and to life and how to communicate your music to other people, the musicians in the band, but also the people in the audience. it was a great and intense experience! I got a lot of inspiration, it made me think about my own music, but I don't think i changed my way of thinking or doing. it made me want to continue to explore music and work on it.
Once England, Holland and Germany were the three main countries for this kind of musical experiences. Since maybe ten or fifteen years improvvised music spread around the world with different sensibility. How is the improvised music scene in Sweden, where you live? Oh, I don't know if the so called free jazz only existed in the three countries you mention here, i have lived for a very long time in france and i found a vivid scene for improvised music there. maybe the musicans from england, germany and holland were better at marketing and traveling than musicians from other countries.... sweden: since some years, there is a growing interest for improvised music again. not that it is easy to find concerts, or that you would get decently paid once you find a concert to do... but you can see a lot of young people listening and being really enthusiastic about this kind of music. i think that imrpovised music might be one of the biggest challengs in music, it gives you a big freedom and a big responsibility, and you can be creative and develop whatever comes to your mind (if you have the tools to process your ideas, of course, so it needs a lot of technique if you want to do a good job).
The scenes in sweden seem to be separated, there is one in stockholm, another one in gothenburg and a smaller one in malmö, but the connections are not very strong in between, everybody seems to be afraid of sharing the cake (it's about money...) - unfortunately! it seems to be that way in many countries, and sweden is no exception. swedish musicians travel quite a lot. as the countrie only counts 9 millions inhabitants, the interest for improvised music is of course proportionally small... so sweden is maybe quite well represented all over the world...
You and your trio with Uuskyla and Nielsen have a lot of connections with theatre groups, or action painters, or actors. When we met each other you, with Nino, Fabio, Filippo and Emiliano were playing with a improvviser dancer. Don't you think that this (for example music and action painting) is a kind of old approach to sinergy between arts? Who can pretend to reinvent the world and to come up with something never seen, never heard...? but it doesn't make this sinergy between arts less fascinating. by creating a meeting between different artistic expressions, you talk to different senses, you see, you hear, you feel, you almost taste what is happening on the stage... i also found that many people are afraid of improvised music, so they don't give this music any credit and don't even try to go and listen. so to watch a painter work together with musicians could make it easier, you don't have to focuse onto the music all the time, but you can just follow the development of a picture, even if it is abstract, and you might get your own associations and pictures - and suddenly, improvised music makes sense and is not at all too difficult to listen too! that is one aspect. the other one is that mouvements and colours amplify the sounds and also show a different way to go - the musicians are also inspired by what they see, of course!
I feel it gives another dimension to the music, and hopefully it gives another dimension to the painting and dancing too! (we can't even imagine a dancer dancing without any music, can we?)
Improvvised music is still looking for a better attention from the media, in first place, and from concerts institutions, on the other. Do you believe in the "FMP" model to be totally indipendent, or maybe there is the chance to find a new place inside some institutions? It is true that improvised music is usually not well treated by the media, so it makes it difficult to promote this kind of music and to find an audience. when you listen to improvised music, you cannot do anything else, like eating or talking or finding someone to share an evening or more with... you have to focuse a bit on the music. you divide food into fast food and slow food, fast food seems to give you fast satisfaction, but slow food gives you something to remember... same with music, and improvised music is more like slow food, takes time to make it, and takes time to digest it, but it stays with you for a while...
I don't know how independant FMP really is, as they can only survive with public money, when there is no money, there is no music....and outside thhe circle of improvising musicians, only few people know what FMP stands for.... FMP exists for many years, and it is a beautiful work, of course, and hopefully, it will continue for a long time!!!
It would be great to get a foot into some other institutions, i think series with chambe music, classical and new music and improvised music and jazz, would be wonderful. it would need a lot of courage, and a real effort on marketing to make this happen. and probably, it would take some time before the audience gets used to listen to different artistic expressions and value all of them equally.
Biggi Vinkeloe - A Short Talk
Cadence: You have a past as a globetrotter before landing in Sweden.
Biggi Vinkeloe: Actually, I was born in Germany where I spent all my childhood. At age 18 I immigrated to France, where I spent 15 years. I have always wanted to become a musician. It was my secret dream when I was 5 years old, but it took me a very long time to achieve this dream. I have played music since early childhood. I learned most by doing, playing with a lot of different musicians, and I studied pretty much by myself.
At age 22, I bought my first saxophone, a Buffet Crampon, I got a bank loan. But very soon I found a silver Selmer Super Action from 1947 in a shop for antiques, so I sold the new horn and played in the other one for many years. It had a wonderful warm and full sound, a bit too soft I found later. Now, I play on a Selmer Super Action from 1984, with a metallic mouthpiece from Dukoff opening 7. I use Vandoren reeds number 2.
I practiced often in the night because it was hard for me to find time during the day, struggling for my survival. I took some lessons from classical musicians, and also from jazz musicians. I got some grants to study at Jazz Schools in Switzerland and France, and to participate at some master classes and workshops. In the end, I got a quite complete musical education, both in classical and jazz techniques, in theory, but also in arrangement, composing, leading. In France, I performed with musicians such as Jacques Veillé and André Jaume, Pascal Vignon. I participated in special projects covering different music styles, from Jazz-rock to rock chanson to Jazz big band to theatre music and film music.
Since 1990, I live in Sweden and work mostly with my own trio. We have traveled in many different countries in Europe and North America. I‚m also involved in multi-media projects with musicians, dancers, poets, and visual artists from different cultures and different countries. Since a year back I work with heavy metal bass player Magnus Rosén (Hammerfall), mostly as a duo but recently even in trio together with Californian drummer Donald Robinson.
You have had the chance of playing and recording with Cecil Taylor in Berlin (1988). This was a very fascinating and instructive time for me. After a weeklong intense rehearsal period, I understood much better Cecil Taylor‚s way of thinking and composing music. He hears so many things simultaneously, and has such a clear idea of how the different instruments should be used in a musical context. It is very much about color and intention, rather than special techniques. In the same time, there is always a lot of space for soloing, if you can put it this way, because in reality, his orchestra was more like a lot of solo voices coordinated and held together. In Berlin, it was Paul Plimley from Vancouver at the piano, while Cecil Taylor conducted, and kept the music going on. Later, for the concert, many things were changed but the work we had done, all those many hours of playing, listening, writing down, trying to understand every day, enabled all of us to create a strong and fresh music. It was not a reproduction of rehearsed and pre-arranged pieces but new music based on the canvas we had been working on. The same group of people did two more periods of rehearsing and performing together with Cecil Taylor, in Göttingen 1990 (without me, mys on chose to be born just when this second Cecil Taylor thing was happening), and at the Documenta in Kassel 1992 ( I could participate then again). In Kassel, we did a 3 hours non-stop performance, starting off with a poem written by Cecil Taylor and performed by all of us together. In Göttingen and Kassel, Cecil Taylor played the piano; Paul Plimley was not involved in those projects. All the performances have been documented on tape and on video, but so far, only the Berlin concert has been released (FMP).
There are not many women who play free or alto sax. That is true. I think it is really tough to be a woman on the Jazz scene. You always have to prove that you play at least as well as your male colleagues, and it took me a long time to get respect from the other musicians. Today, I don‚t feel discriminated (against) any more, I can play with wonderful musicians such as Barre Phillips, Peter Kowald, Ken Filiano, Steve Swell, Donald Robinson, Lisle Ellis, Paul Obermayer. Besides with Miya Masaoka, I have not performed very often with other women, I don‚t know why, but it never happens for some strange reasons.
How did you come to this music? Oh, I like very much the challenge of this music. You never know what is going to happen, it is like in real life! And you come very close to the musicians you play with, as this is a very naked form of music. If you don‚t do it for real, then this music is empty and without emotions. And music is very much about strong emotions and feelings, so you really have to make work the communication between the people on stage (and don‚t forget the communication with the audience). As I am a very curious person who likes to discover new things, new ways of doing, it felt so natural for me to come to improvised music. I played with a rock singer for a while; it was so boring to know in advance what will happen on the stage, I had to play similar solos every time. I mean, of course I lik to play also predictable music, but I need to perform improvised music.
You have worked with many bass players in your trio, and you work quite a lot with Peeter Uuskyla. Yes, well, I like all the different musicians I have played with so far; everybody has another sensibility and another perspective and the interaction is always unique. I love to play in trio, it gives me so much space to develop my ideas and I don‚t get forced into chord changes that I might not want to explore just then. And also, to me, it seems more in balance to meet another monophonic instrument. Peeter‚s and my collaboration is already a 13-year-old story. We know each other very well and feel very comfortable playing and working with each other. He was also one of the first musicians who really respected me and helped to develop my own ideas. We have pushed each other through the years and I don‚t see an end of it yet.
Who are the players who woke up your interest for alto sax? I have listened and studied more than one alto player. My favorites are Lee Konitz (Some years ago, I had the chance to play double concerts with him on a tour in Sweden, that was great); Ornette Coleman (I like his sense of melody); Jimmy Lyons (I like his phrasing very much and I have performed some of his compositions with my trio); Charlie Parker (of course!); Art Pepper (I like his sound). The alto feels so close to the human voice, it feels very often like singing, not so much like blowing when I play.
Do you like some mainstream too? Oh yes, I like to listen to Mainstream too. It is not an issue of Mainstream or not, but rather of good or bad music. If the music comes from the heart and wants something, if the music is strong and transports strong feelings, it is real music. Any kind or style of music is as good and real as the musicians performing it.
About your last album, the duo with Barre Phillips. Barre recorded this album with his favorite bass, a five string wooden bass. We played first for a couple of days to get warm again with each other, then we recorded everything within one long day. I know Barre since more than 10 years; we have performed quite often through the years, in Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Canada. And we always played some duo pieces, so the album was an opportunity to develop this duo a bit more. I‚m very glad he accepted to do this project with me. To play duo feels a bit special for me, as it gets so close and intimate in a way, no one else to hide behind, no one else to rely on when you feel like running out of ideas! The duo is a very intense story, a challenge, and I like the focus and the concentration you need to realize a duo project.
I am working on another duo, together with drummer Donald Robinson from San Francisco. It‚s a slow project as we live quite far from each other, but still it is an exciting one. And outside the improvised music, I continue to work with heavy metal musician Magnus Rosén.
I hope to spend more time in the U.S., as there are many musicians I have started to work with, both in New York and in San Francisco. I am so excited to find out where all this will lead me in the future! [October 2001, Germany]