By Matt McDermott

How would you describe your upcoming Chicago Jazz Festival performance?

I know it’s certainly going to powerful. Bill Dixon is one of my heroes of creative music and has been for a long time, so it’s extremely exciting to be playing the Festival along with him. I played the Jazz Festival once before about seven or eight years ago with the Chicago Underground. Big festivals can be a little tricky in terms of presenting this type of creative music to a mass of people, but I think it’s going to be, if nothing else, absolutely interesting.

Where do you see a link between your own playing and composing and that of Bill Dixon?

I think that the link is perhaps more psychological. It’s hard to put in words. I’ve been listening to Bill Dixon for years and years, I have all his records. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him a year ago and spending some time with him. It was an amazing experience.

I think when you listen and you try to understand a person’s music for that amount of time, you’re going to lean towards their way of doing things, at least, towards some other kind of constellation off of Bill Dixon’s constellation that projects a similar vibe.

You play with a lot of different groups. Is your playing style is different with each one?

I’ve had this discussion with various musicians before, about adapting to certain situations and playing in different styles. For me, I want to play like I play under any circumstances. Whether I’m playing with the Chicago Underground, or solo stuff with electronics, or a Latin band, I feel that it is my responsibility to project a sound that is absolutely my own and really doesn’t have any kind of reference to the way I’m playing on something else. Of course, everything comes from something. I just mentioned how much Bill Dixon has meant to me, but of course I don’t try to play like Bill Dixon, I try to play like myself in any situation.

When you use the term sound/vision abstractionist, what do you mean?

I tend to go with Robert Motherwell’s use of the term of abstract. The word abstract to me is to take something and simply distill it to its bare essence in order to get what is absolutely essential out of something. Abstract to me doesn’t mean going crazy or being wild; I think it means quite the opposite of that. Distilling the sound to its purest energy or visually distilling an image into its bare essence, in order to project something that is true, honest.

Is there a commonality in what your trying to express in music and what you’re trying to express in your multimedia art?

I’ve been working really hard for years now to come to some kind of understanding of how sound and vision can merge. I came to the conclusion that it’s maybe not about the merging of the two mediums but of projecting a certain feeling or a sound, a color or form; the juxtaposition of forms or projecting color and then the same thing through sound. I think, naturally, maybe you get to a point where this becomes psychologically, philosophically, and physically honest and then perhaps that’s what the merge is.

Could you talk a little bit about your Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud residency and how it relates to your work overall?

That was basically one of the first times I did a residency. It was the first time I had incredible freedom in order to create something at a [specific] place. I had freedom in the realm of vision and freedom in the realm of sound as well, so I was writing pieces. Basically my job was to create a multimedia piece based on the atmosphere of the Abbaye. Which was a pretty open thing and I was happy it was so open.

So between my work with paint in large format paintings; working with video in relation to stained glass windows and how light moves through windows; with the history, meaning what’s contained within the church, what’s contained within the Abbaye; I think it was the first time I was offered so much freedom in all the mediums of what I’m doing: video, painting, sound, composing, solo cornet works that I also did there. I was able to integrate them in an atmosphere … probably that same work would have been impossible to do in any other fashion. So that particular residency was absolutely a turning point and milestone in what I’m trying to do. And it made me realize that I’d like to do more residencies because I think it’s a brilliant way to work.