20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY february 23-march 1, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com How did you end up composing? I went to the University of Minnesota as a theory major. By Windom standards, everybody thought I was a great pianist. By standards out there in the world, I’m a lousy pianist. But Mrs. Butler taught me a lot of theory and had me writing music starting in third grade, really understanding chord structures. A teacher who heard my assignments said, “You seem like you can actually compose. You should be a composition major.” I was told there’s a big band in the school and you should go watch them rehearse, and maybe you can write for them. So I started doing that and I just loved it. I just got the bug, writing for the rhythm section, writing for improvisers. Because writing for improvisers fits and fills my social needs. When you compose, how do you decide which instrument will play what? That’s the part I love the most, the thing that fascinated me when I was listening as a kid. I would hear things, and I would be like: “Aww, I would love to know how to make that color. That sound.” When I’m thinking of ideas, I’m hearing a color in my head. And I have to figure out how to get it. A lot of times it’s about mixing different instruments to come up [with a sound] that has a little edge or a little roundness to it, or something that’s just powerful and bright, or something that is very dark. Every instrument has its sweet spot. And on top of that, every player has a certain sound. In the case of my band, I know these guys, so I can think: “Who am I going to put on that, how am I going to get that sound.” You’ve been leading a big jazz band since the ’90s. Is it still the same people you started with? I just found my files from back in the days when we played in Visiones. [The Visiones Jazz & Supper Club was a Greenwich Village jazz music venue that operated between 1987 and 1998.] It says who can play what night, who’s subbing for who, their phone numbers are at the top. I looked at it and I got a headache because it was such an ordeal every week, putting that together, being scared that somebody wouldn’t be there, or if there was a mix-up, or double booking. But the basic band is remarkably unchanged. Like Jay Anderson, my bassist, who played on my record that we recorded at the end of ’92. There are seven people in the band that have been there since the beginning. What happened to Visiones? It closed in 1998. Then right around that time the club called Jazz Standard opened, which was fantastic. And then Jazz Standard became our home. We would do week-long runs, and in 2005, I think, we started to play every year at Thanksgiving. And during Covid it closed. It was heartbreaking. I wanted to ask you about your favorite jazz room in New York City. There’s Birdland. We played there, and it’s a wonderful place too, and it has a big stage. Then there’s Village Vanguard, which is just a historic place, and it’s wonderful. But my band, we played there once. It’s not a good room for my band. My band needs a little bit of room to mix the sounds. In addition to Evelyn Butler, you had two other important mentors/ early employers—Gil Evans and Bob Brookmayer. That I got to work with them and know them was really honestly kind of crazy. With Evans it was completely by luck. I worked as a music copyist in New York and met somebody there, a musician, who knew that Gil needed an assistant. I went to a rehearsal, and he had me copy some things, and I did it and I guess he liked my work and we got along. So I worked for him until he died. And Bob Brookmeyer—he was such a great teacher. He could articulate things in such a clear way. I’ve learned so much from him and I felt so much wind in my sails, emotionally. But you also worked with people like Sting, among other unusual collaborations. The Sting thing was very weird. That was Gil Evans’ project, at the end of his life. He couldn’t do it. He had me write these arrangements. So that was uncomfortable. I hadn’t slept for three nights because Gil gave me this assignment three days before they were rehearsing it. And I had to copy all the music. And at the rehearsals, when everybody had questions, they had to come to me. And Sting realized that I arranged a lot of this music. I was 27 but I looked like I was 13. But I did a good job. And the work you’ve done with Phish? Trey Anastasio came to me and wanted to work on something together. I guess it was a string quartet arrangement; we worked on this song, “Secret Smile.” His song, but I helped develop it and orchestrate it. We went up to Vermont to the barn, where his studio is to record it. And the band basically needed me to conduct, which was really weird because I was conducting Phish. I think that was the only time when Phish was ever conducted. David Bowie… That thing came much later, in 2014. David contacted me through Facebook and then he called me when I was on the train to Boston. I was really nervous about doing it. He had a beginning of this song and he said he wanted it to be really dark. And I asked what words would be? “Maybe vampires?” he said with a big smile on his face. Then we started working. It was really fun. We sat next to each other here at my place at the piano, figuring out the melody, going: “Aaaaaa,” “AaaAAa.” I guess I never thought that I would hear David Bowie in my apartment trying to figure out pitches. I was nervous, if one of us would hate it. He said: “If I don’t like it and you don’t like it, we won’t put it out.” He said, “the great thing about music is if the plane comes down, we all walk away.” His first love was jazz. People don’t know that but he played the baritone. “People don’t really listen and hear the music anymore.” “You can see them on stage, looking at each other. You can see on their faces, the surprise and the depth of disbelief and amazement that they feel for one another in the moment,” Schneider says of the band members performing live. “Which is amazing for the audience, because they can see that this band is loving this.” Greg Helgeson
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