site.btaYoung American Jazz Trio Returns to Bulgaria after a Flying Start in Big Music

Young American Jazz Trio Returns
to Bulgaria after a Flying
Start in Big Music


Sofia, September 18 (Zlatna Kostova of BTA) - At last year's edition of the Bansko Jazz Festival the three young American jazz musicians of Sound Underground gave a new meaning to the idea of a flying start in big music. Jonah Udall, David Leon and Alec Aldred came to Bulgaria as an odd jazz trio: guitar, alto saxophone and trumpet/flugelhorn. In Bansko and after that, they had several more concerts, won many friends and admirers, bought Bulgarian traditional music instruments and traditional and modern Bulgarian music and flew back home to pursue their studies in Miami, to continue their music work, to issue their first album - and to come back to Bulgaria.

On September 18, the trio landed at Sofia Airport for a gig at the Haskovo jazz festival and a tour of Bulgaria - and found time to speak to BTA about their creative process, the inspirations and their contact with Bulgarian music.

Following is the full interview:

1. When and how did you get together?

DL: It all started when Jonah, Alec and I moved in together as roommates. The formation of the trio came naturally after many hours of musical discussion and listening to music together in an informal setting. After all that, it seemed only natural that we should form a trio. It was only after the fact that we noticed how unusual our instrumentation really was. Even so, we take inspiration from similar groups before like some of the late 1950's trios of Jimmy Giuffre.
JU: I think our "unusual" instrumentation is a great asset it has forced us to be creative with how we approach our music from the beginning instead of falling into any habits.

3. Why "Sound Underground"?

JU: One of the first pieces we played as a trio was one I wrote entitled "Sound Underground." In composing the piece I was guided by a quote from the great Wayne Shorter that came to guide the approach we take to music as a trio. The quote is "You've got to go down in the basement and visit every note." To me, this is a reminder to make every single note we play meaningful and necessary. This is why our music has no extraneous or background parts, we are trying to create a sort of continuous interplay of melodies.

4. What is a typical day of the Trio?

AA: We are all busy and have a lot of different projects going on but we often come together to rehearse or just to hang out and listen to music.

DL: We also come together to edit the website and facebook pages etc. We are very
selfsufficient!

5. Who would you like to be like, musicwise?

AA: Individually we have many different influences. David already mentioned a big one, Jimmy Giuffre's trio with Jim Hall and Bob Brookmeyer. Ornette Coleman, Bill Frisell, and Lee Konitz are others that come to mind when I think of how we approach our music. But because we only have three instruments with very specific sounds, we try to sound like as many different things as possible, beyond just our individual instruments. We've recently been working on transcribing some Debussy for us.

6. How do you compose your music, how do you prepare your repertoire?

JU: Composing for this group is a fascinating process. We all compose entirely on our own before we bring finished pieces to each other for rehearsal, but because we all bring such different sensibilities and backgrounds to the music, pieces change radically as we play them. Someone will see the potential for a completely different direction in a piece and we'll take it. Alec's "See You Never" is a great example: it
started off as a soft ballad but we transformed it into a Spanish-flavored theme with saxophone accompaniment.

7. You've been pretty active, tourwise. Who manages your tours?

DL: Jonah Udall 100%! Alec and I like to help out when we can with returning emails and sending information to venues etc. but Jonah handles the brunt of it. He really does a fantastic job of leading it all and we are extremely grateful for it.

8. Last year you bought some Bg folk instruments. What was the development?

DL: Last year, I purchased a kaval. It has been extremely helpful in understanding how some of the Bg folk inflections are created. More recently, I've been listening to lots of Bulgarian folk music and working on "translating" this vocabulary to the saxophone with a fantastic bulgarian vibraphonist, Errol Rackipov.

JU: I've been trying to steal as much from David from those lessons as I can: it's
amazing! It was a real treat for me to take my tamboura back to San Francisco to play with friends of mine who play Bulgarian folk music. I've been learning a lot of melodies, both on the guitar and the tamboura I'm definitely absorbing a lot of the language.

9. What are your nearest plans (apart from all performances in Bulgaria)?

AA: We just did a two-week tour of California and played some shows in New York this summer, so we've been pretty busy. We've also got some shows coming up around South Florida, now that we're mostly back in town. But we've also been preparing a lot of new material lately and we're looking towards recording and releasing our second album in the next year.

Next summer we plan to do more touring in the US, probably in California again and hopefully in the Midwest where I'm from. ZK/LN/
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