BV – Thomson tell us a little about how you’re new recording Mazurka for A Modern Man came about. Why that title? The recording process etc…

TK -Even though I’m primarily known as a sideman, I’ve been working up a large body of repertoire over the past ten years from jazz “lead sheets” to more involved modern compositions, as well as some chamber music. Since 2002, I’d been working with a core group of musicians here in NYC, rehearsing some very difficult and unique music and really cultivating a vocabulary together. Eventually, I wanted to document some of that music for my own archival purposes. We took two days, went up to Rotary Records in Massachusetts where my friend Warren Amerman has converted a church to studio spec, and we ended up recording about 15 songs over the course of two days. The tunes were all pretty involved, some with 6 page charts, tempo changes, meter changes, and more, and I ended up with about 100 minutes worth of music. Within two weeks of finishing the recording, drummer Take Toriyama committed suicide, a total shock for all of us; I eventually decided to release the tracks that highlighted my good friend and musical companion, and personally, it was a tough time for him, so I don’t think the recording does justice to the synergy we had together. Besides this, our only other recording together was Hal Crook’s Creatures of Habit, which was an amazing date to be part of musically.

As for the title Mazurka for a Modern Man, it poetically refers to how I feel in today’s world…in many ways I feel I espouse a more traditional sense of cultural upbringing: scholastic education, literature, chess, performing music on real instruments, an appreciation for the richness of language, no television…don’t get me wrong, I embrace technology, but feel we’re losing a sense of deeper artistic aesthetics as a society. Technology is a tool, not an end in itself; and in general, “leisure time” has been replaced with frivolous “entertainment”. There is no substitute for the depths one can find through intense, prolonged immersion in a single intellectual or artistic discipline, but we are becoming a world with little enough patience to sit and read a book without distraction from your iphone.

BV – You writing style is very unique - at times I felt it almost had a soundtrack type quality, but never losing the jazz idiom.. Can you describe your compositional approach?

TK - Actually, movies and literature have been very influential to my musical approach and I usually compose a piece with a story or image in mind that acts as a schematic for guiding the music. In some ways, I feel writers such as Saramago, Joyce, Mann, and Rilke and filmmakers like Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky, and Teshigahara have been every bit as influential to me as Bach, Ellington, and Thad Jones. As for the jazz influence, I hope that my writing is always informed by that improvisational aesthetic and sense of history, but my sense of history compositionally is so broad as to include Balkan folk music, rock, classical counterpoint, and more, so I have no qualms with a jazz purist saying “this doesn’t swing”. I spend plenty of time swinging as a sideman, and I really wanted to highlight some really unique music on Mazurka, music that compositionally crosses and fuses lots of different musical styles. If you want to hear me swing, look out for my next album!

BV – You have done a number of side man gigs with very prominent jazz artists. Can you tell us a little bit about the transition from sideman to front man?

TK - I feel fortunate to work with so many amazing musicians; it’s been a dream come true. From Kenny Werner, Donny McCaslin, to Billy Drummond, Gene Jackson, and Ted Rosenthal to even chamber ensembles and classical artists like Stephen Osborne, it’s a total adventure on a daily basis. These guys are my heroes whom I grew up listening to as a kid on albums. I still have to pinch myself sometimes when I look up in the middle of a tune and see the very musicians that inspired me to take up music.

But before moving to NYC, I spent a lot of time composing for my group Kakalla. We were literally performing on a weekly basis and then some, so it was an amazing forum to work through different compositional ideas with the same musicians week after week. When I moved to New York 7 years ago, the group disbanded, and I’ve spent my time really focusing on being a sideman in the jazz capital of the world. Jazz is a historical and aural lineage passed down from musician to musician and I’ve learned so much from the musicians I get to play with. Jazz is not a “recording”, it’s a living breathing entity, a creative and artistic process.

But now that I feel more established in the scene (economically and artistically), I’m starting to put a lot more effort into getting some of my own projects out there. Mazurka was the first project of many contrasting ones to come.

BV – Where you always a bass player? Did you start on another instrument? What is it about the bass that attracted you?

TK - I actually have always been active musically; I remember being 4 or 5 and sitting and listening to my father’s records and memorizing and singing the solos and more, so picking up an instrument felt just like an extension of that musical experience. I started with clarinet and piano at 7, but things really took off when I took up guitar and classical guitar at 12…and yes, I had some guitar shredder years in my day! Moving to electric bass was a natural move in high school; but my search ended when my father gave me my first upright bass as a high school graduation present. Everything immediately came together for me musically; the instrumental role of a bassist was a total match, and a year later I was making a living playing music full time.

BV – Im sure the list is long, but can you tell us a few of your favorite bassists or should I say most influential to you as a player.

TK -It’s very important for all of us to learn our instruments and the lineage attached to them in terms of whatever style music we play. I tend to think more like a horn player in terms of soloing, but respect the bass’s role as a fundamental groove instrument. But I have to say that other instrumentalists have been more influential for me in terms of formulating my own soloing voice: Ellington, Coltrane, Bach, Takemitsu, Messiaen, Thad Jones, Allan Holdsworth, and Zakir Hussain to name a few.

Some of my favorite bassists: Jimmy Garrison (what a pocket with Elvin!), Charlie Haden (poignancy and lyricism), Gary Peacock, Oscar Pettiford, Paul Chambers with Phillie Joe (pocket and groove!), Dave Holland, and the little known virtuoso Albert Stinson who died prematurely. But realistically, a bassist is just one element of a rhythm section, so just as influential are drummers Jack Dejohnette and Elvin Jones. I’m a total history buff and audiophile, so I could list influential artists and recordings all day long.

BV – What are your plans for your next recording?

TK -Mazurka was a snapshot in time of a specific set of music featuring my peers, some of the great younger musicians making exciting music on the New York scene today. For my next album, I’d like to explore a more traditional jazz setting and do a burning album with some of the older established musicians I’ve been playing with, probably a quartet with tenor sax and piano and someone like Billy Drummond. An album that really focuses on our playing and synergy in a jazz context rather than complex arrangements and compositions. And as an audiophile, I’d really like to make this next album available in 24 bit/96kHz resolution and get as close to the live experience as possible sonically.

Beyond that, I have lots of projects planned from chamber music to improvisational wind ensembles and an Indian “fusion” project, so there’s plenty of composing and playing to look forward to in the years to come!