Bob Belden: Jazz Adventurer

By JEFF DAYTON-JOHNSON, Published: January 28, 2013
Bob Belden is a jazz renaissance man: a flutist and saxophonist who began his career with Woody Herman's big band. He's also a composer and arranger, who has orchestrated jazz treatments of Puccini's opera Turandot as well as the music of The Beatles, Sting and Prince. His pair of tributes to trumpeter Miles Davis—Miles from India (Times Square, 2008) and Miles Español: New Sketches From Spain (Entertainment One, 2011)—are conceptually and sonically rich high points in a crowded discography as arranger- impresario.

As a producer, moreover, he has led the compilation and reissue of several milestone jazz recordings and box sets for Sony/Columbia records, including trumpeter Miles Davis' The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (Sony/Legacy, 2005) and The Complete On The Corner Sessions(Sony/Legacy, 2007), as well as pianist Herbie Hancock's Sextant (Columbia, 1973)—and many, many others. This work has garnered Belden three Grammy Awards, and few musicians have drawn as creatively from these masterpieces of 1970s fusion as Belden.

Perhaps what is most distinctive about Belden is his capacity to craft music in a cinematic or novelistic way. His albums, his concerts, tell multidimensional stories. In his conversation with All About Jazz, Belden points out that pianist/bandleader/composer Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, bassist/bandleader/composer Charles Mingus and keyboardist Joe Zawinul also created this kind of complex Total Art. But the group of such musicians is a small one. And, as his remarks demonstrate, Belden is thinking bigger and bigger all the time, marrying technology and creativity to transcend current notions of "jazz performance." Indeed, he prefers "adventures" to "projects."

Belden's Animation band has released three records on the RareNoise label, the most recent being Transparent Heart, an aural movie about New York City, recorded with an all-new lineup of musicians.

All About Jazz: Tell us a little about your band, Animation.

Bob Belden: Animation essentially started in 1993 as part of a recording session for EMI-Japan {PrinceJazz (EMI Japan, 1993). I had a concept of reducing the big band texture to three keyboards and a guitar, plus trumpet, sax, bass and drums. It was a sextet with only [trumpeterTim] Hagans, myself, [Scott] Kinsey [on synthesizers], [bassist David] Dyson, [drummer Billy] Kilson and [turntablist] DJ Kingsize by 1999, when we recorded Animation: Imagination (Blue Note, 1999) and Re: Animation LIVE! (Blue Note, 2000). By then we had established an exclusive sound in the jazz world, being the first jazz band to successfully incorporate drum and bass and electronica influences into the music (with two Grammy nominations to prove it).

From 2001-2006, the band was in semi-hiatus, doing a few gigs and an unissued recording session. We used Zach Danzinger and KJ Sawka (currently the drummer with the pop band Pendulum) on drums during that period and DJ Logic joined the band in 2006. We went into Merkin Hall in late 2006 with Hagans, myself, Kinsey, Matt Garrison on bass, Guy Licata on drums (who I met on a Bill Laswell gig at the Stone) and DJ Logic to perform [Miles Davis'] Bitches Brew(Columbia, 1970). This was recorded by a UK production company called Something Else and the show ended up on the BBC. I also put the concert up on YouTube, where it has been viewed about 300,000 times.

It was through this video that Mr. Giacomo Bruzzo from RareNoise Records entered the picture. Giacomo thought the concert was strong enough to release and then implement a plan to try to find work for that band. The main problem was that all of the band members from 2006 had gone on their own by 2010, with personal commitments that overrode Animation. So in a very unique business move, Giacomo approved of resetting the band from scratch. He understood that Animation was not a one-off event, it was a line of thinking, a sound-creation methodology that he was familiar with and knew of the artistic potential. We made a deal to begin anew and on that basis, with the desire to embrace the future, and RareNoise released Asiento in 2011 and Agemo in 2012 to begin the idea of Animation being alive and well. A continuum was established. Transparent Heart was issued in October of 2012.
Read more: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=43730#.UQezAaXhEhQ