Published: May 7, 2014
To say Daniel Rosenboom is no ordinary jazz trumpeter, is no exaggeration. His father, David Rosenboom is currently Dean, Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music at the California Institute of the Arts (and has been at CalArts since 1990), and having a first trumpet teacher in the form of Wadada Leo Smith, where others may have rebelled to the surfscape or gone full Charlie Sheen, Daniel is confidently fulfilling his destiny to boom loud and boom proud.
Catching up with Daniel in Los Angeles he elaborated on what he is working on now, chiefly his album Fire Keeper, how he is extending the richness of the Rosenboom musical legacy, and the latest developments of his blossoming new label, Orenda Records.
All About Jazz: Talking about the album Fire Keeper, has to start with talking about where you are from, your genealogy, why you have arrived at this point, the blurb doesn't exactly say...
Daniel Rosenboom: I'm actually Californian, my father grew up in Illinois and my mother grew up in Michigan, so both from the Midwest, they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and I was born in Oakland and then we moved down to LA when I was a kid, so basically I am pretty much a California native.
AAJ: So in terms of older history than that, when you tap into music from different sources, do you see yourself as just American, or do you have other influences?
DR: I have plenty of other influences, I've spent a lot of time playing music from around the world, but especially music from the Balkans. I have another band, PLOTZ! that plays a variety of Balkan traditional music mixed with jazz and metal and other kinds of, I guess, more contemporary American music. But in terms of fusing styles and different influences, that doesn't really have to do so much with an attempt to blend cultures —it's that I appreciate music from all different genres and from all different parts of the world. And I have a lot of it swimming around in my head, so I write, it just comes out kind of as a natural combination.
AAJ: It does, it's nice to hear a young musician who isn't afraid of matching all of his interests equally, it's not straight rock or jazz, you're not trying to be a heavy rock musician, and not trying to be an in-your-face jazz musician, it's subtle, it's not art music in a poncy sense, it's very distinguished and it's easy to listen to.
DR: Thanks very much. It's all just very organic in the way it comes out, it's never really an attempt to say, "I'm going to combine Balkan music with New Orleans street music and metal" or something like that. It's more just like I just hear things a certain way and I can only write what I hear.
AAJ: I suppose you are fortunate, in a sense, in that you have been hearing music from a very young age, your dad, David Rosenboom is a composer isn't he?
DR: Yeah he's a very heavy composer and pianist, a pioneer in electronic and computer music, and has worked with a lot of revolutionary artists. I like telling the story, that my first musical memory is actually sitting on Anthony Braxton's floor...
AAJ: That's not a daily thing is it...
DR: Nooo, noo! My dad was playing piano in his quartet and they were both at Mills College at the same time, and I was about the same age as Anthony's kids, I was 2 years old, or something like that and we were playing with little cars or action figures on the floor while Anthony and my dad were jamming in the living room. I remember just looking up and to me maybe he was playing a bass sax or maybe it was just a baritone who knows, but it seemed like this gigantic piece of metal making this unimaginable sound and I was totally mesmerized. That to me is the first memory that I have of really experiencing music.
AAJ: Have you followed Anthony Braxton since? Did you see him get his NEA Jazz Master 2014 Award?
DR: Yeah I mean I've followed Anthony a bit, never super closely, and we haven't really had very much contact over the course of my life since he left the Bay Area, but I have always appreciated his music and tried to follow it. One nice thing coming around, I think will be pretty cool, at this year's Angel City Jazz Festival, they will hopefully be presenting Anthony Braxton's quartet, as well as my group—probably on different concerts on different nights but it will be cool to share a festival billing with him!
AAJ: I heard Anthony Braxton give his NEA Jazz Master 2014 speech His interest in new systems/models (his tri- centric thought unit construct) to discuss his music, his essence of wanting to put all these concepts together, absorbing lots of different sounds, almost making a classification system like biology, was really fascinating. I can imagine how his sound and how his system would input what you are doing with rock and metal by absorbing more elements of pop and rock music, and what essentially is, would you call it jazz music?
DR:Oh, well, this is a tricky subject, one thing that I think actually is very pertinent in my life, as well as for a lot of my friends and the community that I am part of. How do we classify the music that we are making, especially when it draws from such a wide range of styles and influences? I would say that the album Fire Keeper isn't really a jazz album but it involves a lot of jazz elements. And, as you said, it isn't really a rock album, but it has strong elements of rock and roll and metal, and in a more modern way, so it's not exactly "jazz-fusion" either. And so the question of genre really boils down to marketing, you think about who would really appreciate your music when they are searching in iTunes or something. And that's a really tricky issue, because if I were to classify it I wouldn't necessarily call it jazz, but I don't really know what else I would call it. It's an amalgam of a lot of different things that are just in my consciousness anyway, so to put that into a very narrow category—not that jazz is narrow— but just as a single word makes it difficult—it's sort of hard to swallow I would say.
Catching up with Daniel in Los Angeles he elaborated on what he is working on now, chiefly his album Fire Keeper, how he is extending the richness of the Rosenboom musical legacy, and the latest developments of his blossoming new label, Orenda Records.
All About Jazz: Talking about the album Fire Keeper, has to start with talking about where you are from, your genealogy, why you have arrived at this point, the blurb doesn't exactly say...
Daniel Rosenboom: I'm actually Californian, my father grew up in Illinois and my mother grew up in Michigan, so both from the Midwest, they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and I was born in Oakland and then we moved down to LA when I was a kid, so basically I am pretty much a California native.
AAJ: So in terms of older history than that, when you tap into music from different sources, do you see yourself as just American, or do you have other influences?
DR: I have plenty of other influences, I've spent a lot of time playing music from around the world, but especially music from the Balkans. I have another band, PLOTZ! that plays a variety of Balkan traditional music mixed with jazz and metal and other kinds of, I guess, more contemporary American music. But in terms of fusing styles and different influences, that doesn't really have to do so much with an attempt to blend cultures —it's that I appreciate music from all different genres and from all different parts of the world. And I have a lot of it swimming around in my head, so I write, it just comes out kind of as a natural combination.
AAJ: It does, it's nice to hear a young musician who isn't afraid of matching all of his interests equally, it's not straight rock or jazz, you're not trying to be a heavy rock musician, and not trying to be an in-your-face jazz musician, it's subtle, it's not art music in a poncy sense, it's very distinguished and it's easy to listen to.
DR: Thanks very much. It's all just very organic in the way it comes out, it's never really an attempt to say, "I'm going to combine Balkan music with New Orleans street music and metal" or something like that. It's more just like I just hear things a certain way and I can only write what I hear.
AAJ: I suppose you are fortunate, in a sense, in that you have been hearing music from a very young age, your dad, David Rosenboom is a composer isn't he?
DR: Yeah he's a very heavy composer and pianist, a pioneer in electronic and computer music, and has worked with a lot of revolutionary artists. I like telling the story, that my first musical memory is actually sitting on Anthony Braxton's floor...
AAJ: That's not a daily thing is it...
DR: Nooo, noo! My dad was playing piano in his quartet and they were both at Mills College at the same time, and I was about the same age as Anthony's kids, I was 2 years old, or something like that and we were playing with little cars or action figures on the floor while Anthony and my dad were jamming in the living room. I remember just looking up and to me maybe he was playing a bass sax or maybe it was just a baritone who knows, but it seemed like this gigantic piece of metal making this unimaginable sound and I was totally mesmerized. That to me is the first memory that I have of really experiencing music.
AAJ: Have you followed Anthony Braxton since? Did you see him get his NEA Jazz Master 2014 Award?
DR: Yeah I mean I've followed Anthony a bit, never super closely, and we haven't really had very much contact over the course of my life since he left the Bay Area, but I have always appreciated his music and tried to follow it. One nice thing coming around, I think will be pretty cool, at this year's Angel City Jazz Festival, they will hopefully be presenting Anthony Braxton's quartet, as well as my group—probably on different concerts on different nights but it will be cool to share a festival billing with him!
AAJ: I heard Anthony Braxton give his NEA Jazz Master 2014 speech His interest in new systems/models (his tri- centric thought unit construct) to discuss his music, his essence of wanting to put all these concepts together, absorbing lots of different sounds, almost making a classification system like biology, was really fascinating. I can imagine how his sound and how his system would input what you are doing with rock and metal by absorbing more elements of pop and rock music, and what essentially is, would you call it jazz music?
DR:Oh, well, this is a tricky subject, one thing that I think actually is very pertinent in my life, as well as for a lot of my friends and the community that I am part of. How do we classify the music that we are making, especially when it draws from such a wide range of styles and influences? I would say that the album Fire Keeper isn't really a jazz album but it involves a lot of jazz elements. And, as you said, it isn't really a rock album, but it has strong elements of rock and roll and metal, and in a more modern way, so it's not exactly "jazz-fusion" either. And so the question of genre really boils down to marketing, you think about who would really appreciate your music when they are searching in iTunes or something. And that's a really tricky issue, because if I were to classify it I wouldn't necessarily call it jazz, but I don't really know what else I would call it. It's an amalgam of a lot of different things that are just in my consciousness anyway, so to put that into a very narrow category—not that jazz is narrow— but just as a single word makes it difficult—it's sort of hard to swallow I would say.
Read more: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-origins-of-orenda-fire-keeper-daniel-rosenboom-quintet-daniel-rosenboom-quintet-by-fiona-ord-shrimpton.php#.U2-l_14tN3g
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