Q & A Feature
WILL BERNARD
2005
Do you remember when you first "discovered" jazz?
My first experience with jazz was hearing my classmates in the Berkeley elementary school jazz band. I really got into playing jazz when I was older by listening to groups like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Frank Zappa and I developed some technique. Those Influences turned me on to Miles, Monk, Dolphy, etc.What was the first record you ever purchased? (jazz or otherwise)?
The first records I owned were "Meet the Beatles" and the Stern Rose Istomin Trio playing Shubert piano trios.Who or what is your greatest musical inspiration?
There is no one greatest inspiration. There are people who have inspired me in different phases of my development. My first most important inspirations were the Beatles and Hendrix. Picking a favorite is like saying your favorite color is red. The real inspiration is the mixture of many different colors.What's in your CD player right now?
Nothing at the moment, but I think the last thing that was in there was 'Ligeti's Piano Concerto'. I've been listening to a lot of modern classical music lately.What was the last movie you saw?
'The Lovers' directed by Louis Malle 1958What was the last book you read?
Parts of Sogyal Rinpoche's 'The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.'What is your favorite escape?
There is no escape.What does jazz put you "in the mood" for?
Jazz is a very vague word. It can mean Cecil Taylor and it can mean Billy Strayhorn. I listen to different flavors according to my mood. If I want a warm fuzzy feeling, I'll listen to one thing - if I want to be intensely stimulated, I'll listen to something else.Name one jazz record that 'says it all' and why?
I think my all time favorite jazz record that I'll never get tired of is Monk's Underground. It's got sophistication, humor, introspection, space, compositional soloing, pop sense, great tunes and deep grooves that someone who likes Led Zepplin can get with.Put together your dream band (using artists past and/or present):
My dream band is Rob Burger, Scott Amendola and John Shifflett (Will Bernard 4-tet). My other dream band is Rob Vlack, Keith McArthur, David Agretelis and Jan Jackson (Pothole).If you were not a musician what would you be?
An artist and a poet.What can we expect from you in the future?
I've got a backlog of ideas and compositions. I want to make another record with the band I've been working with. I also want to make an album that collages string quartets, music concrete, guitar orchestras and studio techniques. I'd also like to make an electronica album. Mainly what I'd like to do now though, is get my band out on the road and hone in on what we're doing now.Complete the following:
In the 21st Century, I believe jazz......
will continue to manifest itself in experimental hybrids which will emerge into new traditions. For instance in Indian Music and African Music there is a wealth of information that has only begun to be tapped by western musicians, most of whom only have a superficial understanding of these ancient methods of improvisation. People will eventually be conversant in these idioms as well as mastering what I call the 'common practice' jazz language.Also people will stop being afraid of combining their influences. If you grew up listening to AC/DC, Cypress Hill and Balinese Gamelan, does it really make sense to go buy a big fat jazz guitar and try to copy George Benson note for note? Right now in the end of the 20th century you get people who are specialists in every decade. You've got 30's and 40's swing, 60's and 70's acid jazz people who think that only the most abstract music is challenging. Nowadays it's hard to listen to jazz radio and figure out who the artist is because so many people copy the masters of yesteryear.
My feeling though, is it's all good - it's all viable. In Classical music it's a great thing that you can still go hear music that was composed 400 years ago. It's fine that people are emulating great groups like the Miles Davis Quintet and smoothing out all the imperfections. It's a great thing that you can go into a museum and look at a Van Gogh or a Breugal .I draw great inspiration from traditional approaches but my sympathies lie mostly with those who are trying to do something unique and personal.
Background
As a musician who finds inspiration in a delirious diversity of styles and genres, San Francisco Bay Area guitarist-composer Will Bernard is without parallel. His Antilles CD, Medicine Hat, shows a musician assimilating disparate sounds into a truly personal statement, one that funks and boils with all the slam of a chilled Jimi Hendrix sitting in with The Meters.The Bay Area has a long history of musical innovation, from Sly Stone's gritty soul to Tower of Power's "Oakland stroke" to the more recent exultations of Grammy®-nominated T. J. Kirk (in which Bernard played alongside another other guitar phenom, Charlie Hunter). But only at the end of the 20th Century, as the globe shrinks and cultures collide, could Will Bernard's unique sound have emerged. A subtle guitarist whose playing hints at everything from experimental classical to rip-roaring funk, Bernard's compositions are studies in cross-cultural, era-spanning soul. What would you expect from a musician whose musical loves range from Hendrix and The Beatles to Duke Ellington and Wes Montgomery, to A Tribe Called Quest, Indian virtuoso Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and Varese? Medicine Hat is the answer.
"I'm a product of the late 20th Century," says Berkeley-born Bernard, who lives next door to Tower Of Power's old rehearsal hall in San Francisco. "I'm someone who has listened to everything I could get my hands on and absorbed all kinds of distinct types of music, while trying to focus it into something personal."
Growing up listening to The Beatles, Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Thelonious Monk, Bernard was also motivated by his mother's classical piano and his father's folk guitar. Picking up his own guitar at the age of ten, Bernard was first inspired by Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys album, which he still rates as "one of my top five guitar albums". While attending Berkeley High School, Bernard joined their jazz band, which boasts an alumni roster that includes the likes of such renowned jazz musicians as Joshua Redman, Benny Green, Craig Handy, Peter Apfelbaum, Rodney Franklin, and Lenny Pickett. After high school, Bernard enrolled at San Francisco State University before earning his degree in composition at UC Berkeley.
Bernard cites his high school to college years as being particularly formative in his development. "During high school, I got into writing music and, for some reason, I thought I'd learn more about music by studying classical music rather than by studying jazz. I was getting more and more interested in Bartok and Charles Ives. Still, I was always listening to funk - it was one of my staples. In the eighties, I started an experimental jazz band called Good Dog, while also playing in a Klezmer group and an Iranian wedding ensemble for several years."
Bernard landed his first major gig as a member of Peter Apfelbaum's Hieroglyphics Ensemble, recording the albums Signs of Life, Luminous Charms, and Jodoji Brightness. During that same period, Bernard also recorded an album with Don Cherry and the Hieroglyphics Ensemble, aptly entitled Multi Kulti. Membership in Jai Uttal and the Pagan Love Orchestra followed, performing on three of their recordings (Monkey, Beggars and Saints, Shiva Station), leading up to Bernard's role as a member of the highly acclaimed band, T. J. Kirk, with whom he recorded two albums, T. J. Kirk and If Four Was One.
"Around 1993, all of the clubs jumped on the hip-hop/acid-jazz tip," Bernard says of the Bay Area scene. "Suddenly everyone was playing jazz in all the clubs. I have to say, I was loving that. At one time I was playing in 15 bands - not all at once, of course. We started Pothole (yet another Bernard venture) and T. J. Kirk then. That was the year I met Charlie Hunter and all the other musicians involved in that circle." For MEDICINE HAT, Bernard enlists several of the musicians whom he encountered on this bustling scene of noteworthy West Coast players.
