UK Jazz News

Mondays with Morgan: Lucas Pino

New album ‘Covers’

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Lucas Pino. Photo credit: Martina DaSilva.

This week’s edition of Mondays with Morgan is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and Lucas Pino, a top-shelf saxophonist, bandleader and composer who has worked extensively as a sideman and as the leader of the No Net Nonet.

Pino’s debut quartet album, Covers, featuring guitarist Alex Goodman, bassist Rick Rosato, and drummer Allan Mednard, was released via Outside In Music on 20 October. Links to purchase the album and to his website are below.

What does or doesn’t comprise a jazz standard has been litigated and relitigated; by now, the subject is a little pat. Miles Davis’s dictum arguably seals the deal: “A standard fits like a thoroughbred. The melody and everything is just right, and every time you hear it you want to hear it some more. And leave enough of it to know what you want to hear again.”

But what’s less discussed is how often Miles, Bird, Diz, and so many other foundational figures, were simply playing their friends’ tunes — watering that garden of material. And with his latest album, Covers, Lucas Pino wanted to tap into that system of mutual inspiration.

Take “REL,” a tune by vibraphonist and pianist Peter Schlamb, which has been covered by everyone from saxophonists Ben Van Gelder and Adam Larson to pianist Glenn Zaleski. While it may not sit next to “Stardust” today, it very well could in the coming decades.

“That’s a tune that — I think more than most — has traction in terms of becoming a modern standard,” Pino tells LondonJazz News. “I guess a lot of this record is just my intuition about what modern standards could look like.”

Covers features Pino and his quartet’s spin on “REL” — as well as others by his peers, like pianist Fred Hersch (“Phantom of the Bopera,” Hersch’s tribute to Joe Henderson), trumpeter Nicholas Payton (“Triptych”), and saxophonist Alex LoRe (“Amnesia”).

But this isn’t at the expense of the standard-writers of yore: it’s a counterweight to the tried-and-true repertoire, not a replacement for it. Because Covers also includes Duke Pearson’s “New Girl,” as well as a shoo-in for the Real Book: Charlie Parker’s “Relaxin’ at Camarillo.” (“Hey, you can’t lose with the blues,” Pino says, “and you can’t lose with Bird.”)

Neither can you lose with these contemporary luminaries Pino tips his hat to: listening to Covers amounts to a guessing game of who they’ll write books about in 50 years.

Read on for an interview with Pino about how he conceptualized and executed it — and where he sees himself in the bottomless tradition of the tenor sax.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

UKJazz News: In the strictest corners of the jazz world, the repertoire is kind of frozen, unbending. I love your approach, where you cover your peers and contemporaries. It feels healthier, more circular. Can you talk about that dynamic?

Lucas Pino: It was just intuitive to me — the repertoire, and how we ended up picking it. I ended up picking tunes that, for one, are my friends’ tunes — like the Peter Schlamb tune [“REL”] and the Alex LoRe tune [“Amnesia”]. I felt like, Oh, these could be standards.

What if my generation was less concerned about their own writing and output and artistic thing, and was still doing what our predecessors did? Which was, I’m going to cover my friends’ and contemporaries’ music? I think these would be the tunes.

And then for good measure, [my wife, saxophonist] Roxy [Coss] and I had had our daughter so recently, that the tune “New Girl” by Duke Pearson — it’s about a new girlfriend, probably; that’s what I imagine Duke Pearson’s talking about. But in my context, we had a new girl. So, I wanted to include that.

For all the other tunes — the Fred Hersch tune [“Phantom of the Bopera”], the Nick Payton tune [“Triptych”] — I felt like, Man, if people were still invested in the living repertoire of the music the way that it seems like in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, these cats are just playing and recording each other’s tunes all the time.

I could pontificate about it for a long time — why it seems like there was more of a culture within the music to cover each other’s music at that time. I think they had a lot more record dates, probably — and they needed to fill their repertoire list and all this stuff.

UKJN: It’s like I’m in the swimming pool versus I’m taking a photo of the swimming pool from far away. Lame metaphor, but…

LP: No, exactly. It’s about how myopic or farsighted. I totally agree with you; I’m right there with you.

You know, the Dutch record label Dox approached me during the pandemic and said, “Hey, we know that you’re very well-known for the nonet. It would be great if you recorded a quartet record and gave us the masters. We could put it out here in Europe, and we have a booking agency; we could book you.”

I said, “All that sounds nice.” But in my head, I’m thinking to myself, Everybody is just trying to get their hands on a master all the time. There’s something about that that I was asking myself, What’s your skin in the game?

And then I talked to my good friend Nick Finzer, who runs Outside In…

UKJN: Great guy.

LP: Yeah, I love Nick. I told Nick, “Hey, I was approached by Dox. I know that we always put my music out on your label. What’s your feeling?” He said, “Well, we could do an imprint; we could do a shared thing. And then we kind of dropped it. I wasn’t feeling any urgency about it.

And then Nick came back a couple of months later and said, “Well, what if I finance the session?” Essentially saying, “What if I put up?” I said, “Of course, yeah. Then we’ll do it and put it on your label.” I thanked Dox and said, “We’re going to go in a different direction.”

It really came about because somebody else said, “Doesn’t it seem like your fans” — if there is such a thing in jazz — “would want to hear you play tunes?” Like, “We always hear you in the context of your large ensemble, and there’s writing and all this; don’t you think that people want to hear you in a pared-down context?” And I thought, Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea.

A lot of the spirit behind the record comes from trying to let go of that instinct that I do have, to control the variables. If you’re doing a big band, like Steven [Feifke, whose ensemble I play in], you’re controlling a lot by writing everybody’s parts. You’re shaping it well in advance.

Whereas, a lot of the spirit of this music is the unknown, and what happens spontaneously in any given concert or recording.

UKJN: Can you drill deeper into the concept of the band, beyond simply paring things back?

LP: I’m forming a new band with this album, and you’re trying to make decisions about personnel. You have to have a thesis; what is the goal? And each of these cats are particularly masterful.

The first thing is their tone. When each of them have a distinct, identifiable, individual sound they produce on their instruments, that is special; we can all agree.

The next thing was that they have to possess imagination — that anything can happen. And that if anything does happen, the whole point is to explore those moments. So, those are the two guiding principles.

I’ve known Rick Rosato for a long time; he was one of my first roommates when I moved to New York City. And I’m very close friends with Alex Goodman; our families have done all kinds of stuff together as long as he’s lived in the city.

And I met Allan Mednard playing with [pianist and composer] Arcoiris Sandoval, in her group Sonic Asylum. That’s been a very long time, too.

But from the very first time he and I had a chance to play together, I kind of earmarked it and said, I’ve got to play with this dude, because he just makes me feel like I sound better. He just lifts me up and makes me feel like a more complete musician. Gosh, I mean, what a superpower that is.

UKJN: Covers is such a unique gateway to your sound on the horn. Which school of the tenor saxophone would you say you’re from?

LP: It’s interesting, because I’ve studied a lot of tenor. And I take, and have taken, it very seriously. I don’t mean to sound pedantic, but it’s the love of my life to check out tenor, and there have been instances where I have been challenged by my teachers.

I think that’s a great lens to look at it through. Because the most recent time that I was in school — 2009, 10, 11 — my teacher was Ron Blake. I came to Ron, and I was playing for him.

He said, “Oh, it’s great. I can hear that you’ve checked out this cat, this cat, this cat, this cat, and this cat. But I know you haven’t checked out Lester Young, and I know you haven’t checked out Lucky Thompson, and I know you haven’t checked out Ben Webster. So, that’s your assignment.”

I was kind of like, “Oh, man, the reason why I didn’t check out those cats is because I’m not really that enthusiastic about them right now.” But what that taught me is, as soon as I started to dive into, learn and transcribe it, and try to embody those sounds, then it opened up my mind and heart to the sound, and to the why.

It really teaches you a lesson when you do that. You cannot cast judgement before you drop your ego, and there’s an earnest exploration of “What is this?”. That becomes more and more difficult as one travels through their own school.

As soon as I develop a sound, I always grow attached to my identity. And that is my greatest weakness, I think, as an artist: I must set down the trophies that I believe that I possess, if I am to progress.

So, the school of tenor I come out of now, i would say is everybody, in earnest. I started with John Coltrane, but I checked out Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano, Mark Turner, Chris Potter, and Sonny Stitt. Stan Getz is my great love, and Joe Henderson.

Even my contemporaries: I want to know about how Chad LB plays. I want to learn about how Tivon Pennicott plays. I want to know how Troy Roberts plays. 

What can be said, except that the saxophone as a vehicle of expression is limitless? So, wish me a long life, because I want to get in there.

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