UK Jazz News

Rob Cope – new album ‘Gemini’

Release date: 12 Jan

Northern-based saxophonist Rob Cope pursued both classical studies (at the Royal Northern College of Music from 2006 to 2010), and then jazz studies (at the Royal Academy of Music from 2010 to 2012). His latest album Gemini (releasing 12 Jan on Ubuntu Records) demonstrates how those experiences have enabled him to cultivate a unique voice as an instrumentalist and as a composer. It features fellow saxophonist Andy Scott with Liam Noble (piano) and Paul Clarvis (drums).

UKJazz News: Tell us a bit about why you chose to record with this ensemble…

Rob Cope: I met Andy Scott at school when I was about ten and studied with him right through my time at the Royal Northern College of Music (as well as with Rob Buckland). I wanted to do an album with him not only because he was such a big inspiration to me, but also because I think he and I play written music in a very similar style. I had composed these duets and I wanted them to sound cohesive. They’re really hard, so I needed a sax player who’s sort of like I am: someone who could both read and improvise comfortably.

As for Paul Clarvis and Liam Noble, I had a long-standing love of their album together Starry Starry Night (2008). So I went to see them play live at the North London Tavern about twelve years ago, and I noticed the way they were on stage together seemed so relaxed. They would chat through songs to play and you could feel the depth of their relationship. It was somehow informal but still world-class. Watching that helped me to understand that you can play difficult music to the highest level without wrapping it in a pretentious bubble. With that in mind, I wanted them to have plenty of license to play how they usually would together. The only time in the whole recording where I felt I had to give any specific instruction, Paul said no anyway. I enjoyed it very much that he was so sure he was already playing the tune the best way it could be! 

UKJN: Was it that intent to bring the Rob Cope-Andy Scott duo and the Liam Noble-Paul Clarvis duo together into one ensemble that led you to record without a bass instrument?

RC: Loads of people, especially bass players, asked me why I didn’t use bass… it’s just my preference (I didn’t have bass on my first album). For this one, I tried hard not to consider what people say I should be doing, instead to do it the way I envisaged it. The pieces are written and structured in a way that never follows any standard songbook form – except for “Laika” which is a blues – and because they’re not heavily notated, it meant that Liam could dictate all the harmony himself without having to inform anyone of what he was doing. Also, the piano can play so low – he had eight octaves to work with – so recording without a bass never worried me.

UKJN: It sounds like you felt having a bass would interfere with their creativity.

RC: Completely! For example, if Paul happened to be a bass player, then it would be a drum-less album. The lineup is purely based on the personnel. When I was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, Pete Churchill would tell us to write for the player rather than the instrument. I thoroughly agree that works.

UKJN: Had you worked with Liam or Paul before this recording?

RC: We’d never played together before, though I took some lessons with Liam while I was at the Academy. When I scored all the compositions out, I sent them to him and Paul. As far as I know, Paul doesn’t have a computer, so I had to print all the parts out and post them to him! I told them that the parts were especially for them, not just a pianist and a drummer. It sort of felt like an audition, they wanted to see what they were getting into.

L-R: Paul Clarvis, Andy Scott, Liam Noble & Rob Cope / Photo by Chris Cruz

UKJN: Your music combines elements of classical saxophone repertoire and technique with jazz and improvisation… how did you incorporate that into this project?

RC: The notated sections are written to be about as difficult as I can play, and I wanted the same for Andy. I’ve thought a lot about how my training as a classical saxophonist has given me a lot of freedom to play notation like that. I wanted to create something reflective of how I’ve been taught, so you have those complex sections of composed music, but because Paul and Liam are improvising, it doesn’t sound like a genre clash. It’s all ultimately jazz, you just hear the influence of contemporary classical saxophone repertoire along the way.

UKJN: Can you outline the main differences between being a jazz saxophonist and a classical saxophonist… should they be considered separate at all?

RC: It’s a great question. I guess different sax players would have their own views. Look at someone like Branford Marsalis: He moves between both genres, but it still feels like a move from one to the other. Looking more broadly, it depends on which country’s music you’re playing: If you’re playing the “Phil Woods Sonata”, which is American contemporary saxophone repertoire, there’s improvisation in the middle; it’s still heavily notated, but it’s less of a shift from conventional jazz. Whereas, if you’re in the French school of classical saxophone, you need to show it a different kind of respect and understand the context of what you’re doing; there does feel like more of a separation. Not that they should be mutually exclusive, each genre has so much to teach the other. I wrote in the liner notes about how I learned to use multiphonics from playing Barry Cockcroft’s great piece for solo soprano sax, “Ku Ku”.

UKJN: Would you say you use classical sax repertoire as a learning resource to enrich your playing in an improvised setting?

RC: Exactly. I am first and foremost a jazz saxophone player. It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza is out of a job and brainstorming ideas for what to do: He suggests becoming a sports commentator because he likes sports, but the others point out to him that you kind of have to have been an ex-player for that! Sitting down to write this album was a bit like that. I asked myself what was I good at, what have I learned, what can I write that would be true to myself. Going through this self-reflection helped me to find my voice as an artist.

UKJN: What was it like to go from a teacher-student relationship with Andy Scott to being colleagues and bandmates?

RC: The transition began when I was in my fourth year at the RNCM, but it was when I came to London that our relationship really started to blossom. I was learning stuff from Stan Sulzmann and Martin Speake, things that Andy was not exposed to. He booked me to play in his Group S ensemble, which was nine saxophones plus rhythm section. We started doing some gigs together and I felt very lucky that he trusted me to play his music. Doing that with him gave me the chance to show things that hadn’t come from him or his peers, and sharing knowledge helped to change the dynamic of our relationship. Because I’d been part of Group S and we’d recorded an album – one of my tunes is on the latest of those CDs – it meant that when we came to do Gemini, everything felt completely normal… until I reminded Andy how much he’d inspired me as a teacher. He was a bit embarrassed. It was quite jarring in a funny way.

UKJN: On the subject of teachers who inspired you, you wrote in your liner notes that the final track of Gemini (“Generations”) is dedicated to Jim Muirhead, a longtime veteran of the Hallé Orchestra and your primary sax teacher while at Chetham’s School of Music (and later my teacher there!). Tell our readers about him…

RC: Chet’s was a boarding school and Jim was the perfect father figure every student needed there. He was very good at shielding you from pressures like BBC Young Musician and internal concerto competitions, never even bringing them up. Instead, he would just let you develop at your own pace and be a kid, bringing up opportunities only at the right time. I think the fact that I’m playing now and still eager to learn and get better is all thanks to him. Of course, that informs the way I teach: I learned from him to never push my students so hard that they burn out, but not to push so little that they don’t get better. I want to take the big picture with them that he always took with me.

UKJN: In addition to making albums and teaching, you cohost the Jazz Podcast with Tara Minton. Your guests include Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, Bob Mintzer and many others. What experiences have you gained from those interviews?

RC: We’ve been going for seven years and I have done about 250 shows in that time, first with Dan Farrant and now with Tara. It was a bit of fun for a while, and then Sonny Rollins agreed to come on the show and our profile kind of exploded. Now we don’t have to ask anybody to come on, I just wait for them to come to us. Sometimes you can connect the dots and see how certain artists see other artists on the show and become interested: Kyle Eastwood coming on led to Jamie Cullum who led to Gordon Goodwin, etcetera. It’s been a privilege to chat with so many amazing musicians, and it’s been amazing to learn how many musicians are up for a chat. Every episode is archived in the British Library, so these interviews will outlive me!

UKJN: How did the British Library get involved?

RC: They emailed us out of the blue around when we published our 150th show. They asked if they could upload each episode of the show we made to a section they have called An Oral History of Jazz, an amazing offer which of course we agreed to. Now members of the Library can access the archive digitally at any point indefinitely. If in the future, for whatever reason, we stopped paying for the hosting, hundreds of episodes would vanish overnight. But thanks to the library backing it up, the risk of the show dying a digital death has been significantly lessened.

UKJN: Other than the podcast, what else are you involved with in 2024?

RC: We’re launching Gemini at Vortex on 25 January, which will be the first time we play together live. We’ll play material from the album but open it out a bit so we can have longer improvisations. I might ask Liam and Paul if they have some tunes they’d like to play, but I’m trying not to plan much more than that. There’s already so much writing. And with great musicians like them, the best thing to do is just to leave them to it. We’ve got a few other gigs spread throughout the year at the Lescar (Sheffield) and the Cambridge Jazz Festival. I’m also recording with my wife Claire Cope’s eleven-piece ensemble featuring Ant Law, Brigitte Beraha, Freddie Gavita, Matt Carmichael and others. There are a few other gigs with my quartet that are still pending so I probably shouldn’t mention them yet, but keep an eye on my website for any announcements.

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