The following is jazz journalist Morgan Enos’s interview with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade. Three Visitors – their new album alongside pianist Edward Simon, featuring guests Becca Stevens, Chris Potter, Jana Dagdagan and Rogério Boccato – was released 1 November via GroundUP Music. Links to purchase Three Visitors, and to the musicians’ websites, can be found at the end of this article.
For Scott Colley, to listen back to ‘Nostalgia’ is to behold the sui generis talent that is Edward Simon.
“Those are classic Ed things that I remember him dealing with some years ago,” the superlative bassist says of the native Venezuelan pianist, and his playing on Three Visitors’ opening track.
Specifically, he means Simon’s sense of “a long form structure that develops out… where a particular idea can keep moving, and moving, and moving – and each time, he’ll add a little something.”
This, in theory, could be metaphorical for any long-term association between jazz musicians. But when you read between the musical lines, Three Visitors – from ‘Nostalgia’ to ‘Kintsugori’ all the way to ‘Far Rockaway’ – speaks to Simon, Colley, and Blade’s specific, decades-long creative triangulation.
“Even in our neutral corners – the East Bay of California, upstate New York, Louisiana,” says Blade, a multiple Grammy winner, “it comes together because of the bond, and then the sound emerges.”
Read on to dig deeper into the resplendent Three Visitors.
UK Jazz News: How have your careers run in parallel over the years?
Scott Colley: Oh, there’s a lot of parallel.
We met sometime in the early ‘90s, through a friend of ours, Pat Metheny. I had known about Brian, but we hadn’t played together, and that’s how we got together for our first gig. After that, we started playing with so many of the friends that we still play with now, that we met [during those days].
For me, personally, anytime I’m able to connect with Brian on any project, it’s like, OK, yeah, I’m there. As we live in different cities and have all kinds of other projects going, we keep coming back toward these projects that connect us. I feel the same with Edward.
Brian Blade: I don’t keep a good track of discography to a fault; you record and move on, and record and move on. But a lot of those records were with Scott, and also with Ed. I think we keep making that next step, as Scott speaks about, and making it together.
Seeing their growth from my objective point of view, the admiration and friendship grows stronger. But then, just to be a fan, and be like, Wow, what they express is touching for me. Thirty years later, we’re still reaching for things together.
UKJN: The sound of Three Visitors is so enveloping. How does the trio achieve that atmosphere?
BB: A lot of the sound comes from, initially, the singular vision: what Ed brings to the table, what Scott brings, and what I try to bring. It’s a submission for each other to speak through the material, rather than speak into the material.
It never feels too precious: Oh, don’t take any chances. Don’t break it. It’s like, break it! There’s always that invitation to walk out on the wire together, because of the trust and the power of the compositions.
SC: Some of my favourite moments when we play together as a trio are related to that. When we’re improvising, it’s a given that we’re going to make mistakes, that there’s going to be crossed wires, where one of us goes left and the other goes right, and we bump heads for a second. Rhythmically, harmonically, in every way.
In those moments, everybody’s attention to the present moment is heightened. I know always that Edward and Brian are listening with all their attention, love and energy.
So, in those moments when you don’t know exactly what’s going on – which is a lot, because we’re always stretching – there’s the idea that we can always find our way back together, because everybody’s so focused on that conversation at any given moment.
To me, that’s the real exciting and powerful part of what we do as a trio.
UKJN: Can you talk about the string players on Three Visitors, and weaving the music with them?
SC: The story of this recording is pretty complex, and took a while, in that the basic trio recording was done in 2019, and then we did a lot of mixing remotely. Edward added a lot of voices on keyboards, and then we actually took the recording all the way to the point of mastering it, as if it was totally done.
Then, as soon as we heard it, all of us had the exact same response: we loved the music, but felt that it needed real people playing the string parts that Edward had played on keyboards.
Also, during the pandemic, Edward was talking a lot with Becca Stevens. So, that piece [‘I Wanna Be With You’], which was originally just an instrumental bonus track on the Japanese release, became something that Edward and Becca worked on together. Her work with Edward was incredible; the songwriting and arranging is beautiful.
So, that came about, and then we decided to go back to the mix, remove the keyboards, and add the live strings.
BB: Despite all the unfortunate loss and tragedy that the pandemic left us with, there were many blessings, and glimmers of light. Where perhaps we might have been moving forward – to the next gig, to the next recording, Let’s just put it out, because it sounds great! – instead we were able to let it sit for a minute, assess it, let it stew longer.
First, great appreciation to Sachi Patitucci, who’s the cellist of that string quartet. She called her friends because we trusted her. Richard Rood, great violinist. Elizabeth Lim-Dutton played violin, and Kathryn Lockwood played viola. And thanks to John Patitucci, because it was done at their home studio. So, a lot of friends helped bring it to the finish line.
UKJN: Brian, where’d you come across the concept of kintsukuroi? Is it related to kintsugi?
BB: It’s the same thing. I went on a deep dive with kintsugi, and came to kintsukuroi as another root, a greater description of that golden repair.
I’m just a fan of what it represents: these broken vessels that are brought back together again, and made even more beautiful, and perhaps even stronger after the mending. I see it as this parallel with going through things in life: some ups and downs, some fractures, but then the restoration, and the repair that hopefully comes.
UKJN: Scott, in the press materials, you mention Paul Motian as a huge lodestar, particularly for ‘The Thicket.‘
SC: That’s a rather simple piece that asks a question, and that is something Paul did unbelievably well. He was the master of creating a composition that – in similar ways to Ornette Coleman’s work – puts out an idea that sparks dialogue or conversation, but doesn’t tell you how to play it.
BB: I remember the group arranging that happened while recording this body of work. Like Scott said, it wasn’t held so tightly.
On ‘Kintsukuroi,’ for instance, Scott was like, “What if, right here, after the melody, we went into you playing free for a while, before returning to the form?” I was like, OK, let’s try it. We’ve got nothing to lose. And it turned out to be an even deeper depiction than what I would have envisioned, or hoped for.
I’m thankful for Scott’s vision of it, and the beautiful drops of gold that Ed put into it.
SC: In Brian’s piece, as with all the music that we play, we leave a lot of space in our writing. We point it in a direction, and then leave it up to Edward and Brian to find the direction that the improvisation can take. I know that Edward and Brian are going to be very conscious of the compositional flow, and always return to the essence of the piece.
BB: I feel like Ed is this master at composing things from these seedlings. As those seeds fall onto the earth, all of a sudden, you’re seeing springs, then a bush, then a tree, then a rainforest. He can go from the smallest, cellular thing to something profound and massive.
So, it’s a real gas to meet Scott and Ed’s compositions, because I always know it’s going to be challenging, and you’re going to have to surrender to what the music is demanding of you.
