I like to practice and look for beautiful melodies / LR3 / / Latvijas Radio

May 10 and 11 Latvian Radio big band will give concerts with an American trombonist and composer Marshall Gilks. He is a musician who is equally active in Europe and the USA, combining jazz and classical music in his everyday life. His trombone playing brings together both the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Cologne WDR Big Band, he likes to play both in small jazz ensembles and in a classical brass ensemble. Marshall Jilks arrived in Riga at the beginning of the week when Anete Ashmane-Wilson invited him to a conversation that begins with childhood and trombone, continues with jazz and composition, but ends on a classical note.

First, a question about your instrument – ​​the trombone. How did you choose it as a child? Was it because your parents were musicians and your father was in the military?

Exactly. My father was the conductor of the US Air Force Band, but he was also a trombonist. So we had a trombone at home. And when I was a little kid I got to know the trombone and my father showed me some techniques so I could play a little bit.

In the United States, around the age of ten, schools hand out instruments to children, and I could already play the trombone a little, so I stuck with it.

What attracted you to the sound of the trombone that made you fall in love with the instrument and continue to play it throughout your life?

Well, I can’t do anything else… (laughs) You know, a lot of people say that the trombone is one of the purest wind instruments because the sound goes through one or a few bends, unlike a trumpet or French horn or tuba where the sound goes through a lot of different bends and stuff like that . This is why people have said that the trombone is perhaps the most similar to the human voice. I don’t know if this is true or not. I’ve just always liked the sound of it, and this is it

one of the aspects I try to focus on the most is my sound and trying to make it as clean and warm as possible.

Who were the big stars, the big musicians you listened to when you were studying?

The first musicians I really fell in love with were the guys who played in my father’s ensemble. As a child I went to see them play, and some of them were also my first teachers – jazz and also classical trombone teachers. Then I started getting to know musicians, starting with people like J. J. Johnson and Slide Hampton to… I like a lot of instruments, not just the trombone, so I’ve listened to a lot of saxophonists over the years, like Michael Brecker or trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw. And then in composition – Bob Brookmeier is one of my favorite arrangers, Ted Jones, Maria Schneider, I actually just came from Colorado where I played with him. She is one of my favorite composers and I am lucky enough to play in her orchestra.

I could sit here all day and list all the people that have influenced me, and a lot of my friends or people that I play with now have also influenced me a lot.

How do you find the middle ground between classical music, Latin and different genres of jazz music? Do you somehow switch when you play one or the other?

From a technical point of view, if I play in an orchestra, I play another trombone, it’s a little bit bigger. To be honest, this question is about my philosophy or something that I think we should think about more – how to just be musicians, as opposed to us putting everyone into categories and saying – you play jazz, you play pop or you play classical .

At the end of the day, I just want to try to be the best musician I can be and play everything.

The way I practice and approach music is that I try to become as natural as possible, to create a natural connection between my hearing and my instrument. Being able to play any sound I hear in my head. So I think that way of thinking makes it easier to transition between different genres.

Is it always easy to realize this sound of your imagination with an instrument and convey it to the audience?

You know, I like to exercise. After this interview I will go do it. Especially when traveling, I think it’s really important to just play.

I have gone on concert tours with some of the best musicians in the world, I think, and sometimes, for example, when I arrive in Japan, my friends say – let’s check in at the hotel and then practice.

I love doing it and it really is the best preparation. If I don’t exercise, it can even create unnecessary emotions and thoughts for me if I don’t feel prepared enough.

You already said that you travel a lot with different musicians around the world. What gives a musician the opportunity to play in many parts of the world, many continents and many cities. Because it also brings with it difficulties – constant change of time zones, foreign environment.

Yes, it is, it’s hard, but I think the more you do it, the more you prepare yourself for it. For example, yesterday I flew here from Colorado in the USA, there was an eight-hour time difference. I slept pretty well last night, but I don’t know what will happen tonight. You never know. Especially the second night in Europe is unpredictable, I know I can fall asleep easily and wake up an hour later like it’s morning in New York. So I’m just psychologically ready for it. If my alarm goes off at 8:30 tomorrow morning, I’ll know I have to go to rehearsal, so I have to mentally prepare myself to do it even if I haven’t slept.

Traveling around the world is amazing. As you do this more and more, you begin to treat traveling as your everyday life.

Today I walked around Riga a bit and went to the hairdresser, and it’s beautiful. But most of all I like to spend time with local people. I don’t know if I’m a good tourist anymore. Walking around Riga is beautiful, I am amazed by the city and I am glad that I will be able to spend six more days here. But I also have a lot of works that I have to work on, compose. I have rehearsals and concerts this week, but I also have to compose. But, you know, traveling and getting to know different cultures, different people – that can also be a huge inspiration. Different audiences, the way people react – all these experiences make you a better musician and composer.

Your music will be heard at concerts in Riga. What is your compositional approach when working on new music?

I just write what I hear. Interestingly, in the last few years, when I have two young children, five and seven years old, a lot of tunes have been written for them, and one of them is quite difficult, called “Sugar rush”, and another tune is written for my daughter, and also it’s complicated, but I’m not trying to make it complicated. There are some challenging things in there, but yes, I try to write about different topics, different things. At the moment I am writing a concerto for trombone with an orchestra that I have to play in Brazil in August. I tried to understand what to write about. When I was a kid, my dad was in the military and we moved around a lot, but the last place we moved to was my favorite place, Colorado. And I think about the first time I saw the mountains in Colorado and how it felt, and that’s going to be heard at the beginning of the piece. For example, one of the pieces we will play in Riga is called “Fresh Start” – I wrote it as a celebration of the end of the pandemic, when musicians could come back and play and do what we do. Yes, I think nowadays I write more and more about specific topics, feelings, ideas.

What is your composition process? When you sit down in front of a piece of paper and a computer screen and start working, do the melodies or the harmonic plan come to you first?

I usually sit down at the piano and improvise a bit, try to explore and find new things. Sometimes I know what melody I’m trying to write, but sometimes I just sit down and explore, and that’s usually how it starts. And then I start writing and see where it takes me. But I would say almost 99% of the time I write at the piano. When I was younger and had more time, I used to improvise on the piano and try to memorize what I wrote, only to come back the next day and see if I remembered it, because I thought if I remembered it, then it would be a composition worth writing down .

Does it work?

Sometimes. Sometimes I couldn’t remember. Sometimes I’d give myself hints to remember, like it’s the first inversion chord of a Cb minor or something like that – and then I’d remember what comes next. There is a great quote by Wayne Shorter – composition is improvisation in slow motion. And I think that’s really true. When I compose, I actually improvise.

And when you improvise in concerts, what goes through your mind? Do you think about harmonic changes or melodies, or do you just play and not think?

Like I said, I love working out. So I think I have all the harmonic chord changes in my head if I need them. But at the end of the day, as an improviser, I try to look for things I haven’t played before. I like pianists, drummers and bassists, a rhythm group that doesn’t force me to play what I already know. I like musicians who help me find new things in the harmonic structures of pieces that we supposedly know. At the beginning of the solo, I really try to search as much as possible. But in big band, the improvisations are built into the arrangement of the larger piece, so the solo parts have to come to a certain place, in terms of energy and intensity, for the piece to make sense. So a lot of times it’s in my head too that I have to get the music to that point.

Is it easy, as you said, to search and find new things? People tend to repeat themselves when they learn something. Is it easy for you not to repeat yourself?

No, no, not quite. It’s quite hard to explain, but if someone is improvising before me, often I try to take their idea and maybe make it a looping motif to develop it. But it requires finding the right people around you to play with to make it happen. And if it’s not, then you can easily fall into the vocabulary you already know, because it’s easier. There’s a saxophonist I play with now and then who also plays in Maria Schneider’s orchestra, his name is Rich Perry, and I’ve always loved his playing since I was young. And once I had a lesson with him and he told me something that I really thought about when I was playing. He tries to go as far as possible in each solo improvisation until he starts playing what he already knows. I’ve always really liked this concept. The way I probably approach it is to try to think and try to play very melodically. It’s something I really enjoy doing, trying to find beautiful melodies to play over the chords.

And what you like and relate to in classical music, where the notes are written out, there is rarely improvisation.

I love the sophistication in classical music. Some jazz bands have that, but sometimes I wish jazz had more sophistication. And, you know, it’s an amazing feeling when you play a small instrument, for example, in a classical brass ensemble or a wind group in an orchestra. And I remember that from when I was a kid, I remember playing in the United States, where there’s this thing called honor bands. When you’re in high school, you audition, every state has an honor band, and I was in the honor band in high school, we played a transcription of the Hindemith march from “The Metamorphoses,” and there’s a big climb to the brass band in the last part, and I remember having goosebumps all over body from this music. And I often have that when I’m playing in an orchestra or a wind ensemble, like when the chord is perfectly in tune – that’s something I really like. I mean, there’s nothing like it.