can stream online<\/a>. Here\u2019s more from it.<\/p>\nMatthew Schnipper: You said in a recent interview that jazz changes every 10 years, and you\u2019ve been a professional jazz musician in New York City for just over 10 years. In that context, has the city changed? Has jazz changed? And how have you changed?<\/p>\n
I moved here when I was 18, and I think the city changing is synonymous with my view of the city changing. In terms of the jazz scene, things have changed a lot post-covid because of how social it\u2019s supposed to be. Jazz music is such a social music and it\u2019s an activity you have to do with others. There used to be more spontaneity in the scene. There used to be club-hopping. People would go to Smalls Jazz Club and then hit Mezzrow and then go to the Vanguard and then to Blue Note, you know?<\/p>\n
What was the third one? I forget.<\/p>\n
MS: How have you changed? You\u2019re a different artist in a lot of ways, from your debut album \u201cOmega\u201d to now. How is that tied up to your time in New York?<\/p>\n
I feel more adult now. Part of that was moving to Brooklyn. There\u2019s something about living on the island of Manhattan that makes me feel like I\u2019m still doing whatever I want, you know what I mean? Being a young person living in the city, my proximity to places was not separated by a body of water. So I was out way more. I was hanging, I was partying, I was playing jam sessions at like 2 or 3 in the morning.<\/p>\n
Upon moving to Brooklyn, I became a person who really values a slow life. I\u2019m going to the spa now. I\u2019m cooking, I\u2019m going on walks, I\u2019m chilling at the park. I love a soft life, you know? [I am also] growing older in the realm of the sonic. I actually value a more refined version of myself now in the way I play. Or even in the way I\u2019m composing music. I\u2019m distilling what I have always felt compositionally down to much simpler terms. I\u2019m able to say things and a lot more with less information and less complexity.<\/p>\n
Sonia Rao: You\u2019ve also said in past interviews that you see performance as a vessel. A vessel for what? And has that changed as you live a calmer life?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always found purpose in being a vessel for God. My spiritual practice has helped me find some direction in terms of why I\u2019m playing. I think of music as an altar.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also this experience I have often, but not often enough, of feeling like I\u2019m not the one making the music. It\u2019s this experience of emptying, where you feel like you\u2019re behind yourself and almost becoming a witness to what\u2019s happening to you. Disorientation is almost like the destination. You can practice yourself into a stupor where you actually transcend the work you\u2019re making. Your rigor actually takes you outside of yourself.<\/p>\n
Throughout my work and my young life still, I\u2019m thinking about all the different ways we become these immaterial archives for ourselves. I\u2019m always thinking about ancestry. I\u2019m thinking about stories and people in my community, and how these are now things that we reappropriate and recreate and distribute out into the world.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how I feel about being a vessel now.<\/p>\n
MS: One of the things you\u2019re talking about is time. You put out a triple album earlier this year, and you\u2019re inviting people to spend all of that time with you. How much did you think about that duration when you put the music together?<\/p>\n
When we recorded, I was open-minded. I was like, \u201cLook, we\u2019ll try to get what we can, see how much information is going to be good and then see how much we want to release.\u201d That could have been 40 minutes of material. It could have been an hour of material. And it turned out to be three hours\u2019 worth of material.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the position of power that an artist is in. We get to do something to the audience for this hour to 90 minutes that they have bought a ticket to sit there, and that is an incredible privilege and an honor \u2014 and something to be treated with utmost care.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always thought about time as something that can be harnessed. You travel into the Village Vanguard. It\u2019s a basement, it\u2019s dark, it\u2019s small. You\u2019re cozy, you\u2019re rubbing up against the people next to you and it\u2019s like, how do we harness this time and do something interesting with it? Obviously, we\u2019re trying to make music. We\u2019re playing stuff that\u2019s intellectually rigorous and challenging. But I\u2019m also thinking about real tangible ways of manipulating time, which deals with tempos and BPMs, right?<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re thinking about the time of life, we operate 60 seconds per minute \u2014 so, 60 beats per minute. If you\u2019re playing a faster-paced song at 300 beats per minute, then your orientation to time becomes morphed. It becomes skewed. That\u2019s the reason why you can go to a concert and feel like it was 10 minutes, or you can go to a concert and be like, \u201cMan, that felt like three hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
MS: You\u2019re playing again at the Village Vanguard, where your triple album was recorded. Are you imagining your new shows as reflective of what is on those records, or are you going to try to do something new?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s such a holy grail to make a record at the Village Vanguard. That\u2019s something every jazz musician wants to do. I caught some of the lightning and bottled it up, you know?<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m feeling so excited to jump off the deep end and try some new stuff. [Maybe] fall flat on our faces. In quantum theory, they say that once you start to observe the atoms, they start acting differently than when you leave them alone. That\u2019s what I\u2019m excited for. We\u2019re going to be able to get to whatever we want to because the red light isn\u2019t on anymore. And it might be even more spectacular.<\/p>\n
SR: What does it actually feel like to be there, trying new things? Take us into what it\u2019s like to be in your body on stage \u2014 or out of your body, as you say.<\/p>\n
The Village Vanguard is a very special place. So many musicians have played there, and there\u2019s something true about it being in the walls and the floorboards. You can feel that this is a well worn-in spot, and it\u2019s conducive to great music being made.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s special about the Vanguard is that it has a real listening audience. Some people go there every week to hear whoever is there for their week-long residency. And then other people are tourists who know about the Vanguard and are like, \u201cYo, these are the hallowed grounds of jazz music.\u201d People know the music and respect the music, and everyone feels like family there. There\u2019s just a sense of community in the New York jazz scene. Because [the Vanguard] is, indeed, the best jazz club in the world.<\/p>\n
MS: You\u2019ve also played in more underground venues like Public Records in Brooklyn. Do you think about your audiences in those different places? Which New York arts community do you want to be a part of?<\/p>\n
I want to be somewhere in the middle. What I love about the underground scene, the alt scene, is that I feel like the audiences are way more diverse. I\u2019m playing for people who look like me and who don\u2019t look like me \u2014 which is fire. I\u2019m very privileged because when I play at the Vanguard, I get a little bit of that audience, too. I think I\u2019ve crossed over a bit and done enough stuff with the cool kids in New York. That\u2019s really helped me out in terms of changing what it looks like to go to the Vanguard and [see] a bunch of old white dudes who have been going there for years. But both audiences are valuable because those cats who have been going to the Vanguard for years and years, they\u2019ve seen Rahsaan Roland Kirk play. They\u2019ve seen Dexter Gordon play. I want to play for those people, too.<\/p>\n
In my lifetime, I hope to see a real change in engagement with the younger community because not only will they be around for the entirety of my career, but they\u2019re also radical. They\u2019re a part of what\u2019s going on in the world right now, and they\u2019re the ones who are going to be able to breathe change into the world. Music can make some stuff shake. It\u2019s like, can I have an audience that is willing to take arms up? Can I have an audience that\u2019s young and lit and fire?<\/p>\n
MS: Which brings us to something you mentioned earlier: You\u2019re young. And you\u2019re working in a genre that a lot of people think of as an older person\u2019s genre, but you\u2019re breathing new fire into it. Tell us more about that dynamic.<\/p>\n
Being a jazz musician, you get typecast immediately. I\u2019ve been in a healthy number of spaces where I\u2019m the only jazz musician and I\u2019m with pop stars, rappers, whatever.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a real desire for the music, and I don\u2019t think people are closed off to jazz. I think most people love the music and just want it to be cool. I\u2019m in a class of really incredible musicians my age who are making some beautiful music, who are super swaggy, super fly and also deeply rigorous. Those things can live together.<\/p>\n
SR: Are there any musical heights you would still like to reach one day?<\/p>\n
There are venues I would love to play at. I just want to reach as many people as possible, so I want to play bigger venues, cooler venues, more standing room spots and more seated spots, too. Bigger halls. I believe in the music I\u2019m making and I think it\u2019s doing something for me, so hopefully it\u2019ll do something for other people. Those are my heights. I don\u2019t really have any concrete place. Maybe Carnegie Hall?<\/p>\n
MS: That seems within reach.<\/p>\n
My mom would be so happy. Like, \u201cOh, my baby is playing Carnegie Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first thing Immanuel Wilkins did upon moving to Brooklyn about five years ago was make nice with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-360134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}