In this interview, Rob shares with us part of his story and very interesting insights into music, practicing, composing, listening and playing with other people.
Check out the solo transcription by the end of the interview!!
How and when did you start playing music?
I started playing playing violin in 4th grade and was not very good. Youget attracted to certain kind of things when you are a child. I don’t know why. It was a very difficult instrument for me, but that was when I started learning songs. There was something about violin that didn’t really work for me. In the 5th grade I switched to clarinet. Probably because I saw a clarinetist named Richard Stoltzmann on Sesame Street playing that very famous melody from Peter and the Wolf. Anyway, I heard him play that for Elmo and I was in trance. I think it took me two weeks to make a sound. Violin was much easier when it came to producing a sound. I didn’t sound good on it, but it was easier. Clarinet was a struggle. I had to figure out how it worked…
Eventually I got it working and was able to play in the band at school. The teacher was cool. I think his name was Mr. Lynch. I don’t remember too many of my teachers before I got involved in music but I remember him. He was really chilled out.
A lot of people who teach don’t have that sense of meaning and that’s a very important thing to me. When you pass on this kind of music to young people, you show them how important it actually is as a function of being a complete person. You show them how deep it actually is. An expression, in the best case, of our relationship to the infinite and existence itself, or at least that is what I think it is supposed to be. I am not really sure people understand that but I think my best teachers, regardless of subject, either knew that and actively thought about it consciously or felt it intuitively and tried to the best of their ability to act it out in everyday life as best as they could.
What kind of music did you listen to back then?
I don’t know exactly how old I was but it was fourth grade and I can tell you that my father loved the Beatles, so I really enjoyed that music as well, but the thing you have to understand is that he was so eclectic…He was listening to classical music, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach…and a whole bunch of albums ranging from John Coltrane to Charlie Parker, TheloniousMonk, Ben Webster…He would listen to a lot of Monk’s music. Especially in the car.
Where did you grow up and how did you become a professional musician?
I moved around a little bit when i was a child.
My father was a high school english teacher first. He moved on from that job when I was four or five and went to study at Western Michigan University to get his Masters degree. He was enrolled in a graduate program including a teaching assistantship at that time which was enough money to support my family as he progressed through that part of his life. It was during that time that I became involved in the music programs of the Kalamazoo Public Schools. It was great. I think it is imperative for the development of children that public school music programs be supported. I believe many programs across the United States have been cut. With that cut goes the cultural development of adolescences in the United States and we will see the negative result of that over time if this is the way things continue to transpire, in regard to the transmission of culture from one generation to the next in the United States.
I think I became a professional musician by playing. I attended different institutions and a lot of that process was really hand in hand with those programs.I remember the first “professional thing” I did when I was 17. It was when I attended Interlochen Arts Academy. We got paid a little bit of money and got a tasty pizza. I am sure we were terrible, but that was what it was. And from there, you get better, you play engagements and meet people…
What would you say are your major influences? I mean, musicians and people who have inspired you and keep on inspiring you throughout life…
I was very lucky because there was a relatively new teacher at my first high school in Marcellus named Joe Lekan. He started hooking me up with really interesting recordings at the time. Standard stuff for a jazz musician, but for me it blew my mind. I think he gave me Cooking with the Miles Davis Quintet and Lush Life by John Coltrane. I listened to those albums so much. He was really the person who started me off. I switched to saxophone when I was 14. I had to beg my parents to get me a saxophone and they did, because they are amazing people. They have done so many things for me in my life, I wouldn’t be anything without them. That’s the truth. That is what it is.
I was listening a lot to John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, but weirdly enough, I was also listening to gangster rap. It was terrible stuff, but rhythmically it was happening. I mean, there’s a reason why this stuff is listened to. Interestingly enough, that’s when I started getting into Sonny Rollins. I would listen all the time, but especially when I would cut our grass, which, out in the country it was a giant yard. While I used to cut the grass, I would listen to as much Sonny Rollins as I could get my hands on. To me, that is somehow related. I am not really sure how but I went from that to listening to a ton of Sonny Rollins.
I went to a Summer Arts Camp in Michigan, which is an arts school the rest of the year. So anyway, I went there for two years of high school. I think I was 15 or 16 when I began. It was an interesting experience to go to school there. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how truly lucky and privileged I was to go there. It was serious stuff. I was taught to really play there. My teacher was Bill Sears who is a fantastic saxophone player. I remember when I was in Kalamazoo I heard him play a concert with Rick Margitza. Rick became another sax player I checked out a lot. Margitza had played with Miles and tons of other people. He’s still doing his thing and I think a lot of my harmonies are derived from what he’s doing. From then on, it was a lot of study of John Coltrane, some Hank Mobley, Kenny Garrett, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster and Michael Brecker, but also other people lately like Milt Jackson who is a vibraphonist.Also, I’ve always loved Kenny Kirkland. I would like to study him a little bit more. Haven’t got into transcribing or stealing his stuff..
Lately I’ve been taking some Brad Mehldau stuff and trying to re-work it for my approach. Woody Shaw has been a guy that I look to.
And classical music.. lots of classical music. Bach is definitely one I like in terms of how music is built. Bartok interests me but I haven’t been able to assimilate how he does his thing. He is deep, but I haven’t really understood him yet.
A really deep one for me has been Thelonious Monk. He’s just ridiculous. But the main thing is that they all created this totally unique sound universe. They are really great at that; it’s so personal to them. I think that’s what I really dig about those three composers, that they are so unique as writers and you couldn’t confuse any of them with anybody else! That’s where I would like to go as a musician and writer: finding something which is truly unique to me. But that’s hard man. That’s really hard. It’s insanely difficult, and you probably have to make bold moves and really know your self as a human being…and you have to know music just as well. Historically speaking also, not just how it functions, but you have to know what it meant throughout time.
I’ve seen here and there that you just released an album. Tell me a little
of how the album happened and what’s the story behind it.
Basically, I was living in New York and made some connections either from playing while I was there or from going to school. Ron Blake is on that album. He’s a friend of mine but he was also my teacher while I was at Julliard. He’s one of them and we got along really well. He taught me some things that I needed to start thinking about basically. He made me think about music in a different way than I was used to. So it was really important for me that he played on that album. Then I also had some friends of mine. Dan Cray was on piano. I knew him from Chicago and I always looked up to him. I
remember when I first heard him in Chicago, I thought I would never be good enough to be able to play with him. It makes me happy reflecting on it, that we became friends and he made me a better player. There is this great bass player I met through Dan named Adam Coté, and he’s just a
phenomenal bass player. Adam happens to be very intelligent and funny as well. Because of those guys I was then introduced to Mark Ferber whom I didn’t really know that well but man, amazing drummer and am so glad I was able to meet him through Dan and Adam. That was really hip. He’s a bad dude man!
They are all great musicians, every single one of them. I got really lucky to be able to have all of these guys on the album. We recorded at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn. I had already gone on the ships, as I was trying to save up money for this recording. So it was on a vacation I went and recorded this. A couple of the guys had already played some of the music because I had already written a lot of it and workshopped it in various sessions that I would play around town. It was great. We recorded everything in 5 hours. It was fantastic. So when we did that recording I believe it was October 2016 so I have been sitting on it for a while. But the thing is, that a lot of my playing, my technique, at least…and sound, was kind of more or less developed. There are some things that have changed in my sound over the last couple of years, but lot of my playing was developed when I made this recording. I learned really subtle, mysterious things. Stuff you cannot really talk about or teach but you have to experience.
https://robhaight.bandcamp.com/album/crumbling-moment
You have been working as a cruise ship musician for a while, now as a Musical Director. How is the experience of working in a ship band in general, and how different it is being a Musical Director?
The whole reason that I got into the ships was because New York was so expensive and I just couldn’t hang with how much things cost. I was in debt. I had to pay a friend back for buying my saxophone and I had to pay back loans that I accrued in New York when I was going to school.
Before I was a Musical Director it was great because I had a lot of time to practice and a lot of that practice actually helped me. I had a lot of work to do technically when I left New York. Things that I wanted to sort of change. I wasn’t happy with some of my sounds, especially in the altissimo register and that takes a lot of time to work out…so for me, it was great because I just practiced a lot and made some money. However, as a Musical Director, it has been really hard to get all the practicing done but I have learned some things about strategy. Not having time really makes you look at how you are spending your time and I think that’s actually better for you in the long run if you are forced into a situation where you don’t have that many hours a day. That was really good for me, so now I think I can get to the point where I can get things done in a faster, more strategic way. It’s like I know what the issues are, and I am thinking about them differently. Like, how can I get the most done fastest, no beating around the bush; if you’re going to get one thing done today, you just spend the couple of hours you have, just getting that one thing better. That’s cool! I was lucky because on my last ship, Harmony, I had great musicians. It made my job easier dealing with great people. So, overall it was good for me. I had to grow into it. The best part of growing into something is that you have to take actions that awaken potential. Different kinds of things, different kinds of qualities that I lack in but could develop. But as far as the time allowed for practicing was concerned, that was really difficult and a real issue for me. So now what I do, is that I am trying to practice more with a specific problem solving mindset that is geared toward one solution per day as opposed to five or ten.
You happened to meet your wife in one of the ships, Verónica, who is actually a Chilean national. How is it for someone who comes from the U.S.A. to live in a country like Chile?
The biggest thing about coming here and staying in Chile for months at a time…First of all, you guys have a very interesting music scene happening here. Good musicians and really nice people…sort of creating with jazz but mixing with other influences from other types of music and it is just different. That cultural slant makes things a little different, so it is hip.
For example, Felipe Duhart does this really cool thing: He’s writing all of this music that is influenced by cueca. His album turned out to be really fun and it was nice to play with all of the people I was able to meet through him. There are influences from other music here that squeezes in
and it has its own shade, its own characteristics where as in New York everyone seems to just be ready to go to war! Like, do I have all my licks together?? I don’t know…I am not into that, really. I mean, it’s weird. In New York there’s a lot of everything; the greatest musicians in the world, bad musicians, you see the guy who wants to sound exactly like Wayne Shorter, the guy who wants to be John Coltrane…the guy who wants to be Kenny Garrett. The funny thing about that scene is that it is actually really easy to be different… although I couldn’t see it while I was there. Just choose to not play a ton of notes because that seems to be what everyone else is doing. That is harder than it sounds, but I think it’s more important to aim for a definitive voice that is true.
I spent a lot of time in Chicago and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I feel like people should go to Chicago first, to NY and then perhaps return to Chicago after that. I don’t know, but Chicago seems like a really good place to develop individuality. Once you are on your way to that, New York is a good type of place where you can temper it. I feel lucky that I moved to New York when I was thirty one. I’m not sure what it will look like after the Coronavirus.
In regard to Santiago…The thing about the Chilean scene that drives me crazy is that people are using the Ireal app on their phones instead of learning the music from the recordings. That is probably a generational thing and most likely happening everywhere.
The other thing is that I don’t see people get together too much to play music for fun. I don’t really feel like they play…maybe because it is getting more expensive here and people have to teach or work all day every day to survive. When I was in NY there were sessions all the time during the day. We were all struggling musicians. You know, some people had day jobs but we would get together and play quite a bit regardless. I didn’t have a day job but I was looking for one. I was very thin then. If there is one thing I love it is getting together with people and playing. Back then I guess I loved it more than being able to eat, which seems crazy now. I get really upset if I miss a meal these days, as you can probably tell by looking at my stomach!
Now that you have been living in Chile for periods of time, you have recorded with some chilean jazz musicians. How has that experience been?
I was very fortunate to meet a lot of musicians here. My time in Chile has been very productive. I had the great pleasure of recording for Juan Pablo Rivera, who is a fantastic arranger as well as vocalist and then Felipe as a I mentioned earlier. I did an album with Cristobál Piña that was fun and it
is beautiful. I don’t think a lot of people have listened to that yet. Seems like it is not being heard and I hope that changes. I recorded one with Cristobal Massis which is really cool. …And there’s one I recorded with Matias Gonzales and I really like what we did. I don’t know what it sounds like yet because we just recorded it at end of January, but man, he writes great music and he’s a really good guitar player too. Beside that, I’ve been able to play a ton of really cool gigs with people. Really great, lots of killing players here. Just for me, its not enough, you know…Like if I go a week without playing with people, I start losing my mind a little bit. And that’s the thing, you can always find people to play with in NY. There are so many musicians. You get to try your originals, you get to have other people read your originals and you kind of get your playing torn apart a little bit too, because if you cannot sight read those originals, sort of… woo..hahaha.
I forgot to mention one musician that is super important to me, Nico Vera, with whom we did an album together. That album still needs to be mastered but the music turned out to be really interesting and beautiful. Nico is a really interesting dude. The way he writes and the way he plays guitar along with how we communicate is very special. It is turning out to be one of my most important musical relationships. His approach sort of fits in well with my approach and it creates a nice thing, so I am really happy that we’ve been able to work together.
How is it different from U.S.A?
Just as an American coming here (forget being a musician), there are two things: one is a positive. I think a lot of the cultural things that Chileans do are so much better than the US. There’s something wrong with the United States right now. I don’t really know what it is but, there’s something
going on and I really can’t put my finger on it, and I am no expert, so maybe I shouldn’t even try…But I like Chilean culture. I really like it a lot.
The other thing is that coming from the United States I kind of see how your government is not really doing such a great job of taking care of people on a social level… Infrastructure, education and the social safety net in the United States are all at a relatively high level and it is a pretty hip place to live, but these things seem to be degrading over time in certain locations. But for poor people, things were never good to begin with… To an outsider like myself, I can’t help but see some pretty big scars left over from the Pinochet dictatorship. I hope your country can come together and act as one people.
As far as differences, I don’t know if there are that many differences recording with Chilean or US musicians; maybe some cultural differences. People are people, we go to record and we have our approach, our strategies and how we want to be when we go do that. And you know… probably the main difference is cost. Cost of the studio, cost of the personnel. Costs in the US are way higher in general. It’s difficult anywhere if you don’t happen to be rich. So yeah, maybe there are little cultural differences but I don’t think it effects that much. I guess things are a little more relaxed here. The pace of things are different. For example, longer lunch breaks. People are not expecting to get a ton of things done in a short period of time. At least that is what I see. I think that’s probably the main difference that I have not only noticed but have been effected by. Chileans know how to enjoy life. They know the value of family. Americans really seem to struggle with those two things. I can tell you in all honesty that my Chilean family here has made me completely change my relationship with my immediate family. I have learned a lot and these lessons have made my life better.
Let’s say you have a gig or a recording session with some musicians you don’t actually know. What do you expect from musicians when you play or record with them?
That’s a tough question man. Most of the time this is about art, but sometimes it’s also about money. Like for example, if I get hired to do a recording and am not really interested in the music, I am still going to give one hundred percent of who I am and what I do to that product if am getting hired to do it. It’s business and that’s something that the ships have really taught me. Not to have a bad attitude towards music that you are not really into, because sometimes it is just a show; you are entertaining! So if it’s something that am not artistically into, no one is going to know.
Not from my attitude and hopefully not from how it sounds. But if I am involved in something a little more artistic, the thing that I expect most of all is that people are listening; that I can play something that doesn’t fit into the changes and am either referencing an idea or putting in
substitutions or just putting more changes in there, whatever…I like musicians who are not afraid to bend harmonies or superimpose other rhythms. I like taking risks, and would totally accept falling on my face. I would rather take the risk. I would rather really try to go for something even if it is beyond my capabilities. You know, really go for it. I guess I expect a really good musician to go with me. Or sometimes it can go the other way. I don’t have to lead everything. I like piano or guitar players who don’t wait for me to suggest another harmony, you know, they bend it a certain way or they turn it into something that I have to listen and to respond to. I love that. There’s a really great guitar player who I played with in Chicago quite a bit, who was really good at that. His name is Scott Hesse. He’s an unbelievable musician. He taught me a lot of stuff. I don’t think I was really good enough at the time to be playing with him, so I am grateful that he spent that time with me.
For closing, can you share what have you been working on lately?
It is very difficult for me to play in my apartment, so I am working on playing soft most of all, which is really quite challenging, to play soft and control everything and be in tune. I am kind of not so great at it in a lot of ways, but beyond that, I just pick things to work on. The other day I
took something Seamus Blake did on a youtube video. It just sounded crazy to me and it turned out to be a diminished thing in septuplets. It was cool because it was a pretty advanced diminished thing, but it could be broken down to something pretty familiar to any musician who has really studied jazz at all, but he reformulated it and made it into an odd metric thing that still fit over 4. So that was interesting. I am looking at that kind of thing right now. I am also using and trying to get more familiar with the modes of the harmonic major and substituting them into places where I would play
modes of major or melodic minor. Like there are the obvious ones, like if you were playing C major you would play the C major harmonic instead. There is a less obvious one that I’ve been really enjoying a lot. It’s using the 6th mode. So basically, you can take that C major and instead of playing whatever you normally play on that, you would play things from E harmonic major and it gives you some nice colors, depending on what notes you wanna take from that. I am really into figuring that out right now. I don’t have it in me yet or am not naturally playing that kind of stuff but that’s where am going to go next. Those kind of substitutions.
Other than that I like to learn new tunes. I was checking out this Charlie Parker album in which he plays “I Get A Kick Out Of You”. I kind of knew that song, but hearing Bird play it made me wonder if I really knew it the way that I should. That’s kind of part of my process. So l’ll learn it by ear,
just by playing along with the melody the way Bird did it and maybe I’ll transcribe it afterwards to see what it looks like on paper. But I like to just learn things from the album, because it’s fun and it’s a good way to learn the song and the progression. After that I would start taking that
into different keys to learn it well. Another example of this process is this: I took Confirmation in Db yesterday and when I say that, what I actually mean is that I play the head of Confirmation in Db. And that’s really my main concern, like, can I play the head in any key? The changes, yes, I can play them, but can I play the head without practicing it? Confirmation is kind of an intense head, so the answer to that was no! So I had to work on it for a while and that’s kind of what am really after. I want to be able to play anything that I can hear. I should be able to pick up the horn even if I never studied the tune before, I should be able to play it. That’s what I want. That’s what I am practicing.
And then the last thing I’ve been practicing, although I haven’t been practicing it lately, is 5/4 over 4/4. So basically, you think of quintuplets grouped every beat. One hand would be in 5 and the other in 4. You would hit beat one, then on the 5th quintuplet would be beat 2, then the 4th quintuplet of the second beat would be beat 3 of the 5/4 and so on until everything lines up again on beat 1. I have been trying to get that together but as I said earlier, I haven’t been practicing it lately. It’s frustrating because I find it really difficult to make my hands make two different things at the same time.
Another thing I am practicing is rootless chord structures. Basically the idea is that you play a chord structure that doesn’t have a root in it and while you play it you have to hear the root of the chord in your mind. I also try to sing these structures. It will be quite some time before I am able to use
them in a natural musical way, but I am trying to lay the foundation for my next approach. The most important thing that I have been doing lately though, has been playing along with Ben Webster by ear. I think that, while my approach may be considered modern, there is something very valuable missing from my playing and I am trying to get the spirit of Ben Webster to show me what that is. I think it is subtle. It doesn’t mean that I want to play like Ben Webster necessarily. But I feel like I need to take a journey with him through his albums to learn something very important.
Thanks a lot Rob for your time. Is there anything you would like to share for closing this interview??
Well the only news that I have is that I just released my album haha. That’s pretty much it. It’s available on Band Camp. It’s called Crumbling Moment. That’s what I have to offer right now for musicians and not musicians alike. Am checking out what I can in the middle of this
pandemia
You can also check from Rob in
https://robhaightsaxophone.com/