Toby Koenigsberg Interview

Toby Koenigsberg has performed throughout the United States, including in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Nevada, Texas, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington, as well as in Alberta and Ontario in Canada, and in Japan. He has performed with such jazz musicians and ensemble leaders as Marian McPartland, Rich Perry, Ben Monder, and Bill Holman.†He tours regularly with the Toby Koenigsberg Trio, performing at the Rochester International Jazz Festival, Jazz Festival Calgary, the Tony Williams Jazz Festival, the Portland Jazz Festival, and elsewhere.†His most recent CD, Sense (Origin Records), garnered praise from the All Music Guide and All About Jazz, among other publications, and has received radio airplay throughout the United States. His first CD, Push, features Koenigsberg with saxophone great Rich Perry.† Koenigsberg has been honored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and while attending the Eastman School of Music he received the Schirmer Award, given to the most outstanding graduate jazz performer in a graduating class.

In addition to performing, Koenigsberg has written numerous compositions and arrangements for large and small jazz ensembles and for studio orchestra.† Down Beat Magazine awarded his composition "Song for Aki" Best Original Song in its 2003 Student Music Awards.
Koenigsberg is also active in jazz scholarship and pedagogy.†He is published by the Jazz Education Journal, the official publication of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), and he has given lecture/demonstrations on the music of jazz luminary Bud Powell at the 2005 annual conference of the IAJE, the Eastman School of Music, and Jazz Festival Calgary.

Koenigsberg received his Master of Music degree in Jazz and Contemporary Media from the Eastman School of Music.†Prior to that, he pursued graduate study in classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory under the eminent Ann Schein.†His undergraduate study was at the University of Oregon, where he is now assistant professor of jazz piano and associate director of jazz studies.

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Rick Holland/JR247: Toby, welcome to JazzRadio247. I’d like to congratulate you on your latest release, entitled “Sense.” I’d like to start by asking you to share with our readers and listeners some of your educational background, and some of your important teachers and mentors that helped to shape you musicially.
 
Toby Koenigsberg: Thank you, Rick.  It's a pleasure to be giving this interview.  I started taking piano lessons when I was seven.  My dad is a big jazz fan and an amateur jazz pianist, so I heard a lot of jazz growing up but never liked it – too inaccessible.  I had a life-changing experience when I was twelve and heard my middle school jazz band play for the first time.  A trumpet player was playing a transcription of Dizzy Gillespie soloing on “A Night in Tunisia” and I was hit like a ton of bricks by an intense yearning to play this music.  I immediately signed up for the jazz band and started taking lessons from my dad.  My studies shifted into high gear a few years later when I met Steve Owen, the director of jazz studies at the University of Oregon where I now teach, at a high school jazz camp he was running.  I sensed that he had the potential to be a very positive influence on me and so I pestered him into giving me lessons and ended up attending his school for my undergraduate degree.  From Steve, a true master teacher, I learned the basics, and I continue to learn a great deal about pedagogy from him to this day.

One of the things I love most about jazz is that one can draw material from seemingly any style of music and that material can fit naturally in a jazz context.

While in college, I studied with Gary Versace, the wonderful pianist/organist/accordionist.  (Gary left his job at the University of Oregon just in time for me to get it.)  I learned a lot about harmony and about developing ideas, among other things, from Gary.  After college, I briefly studied classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory with eminent pianist and teacher Ann Schein, from whom I got some sorely needed tutelage in the development of technical facility.  When I finally got around to attending graduate school to study jazz a few years after having dropped out of Peabody, I went to the Eastman School of Music and worked with Harold Danko and Bill Dobbins – both of whom are amazing practitioners of their crafts and phenomenal teachers.  From Bill I learned a pedagogical approach that I use with my students and myself to this day which involves the traditional methods (transcription, repertoire, etc.) but with a willingness to be incredibly patient over a long period of time in order to achieve an extremely high level of detail.  From Harold, and from some of the students I was playing with at Eastman, I learned one of the most important lessons in music: that above all else it's about the emotional content.  In fact, I would now go so far as to say that the only thing that truly matters in music is the emotional content.  Also at Eastman, I studied with Fred Sturm, another true master teacher, from whom I learned a lot about arranging and pedagogy.  Of course, from all of these teachers I learned many other things as well, but for the sake of brevity I've tried to pinpoint those things which made the biggest difference to me.  Also, since I mentioned the students at Eastman being so influential for me, I would just like to add that over the years I've learned as much from the musicians I've played with as I have from my teachers.
 
JR247: Before I ask you about “Sense,” you have a couple of other projects you’re working on that sound very intriguing. Can you share some thoughts on your project devoted to the music of Bud Powell? Please also let us know where you may be presenting this.

TK: I've actually wrapped up most of the creative and educational components of this project.  The creative component has involved playing my arrangements of his compositions.  Two of these arrangements made it onto “Sense” – “So Sorry Please” and “Oblivion” – and I continue to perform these regularly.  I've also got a solo piano version of “Bouncin’ with Bud” that I'll be performing in some concerts in the coming months.  The educational component has involved lecture/demonstrations at the 2005 annual conference of the International Association for Jazz Education, at Jazz Festival Calgary, and as part of a residency at the Eastman School of Music.  However, though I am probably mostly finished with the creative and educational components, I continue to work extensively with Powell transcriptions in my own practicing.
 
JR247: Share with some of us who are not familiar with it some thoughts about the music of Elliot Smith. This is another project you seem devoted to. Where will this be presented? With either of these first two projects, are you writing any commentary or dialogue concerning these presentations?
 
TK: Elliott Smith was a pop music artist from Oregon, where I grew up and currently live.  He became well known (as indie artists go) for his contribution of several songs to the soundtrack of the movie “Good Will Hunting,” one of which earned him an Academy Award nomination and a performance at the Oscars.  I became a huge fan of his music six years ago and began playing his songs on my jazz gigs.  In 2003, at the age of thirty-four, he committed suicide, which left me deeply saddened.  Today, I continue to play his music and I have a CD of it in the works.  There are many great things about his artistry, but I will just mention a couple here that have to do with why, in my opinion, his music works so well in a jazz context.  First, his harmonies are very rich, much like the harmonies I'm accustomed to as a jazz musician.  Second, his forms offer many interpretive possibilities to one who wishes to “open them up” for improvisation.  The challenge of performing his music is maintaining the emotional meanings of the original songs while adapting them to a jazz setting.  For example, I might have to change a song by using more dissonant, substitute harmonies in order to achieve a sense of pain which was originally conveyed by lyrics.  Sometimes it feels paradoxical: I have to change the music in order to maintain its meaning.  But this is what is necessary if I am to convey Smith's expression in a relationship with my own, which is the goal.  I plan to donate profits from the CD to charitable organizations he is associated with: Free Arts for Abused Children, which is basically what it sounds like – free arts education for children who have been abused – and Outside In, an organization which gives aid to homeless youth in Portland, Oregon.  As for commentary for my Elliott Smith project, it will probably consist of something similar to this answer to your question and it will probably take the form of liner notes.

I think the state of jazz in 2006 is very, very strong.  Of course, it doesn't have a lot of commercial viability, so I'm referring to its artistic state.

For tune learning, I have my students go through an extensive process that involves finding the original sheet music (if it's a standard tune), transcribing changes from multiple recordings, learning the lyrics (if there are any), producing their own lead sheet of the tune, cycling the tune through all keys, and other things.  And then, of course, there are instrument-specific things – for piano, for example, voicings, comping, technique, etc.  Obviously I can't address all instrument-specific things because I don't play all instruments, so I'm upfront with a student when there is something that needs to be addressed (like a bass player's sound, for example) that I don't have the knowledge to address adequately.  In those cases, I try to hook them up with people who do have that knowledge so that I can continue to teach the things that I'm qualified to teach and not worry about the things I'm not.  I also strongly encourage students to listen and play as much as possible, but there's only so much I can do in these areas – the student has to want to do these things.  Ultimately, I encourage students to develop their autodidactic abilities, as there is no way to succeed in music, I believe, without them.  This is just a sampling of what I teach.  And I should mention that I am always organizing and reorganizing my curricula in an attempt to achieve greater results.  Sometimes this involves simply codifying things that I am already teaching, which I find necessary in academia where it's helpful to have targets, timelines, checklists – the kinds of things which help a student to know if he or she is adequately progressing to a point at which we will be comfortable awarding him or her a degree after several years.
 
JR247: I’m asking everyone this question, How do you see the state of jazz in 2006? What are some things we as a jazz community must do to keep this music viable and moving in a creative direction?
 
TK: I think the state of jazz in 2006 is very, very strong.  Of course, it doesn't have a lot of commercial viability, so I'm referring to its artistic state.  And, by the way, on the topic of commercial viability, I have a lot of friends who have been involved in various pop music projects, and it's hard for me to see, when those projects are primarily about self-expression, how they are any easier to get off the ground commercially than jazz projects.  I think art music is always going to be a hard sell.  I have some friends who play in a disco cover band that makes good money.  I'm sure it's really fun music to play, but I don't think anyone in that band would say it's their first choice.  So, being an artist is hard financially, and everyone who wants to do it has to find their own way to make it work as best as they can.  Now, on the artistic state: I see jazz musicians all over the country and throughout the world who are extremely passionate about what they are doing, who are willing to work very hard to develop their skills and get their music out there, and who are doing things that are so creative it truly boggles my mind.  I can't imagine a time when there won't be individuals out there doing these things, so I don't have any nervousness about the state of jazz in the future.  So I suppose I don't think there's anything that we as a jazz community must do that isn't already happening and isn't going to continue to happen.  I guess all I could really say is that each person needs to be honest about what he or she is capable of and would like to contribute to the music, and then to contribute that.
 
JR247: Who are some of your favorite players currently?
 
TK: Brad Mehldau, Ben Monder, Kurt Rosenwinkle, the Peter Erskine Trio, Bill Evans, Clusone 3, Elliott Smith, The Band, Glenn Gould's later recording of the Goldberg Variations – these are some of my favorites at the moment.
 
JR247:I’d like to take one last angle in this interview, and talk about your compositional goals and aspirations. How much is composing/arranging a part of your musical life?
 
TK: I used to enjoy large ensemble arranging a lot, and I continue to teach it, but with everything else I've got going on in my life, something had to give – actually a number of things – and that was one of them.  As for composing, I never really sit down and try to write something, which is probably why I'm not prolific.  If I have an idea, I try to flesh it out.  If it doesn't work, fine.  My track record is to write a really strong composition (by really strong I mean one that I would be comfortable releasing on a CD) about every two years.  My first CD, “Push,” had pretty much all of my best compositions up until that point on it.  In the two years between the recording of “Push” and “Sense” I wrote one new piece that I felt was strong, “Variant Strain,” which appears on “Sense.”
 
JR247:What are some current and future goals you have compositionally?
 
TK: It would be nice to be more prolific, but I've got so much on my plate with my performance goals that I think if I became ambitious as a composer it could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.  At least at present, I seem to be doing fine as a performer without stepping up my activity as a composer, so I'll probably just continue to do what I've been doing on the composition front.
 
JR247:How important do you believe it is for a jazz musician to be actively composing?
 
TK: If a student of mine asked me that question, I would probably encourage him or her to actively compose, and I remember a time in my formative years when I was composing frequently, and doing so was probably important to my development.  That said, I guess I am living proof that one can achieve some worthwhile things as a performer without continuing to be a particularly active composer.
 
JR247: Can you share some things outside music that contribute to your happiness and wholeness as a fully formed human being?
 
TK: My wife, Aki, and my sons, Seiji, age three, and Akira, age two months, are the greatest source of happiness in my life and the most important thing in my life.  I'm also an avid reader of current events and history.  Having a hobby outside of music like this definitely helps me to feel more fully formed as a person, despite the fact that the stuff I read about is generally not particularly uplifting.  (As the saying goes: “History is just one damn thing after another.”)
 
JR247:I want to thank you for spending time with us at JR247. Good luck with your multifaceted career and continued success!!

TK: Thanks so much, Rick.