Loren Stillman Interview with Riveting Riffs, Copyright Protected http://www.rivetingriffs.com/loren_stillman_interview_with_riv...

Jazz saxophonist and composer Loren Stillman talks about

how he created his current CD Blind Date, “I went about it
as though it was a blank canvass. I started to write without
any preconceived notion of what it was going to be. When
I went back and listened to it, (I found) that it had turned
out to be an odd metered piece, and something that went
over the bar lines.”

Stillman further explains his unique approach to

composition, “What I am looking for is to compose more
like an improviser, and to improvise more like a composer.
I feel like this is a limitless approach to writing, and the
song “Blind Date,” was composed in that manner. It is a
stream of consciousness. I then found out where the bar
lines should be and what the harmony should be.”

Even though Stillman initially approached his CD Blind

Date as a blank canvass, he discovered some common
threads emerged. For instance, the songs possess a
commonality in terms of the intervals that he employed. He
believes that whenever a composer is creating a greater
body of work, such as Blind Date, within a three-month time frame, it is inevitable that certain themes
will emerge.

“I think there were some common threads melodically. Overall, you are not just getting these
individual pieces, but you are getting an overall perspective of the music, which sounds more like a
symphonic approach. You have little movements with each one of these little songs. Later (after you
are done), you can look back and go, ‘Oh wow,’ but in the process of doing it, you really don’t realize
(the shared themes). You are just doing and not thinking. Later you go back, analyze and think about
what you have written and recorded. It is very natural. I always try to write what I am hearing.
Sometimes what you are hearing is very patterned and codified. It is always shifting and changing,”
Stillman observes.

The title track, “Blind Date,” takes its name from the fact that the Stillman and his fellow musicians,
Gary Versace (piano), bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron had difficulty coordinating their
schedules.

“Trying to get four people’s schedule to line up so we could record “Blind Date,” was like going on a
blind date. I knew individually how each of these musicians played, and how they interacted as
individuals. I also understood what it would sound like for the whole group to play together. “Blind
Date,” captures the mood of having four guys in the same room that had never played together, and
who only had two days to make great music, while recording a good album,” says Stillman.

Some might suggest that releasing nine albums in a span of ten years is overkill and only serves to
undermine your own record sales. Like any other artist, Stillman would obviously like to generate

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more sales whether digitally or through the purchase of CDs, however, he says, “I have never really
thought about it in that way. I have always been more concerned with documenting, so I have never
thought of it in terms of overexposure. What is important to me is documenting what is really
happening at this moment in my life or stage of development. I like to write a lot. It is more important
for me to document a body of work, than it is to let that music disappear. Maybe there could have
been a year or six month’s spacing between all of these recordings, so they could have got fair
exposure. They did come out on top of each other, three months or six months apart. That is the only
fear that I would have, is maybe each one doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. It is hard to know,
because it is within the first few days of recording that you make your cake, and after that, you don’t
see much in terms of residuals and record sales. You have to make as much as you can in your
agreement with the record label, instead of counting on a publishing deal to come through or seeing a
profit from record sales.”

What will the listener hear this time out from Loren Stillman? “I feel that this album is a lot mellower
than some other ones that I have done in the past. It seems a little more laid back, free flowing and
easy. It is more approachable from the standpoint of improvisation, but also within the compositions,
it gravitates more towards a classical composition. There is more happening in terms of time
signatures changing, and there is not an identifiable one in the music,” he says.

Continuing with his discussion of time signatures, Stillman notes, “There is a lot of music that is
composed with odd time signatures from the onset, and the idea is to compose within this grid of time.
You decide (in advance) what you’re working with or what your template is. That’s something that I
don’t like to do, I just like to let it go. I would say that the commonality in this record is just that. You
can’t identify where it is in the music, but you feel a pulse, and not necessarily, that it is in ¾ or 4/4.
What I am really trying to build for is to write with a pulse.”

Stillman’s penchant for innovation and submitting to his creative instincts, surfaces again with the
song “Shape Shifter.” “It is pretty well a waltz that stays in ¾ all of the time, except for the very last
bar of the song, which creates a hiccup in the piece. You have been hearing this whole form in ¾ and
then there is this one bar that throws a wrench in the gears. I was just trying to write a melody, and
then later tried to find an introduction that worked.”

About “Shape Shifter,” Stillman comments, “There were these big chords, and these big open sections
that were played on the piano. I had Drew solo over the piano voicing. The melody reminded me of
someone shape shifting, and conforming their personality to accommodate a situation, to be adaptable
or a social chameleon. I don’t know why that came to mind, but it did. That was really the premise of
that song.”

Stillman responds to the suggestion that he is more of an innovator than a follower, by laughing,
“That is really a big compliment. I don’t really know how to respond to that. I am just doing what I
know how to do. I don’t know any other way to go about it, than to write the music that I hear, and to
play it the way that I play. I really don’t know how to do anything else. I never thought about it in any
other terms.”

The Brooklyn, New York based Stillman is signed to the German music label Pirouet Records, and he
speaks enthusiastically about the management’s support for and promotion of his music. “They give
each project that comes out their full attention,” he says.

It is unlikely that Loren Stillman will ever lose his passion for wanting to continually document his

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music and his life through his music, but he says, “I think what I have discovered with Pirouet, is I
would rather make fewer records, and make more of an artistic statement.

Interview by Joe Montague for Riveting Riffs (www.rivetingriffs.com) ©

May 2008
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