- James Hall (JH): Your music is hard to classify, sometimes moving between jazz, classical, and popular idioms. Do you think that makes it less accessible?
Theo Bleckmann (TB): There is that accessibility question again – I don’t know what that means anymore, James. I do what I feel very strongly about and hope that my audience(s) will follow me along the way. Sometimes I think the unpredictability of my projects is exactly what appeals to them – people are so tired of that narrow view of what an artist should or should not do, and they really enjoy discovering new music and sounds with me. Isn’t that part of an artist’s job, to find new ways and breaking with the past?
The iPod generation certainly gets that sense of boundlessness – they listen to Steve Reich, Animal Collective, (John) Coltrane, and Meshuggah on shuffle. Visual artists do it all the time: the same artist might work in representational painting, in abstract sculpture, in installations made out of paper and create multiples to sell in the gift shop. Speaking of selling, because I do so many things, I can fit into more venues and work with all different kinds of people and get inspired that way: jazz festivals, new music festivals, performance art festivals, museums, churches, installations… I have even sung at film festivals. Now that record stores, with their clearly marked sections and bins, are a thing of the past (I say that not without great nostalgia and regret), we are eschewing categories more easily perhaps?
- JH: Talk about being a vocalist in the "Downtown" music scene. How did you get involved with experimental music in New York?
TB: I have always had a hunger for different kinds of music and sounds, even as a kid. When I started to listen to jazz around age 16 it was mostly 1960’s free instrumental jazz. I then branched out in either direction back to ragtime and up to fusion. Sheila Jordan, who I met at a workshop in Austria in 1988, became my mentor and invited me to visit her in New York. I grew up in an old house in a small village in Germany, so New York was love at first sight: gritty, pretty, and pretty scary then.
Sheila introduced me to composer/pianist Kirk Nurock and we started to work as a duo. Kirk’s music so beautifully straddles that strange line between meticulously composed songs and extended sounds. He taught me a lot about form, composition, and shaping my improvisations.
I went to hear a lot of jazz and new music and immersed myself in everything I could get my ears on. I listened to a lot of recordings at various libraries around town while reading along with the scores, compared different recordings of the same piece and discovered new composers.
(Bassist) Mark Dresser heard me in 1993 and asked me to join his band Force Green. The music was really challenging, nothing like I had ever sung before, so anything after that seemed like a walk in the park. I became more and more interested in contemporary music and the many different processes of writing and performing, including performance art, installations, dance, and sound art. Ultimately, I think my ability to improvise with extended sounds and perform more complex, written music was instrumental.
