Trompeteren og komponisten Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014) var kanadisk av fødsel, men bodde store deler livet i England. Han kom til å få stor innflytelse på mange jazzmusikere fra 1970-tallet og fremover og spilte inn en serie med beundrede plater. Nesten ukjent er det derimot at han i perioden 1979-1982 reiste flittig på turné med Søyr. Det var i den periode da bandet ikke utga plater, derfor er det nesten ingen som vet om det. Men et annet sted på siden (under ‘videoer’) finnes et opptak fra NRK i 1981 der han kan høres i utmerket form både som komponist og solist.
Han var en meget beskjeden mann som høyst motvillig ga intervjuer, men her er en samling sitater fra artikler om ham og intervjuer med ham i perioden 1980-2010. Han snakker om seg selv, sin musikk - både den han spilte og den han skrev, på sin karakteristiske og lett underfundige måte. John Eyles skriver i et intervju med Wheeler i ‘All About Jazz’ i 2003: «When I told (Evan) Parker that I wanted to interview Wheeler, his comment was, "There's a story there to be told. Don't let it get away.»
Om å skrive musikk:
«I know I have a system but I don't really want to know what the system is.»
Innlegg i CD’en ‘Island’ med Bob Brookmeyer 2003
«Kenny uses intervals in his writing that he's learned as an improviser.»
Nick Smart sitert i The Guardians nekrolog 2014.
«What I like doing best is writing sad tunes, and then letting wonderful musicians destroy them. I don't want the players to try to interpret what they think I'm feeling.»
Intervju med John Fordham i The Guardian 2010
Om fremtiden:
«I think I'm doing the same as I was thirty years ago. I'm still trying to find soppy romantic melodies mixed with a bit of chaos. That's what I've always done, I think. It is not really a question of moving forward.»
Fra intervju med John Eyles i ‘All About Jazz’, 2003
Om forskjellen mellom å skrive og spille soloer:
«I think Hoagy Carmichael said that about "Stardust", he got it
before anyone else got it. I have the same feeling about the tunes I write. I quite like them because I don't feel responsible. But the solo, nobody is to blame but yourself.»
«I suppose you could work at a solo. Especially in the old
days in big bands when you got two solos a night. Sometimes I
used to think I'd plan the first eight bars of my solo but it always
went wrong. I'd get into bar two and it would be all.... I could
never plan out a solo. It has to be immediate, you know.»
Fra intervju med John Eyles i ‘All About Jazz’, 2003
Om sitt eget spill:
«If I ever got to like my own playing I’d give it up.»
Fra artikkel av Nick Smart, 2015
«If I were to play with a rhythm section that was playing straight ahead bebop, I would feel very uncomfortable. I like to play in a loose situation, you know. I try to throw in a little bebop but I try not to throw in bebop licks. Try.»
Fra intervju med John Eyles i ‘All About Jazz’, 2003
Om forholdet til egne plater:
«I never listen to my own records more than once or twice. Maybe seven or eight years later I'll pull it out again and listen. I don't even like to think about whether they are good or whether I like them. I'm just happy when other people seem to like them, you know.»
Egen favorittplate:
«Deer Wan. That’s the most complete – with Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie, Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland. My favourite band.»
Intervju med Chris Parker i 1990 (London Jazz News 2022)
Om å være orkesterleder:
«CP: What are your plans afterwards?
KW: Definitely not to be a bandleader for a long time! If you could just write the music and play it, it’d be OK, but there’s so much else involved. I’ll usually get letters, calls – I’m not the hustling type, but I keep working.»
Intervju med Chris Parker i 1990 (London Jazz News 2022)
Om kritikker:
«Evan (Parker) sent me some reviews the other day of Dream Sequence that he got off the Internet. There was a really glowingly good one but then there were three or four little ones that made me feel sick and negative and horrible. One guy mentioned that, ‘Wheeler sits in now and again at The Vortex and does one set. I hope Wheeler is not trying to protect his ECM base.’ As if I'm hiding away in London and only doing it now and again in a small situation. That made me feel really sick, that anyone could sit there and watch a set and then print that on the Internet after.»
Fra intervju med John Eyles i ‘All About Jazz’, 2003
Om oppvarming:
«His regular two-hour warmup routine in the mornings borders on a meditation, "just breathing out through the trumpet, not using my tongue. That's how I try to keep in shape, I don't play pieces.»
Intervju med John Fordham i The Guardian 2010
Om inspirasjon og ‘Windmill Tilter’ (The Story of Don Quixote) med John Dankworths orkester:
«The world’s greatest losers are some of my favourite people and I wanted to do something about that, but I had a talk with Dankworth and he put me on a bit. He mentioned some names, and Don Quixote caught my attention. I went to the local library and met a lady there who was very helpful, and the more I read, the more I liked him, but I wasn’t sure if it was a great idea because I think Richard Strauss has done something … Dave Holland and John McLaughlin were both on it, very early in their careers, before they left for the States.»
Intervju med Chris Parker i 1990 (London Jazz News 2022)
Om frijazz.
«At that time I was very frustrated, (late sixties, editor’s note) because I’d spent 20 years trying to play strict be-bop - although I love it, it’s my roots, and I could never do it! I don’t know why? May be it was because I wasn’t good enough - I love Miles and Dizzie and all them and I tried to play in that…so I couldn’t do it so I didn’t get many jazz gigs. I was many great players who play that music, like Tubby Hayes, Jimmy Deuchar, Ronnie Scott and all them, so I wasn’t doing many jazz gigs and I was frustrated. And then I found out about this place where the young guys were playing this new, funny music, so I went along one night and listen to it - and I hated it I have to say, but I went back a couple of times and they eventually said: - Do you want to sit in? So I thought why not and I just went berserk on the trumpet for about then minutes. Even to this day I couldn’t say if this music..if the music is good or bad, I just find it theraputic. I get something out of my system. So I started to play a lot with them, you know, Evan Parker, John Stevens, Tony Oxley, Derek Bailey and all of them and that’s how I got asked into Europe, because it was like a communal scene between Germany, Holland and England mostly where people would play this kind of music and they moved around to different countries so I got asked to do….so…»
Intervju i 1990 i ArtistsHouseMusic.org
«I always tried to play bebop, but I never could play it, I don’t think I could play it till this day. As much as I love it and it’s my roots, but… I never could play five or six choruses of “I GotRhythm”in the idiom, you know. I’d get a bit nervous and go out, do something else, so I wasn’t really accepted in England by the bebop crowd actually. But I was dying to play- I didn’t know what I wanted to play, and knew I couldn’t really play bebop… Then I found out about this little theatre[The LittleTheatreClub] whereJohn Stevens was playing, they had sessions playing freejazz once a week, I guess that was sort of the start of the freejazz movement in England more or less… It must have been 1966 the first time I came in there. I went up there one night to listen, and I hated it, what they were playing. But I stayed on, and then I came back another night and they said – why don’t you come and sit in? So I sat in, and I just went completely berserk on the trumpet, let out a lot of frustrations, cause I’d been dying to play a lot. As I said, I didn’t feel I was accepted by the “in” players because I couldn’t really play a “straight” chorus in their language, so I just kept on playing with these guys.»
Intervju i 1981 med Per Husby i ‘Cadence’.
©Morten Thomte
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Søyr var et orkester som, over en periode på 40 år, huset over 50 musikere og 2 forfattere - alt under ledelse av Torgrim Sollid. De spilte jo ikke samtidig, selvsagt, Søyr besto for det meste av 13 personer og for det minste av 5 og fremsto i flere skikkelser - som det fremgår av tidslinjen nedenfor. Det startet som et prosjekt knyttet til folkemusikk fra Østerdalen (se f.eks. ‘Slåtter&Reels’ under ‘videoer’ og venstre del av ‘tidslinjen’ for utdyping), men utviklet seg snart til et mer ‘samtidsmusikkorientert’ orkester. Eller som Johs Bergh i sin tid skrev i Store Norske Leksikon: «Søyr er et norsk jazzorkester kjent for en kontinuerlig eksperimentell profil. Utgangspunkt…var de første årene folkemusikk fra Østerdalen, men senere ble det blant annet benyttet impulser fra komponert samtidsmusikk, gjort samarbeid med lyrikere og anvendt visuelle virkemidler.»
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