Interview with Jacques Kuba Seguin: The music comes from the soul: Video

Jazz interview with jazz trumpeter Jacques Kuba Séguin. An interview by email in writing.

JazzBluesNews.com: – First let’s start with where you grew up, and what got you interested in music?

Jacques Kuba Séguin: – I grew up in Montréal. Was got me into music was the radio !! Simply listening to a bunch of things. Then when I went to high school they gave me a trumpet  to join the school band. Never stoped playing since then.

JBN: – How did your sound evolve over time? What did you do to find and develop your sound?

JKS: – First I was into American jazz so « Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Tim Hagans, Tom Harrell, Nicolas Payton …

Then I started listening to European jazz Tomasz Stanko, Arve Henriksen, Piotr Wojtasik, Stéphane Belmondo …

JBN: – What practice routine or exercise have you developed to maintain and improve your current musical ability especially pertaining to rhythm?

JKS: – I walk in the different meters I’m playing. I’ve been walking in 7 for the last 3 months. 🙂

JBN: – Which harmonies and harmonic patterns do you prefer now?You’re playing is very sensitive, deft, it’s smooth, and I’d say you drift more toward harmony than dissonance. There is some dissonance there, but you use it judiciously. Is that a conscious decision or again, is it just an output of what goes in?

JKS: – I like to isolate things and really workout different melodic patterns I’m working out. Take very simple 3 note cells and move them around the changes. Expand the motive …

JBN: – How to prevent disparate influences from coloring what you’re doing?

JKS: – I think all influences are good. If something affects me it means it was ment to be.

JBN: – What’s the balance in music between intellect and soul?

JKS: – For me music comes from the soul. I like intellectual music but to incorporate and intellectual concept into my music I have to live with it for à while so it grows into my soul and comes out that way.

JBN: – There’s a two-way relationship between audience and artist; you’re okay with giving the people what they want?

JKS: – I try to be always honest about what I give. If I don’t feel it, the public does too and the result is not the best. It’s all about honesty …

JBN: – Please any memories from gigs, jams, open acts and studio sessions which you’d like to share with us?

JKS: – I was playing a concert with a European pianist Jan Jarczyk who was a teacher at Berkeley school of music.

I look at the set list and on the 6th song on the set list Jan asks me to play a solo intro on the trumpet.

Maybe I got the 4rd of 5th song mixed up but none the less at the end of the song, I start playing my intro and I really go for it but after a few minutes of playing alone I’m thinking to my self, when is the rest of the band coming in!?

So, before being completely tired I simply stoped playing and I look at Jan and he’s standing and smiling.

He says in his broken English strongly tainted with polish accent:

• Kuba, that was very nice intro but this is not tune we’re doing right now.

We all started to laugh, including the public … good memories.

JBN: – How can we get young people interested in jazz when most of the standard tunes are half a century old?

JKS: – Get them to listen live concerts.

Jazz clubs are one of the only places in the world where people of all ages can hang in a club and have a good time. Jazz unites people.

JBN: – John Coltrane said that music was his spirit. How do you understand the spirit and the meaning of life?

JKS: – We are there on this planet for a while and sometimes we are blessed to be a channel through witch music comes through. I just try to remember the privilege I have to be able to play music.

JBN: – If you could change one thing in the musical world and it would become a reality, what would that be?

JKS: – Organize a proper system of $ distribution to the artists.

Impose à law by the gouvernements on the big companies like “apple music, Spotify …” to give back to the artist what is rightfully theirs

JBN: – Who do you find yourself listening to these days?

JKS: – Richard Galliano, Ravel, Louis Armstrong ans the hot five, Yamandu Costa, Brad Mehldau …

JBN: – What is the message you choose to bring through your music?

JKS: – Friendship, racial equality, freedom of being who you want to be.

JBN: – Let’s take a trip with a time machine, so where and why would you really wanna go?

JKS: – Early 20th century in Europe.

Interview by Simon Sargsyan