Jazz interview with jazz trumpeter and trombonist Luca Aquino. An interview by email in writing.
JazzBluesNews.com: – First let’s start with where you grew up, and what got you interested in music?
Luca Aquino: – I started studying the trumpet when I was twenty, after listening to Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Chet Baker. I never played an instrument and I fell in love with jazz. Before that I had heard a lot of rock, punk and electronic music. My favorite band at that time were the Doors. Jim Morrison opened my head and changed my way of living and thinking.
JBN: – How did your sound evolve over time? What did you do to find and develop your sound?
LA: – Sound is the most important thing to communicate in an original way. It is essential to discover the sound that is inside you and, to do this, it takes time. You don’t have to go in a hurry. You have to listen to what you have inside you and try to get away from what you try to contaminate instead. It takes courage, determination and a little luck. My sound studies are projected towards the sounds of nature. For me it is important to go, to walk in places where you can hear the wind in the leaves and the sounds of animals, without traffic and chaos but it is subjective. From a technical point of view, with the trumpet, to look for one’s own sound, one must play long notes and always listen to everything well, without haste.
JBN: – What practice routine or exercise have you developed to maintain and improve your current musical ability especially pertaining to rhythm?
LA: – I play scales, chords and I use to program months of studies but I prefer play what I want to play in that moment, without too many impediments but, of course, it depends on period. Sometimes you have to studies technic or sounds or develop improvisation or just silence. Silence is important, in music and in life. I don’t like musicians, expecially saxophone players, that play always and people that speak always.
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?
LA: – In this period I like to be very melodic and linear. Three years ago I played completely differently. Now, and especially in my new album, I like to play ethereal, wide and sweet melodic lines.
JBN: – How to prevent disparate influences from coloring what you’re doing?
LA: – It is impossible not to be completely influenced and it would be deleterious to try. It is important to study what you like, whether it is a musician, a current or anything even foreign to the music but it is also always important to free your mind, in the moment of execution, whether it is live or during a recording. Doing meditation helps a lot, Markus Stockhausen taught me.
JBN: – What’s the balance in music between intellect and soul?
LA: – 35% anche 65% .. It’s nice to think but also to let yourself go completely.
JBN: – There’s a two-way relationship between audience and artist; you’re okay with giving the people what they want?
LA: – No. I don’t like when musicians use striptease to have applause. I’m from Jon Hassell school.
JBN: – Please any memories from gigs, jams, open acts and studio sessions which you’d like to share with us?
LA: – From the Arab world, from New Orleans and from Europe. It was wonderful, a unique experience. An important message of peace. We brought a power generator into the desert. An ambitious and difficult undertaking. Pavarotti had not succeeded either. And I also have a crazy memory of recording another album on the borders of Syria. I love places with spiritual strength and sound of their own.
JBN: – How can we get young people interested in jazz when most of the standard tunes are half a century old?
LA: – Jazz is current and always changing. It’s not like classical music. Jazz is a spongy music that absorbs everything it finds without ever losing its peculiarity: improvisation. There are rules to respect, to know and then to break down. A hundred years are few, who knows how a jazz player will answer your question in three hundred years.
JBN: – If you could change one thing in the musical world and it would become a reality, what would that be?
LA: – Musicians that use the music for fight.
JBN: – Who do you find yourself listening to these days?
LA: – I listen to so much music, hours and hours. Today I am studying Francesco Bearzatti, a great Italian saxophonist.
JBN: – What is the message you choose to bring through your music?
LA: – Peace.
JBN: – Let’s take a trip with a time machine, so where and why would you really wanna go?
LA: – In New York in the 50th to listen live the sound of Charlie Parker.
JBN: – I have been asking you so far, now may I have a question from yourself…
LA: – Do you like and know Bix Beiderbecke? Could you recognize him after one, two, three notes?
JBN: – Thanks for answers. Yes, of course, I know Bix Beiderbecke …
JBN: – So putting that all together, how are you able to harness that now?
LA: – Ahahah I don’t know. Let’s fly and we’ll see.
Interview by Simon Sargsyan
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