Interview with Jonas Timm: I would delete streaming plattforms… Video

Jazz interview with a bad musician, as if keyboardist, problematic person Jonas Timm. An interview by email in writing. 

JazzBluesNews.com: – First, let’s start out with where you grew up, and what got you interested in music. How exactly did your adventure take off? When did you realize that this was a passion you could make a living out of?

Jonas Timm: – I grew up in Berlin in the 90s. My Parents both sing professionaly in a Choir, so I did absorb vocal music of all the centuries and had the great oppurtinity to listen to orchestral music e.g. played by Berlin Philharmonics as well… After some classical piano training from 5 on I stopped playing that instrument from 12 to 15 to do, what teenagers do… With 15 a new teacher invented me to the world of improvised music and showed me the big piano players like Ahmad Jamal, Bud Powell, Herbie. Since then I am in the tube..

JBN: – How has your sound evolved over time? What have you been doing to find and develop your own sound?

JT: – I always have tried to have a warm sound on the piano, I simply liked music for a long time the most, which feels warm and like home, maybe like a choir… Over the years I began to listen to different kinds of groove experiences and began to understand, that you need a percussive element for that. To combine these two attitudes will probably take more than a whole life, but I am working on it. It is for every style and every new song a try and error thing. I try to ask myself, what I can do to sound more fitting….

JBN: – What routine practices or exercises have you developed to maintain and improve your current musical proficiency, in terms of both rhythm and harmony?

JT: – To be honest, I am very bad in routines, I do play a lot with recordings I like and that is for me the best school rythmwise. In the Point of Harmony I follow the path of my teacher Richie Beirach, who always listened to classical, non improvised music from 19th/20th/21st Century to get new impressions and do things differently

JBN: – Have you changed through the years? Any charges or overall evolution? And if so why?

JT: – I am sure I’ve changed, but more the slow organic way and that is hard to say in detail, but every new major influence, other city, other teacher provokes some change in my play…

There could be talk or advertising about your CD

JBN: – In your opinion, what’s the balance in music between intellect and soul?

JT: – For me this question is not possible to answer from my intellectual side, I need to listen to my soul. And that might give a good impression on my musical behaviours: Even if there is a lot thought things in the music, in the End the feeling and the felt moments have the last words…

JBN: – There’s a two-way relationship between audience and artist; are you okay with delivering people the emotion they long for?

JT: – Not really. I also have accepted, that the audience for improvised music, the way I love to do it is not as big as I would like it to be. But with them who are interested I try to interact a lot.

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

JT: – For me the most important thing is to keep young people interested in Improvising. Improvising everything music, words, their lifes… Standard Tunes are an important heritage and will never die but they mature/age like all music does, which was played a lot in the past, but never is forgotten.

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

JT: – That has changed constantly in my life. But at the moment I could say I am going with the words of this great saxophone player. Music is my spirit and when it works for me that I can combine that with lightfullness and Ease it’s pretty near to what I feel as the meaning of life.

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

JT: – I think, I would delete streaming plattforms….Improvised Music could simply not be shown in a true manner there.

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

JT: – Ahmad Jamal. The spacing in his music touches me a lot. The balance between space and denth is surprising and makes me … happy.

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

JT: – This answer might not surprise you as very creative: But New York 50s/60s would be the pick, see how everything looked, felt, people behaved and what the vibe of Jazz really was back than. I would kill to get an impression of that 🙂

Interview by Simon Sargsyan

Note: You can express your consent and join our association, which will give you the opportunity to perform at our Jazz and Blues festivals in Europe and Boston, naturally receiving an appropriate royalty. We cover all expenses. The objectives of the interview are: How to introduce yourself, your activities, thoughts and intellect, and make new discoveries for our US/EU Jazz & Blues Association, which organizes festivals, concerts and meetings in Boston and various European countries, why not for you too!! You can read more about the association here. https://jazzbluesnews.com/2022/11/19/us-eu-jba/