Kelly Rossum - "Interview: Kelly Rossum on Free Jazz" By Don Berryman

By Nolan E. Schmit
December 2006

Nolan’s guest on the program is jazz trumpet player and composer Kelly Rossum. Rossum is gaining an international reputation as a creative force in the definition of modern jazz. It is difficult to describe his style as anything but unique; combining the traditions of swing, bop and free jazz with the innovations of electronica, ambient and trance music. Kelly has presented music master classes throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Asia. He has appeared on over 20 CD recordings as well as studio sessions for Asche & Spencer and is currently the Jazz Coordinator at MacPhail Center for Music in downtown Minneapolis. His new album, Line, was just released in October of 2006.

Listen to the full interview at The Composers Notebook

Episode 13 – Composers and Coffee with Kelly Rossum

NS: Welcome to the Composers Notebook. I’m your host Nolan Schmit and I’d like to wish you a happy new year. We’re going to be ushering the New Year with an episode of the Composers Notebook and specifically composers and coffee today. I thin the year 2007 ahead is just filled with opportunities and I’m excited for it, a lot of opportunities to build relationships with people, to write some great music, to make an impact on people’s lives and hopefully contribute in a positive way and so I’m really excited about the opportunities ahead in the year 2007 and I wish you the best of luck in all that you do and experience this next year.

Well today we’re going to, as I said earlier, going to be listening to a conversation I had with Kelly Rossum. I went and visited Kelly in the Twin Cities this past summer and recorded our conversation. He is a very fine trumpet player, jazz musician and does great work. He’s really building a name for himself in the Twin Cities and nationally, and I think you’re going to enjoy the conversation with Kelly. So, without any further discussion on my part, we’re going to go right into composers and coffee with Kelly Rossum.

NS: Welcome to composers and coffee. I’m your host Nolan Schmit and we are in Minneapolis, Minnesota to visit with this week’s guest. Kelly Rossum is a jazz trumpet player, composer, arranger, self-publisher and variety of other tasks that he does here in the Twin Cities; Welcome Kelly to the show.

KR: Well thank you so much for having me here.

NS: Now we’ve known each other for a few years, so we should probably let the listeners know that we’re both from Nebraska originally. You went to Millard…

KR: Yeah, Millard High School… Millard North.

NS: Millard North High School and so we’ve known each other for a few years and it’s really a treat to come up and have some time to spend with you. Could you tell us Kelly just a little bit about what you’re doing now and give us some background, you’re formal education, where you came from, and how you ended up here in the twin cities.

KR: Oh, a real simple question to start off with, thank you. (laughter)

NS: That’s all I provide…

NS: starting points and you do all of the talking.

KR: Well, let’s see…

Why don’t we go backwards in time a little bit and we’ll start with Millard North High School. As you bring it up, I graduated from Millard North, in Omaha, in 1988, and that’s where I really started my interest in music; because it was a lot of fun. I did composition and performance and arranging in High School because the small pep band of four people, that I took around to the cross country tournaments, the swim meets, we even did a debate meet once; a debate tournament. We had a pep band for the lunch room. But they didn’t write music for that particular four instrument (pep band) instrumentation. So I transcribed some music, popular music like Louie Louie, Walk Like and Egyptian, what else was going on at that time…

NS: The hits of the 80’s.

KR: yeah, some real fun tunes. I did it just because it was fun and we needed it. I had never thought academically about it or that this was something that I would continue to do as a career. But as it turned out, I went to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln after graduating High School, and my first year at the school I took some computer courses, and thought, maybe I should be a computer science major. Because that would be a real job and it would afford a salary…

NS: Moms and Dads point people that way.

KR: yeah and I took the course and right away I knew it wouldn’t work because the book that they were teaching the course from I had completed my junior year in High School. So, that really soured the whole experience for me. (laughter)

And at the same time, I had met professor Denny Schneider at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. And he’s a wonderful trumpet professor who has since retired, and I owe my career to him. Completely.

So then I decided let’s just do this music thing. Since it’s a lot of fun. Well, might as well have fun in life. Right?

KR: and it just kind of snowballed from there. (lots of laughter)

NS: and here you are.

KR: and here I am. Fast forward again many years later. I’ve gone through a bunch of different institutions, scholastic institutions, (laughter), University of North Texas for a while, worked out on the east coast, did some time up at the University of Minnesota as well. Now I am, despite all of that formal education, a professional musician.

NS: They didn’t damage you?

KR: No, I managed to make it through. I have a few useless degrees and I do work professionally in the music field. That is a lot different than what they had prepared me for through the university systems.

NS: That’s usually the case.

How did you get so turned on to Jazz? What was it about jazz that really clicked for you?

KR: Boy, Jazz. Probably dates back to some of my early memories of, first wanting to play the trumpet, was I saw Dizzy Gillespie on Sesame Street in the early 70’s. And I just thought that was really cool. I thought that was really neat, and as a kid, seeing him play that, it must have struck a chord or something, because later on, as I started listening to music on my own, not my parent’s collection of music, but what I would go out and purchase myself, it was all jazz. I studied classical music because trumpet is a very difficult instrument and you have to know… how to play the instrument. But, I would always listen to jazz music, because again, it was just so much fun. So eventually I decided, well let’s just try and do this, let’s try to be a jazz musician and see how it works.

NS: Was there any particular composer or artist in the jazz field that you really latched on to, that really influenced your… I mean obviously you said starting off, Dizzy Gillespie, who have been the names that you…

KR: Well as an artist, it would easily be Miles Davis, first and foremost. He happened to be a trumpet player, and I’m a trumpet player, but I don’t think that’s the reason of the staying power. He not only was able to, from what I feel, is to epitomize what jazz is all about, he was always evolving, always changing, always pushing the envelope, always incorporating different sounds within his music, but he also was a fantastic business person. He was able to lead groups, keep these musicians together, and always surround himself with the best possible personnel for his ensembles. And that’s extremely difficult. When you actually get out there in the world and you do this, that’s one of the hardest challenges and most elusive things to pull together, is the personnel and the feeling for the music, so that we’re all on the same page. So I respect Miles Davis quite a bit in that regard.

As far as composers, Wayne Shorter is a fantastic jazz composer. Also, Duke Ellington of course, a lot of the major composers. An arranger that I have a lot of respect for is actually Booker Little. He was a little known trumpet player in the 60’s who did some really, really interesting horn writing. And today, probably my favorite modern jazz composer and arranger would be Maria Schneider, who is also a Minnesota native.

NS: Minneso – oo – tan

KR: yeah, Minneso – oo - tan, get your O’s a little longer, and you can hang out here for a while (laughter)

NS: How did you come familiar with her work?

KR: Strange, I actually heard her music first when I was in Texas. Because she had just come out with her first recording; it was Evanessence. And it was played during my jazz arranging class for a class of about 50 – 60 students in a recital hall, lecture hall and the professor played Maria’s new recording and we were all literally yelling by the end of it. It was fantastic. There was this big guitar break through one of her tunes and we just thought that was amazing. So right after that I was hooked and I’ve met her a few times and spoken with her and of course followed her career, which has been amazing to follow. Her work with ArtistShare, the fact that she had just won a Grammy for a recording that is not available in CD stores.

KR: yeah, it’s all only available on-line through her own distribution, and she won a Grammy for it. That says so much about the business and how the music is evolving. It’s really fantastic.

NS: What experiences in your early childhood do you think had the greatest impact on you wanting to become a musician?

KR: Hmmm… boy, these are some softball questions that you’re throwing me… ah… wow… early childhood. Well there was always music at my house. There was music on the stereo and both of my parents were musicians. My dad played piano and clarinet in the army band and all the way through his college years, and my mother also played piano. So I would hear Scott Joplin rags, as I was running around the house, being played on the piano. And we had a big three tiered Thomas organ with the foot pedals.

KR: My first music lessons were actually on the organ, walking a little bass line with my left foot. Heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe… I remember all of that, and the notes would light up for the right chords that you had to play. Technology was fantastic in about, let’s see, 1980. (laughter) yeah, those three tiered Thomas organs were a blast. So I always had music around the house. As far as becoming a musician, it never was really a conscious choice, it’s just something that I suppose I stumbled into because I enjoyed it.

NS: Who do you think… you mentioned Dennis Schneider earlier… Can you think of particular people in your life that specifically encouraged you to get into music.

KR: Oh, definitely. Jim Johnson was my band director in Millard, at Millard North. He’s a Nebraska native and just a beautiful human being. And he really encouraged all of us, all of his students, to go forward in music and just to pursue what they enjoy doing. That was really nice, a big assist. And my family was very encouraging, always.

NS: You mentioned in High School that you had done some arranging for the four-member pep-band that did every single event possible, where did you discover an interest in actually writing music.

KR: Well the composing seemed to me always as a necessary tool to get something out of my head. Composing has never been hard; it’s never been really difficult for me. My litmus test is that, if something stays in my head for a certain amount of time, it means that it’s worthy of getting out of my head. I’d write it down, and it either sits in my file cabinet or I turn it into some piece of actual music. And I remember very specifically in High School I had this phrase, this musical phrase, it was kind of like a bass-line, that wouldn’t get out of my head. It was kind of a pep-band thing, again, designed for a huge band to play with a nice drum beat behind it, and I finally said ok, I’m going to write this down. I kind of sketched out some ideas. I remember sitting in the sauna after working out at the gym and thinking through it, this was when I was a junior in High School. I would be able to sing through in my brain the entire piece. And I figured, ok I better write this down or I’m going to forget it. Well obviously, that’s what composers do. Nobody told me that that was composition; I just had to do it. So then as I started studying composition more formally, I began to learn some of the tools of the trade, as to how to ‘s lay out parts, how to lay out a structure, how to copy other peoples music. You know, because it’s all been played before. We only have 12 notes in our particular notation system – they’ve been played before. You have to figure out different things to do with it. If something is in my head for a long amount of time, it feels like it’s worthy of pursuing in a compositional sense.

NS: When you have that time to actually sit down and write, and you’ve got to get that idea out, what steps do you take to do that? Do you sit at a piano? Do you go somewhere, do you have a place that you like to write?

KR: I have different places for different pieces. Often times, the primordial ooze of the first idea can happen anywhere, and it usually happens outside, or away from home, traveling. That’s when I just immediately grab a pencil and a piece of paper and start sketching out notes. Driving on car trips is a great place. I have pads of paper that I have next to my steering wheel that I write down these ideas. After that, the second general step, is to sit down at the piano with staff paper and a pencil, and rough out the ideas, complete as much as possible. And then, I take it to the typewriter, which is my computer, and I just make it look pretty. I really don’t compose at the computer, because I think that offers up way too many shortcuts, and in effect limitations to what you can do because of the design factors involved in the software.

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