by Vernon Frazer - Cadence - May 1987
Alto saxophonist and flutest, Tom Chapin was born 3/9/56 in Manchester, Conn. He has studied with Jackie McLean and Paul Jeffrey and has done various freelance work and recordings. At the time of this interview, he was musical director of the Lionel Hampton Big Band. He has recorded one record under his leadership.
CADENCE: Do you have a preference between flute and saxophone?
THOMAS CHAPIN: It's like a right hand and a left hand. I'm ambi-instrumental. They're useful as tools in different moods. They're not really limited, although people tend to connote certain things with a saxophone and certain things with a flute. With the flute, though, I find that I have to be able to hear myself very well to play it, and the other musicians have to be extremely sensitive to it. It is somewhat more delicate. As far as technique, I've been going back and forth for so long, there's no conscious thought of it.
CAD: After high school, did you attend the Hartt College of Music immediately?
T.C.: Actually, I went to the University of Miami for a semester, first. I just found that Florida didn't really agree with me, I'm really a New England man. But also, I was disappointed at not being accepted into one of the school bands. When you come out of high school you think you're really hot stuff, you know, but when you come to college you realize that there's some hot stuff coming from every high school. Then I went to Hartt, where I studied with Jackie McLean briefly. I took a couple of his history courses and learned quite a lot from those. I learned just from being around someone of his stature. Hartt, at the time, didn't have the full-time jazz curriculum that it has now. I was studying classical saxophone there. But I was in Paul Jeffrey's jazz laboratory. Paul really challenged me, he was very demanding of me. From elementary school, junior high, right on through, I've had very demanding teachers and that, more than anything, has crystallized my abilities.
CAD: Do you find that classical training helped or hindered your jazz playing?
T.C.: I don't feel that one hinders the other. If you play music with all that you have to give it, it doesn't really matter what you're playing. I think we're finding some fundamental changing going on with music and the arts in general. We're finding a blending of things and a broader appreciation of more kinds of music, finally, in America. In Europe, you'll find it's quite broader already. People always tend to make divisions where there really aren't any divisions. I mean, there are differences, as there are differences in cultures, but there are underlying factors which unite them, also. When you talk about classical music, you're talking about a style more than you are any technical or emotional difference. Baroque music was great (to) improvise upon, it wasn't so hard and fast as we might imagine it. When you look at the tradition that jazz comes out of or the tradition that "European classical" music comes out of, there are similarities and there are differences. But it's all music, it's all made of the same stuff.
CAD: I understand you followed Paul Jeffrey to Rutgers when he left Hartt.
T.C.: I did. Paul presented so much music that I was quite inclined to follow him where I could take a "jazz" direction more completely. While I was at Rutgers, I became friends with James Spaulding, also. He was one of my big influences, from high school on. The way he played really touched something inside of me, on both flute and saxophone. He has a very fluid sound. He's traditional in some senses, but very ethereal in others. What he does is very fresh. After two years I graduated from Livingston, which was the college I went to called the "experimental division." That's where they put the jazz guys. They also had the "avant-garde" people there. There was a big division between them and the jazz people, but for me, I never felt that difference. It's always funny when you get into those distinctions between music. I always wonder why people are battling it out.
CAD: Do you feel that studying jazz formally can affect a person's originality, that instead of playing what he feels a musician might say, "Well, it's time to play my C Blues Scale?"
T.C.: I always felt like I rebelled against that, to a certain extent. You do need to understand why something works and why something works well. You need to understand the language. You take elements and combine them, manipulate them in a way that is particular to you and, hopefully, more particular to you than to another person or style. People have their shadows or influences, but nobody can really imitate totally.
CAD: After graduation, did you go directly into Lionel Hampton's band?
T.C.: Not immediately. I did accompaniment for dancers at Wesleyan University in Middletown, then I decided to move to New York. The same day I signed a lease, I got a call from my mother, who said that Lionel Hampton's office had called and wanted me to make a rehearsal. I look at that as a very important day.
CAD: How long did it take you to become Hampton's musical director?
T.C.: It really wasn't my goal. It was sort of thrust on me after about a year.
CAD: What does a musical director do?
T.C.: In my case, with Gates – that's Lionel – it's a little unusual. I think in that he likes to have ultimate control. I really take up the slack. When he isn't directing, I direct. When he does, I stay out of the way. I go over the tunes we're going to play with him, get the order of tunes from him, organize everybody to get onstage at the same time, give cues, count off tunes, that kind of thing.
CAD: What are the differences between playing in a big band and a smaller group?
T.C.: An entirely different set of circumstances. In a big band, you're involved in section playing. You play with other instruments of your own kind and learn how to blend. When you solo, it's in very strict confines. The small group is open to as much as the people in it want to do. There's more room, depending on who you're working with. When I'm leading my own groups, I enjoy playing melodies the way I want to phrase them.
CAD: You seem to be fascinated by the intercultural aspects of music. Are you trying to accomplish anything specific when you use elements of other cultures in your own work?
T.C.: Specifically, no. I find myself attracted by the sound and feeling of so many different musics. I'm looking for the commonality of these feelings rather than their differences. For instance in "Consolation", a Baden Powell tune I recorded, I used a Brazilian tune and had an oud, which is a Middle Eastern lute, playing with the saxophone. The tune is an African chant, really. Baden Powell uses a lot of what they call Afro- Brazilian music. Of course, in a lot of North African music, they use the oud. It's all related, although you wouldn't make the connection immediately.
CAD: About the time you joined Lionel Hampton, you also released The Bell of the Heart on Mario Pavone's Alacra label.
T.C.: Indeed, I met Mario the night Paul Jeffrey put together the Mingus Tribute band for a concert in Bushnell Park in Hartford. It was a very nice mix of Hartford and New York musicians. After that, Mario and I started playing together down at the Hillside in Waterbury. Mario was putting out his own album, Shodo, and Joe Fonda's Looking for the Lake. The Bell of the Heart arose out of the compositions I was writing at the time, which Mario really liked. We put a nine-piece group together and recorded them.
CAD: Did The Bell of the Heart influence your career in any way?
T.C.: I think so, definitely. The whole LP scene is really a vital step for a musician. While we can always feel in retrospect that we never quite did what we wanted to do, we accomplished something very important at that time. I'm very grateful to Mario Pavone for producing The Bell of the Heart. He's one of the people in the area who's always shown a great interest in my music. It's rarer than you would think to find people who are genuinely interested in what you're doing. The people and the energies they bring to the music are what makes the music happen. It's a very kindred relationship, shall we say.
CAD: Since The Bell of the Heart, you've released three cassettes. What made you decide to go the cassette routine?
T.C.: It was quite by accident. I'd been working on the street with some people and through various connections that group came into the Blue Note on Monday nights. The producer of the Monday Night session suggested to me that I make a tape to be given to a specific record company. Being naïve at the time, I invested the money and gave them the tape, which they promptly did nothing with. But I don't regret putting out the tape. I did things on it that I really feel solid about and have been able to grow from.
CAD: Some artists have been releasing their work on cassette because they lose too much money on self-produced records. Do you see cassettes as a means for musicians and other artists to get their work out to the public?
T.C.: Only in a very limited sense. I think the LP is still where it's at right now. Most radio stations will not play cassettes if they don't know you. You're much better off with a record, as far as the public hearing your music. But the cassettes are much cheaper to produce. They're much easier to carry and sell on gigs. The record, in the other hand, offers you so much more information in terms of pictures or even liner notes, which are very difficult to put on cassette. I would much prefer to have my work on records and I'm confident that this will be happening soon.
CAD: How do you approach composing?
T.C.: Compositions come to you in so many different ways, they really do. Many compositions have come just by me sitting down at a piano and an idea will come out right from the start, just from the energy put into it. Sometimes a whole tune will just write itself right out of that. One tune I wrote was 'Journey of a Thousand Miles". The melody was coming to me as I was traveling on the bus to a gig at the 880 Club in Hartford. The phrase is five bars long, then ten bars long, then five bars long. The melody is in a pentatonic scale, which is a five-note scale, and it's in 5/4 time. It came about very naturally. I wasn't thinking in that way. When you don't think, sometimes you surprise yourself. Looking at that song in retrospect, I can almost feel it's not from me. Some compositions just come out like that. Others I've written as exercises. I'll take a set of changes in the traditional jazz form, take a melodic idea and expand it over the changes. Some melodies will work like that and others will not.
CAD: Do you ever write for a particular group or idiom?
T.C.: I can, but my principle thrust is really in feeling natural emanations, letting the music come through as much as possible, and I do that mostly on the piano.
CAD: When you come into Connecticut, you frequently play with a "local" rhythm section. In that situation, do you rely on the standard repertoire?
T.C.: Mostly, because we don't get the chance to rehearse as much as I would like to. I enjoy rehearsing, but a lot of the time our schedules don't permit us to do that. Compositions must be worked out a little before they can truly be played well. Of course, if you work with the same people often enough, you can gradually work tunes into the repertoire.
CAD: Do you find that pick up rhythm sections are as bad as the press makes them out to be or is it just that the musicians don't have the name value?
T.C.: There are so many musicians out here. Everybody chooses a different path in their life and at some point they may be in the public eye and other times may do something else and still be just as involved in music. For instance, I was in San Francisco recently to work at Pier 47. Donald Bailey was in the rhythm section. A great drummer! He used to work with Jimmy Smith. New York is not the be-all and end-all of everything. It's a staging ground. As far as I'm concerned, it's a very unpleasant place to live. But there are many scenes around the country that are quite viable, quite happening. It's just more than you could imagine. They may not be getting the press coverage that some people are, and sometimes quite regrettably in comparison. In New York it's the same way. In New York, there are so many fantastic musicians who get no credit for what they're doing. You feel that maybe they should get the recognition that some of the other people are getting, but the business doesn't allow for such a thing. I feel that there is really one important aspect to that: those who are afforded the recognition and the power – the dubious power – of "commercial success" have more opportunity to explore themselves musically. In other words, they don't have to get a job. They don't have to work in the Post Office, as a messenger boy or whatever the hell kind of boy you are. Those who don't make it beyond that economic hump are in a tight bind.
CAD: Are you looking to form a group of your own?
T.C.: Yes, I've been working towards that for quite awhile. Of course, you always have to work with variations because people are busy with different things. At the same time, though, I'm really looking forward to doing a wide variety of things. For instance, a week from today I'm doing a rock and roll gig. The day after that, I'm starting rehearsals for a modern dance production. I recently borrowed a synthesizer from a friend and I'm starting to understand a little more about the electronic medium, which I was never exposed to as much as I would have liked. Brian Johnson and I are putting together saxophone, drums and poetry. Also, I'm working with New Music ensembles from the John Cage tradition. I'm getting the chance to explore a lot of different things and I'm expanding my own music as much as possible.
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