by Gary Parker Chapin - Coda Magazine, 1992
_Sunday afternoon at the Knitting Factory. For the month of December, Thomas Chapin is using this venue and time slot to record what will become his second trio record, Anima. The current tune being laid down by the trio (Chapin, alto sax and flute; Mario Pavone, bass; Steve Johns, drums) is a lengthy stomper called "Hat and Shoes"._
Thomas explains that the tune is about up and down, Heaven and Earth, Heaven and Hell, Angels and the Devil – in other words, hats and shoes. And, despite having to choke down the heavy metaphysics, that makes both structural and thematic sense. The first half of the A Section, for example, is a flighty, upper-register line, jangly, but reminiscent of someone's pastel-pleasant idea of the Great Beyond. Suddenly, with the second half, the mood reddens. Thomas hits the lower register and you hear the Devil stomping around below, popping and squealing and having a good time with it all. Soon, he's out of the A Section, into the B, and the trio is virtually rocking on a four/four vamp that funks out, building tension expertly and launching the group into the first round of improvisations.
It's a revealing piece, saying as much about Thomas Chapin's musical background as it does about his attitude towards hats and shoes. The trio's solos, like the structure of the tune, flirt with out-ness, but always make sense melodically and thematically. If Thomas' alto rips the plaster off the ceiling, then you can be sure it was perfectly appropriate to the tune that the plaster be brought down.
Actually, though, terms like 'in' and 'out' as applied to music have always struck Chapin as being little more than useless, prescriptive annoyances. This makes sense when you consider that his first important influence was Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Chapin explains, "Roland Kirk was really important to me in terms of how I came into jazz – how I heard jazz. He's a person who is neither in or out, who is both. Also, the term doesn't apply. He's so deeply rooted in tradition and yet the spectrum in which he operated was total. And I hadn't heard much jazz before that. I wasn't raised on jazz, so I was just finding this stuff out for myself. It's the way the man thinks. There's a great deal of variety in his music. A great deal of span and range, in his music and in his sonic palette, which is very large.
"Also when you start listening you don't think of things like in and out. You like it or you don't like it. I listened to Charlie Parker and Sun Ra. And Sun Ra is rooted. Everything is rooted somewhere. Ornette Coleman is rooted in Texas and blues and bebop. All those guys are. They may have taken a different branch than other guys, but it's all part of the same tree. It can't be otherwise. It seems so obvious to me."
In terms of his own immediate roots, Chapin started on the piano at the age of three, picked up the flute at ten, and then the saxophone at sixteen. Although he has played tenor and soprano, and spends time exploring a vast array of world instruments, Thomas landed on the alto simply because, "That's my voice." After high school Thomas packed up his horn and took it to Rutgers University, studied up on their jazz curriculum, played frequently ("For me, Rutgers was one long rehearsal"), and got his degree. After this brush with academia Chapin quickly built himself a wide and varied resume: serving five years as lead alto and musical director for Lionel Hampton's band, working with the Chico Hamilton Quartet, playing with various collectives such as Motation, Zasis, and the freely improvisational Machine Gun. At the same time he worked in a number of Latin contexts, and engaged in a bunch of mixed-media experiments with percussionist Brian Johnson and Poets John Richie and Vernon Frazer. All of this while leading various bands of his own through performances and recordings for labels like Mu and Alacra.
At one point Thomas saw himself playing in so many dramatically different contexts that he thought he would give himself a different name – and personality – for each one. The only one that caught on was "Rage", which he uses when playing with Machine Gun ("It seems like that's what I do with that band.") But before he could dub himself again Chapin began working with the current trio.
Says Chapin about his cohorts: "Mario is one of the most energetic, inventive players I know. And Steve…when he locks onto a groove it's like a bulldog grabbing a postman. More importantly, though, they've each got very personal and particular strengths which make the music what it is. Somebody who has a personal sound on their instrument, to me, is ideal, because this is what I strive for in myself – my own voice."
There are many aspects of Chapin's own voice to discuss, both regarding his playing and composing. One aspect common to both of these things is the element of search – he never stops looking for new areas to explore musically.
When asked how he approaches the flute differently from the saxophone, he replies "It depends on the piece, the demands of the music. Sometimes I approach the saxophone differently from the saxophone. Often I try to play the instrument in a way that I don't know how to play it, and I don't know if that's a good idea. Sometimes I try to play it from a different angle within myself. A feeling will come over me, and I'll just strive for some different sound, like some different personality that wants to say something. It's very interesting to watch." Similar sentiments show themselves on the compositional front. For Chapin composition is a logical extension of the continual quest that is improvisation. It seems that the reverse should be true. Within jazz, wouldn't improvisation follow the composition? "I don't think so. I've spent a lot of time in free improv situations, and I've found that the forms arise very naturally."
"Whether that was our conditioning from playing written music or hearing it, how our minds formulated it…well, it wasn't a conscious thing. I'll just be improvising and out will come an idea that will strike me, and I'll say, 'hmmm, here's a point for further exploration.' That's where the writing process starts for me. It's very inspiration oriented."
This approach also seems to prevent 'concept' from intruding too heavily into Chapin's compositions.
He agrees, "There are ways of contriving things and there are ways that you can contrive to spur yourself on to do things that you wouldn't normally do – and you have to do that, it's required of you – but sometimes you hear the contrivance in the music, and sometimes you don't hear the contrivance. I prefer not to. In other words, the concept is merely the vehicle for an emotion – though I don't mean sentimentally emotional – I mean very direct communication."
One way in which Chapin's approach has changed recently – a way that allows for more direct execution and communication - is that, whereas he used to compose almost exclusively on the piano, he now works directly on the alto. How has this changed his music?
"Composing on the alto puts a heavy emphasis on melody and counterpoint, as opposed to the harmonic things that you tend to get into on the piano. Also, when you write on your instrument, the ideas that will come out will be formed differently. They'll fit that instrument well. We were talking about Hat and Shoes, and during the second part of the A Section, the devil part, I'm leaping around the low register. This gives it a certain kind of pop because it's articulated in a certain way. That wouldn't have happened on the piano. On the piano I don't think I would have done it like that. On the other hand, I wrote this bass line with no idea of what the bass could do technically. And what I had originally written was pretty much impossible, but Mario came up with a variation that worked out very well. If I were a bass player I wouldn't have written that line. So what you write is definitely affected by what instrument you write on."
Aside from these technical concerns, Chapin's search for a compositional voice involves drawing in information and putting it out in some holistic fashion. This impulse used to manifest itself in Chapin's tendency to place himself within as many musical contexts as possible. Today, it's more a case of bringing those contexts into the trio.
"The trio seems to best describe where I exist musically. It encompasses a lot of different material, but we remain ourselves. I think the more you embrace the more you become whole. This is true musically, and I'm not just talking about playing different styles. Compositions are a balance. It's like the saying, 'for every poison there's an antidote' – if a composition gets too sweet you have to mess it up, on purpose."
"And if this creates some feelings of ambiguity in the listener than it's a job well done. Ambiguity is one of the key points of the Tao. Ambiguity allows for maximum interpretation and experience. That's what I want."
Obviously, for Chapin, the voice encompasses much more than notes, song structures, and influences. Like the tune Hat and Shoes, everything Chapin puts out has some other musical dimension that reflects a poetic/spiritual world view. For example, the name of his upcoming trio record is _Anima_.
"The dictionary definition of anima is 'life spirit'. The psychological definition is, 'the feminine component of the male psyche.' In Italian the word means 'soul'. It represents to me the mysterious feminine – the creative force. That's the well that I am trying to drink from. And for me, the truly great musicians are the ones who draw from that well. I've always liked the shamans, the medicine men of the music. Roland Kirk, for example, he dipped heavily into the dream world. And Sun Ra, he just lives in that magic kingdom place."
The word shaman evokes powerful, universal images of the lonely mystic; apart from society, yet the creative, spiritual centre and healing force of that society. In jazz the shamans might be Monk, Coltrane, Ornette, Cecil, and a good number of others. The other aspects of this analogy which seems to apply to Chapin is the shamanic practice – documented from Siberia to the Great Plains – of purposefully inducing an altered state of consciousness in order to make the journey inward.
"Playing, for me, is about changing my state of mind, moving out of my ordinary self. I've noticed that when I play, it's almost like a different person takes over, someone who I don't deal with in my day to day life, but who is inside me. I try to let this creative voice take over. I try not to get too much into my conscious thought. It's more a matter of setting up conditions – gaining mastery of my instrument, mapping out structures, that kind of thing – that will allow the conduits to open. And when the conduits do open, when that other person does take over, I just sit back, watch the show, and see what comes out. To me, that's what's divine about all of this. That's why I love to play."
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