By Filipe Freitas
Michael Formanek, 2018 by ©Clara Pereira
Name: Michael Formanek
Instrument: double bass
Style: avant-garde jazz, modern creative
Album Highlights: Low Profile (Enja, 1994), Nature of the Beast (Enja, 1997), The Distance (ECM, 2016)
In mid-March next year, you’re going to release a new album with a recently formed trio - featuring saxophonist Chet Doxas and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza. Can you talk about how this trio came up and what’s behind the music?
The Michael Formanek Drome Trio began as a group that got together on a fairly regular basis during the initial lockdown period in 2020, primarily outside in my backyard. We had all played together in various configurations and were already doing a fair amount together before the pandemic. After a few months of playing a mix of tunes, improvs and a few original pieces, I composed some music for the trio and we began rehearsing it. That eventually led to the recording session that became Were We Where We Were.
With that record, you’re also launching your own label. What led you to take that step?
I’d been thinking of forming a label for some time but kept talking myself out of it. When I decided to release this recording on Vinyl, it seemed like doing it myself might be the way to go. Once I get this one out, I should have a better idea how I want to proceed with it.
Your solo record Imperfect Measures naturally contrasts, both sonically and structurally, with the Ensemble Kolossus. Which format excites you most and which is easier for you to convey your ideas?
They seem radically different but in many ways the process is the same for me. I try to start with an idea and then develop it through whatever medium I’ve decided to use. The Ensemble Kolossus music is very detailed and structured, but it is intended to be interpreted by the group of musicians who are playing it through the lens of improvisation. My solo music does the same thing but drastically minimizes the amount of predetermined information to a simple sketch, or a spontaneous thought, sound, or feeling. They are equally exciting to me but I do enjoy the energy and creativity I get from the musicians I ask to play my music. Solo playing is more introspective for sure.
It’s been more than three decades since you made your debut as a leader with Wide Open Spaces. To you, what are the main differences - positive and negative - between that time and the current days?
For me it doesn’t really seem that different. There are a lot fewer record companies and infrastructure to help sell the music, but I’ve mostly skirted along the edges of the “music industry”, such as it was and is now, and that isn’t so different for me now. I just continue to try and put out examples of the best work I can, and hope that there are a few people out there who make recognize and appreciate it.
How great was touring with Joe Henderson and Tony Williams when still a teenager? How did that happen?
Those things happened for a lot of reasons I guess, not the least being the result of living in a particular place at a specific period of time. That’s really the way most things happen anyway. Tony had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and wanted to have a band there. He had heard me play on an instrumental rock, find of fusion, and hired me mostly on the basis of that. He wasn’t very interested in whatever jazz abilities I had or didn’t have but wanted someone who could play his music well and hold it down while he played all his amazing ideas. Joe Henderson and I had a few conversations and he invited to his house to play and rehearse with him. He seemed to think I was able to do what he needed and kept calling for a while.
Name two persons who influenced you the most as a musician.
Tough one. Probably Charles Mingus and John Coltrane.
Name two persons whom you’ve never collaborated with but you’d like to.
I would like to have played more with Paul Motian. I did play with him several times but would really call it a collaboration, just some gigs. I was living away from New York for much of the period that he was really staying in New York and playing a lot there. The other would be Jack DeJohnette whom I’ve never played with.
Can you pick three records that changed your perspective of jazz?
The Shape of Jazz to Come (Ornette Coleman), Fractured Fairy Tales (Tim Berne), and then there are just a lot of other records that gave me ideas to investigate and inspiration to try different things. It could be something by Coltrane, Mingus, Ellington, Braxton, Sun Ra, Hendrix (I don’t care what we call his music), Miles Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Julius Hemphill, and on and on!
What would you have been if you weren’t a musician?
A hermit
Are you working on any other projects at the moment?
Always. The Drome Trio has a bunch of gigs lined up, whatever that means geese days, around our new release in March 2022. Thumbscrew has a new recording that will be out in Fall of 2022, which is around our 10 year anniversary as a band, called Multicolored Midnight. Also doing a few solo gigs and hopefully more duo with my son, Peter. I’ll record very soon with Angelica Sanchez, which I’m very excited about. Also will record a new Elusion Quartet record next Fall for a 2023 release.