Making Connections Between Erik Satie, Jazz, and Personal Identity article @ All About Jazz

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Yasushi Nakamura had a baby, I felt moved to write a lyric for him to “Gymnopédie No. 1 (Rayga’s Song)£. That’s probably when the idea of a full project began to take shape. During the pandemic, I wrote lyrics to several of Satie’s pieces. Then, about six months before we went into the studio, I started meeting with pianist

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Luis Perdomo to explore arrangement ideas.

AAJ: As you say, part of the project is that you’re doing with Satie’s music what you do with many other songs: you write words for them that express your own feelings, ideas, and experience. In Satie’s case, you’re also bringing his impressionist musical forms together with jazz.

The Satie, Souter, and Jazz Connection

TS: When I started listening very closely to Satie, I realized he reminded me of

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Wayne Shorter with all his interesting and unexpected tweaks and nuances verse to verse that you might miss if you weren’t focusing. Satie was definitely ahead of his time.

AAJ: The surprising shifts of notes give a feeling of in-the-moment creativity and spontaneity.

TS: Yes. In my research, I couldn’t find any explicit references connecting Wayne with Satie. But of course,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Charlie Parker was very influenced by Debussy and Stravinsky, who themselves were very influenced by Satie. And

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Miles Davis spent a significant amount of time in Paris in the ’40s and ’50s, where it is quite likely that Satie’s influence filtered down to him. For sure, Miles’ philosophy —silence is more important than sound—echoed Satie’s contention that “music is the space between the notes.”

AAJ: Satie helped create the genre of musical impressionism—sometimes tone poetical and largely modal work of Debussy, Faure, Ravel, etc. And then of course Les Six took him as a mentor for their own creative efforts to bring music further into the 20th century. And that all influenced jazz.

TS: Yes.

AAJ: Could you say something about that.

TS: Satie rejected the complex structures, dramatic intensity, and emotional extravagance of the then-prevalent 19th-century German Romantic tradition of composers like Wagner and Brahms. His music was distinctly French, minimalist, and spacious. His use of modal harmony and his reverence for silence and space, which was a huge influence on Debussy and Ravel and others, resonates profoundly in the jazz idiom, especially in Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959).

AAJ: As it happened both Satie and Miles were definitely models of individuality.

TS: Yes. It was a surprise to me that I couldn’t find many explicit references to Satie’s influence on jazz. It reminds me of vocalist

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Mark Murphy, who was my mentor for many years, and had a tremendous—often under the radar—influence on subsequent generations. There are male singers who may never have heard of him but who echo his voice, which they picked up through listening to the artists he inspired. Satie, too, seems to dwell at the edges of musical history, despite his revolutionary impact. This project is my way of shining a light on his genius. I wanted to be his champion.

AAJ: You have something in common with Satie in that your music is introspective like his. So, you came across a singer from Paris,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Anne Ducros. How did you get to hear her and her album, Piano, Piano (Dreyfuss Jazz, 2005), with her wordless vocal interpretation of Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1?”

TS: About 20 years ago, I was writing a vocal news column and that album came across my desk. It’s mostly jazz standards. But in the middle of it, up came her thrilling improvised arrangement of “Gnossienne No. 1.” I was mesmerized and listened to it over and over.

AAJ: She’s French, so there’s that connection to Satie. I agree that she’s an excellent jazz vocalist, and I’m surprised I never heard of her before. She has a great voice and a very accurate sense of pitch.

TS: Yes. She is a wonderful singer.

AAJ: So, OK. You’re into Satie, and now you’re starting to do your own take on him by writing lyrics to some of his songs. Strikingly, on the album, in addition to Satie, you’ve got tunes by

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Ron Carter (“Mood”) and Wayne Shorter (“ESP”) and two French songs, Jacques Brel‘s “If You Go Away” and Leo Ferre’s “Avec Le Temps.”

TS: I’ve been singing “Avec Le Temps” with my own lyric for nearly 20 years and I thought it was about time I sang it in French. It, and “Ne Me Quitte Pas” are just beautiful songs. And they make me think of Satie’s tragic love life, so they are kind of about him. One day, I realized that Wayne Shorter’s “ESP”—the title track of the Miles Davis album he’s on—shared the same initials as The Erik Satie Project, and I started listening to Davis’ album ESP (Columbia, 1965) at the gym. The way the title song by Wayne Shorter moved subtly, section by section, reminded me of Satie, even though it’s a very different treatment. And Ron Carter’s beautiful song, “Mood,” also on Miles’ album, echoed Satie’s quiet, contemplative energy, so I added it to the project, writing lyrics inspired by something my son had said to me once—that moods are just weather.

AAJ: And that’s a very interesting way to connect Satie and jazz and your own lyrics. And when you bring in modal music, you can’t avoid the impact of Miles,

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>John Coltrane and others, who used modal scales intensively in jazz.

TS: Yes. But, first of all, I just wanted to do songs I loved, and which inspired me to write lyrics.

AAJ: You appreciated his persona as well as his music?

TS: Yes. Certainly, researching his life, I could see how it shaped his personality and his music. His mother and sister died when he was six and he and his brother were sent to Honfleur to live with their paternal grandparents, and then their grandmother died a few years later, and they were sent back to Paris to live with their father. So, there was a sort of instability to his childhood which I think is reflected in his music.

The International Personnel on the Satie Album

AAJ: Let’s talk about the members of the band for your album. Luis Perdomo is the pianist and arranger. He’s a great one. I heard him live as a duo with

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Miguel Zenon, and they were both out of this world.

TS: I started playing with Luis right before Covid. He is an amazing pianist and arranger. Bassist Yasushi Nakamura has been playing with me for about ten years, in various configurations from duo to quintet, and he’s on my Picture in Black and White (Noa, 2018) album. My husband, the drummer

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Billy Drummond is on four of my albums. This is my first time working with saxophonist

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Steve Wilson and trumpeter

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Nadje Noordhuis. They are all poets on their instruments who I feel blessed to work with.

AAJ: Perdomo is from Venezuela, Nakamura, is from Tokyo, the trumpet and flugelhorn player, Noordhuis, is from Sydney, Australia, and Pascal Borderies, who narrates “I Kiss Your Heart/ Vexations,” is from Paris, and you yourself come from the UK. And then of course there’s your husband Billy Drummond, the drummer, and the saxophonist Steve Wilson, both American-born. So, like many on the contemporary jazz scene, you mostly come from different countries.

TS: We do. And I guess we all add our own flavors to the ever-evolving gumbo that is jazz.

AAJ: Did some of these folks have a passion for Satie before, or was this all new to them?

TS: They all know Satie, of course, as part of music history. But I think only Luis had really investigated Satie’s music in any depth, encouraged by his teacher, the late Sir

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Roland Hanna, who had played Satie with his trio in a jazz context. But what Luis did with his arrangements is very different from Roland Hanna.

AAJ: How did Pascal Borderies come in on this recording? I believe he is not a musician, but rather a physician and businessman.

TS: He and his wife are dear friends who I met first when they came to see me at the 55 Bar. He’s French, so I asked if he would read the letter on “I Kiss Your Heart (Vexations).” He was keen to do it, and he did a great job. I thought he’d be nervous, but he wasn’t.

AAJ: I was struck that Perdomo arranged many of the tunes. I think he’s a master musician on many levels.

TS: I agree! I went over to his house a few times to work on ideas together, and one day I turned up and he presented me with his finished arrangements to “A Song for You (Gnossienne No. 1)” and “Holding on to Beauty (Gnossienne No. 3)” which I just thought were incredible. They are very different from the Satie. And they really capture the essence of the lyrics. [Satie conceived the words gnossienne and gymnopedie, the former probably from his interest in the Gnostics in early Christianity.—Eds.]

Billy had the idea for the arrangement of “D’Ou Venons-Nous (Gnossienne No. 3)” in the studio. I’d been planning to just do it straight. But Billy said, “Let’s try having Yasushi begin it on the bowed bass, and then we’ll all play whatever we want, and then you’ll come in and sing it.” So that’s what we did it. It was the only take we needed.

Special Creativity During the Recording of the Album

AAJ: So, did it just feel like another jazz gig?

TS: Not really. In the studio, there’s always extra space to discuss any ideas that might come up. Obviously, you can’t do that on a gig, which is more spontaneous. Both situations have their advantages.

AAJ: There’s a wonderful scholarly book by musicologist Ingrid Monson called Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) in which she documents how jazz musicians hear what each other is doing and how they reference it in their own improvising.

TS: Yes, absolutely. When I play live with these guys, I’m always amazed by what’s going on between them. They’re completely in the moment, coming up with ideas seemingly out of nowhere. Surprising, but always appropriate. Always listening and responding. It’s like that trust exercise, where you have to fall back knowing that the person behind you is going to catch you.

AAJ: I understand you did some things from this album in a show at Dizzy’s Club. How did you feel about doing it in a live jazz concert that included Satie at a nightclub?

TS: It felt great. I was excited to bring this music to an audience, and they were very appreciative.

AAJ: Your singing, and your words too, are very much about feelings, and Satie’s style often reflects that as well. There was a form of poetry in his time called symbolism, where poets like Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine, all used words as symbols to evoke meanings and emotions. It had a big influence on impressionist music and art. The meaning is not stated directly but rather is implied in what is evoked, often subconsciously.

TS: That makes sense. It certainly lends itself to my style of lyric-writing, which is sort of impressionist and, I hope, open to multiple interpretations.

Personal Identity in Souter’s Music Compared with Satie

AAJ: So, as you work in this way with all the different forces and factors involved, what do you want to do with it, and what do you want people to know about it? You know, all of your composing and singing is unique. As Robert Frost wrote, “I took the path less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

TS: I think perhaps what is unique are my song choices, which are driven by my core, even if it’s just a standard. My previous album Picture in Black and White came from finding out in my late 20s that my birth father was Black from the Caribbean. I grew up looking White in a predominantly White culture, so I was divorced from that side of my heritage and I wanted to know more. I started reading memoirs, history books, and novels about the African diaspora, and as a musician, I naturally wanted to share those stories through music. With all those voices and experiences in my head, I began to hear familiar songs in a whole new light—they just felt different, like they carried new meaning. So, for example, “A Taste of Honey,” instead of being about being betrayed by an unfaithful lover, could be about a woman in Africa coming home to find her husband has been stolen for the slave trade. Or

”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Ornette Coleman‘s “Lonely Woman” could be about a slave couple forcibly separated. It felt like the familiarity of the songs could help carry the message, almost surreptitiously, without hitting people over the head with it.

AAJ: There’s an interesting parallel in the news recently to you discovering your father is black. Pope Leo is to all appearances and life experience white, with the exception of his work in Peru, but his maternal grandparents were Creole, Caribbean people of color living in New Orleans.

So, there’s so much else to talk about, but we’re running out of time. Thank you so much, Tessa, for participating in this interview and introducing us to Satie in your own personal and profound way. And congratulations on the release of your Erik Satie album. So, what would you like to offer as a concluding remark or two?

TS: My songs and song choices have strong meanings for me, but are loose enough, I hope, for listeners to get what they need to hear in them. People come up to me after gigs and tell me what certain songs have meant to them, and sometimes they are the absolute opposite of what they mean to me. But that’s the beauty of music.

Tags

PREVIOUS / NEXT

---