by David Austin

Saxophonist Alfredo Colón returns to The Jazz Gallery this week with a new band playing new music. We caught up with him in a reflective mode, musing on his musical education, the blues, and how to spawn creativity.

The Jazz Gallery: How did you choose your bandmates?

Alfredo Colon: These are all players I’ve admired for a long time, some of which I’ve worked with extensively and others I’ve only played with a little. I’ve probably played with Theo the most. He might be the most creative person I know. He really knows how to make the music sparkle but can also make the music really grimy when it’s called for.

I’ve played in Odin’s bands for years and have been trying to figure out how to fit him into my music for a while now. He has an amazing sound and rhythmic vocabulary. I’ve also been playing with Kobi a ton and he’s one of the few drummers I can really trust with my music. He’s not afraid of venturing into some wavy spaces, but when it’s time to make the music dance he’s all in.

Rafael is the player I’ve played with the least. I had been hearing his name all over the place once he got to NYC but I never got a proper chance to meet him until this past spring. We did a recording together and I immediately knew why everyone was hiring him. He adds a ton of heart to the music.

TJG: For a new band like this one, how do you let go of a fixed sound for your band, especially a band that’s new? What allows you to empower your bandmates to play their way?

AC: I've never been really precious about accuracy. I think it's a thing that's becoming more and more present, the older I get. There are some people who run their bands like the navy—“I'm the captain. What I say goes.” But then there's a lot of the folks that I really look up to who create an environment where reaching for something is encouraged and mistakes are forgiven as long as you're really trying.

TJG: Why does that sort of openness appeal to you?

AC: I think when you have a rigid musical environment, the musicians don't reach for anything they feel uncertain about. You need permission to fail to go beyond. It's all high risk, high reward.

When I listen to someone like Coltrane, the appeal is that even in the studio, even at The Vanguard, he’s not playing it safe. I feel like I'm being invited into the musical journey and participating in the practice with him. Of course he’s already playing the baddest shit, and you can hear that there's this pristine technique and polish to everything, but every now and then you’ll hear him play a high note with a split in the sound or a crackle in a low note. I find those phrases so charming because you can feel him reaching for more. You can really hear the light bulbs flashing mid-phrases.

TJG: I heard an interesting quote from Iman Shumpert, an ex NBA player. Someone had asked him “what makes a good ballplayer out of high school or out of college?” And he's like, man, no one's ready for the NBA. But college players have had the personality stripped oftheir game. the way they make you play within their system. Yeah, the high school guys have all this creativity. They’re able to play raw and free in high school, and the best NBA players are like that—just extremely polished.

AC: 100% I was just talking about that this morning. I think that the school system gets a lot of flack for being rigid and fixed in their practice, but music educators are tasked with a pretty huge load of work. It’s one thing to teach jazz history, all the standards and what not but it's a whole other thing to help these kids figure out how to be themselves in the music. I don’t really think it’s possible. Henry Threadgill has a good bit about this in his autobiography. He says something like “you can’t teach someone to have a love affair with the music.” If you’re going to school to be a surgeon or something, it’s a much more fixed and standardized curriculum. If music was this standardized, we’d really have nothing else to learn.

Personally, I loved my college experience. Some of the people I was in there with, and some professors really understood what it meant to be a jazz musician, like Steve Wilson and Jason Rigby, but for the most part I felt like a lot of other professors were trying to get me to sound like someone I wasn’t. They kept recommending I shed people like Phil Woods and listen to lots of Jim McNeely. Respectfully, I don't think there’s anything wrong with that music but I was interested in people like Coltrane, Ornette, Albert Ayler, and Sonny Rollins. I wanted to feel the spirit in the music and didn’t find it in the stuff they were sending my way. After a while, I found myself resenting going to school because I was paying to be pushed in the opposite direction of what I wanted. Luckily, people like Steve Wilson and Ray Gallon were there getting me to dig into players like Bunky Green and Johnny Hodges who inform my playing tremendously these days.

I felt that there was this obsession with a modern big band sound that I’m not too fond of and so little attention on the blues. I think every school teaching any kind of Black American Music should center the blues.

TJG: What is it about the classic American blues sound that you like so much?

AC: The blues are everything. No other artform has captured the human condition as well as the blues. It informs all American music that came after. You can hear it when a player has spent a significant amount of time with the blues right away. Darius Jones and Henry Threadgill are the first that come to mind. As musicians, we’re all searching for something bigger than ourselves. I feel like the classic blues musicians understood how to capture their burden—the human condition in their music. I want that kind of spirit in my set. Someone like Howlin’ Wolf could break your heart in two and put it back together with just one note.

TJG: What have you been working on in the last year?

AC: I’m working on closing the gaps in my playing. Some things I’ve been thinking a lot about are blending with others in horn sections and committing to an idea for a long time. I want to be able to one day stick to one idea for an entire set of music.

TJG: What have been some influences lately?

AC: I’ve been listening to a ton of Midwest emo lately as well as Björk and Ambrose.

TJG: Why Midwest Emo?

AC: The way those cats write is so hypnotic. The Midwest emo guys often write these intertwined lines for each instrument. The forms are often really unusual on paper but feel so good in context. It's fascinating stuff and something I’m trying to incorporate.

Alfredo Colón plays The Jazz Gallery on Thursday, August 10, 2023. Mr. Colón, on saxophone, will be joined by, Odin Scherer on guitar, Theo Walentiny on piano, Rafael Enciso on bass, and Kobi Abcede on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. E.D.T. $20 general admission ($15 for members, FREE for SummerPass holders), $30 reserved cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 livestream access ($5 for members, FREE for SummerPass holders). Purchase tickets here.