Not Too Suite: Dezron Douglas Speaks

Photo by Deneka Peniston, courtesy of the artist.

by Sarah Thomas

Since his first performance here in 2008, bassist Dezron Douglas has been an integral member of The Jazz Gallery scene. He’s led many bands, including a string of shows with drummer Kweku Sumbry as part of the Gallery’s long-running Mentoring Series. This year, Douglas received The Jazz Gallery Fellowship, an annual award and commission for an experienced artist to expand their compositional practice.

This weekend, Douglas will present his fellowship composition, Not Too Suite. The work emerged from his love of coffee, which has deep roots in his family history. We caught up with Douglas to talk about how both coffee and music alike can foster human connection in trying times.

The Jazz Gallery: This weekend at The Jazz Gallery, you’re premiering your Jazz Gallery Fellowship Commission.

Dezron Douglas: Yes. I was awarded the commission at the beginning of the year, and this is the culmination. This is the first premiere. As with all music, there's always a chance to rehash things, but this is the first attempt.

TJG: Round one. And it's called Not Too Suite.

DD: Yeah, the music I composed is based off of my love of coffee. 

TJG: That makes me happy.

DD: Me too, although I had a terrible cup this morning in Massachusetts. A good cup of coffee can set the tone for the day. I've been in love with coffee since I was very young. My grandfather gave me my first sip of coffee when I was about four or five years old growing up in Hartford, CT, and I’ve been in love with it ever since. I actually got really serious about it the year that I moved to New York. I'd been working here since 1999, but I moved here in 2011. Before then, I believed that the only coffee that ever existed for anyone to drink was Dunkin’ Donuts. New England—”Time to make the donuts,” you know? Dunkin’ Donuts coffee was everything. It still is everything. I'm not a fan of Starbucks at all. But I'm a Dunkin’ kid. I grew up on Dunkin’ Donuts. 

So when I moved here, my mind was blown. New York has a deceptively rich coffee culture here in the city. Even the coffee you get at a bodega can be pretty good coffee for $1.25. But I had no idea. And I had done some traveling. By the time I moved here, I'd already been halfway across the globe more than a few times. I had toured Japan a bunch, so I can consciously say that Japan has a coffee culture. In Australia, certain cities have a coffee culture—Melbourne, Sydney. Brazil—coffee culture. Parts of Mexico—coffee culture. 

When I say coffee culture, I'm not just talking about a region that's famous for their coffee beans. Columbia has great coffee, but they don't really have a coffee culture as far as I know. There’s only one or two ways to have coffee there. But the ultimate ingredient in coffee is if it's made with love, and New Yorkers tend to make all of their coffee with love because it's like the most important part of the day. And sometimes that most important part of the day happens four or five times if you’re having a rough one. 

So this mid-November my quartet is releasing a record, and on that record is a song called “More Coffee, Please.” I wrote that in the middle of the pandemic. As artists and creatives, we tend to find inspiration from many different avenues of our lives. We find the beauty or the sadness in everything. But nothing necessarily speaks to us enough to express ourselves or expound on the subjects that inspire us.

In the pandemic, I started making these videos where I pour my coffee in my Chemex, and it became sort of a thing. It opened me up to a whole world of people who actually find the romance in coffee and in the process. Sometimes just the whole process of making a cup of coffee wakes you up before you even have your first sip. And everyone drinks it differently. Everyone has their own relationship with coffee. So I decided, why not write music based on that?

I've done some research, but I also just went off of things that I know. One of the movements in the suite is called “Black Gold.” Coffee was a high commodity at one point in the history of time and it was used to implement policies or change things. Coffee was an important staple and commodity for business. This is before we even knew how to—before electronics. Coffee was it. So I have a movement dedicated to that.

And I also have a movement dedicated to my grandfather, who introduced me to coffee. My grandfather’s from Westmoreland, Jamaica, and he gave me my first sip of coffee—Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee—and I was hooked ever since. There's a movement in there called “Pinwheel,” and it's about decaf coffee. If you're a real coffee drinker, at some point we're all going to have to either take a break or go decaf. Sometimes the real hardcore people are like, “I'm not stopping drinking coffee.” They'll just go straight to decaf. So I have something dedicated to them. 

And the suite—I always like a play on words, saying something that could mean several different things. My grandfather recently passed on February 17th of this year, two days before my birthday. So when I was writing this music, all of this stuff was happening and it sort of just came full circle.

I remember for Christmas a couple years ago I got my grandfather a Chemex. When he unwrapped it, he was looking at it and he was like, “What's this?” And I said, “This is how we make coffee. I'll make you a cup.” So he was happy about it. I made him a cup and showed him the process. He was sitting there looking at me like, “I'm never going to do all of that, but thank you. You can come over here and make it for me.” So I bring him this glorious cup of coffee, and he sips it, and he sort of has this stale look on his face. You could tell by his body language how he felt about something. So I'm like, “Pop Pop, is something wrong with the coffee?” He was like, “I can't taste it.” And I’m like, “What’s happening?” And my grandmother said, “He just wants sugar.” So we put some sugar in it and he stirred it up, and when he tasted it he was like, “Whoah! Yes. Yes.” His face lit up and now he appreciated the coffee. He loved it because it was sweet. 

Some people don't like sugar in their coffee. Some people don't like cream. Like I said, everyone drinks it differently. In the culture I grew up in, and part of African-American culture in general, one of the things that has plagued African-Americans in the United States is diabetes. It’s plagued humans in general, but specifically the African-American community. I grew up with a lot of my family who it's like, can you get more coffee with your sugar, please? Or can we get more tea with your sugar? Or less sugar with your sugar? So all that was happening and a lot of things were on my mind. 

I've written many suites. As a composer, when you first learn copyright laws you learn the tricks of the trade where you can copyright ten tunes at a time and call it a suite. I'm sure everyone's done that before, figuring out a way to beat the curve. But this is my first attempt at actually sitting down and composing music inspired by telling a story in movements. Like I said, it is a work in progress. There are many ideas that I want to hear. It's about ninety percent done. It's probably one hundred percent done, but I'm saying ninety percent because there's always something you can add. It's September 16th and 17th. It's that day. The next time it's performed, it's not going to be the same. Who knows what's going to happen?

Every time is different. Also, we have two sets each night, so it's going to be four different interpretations. I like to compose leaving space for creativity. There are some through-composed things, but I like there to be a balance—through-composed and creativity—to give the musicians a chance to express themselves within the vision of the composer. 

TJG: Let the piece live and grow. 

DD: Exactly. That’s the beauty of Bach. A lot of his masterpieces were improvisations. And someone was like, “Well, let's transcribe that. Let's write that down. That's gorgeous.” And he's like, “Well, that was just yesterday. I don't know why y’all keep bugging me about this. I can't do that again. I'm not trying to do that again. Now I'm on this.” “Well, that sounds great, too!” Bach probably kicked a pile of people out of his house. He's like, “Just leave me alone!” 

So that being said, the title Not Too Suite could be in reference to coffee, because those are three words that every professional coffee drinker says when they order their coffee. If they want some sweetener, they'll always say, “not too sweet.” It's something that comes up. Or, “Man, this is too sweet,” or “It's not sweet enough.” So Not Too Suite is a reference to coffee. 

Also, this is not your typical suite. I think it's important for me to be myself and not try to be what I'm not. In the process, I'll grow and maybe I’ll earn another badge at some point and change and add wrinkles to the way I write. But my writing has evolved over time. I go back and listen to pieces that I wrote twenty years ago, and I'm like, “Those are great ideas.” And then sometimes I'm like, “Man, I actually wrote something like this? I can't play any of this now. What was I thinking about?” And sometimes something you thought was a masterpiece, you're like, “This is terrible. I don't know who paid money to listen to this back in the day. Lord have mercy.” 

So I'm looking forward to everyone coming by. I thought about having some coffee brewed, but that's too much work. Everyone’s picky. Someone's going to be in there like, “You don't have oat milk! I need a Sweet ‘n Low. Where's the creamer?” Listen, why don't y’all go to the bodega? We'll take five. Everyone go do what you have to do and come back and we'll start the show. Your coffee is more than welcome in The Jazz Gallery. Just don't make a mess. 

But I really feel like it's taking shape. I recently collaborated with a brilliant artist, Jenny Stanjeski. She's a professor at Juilliard, and she invited me to her studio to play some bass while she painted. I took the opportunity to work on one of the movements, and she painted various pieces. But she came up with this piece that really represented one of the movements. So I was like, “Well, that's it. That's the visual for the suite.” 

Same with Sachal Vasandani, a great vocalist friend of mine, brilliant musician, and great lyricist. I wrote some lyrics, and he's hashing it out. So I invited some collaborators as well as the musicians that are working with me—Johnathan Blake, Glenn Zaleski, Chris Lewis, and a great young trumpeter, Akili Bradley.

Actually, this is sort of a generational situation, as well. Both Akili and Chris are very young and recent graduates of college. Chris was born in New York, but I think he went to school in Philly. Akili is from Oakland, if I'm correct. She went to school at Berklee. They're both phenomenal musicians.

I also tend to compose music for the musicians who are playing it. When I first got the commission, the band I put together was Johnathan Blake, Luis Perdomo on piano, Chris Lewis on tenor, and Marquis Hill on trumpet. Maybe three months after I called him, Marquis had to pull out. I had written a bunch of music then, so I started changing it and thinking, “Okay, this might still work, but I was actually hearing a certain voice on this, so I'll rewrite some things.” Then at the beginning of this summer, Luis unfortunately told me he couldn't make it, and so I scratched a couple movements and began writing for Glenn.

I love Glenn's playing and I love Akili’s playing. So there are some parts of the suite that got cast aside, but they'll get reworked into something else. Maybe I’ll have to do a double coffee suite—who knows? But the music is written for the people who are going to perform it, and everyone's collaborating on it. It's my vision. I wrote the notes. But I'm not telling anyone what to play.

TJG: I was listening to your album from a couple years ago, Force Majeure, and I noticed that the first track also mentions coffee. So I was like, OK, there’s a theme here.

DD: This is definitely a house of coffee.

TJG: That album was one that you recorded in early quarantine days, so seeing this great band you have lined up also made me really happy. I know we've been back at this for a while since quarantine times, but it's still so great to see people being able to collaborate together.

DD: When you are in a bonded unit, whether you go through one performance or one hundred performances together, it's like a battlefield. You go into battle together, because you can practice something a million times and when you get on stage the Creator is going to be like, “I don't care how many times you practice this passage, it's not going to happen for you today. But if you do this tomorrow, it'll happen for you tomorrow. But it's not going to happen today.” So you go into battle together. 

And when we were all quarantined, a lot of the vital things that we need as humans were stripped away. But even more specifically, as creators we were almost handicapped. It's like everything that we need to facilitate creativity was gone. So we had to really figure it out again. Hence, Zoom made a lot of money. People found ways to connect, because we need that social connection, that physical connection—not just touch, but actually being in a space with someone and bouncing energy off of each other to create something. That's needed. 

I formed a quartet right in the middle of the pandemic, and it's a great band. Like I said, the record's coming out in November. But when I got this commission, I wanted to work with other musicians. I consider myself a switchblade. I'm very versatile in a lot of different styles and I can fit in in a lot of different circles of music. I’m classically trained. I played tuba for ten years classically. I’ve done a chamber work with the bass. Music is my vibration. Music is healing. So the opportunity to write music for some other people that I love was therapeutic. It was another kind of therapy, because I had been writing music for my quartet. I had a certain sound in mind, and I had really been hearing the way those guys play. But then my writing and my ideas started to drift off into other areas that I didn't anticipate because I'm dealing with other people's vibrations. So it’s definitely an important thing. 

The Jazz Gallery made it a point to stay connected and keep that human connection with Zoom. Throughout the pandemic, I did various livestreams where we had a Zoom meeting and I’d play solo bass and just talk. Some people had coffee, some had wine, vodka, beer, soda, or whatever. Some people had their cheese and crackers. And they were with each other in their own place. So we saw how important that human connection is, and the Gallery really made it a point to stay active in people's minds and let people know that we're all here. We are still here, and we are going to share with each other.

TJG: As part of your fellowship, what else have you done with the Gallery?

DD: I recently did the mentorship program with a great young drummer, Kweku Sumbry from D.C. Rio [Sakairi] tends to push me. I think she pushes a lot of people. She's like a driving force and she nudges a lot of people to be great. I'm not saying I'm lazy, but I'm very selective about some of the things that I do, and Rio's quick to call me on the phone and be like, “OK, Dezron. I don't care. You're doing this.” And I'm like, “All right, Rio. Fine.” And then I wind up enjoying doing whatever she asked me to do. So I did the mentorship thing, and that was great. We did four concerts, and I did four different experiences for Kweku. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I got a lot out of it, and I'm sure he did as well. So I've been involved in The Jazz Gallery community since I first began playing there back in 2008.

TJG: Do you have any other projects coming up?

DD: Be looking out for my new record coming in mid-November. Some kind of announcement should be happening next month about it. It’s a great label, International Anthem. We actually just lost a family member of the label, a friend and a driving force on the scene, Jaimie Branch. She was a brilliant trumpeter and composer. She was good people. She was a good friend, great person to everybody, and a heck of a musician and creator. And she was my label mate. We talked a lot about it. She was listening to my record. She had sneak peeks. She was listening to stuff before I even heard it. So it's a great label. Their roster and the music they put out is very healing, no matter what genre. They're almost genreless. They do a lot of classical stuff. It’s the same label that the Force Majeure record was on. They do a lot of different things, so I'm happy to be in that community. 

I have a lot of things on my plate. I teach at NYU. I’m in a rock band now. I have my band. I still work with Ravi Coltrane. I still work with Louis Hayes, who is now an NEA Jazz Master. But the record is the most important thing coming up aside from this suite. And if the Gallery board and Rio like the suite enough, maybe we'll get a reprise before the end of the year. Who knows? But we have to get through the first dance.

Dezron Douglas presents The Jazz Gallery Fellowship Commission “Not Too Suite” in his concert at The Jazz Gallery on Friday, September 16 & Saturday, September 17. The group features Dezron Douglas on bass, Johnathan Blake on drums, Glenn Zaleski on piano, Akili Bradley on trumpet, Chris Lewis on tenor sax, and Sachal Vasandani on vocals. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. EDT. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 Livestream Saturday only (FREE for members). Purchase tickets here.