It’s a Venn diagram of jazz: composed and improvised, formal and loose. And listeners never know which fragment of Okonski they’ll see at any given time or if there’s even a meaningful distinction. The piano jazz trio, who dropped its new LP, Entrance Music, on February 28th, laid all its musical cards on the table. And if you’re going to make a new noise in a style that’s many decades old, you will have to.
The piano trio is a spin-off and features three members from Indiana-bred R&B outfit Durand Jones & The Indications: Okonski, drummer Aaron Frazer, and bassist Michael Montgomery. Okonski, however, formed in Brooklyn, even though all three members now live in different locales. Logistical concerns keep the band from touring. But don’t think that stops the records from feeling live. And that’s really where the important part comes in.
The band’s debut, Magnolia, had a fair bit of spontaneity. But that element was upped for its follow-up, Entrance Music, which further stirs their crock pot mix of everyone from Pharoah Sanders to Bill Evans to The Bad Plus.
“Knowing that we could create spontaneously, that there are different frameworks for us to be able to make these songs, I think we were a little bit more comfortable in just kind of winging it, for lack of a better word, trusting the process,” said Okonski.
We talked to pianist and band head honcho Steve Okonski via Zoom from his home in Asheville, NC.
What are the challenges of having a band without a traditional lead instrument and without a vocalist to draw the listener in in a very accessible way?
I think all three of us serve as lead instruments at different times. On Entrance Music, Mike opens up side B with a brilliant bass solo. Aaron has some other moments where he’s soloing. I’ve got moments where I’m playing out. And so, everyone has to step up to lead at one point or another. And I think, with this group of musicians, it’s all very comfortable. I guess the feeling has to be good because of the lack of a singer or a horn player. You have to be bobbing your head, or at least you have to be engaged with it from the very beginning. And you won’t feel like you’re missing anything. Hopefully, someone who’s listening doesn’t.
The music has a rhythmic element, particularly on the Trio Sessions EP. Would you say that hip hop, mainly instrumental hip hop, has a big influence on the band?
Yeah, most definitely. There’s a long list of influences, but hip hop and the tracks that have informed hip hop and the tracks that hip hop artists have sampled have all played into that. I’m a big Bob James fan. I don’t know if anyone has been more sampled than him in the hip hop world. And I often like listening to the music that has been sampled, sometimes more often than I like listening to the original tracks. So yeah, I would say, especially, the early ‘90s production stuff is a huge influence.
If a singer or rapper approached you guys about some sort of collaboration, would you do it? Trio Sessions could be an amazing rap EP with a strong MC involved.
I would love for someone to get their hands on these albums, chop them up, and do what they want with them. I mean, off of Magnolia, Pale Jay took that track “Runner Up,” and he sampled just the first part of that and built a whole new song off of that called “By the Lake.”
I want to talk about the writing process because, in listening to the music, it felt like there was room for improvisation, but it didn’t feel like it was mainly improvised. It feels fairly composed. Are there charts? Tell me about how the tunes came together and were developed.
Yeah, talking about something from the new album, Entrance Music, a song like “October,” there were no charts. There weren’t charts for any of these songs. I had already come up with the little melody, not in the A section, but in the B section, the transition period. I showed it to the guys.
I said, “this is all in E flat, and this is what I’m doing.” But we don’t talk about the form. I tell Mike, “Maybe start this one out on the bow,” and then we’ll see what happens. Or I’ll say, “Aaron, let’s start it out pretty open. And then when you come in with something, we’ll change the feel.”
So something like that, there’s a nugget of an idea beforehand, that we then explored live, while we were recording. A song like “Lakebridge” is very open. That is really just saying, let’s do something kind of loping. Let’s do it in this key, and let’s see what happens. And that one, I don’t come in with a melody. We just play. And then as I open that, that melody that is in there, as I’m playing it at the beginning, I’m trying to remember it. When we feel like we get to the end of the song, let me repeat it. A song like “Dahlia” was unique to this record, in that it is the most probably composed. As a whole, Entrance Music is more composed than Magnolia was.
Every once in a while, you’ll see a jazz artist that does an entire album cover. So if—for whatever reason—the label or some collaborator was like, “guys, here’s a big check. And I need you to re-record another band’s album completely, but it’s your choice.” What would you do?
That’s a great question. What would we do as a trio? That’s tough. We haven’t done a lot of covers. I’m trying to think of like some of my favorite albums. I would be loath to try to redo a piano trio album. If I love it so much, it’s probably because they did it perfectly that time.
It kind of feels too, like, obvious or on the nose. I’d want something left field.
I’d rather it be more left field. I know it’s a lot of covers on there already, but it would be just a fun exercise to go through and play all the songs off Donny Hathaway’s Live. But that’s probably more on the nose than you’re talking about, too. You know, it’d be fun to do Weezer’s Blue Album. “Undone – The Sweater Song” in particular could be a nice 15-minute introspective track. I think there’s enough that could transfer.
The triple album set on Blue Note Records. Each song milked for every available note for a jam.
Absolutely.
