Do you ever find yourself hemmed in, or that people try to codify your music as a certain kind of style or sound?
All the time.

That has to be fun.
I have a reputation for having problems with critics. Part of the reason I get frustrated is because I am sympathetic to the issue of trying to write about music. It’s nearly impossible. Especially when you’re writing about music that is truly contemporary and doesn’t have a set of terminology that everyone accepts to discuss it. I think what ends up happening is that, in order to be able to even discuss some of this stuff, things get really simplified and people get categorized. I know Peter Brötzmann fairly well, and his entire life is not defined by (landmark 1968 album) Machine Gun. He’s done lots of different kinds of things. Part of what he’s done since the very beginning of his career is he’s a had a very strong introspective ballad character to his work, which people have wanted to ignore because it doesn’t fit into this idea of this blistering, Teutonic, German saxophone player.

But at least that in, say, The Penguin Guide To Jazz, (editors) Richard Cook and Brian Morton give a fair consideration of your work.
I think so, too.

They [wrote in 1992’s first edition] something to the effect that jazz will not be able to hold you, and that given your age—at that time—you’d move beyond it.
That’s the thing, that was the very beginning. What’s interesting about that book—and I have to say in some way I sort of respect them for doing it—as the editions come out, they just add to what was there. They don’t rewrite the history as they had it down. That was the first stuff they wrote about me, and I think it’s interesting because they didn’t know who I was, they didn’t know what my background was. And here it is, probably a decade later, and I wonder what their assessment is now. And the fact that they’re still writing about the stuff shows that they’re at least taking what I’m doing seriously. I have a respect for them for leaving that in there and saying, “Hey, maybe we were wrong.”

What were the challenges when you first played with Peter Brötzmann?
With Peter, one of the biggest challenges is to play with him and not be intimidated. Of all of the people I’ve played with, I’d say he’s really one of the most inspiring individuals I’ve known. Not just his intensity level, in that he can be very loud, it’s not that. It’s the intensity level of an amazing amount of commitment to always look for something to do, to try, to experiment with, and never leaning on anything he’s done before. That’s intimidating. Of all the concerts I’ve played with him, he’s very rarely said, “Well, that felt good.”

So constant evolution then?
Yeah, yeah. I’ve realized that it is an ongoing life pursuit. You know it’s Peter Brötzmann within three notes on anything you hear, on a record or at a concert, and yet he’s always searching and finding different things to do, working with different people. His musical spirit is so evident that he’s like a Miles Davis or a Thelonious Monk, that right away, you know it’s them. Being next to something like that is intimidating but also drives me to do the same kind of thing.

Is it a strain fitting everything you do into each calendar year?
Yeah. The easiest thing for me actually is the music. It’s challenging to meet the deadlines, composing music for different groups, but that’s mostly because of the time constraints, not because I don’t enjoy it. That stuff is all easy. It’s trying to make my life work outside the music that’s quite difficult. I’m married, and trying to get the balance at home is really tough. I’m on tour probably at least seven months a year now. And my problem is, if someone asks me to do something, “Come to Oslo and let’s do a concert”—I always say yes. Then I have to figure out how I’m going to make it work out domestically. It’s difficult but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Sounds like quite a contrast from those early years you mentioned, where you were principally just writing, struggling a lit bit, I imagine, to make a living.
No question. Basically since I got out of college in ’86, until the mid-’90s I was working day jobs. I feel very lucky to be playing music full time. A lot of people I work with in the United States and Canada are not able to do that and have to spend a lot of their time and energy doing other work they’d rather not be doing.

Cecil Taylor washing dishes ...
Unfortunately, that is part of the story of the artists, whether they’re musicians or not, in this country. Ironically the country produces some of the greatest people in the art world, of any country. But it isn’t received ... I hate to say that because I really love touring North America. In general, the experience in Europe versus the experience in North America was very similar, in regards to the audience and the critical response. And in the last couple of years, it seems that the audiences in Europe are much more open-minded to the different things that I’m trying. And some of the writers seem to accept the fact that I would do things that seem contradictory and were curious about why I was doing them. Like if I did something with funk music. Here, a lot of the jazz writers would say it’s a cop-out or a sellout, not that I could possibly be interested in that music for its own worth.

Don’t you think that’s almost a historical trend? Even decades ago, musicians would go to tour Europe and simply stay there.
I think it is true historically. For a music that’s been so much about innovation and change, it’s unbelievable how conservative people can be. Some of the most conservative people I’ve met are fans of free jazz. They have such a specific set of ideas about what that music is and what it isn’t, who can play it and who can’t play it, and it doesn’t make any sense because this music is supposed to be about change and being open to different kinds of things.

“I’m a modernist but I’m not interested in anything new.”
Right. And the irony of that seems lost to a lot of people. I would say Evan Parker and Derek Bailey are jazz musicians. Derek Bailey would probably be very unhappy to have himself called that.

Why? What do you think he would consider himself?
Well, I can’t speak for him, but my impression is that he pretty much wants to disassociate himself from the idea of being a jazz musician and he’s interested in what he’s called nonidiomatic improvisation. To me, he’s part of the jazz tradition, because he’s still a narrative kind of improviser. No one really tells a musical story the way Bailey does.

How has losing (trombonist) Jeb Bishop changed the dynamics of the group?
That was a big change. Jeb had been with the band since the beginning. It was really sad that he wanted to move on, but I respected his decision. It made me consider that maybe the band had run its course. It’s not that Jeb’s a trombone player—he’s Jeb Bishop and he has a whole set of music that he brings to the table. So we discussed the idea and everybody else in the band really wanted to keep doing it, which is really gratifying.

What put you on to the idea of song by song dedications? With some, I think you can see the reason for pairing a song with a dedicatee, and others strike me more as homages.
In general, they’re more like homages, citing various people who’ve really impacted me in what I do—musicians, friends, whatever. Recognizing all these things are important. I think Jackie McLean said we should give people their flowers when they’re here. Reading about musicians like Anthony Braxton, when I found out who they were interested in—in certain cases, I was unaware of these artists—I would go check out their work. There’s this trail of information that you follow. And I figured that maybe people were curious about those things regarding the things I was doing. And it was kind of these signposts. Very frequently people don’t get acknowledged for their impact on us.

And the dedications traverse boundaries, too, they’re not just relegated to music.
It’s so interesting when people talk about jazz improvised music, and the idea is that there’s only that one kind of history. There’s so much other stuff out there, just in other kinds of music, never mind literature and film and everything else in art. The thing that excites me is all of that stuff, all of the creative things that go on, new ways to look at the world we live in. That’s really why I get up in the morning. The way I voice my participation is through music. I’m not a painter, I’m not a writer.

And not to get too Proustian here, but I was intrigued by the use of the word “memory” in the title of this album. Was there a special connotation there?
After we recorded the album in July of last year, with Jeb leaving the group and finishing up a number of projects I was working on at the time, the idea seemed how we remember things, how we’re affected by personal perspective and that the past isn’t so clear. The way we remember things changes. In the years that I’ve been doing this music, there are thoughts of forwardness that happen, new ways to work with people you’ve known a long time. There’s also a process of things falling away, people that you don’t work with again, people that you don’t see again, places you never go back to. So it’s a sense of loss and a sense of optimism that sort of runs parallel all the time.