Joe Hertenstein - Sunday Interview ~ The Free Jazz Collective

Sunday, April 28, 2024

Joe Hertenstein - Sunday Interview

Sunday, April 28, 2024 Sunday Interview 1 comment

Photo by Cristina Marx/Photomusix

What is your greatest joy in improvised music?

Those endings!
Secondly, getting paid for it.
What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?

Fearlessness
Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?

Many. Milford Graves
If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?

Cecil Taylor
What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?

Coming up with compositions for my new quartet for our first tour in October.
Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like

Yes, in my spare time I am a singer/songwriter myself. I love words, storytelling, singing in rhymes. There’s nothing like a great sounding, well placed back beat. I’m suspicious of people, who don’t sing and dance.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’d like to be slightly less depressed about the state of the world and my playing. I’m also looking for a bigger (>70m2 with balcony) apartment in Berlin, anybody?
Which of your albums are you most proud of?

My last one? Usually it’s hardly the music itself that I’m proud of but rather the fact that I managed to produce and release it into the world at all. Colleagues know what I mean. Being a full time (jazz-) musician is an impossible way of life.
Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?

By the time an album gets released, I have listened to it so much during the production process that I must be careful it doesn’t become a love-hate relationship. Albums are the documentation of the past, please collect them, but come see me play tomorrow: Our trio REMEDY with Thomas Heberer and Joe Fonda will be touring Germany and Belgium during the first half of April.
Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?

Couldn't say, probably Beyond Quantum with Braxton, Parker, Graves, and those by Tethered Moon with Kikuchi, Peacock, Motian.

Many Jazz classics and classic classics of course.

I listen/ed to many Blues singers and singer-songwriters...I don't know...music is endless...
What are you listening to at the moment?

I’m mostly evaluating recordings of productions I’m involved with, I mean, it's a job. For a palate cleanse, I might spin some Dylan, Waits, Cale later...
What artist outside music inspires you?

I used to go to a lot of gallery openings. I wonder what the Vatican is hiding from us. I stare a lot at the carpet in my living room.