Jessica Ackerley - Sunday Interview

Photo by Michael Kochman

1.  What is your greatest joy in improvised music?
   
   When performing improvised music in front of an audience, there is a satisfaction of knowing that once the music is done it can never be exactly replicated again. Its purpose is to only exist in that specific moment.
   
   From a collaborative perspective, I find it highly rewarding when the musicians can find a balance between music vocabulary developed over time coupled with elements of constant surprise.
   
   
2. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with?
   
   Empathy. Listening. Interacting. Engaging….the usual suspects that are needed to make good music.
   
   Another big one for me is versatility. I recently completed a two week European tour with one of my longer collaborators, the pianist - Eli Wallace, and every night I was amazed by his ability to adapt to whatever piano/instrument situation he was in and still create interesting and engaging music.
   
   
3. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most?
   
   There are too many to choose from, it is impossible for me to choose just one. My musical tastes are pretty eclectic, pretty haphazard at times. Each artist has specific ideas that I am drawn towards and it has never been a culmination within one specific name.…but if I were to choose just one, it would be Charles Mingus.
   
   
4. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be?
   
   I’d like to play jazz standards with Ed Bicket, guitar duo, at a restaurant in Toronto. There would be a lot of pleasure in that for me….
   
   
5. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life?
   
   To maintain good health into my older years where I am able to perform and play on a regular basis.
   
   A current goal I have as a composer is to write an orchestra piece and have it performed by a professional orchestra one day. It is a big dream of mine!
   
   
6. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like?
   
   Yes, I love pop music. It is my decompressor, stress reliever, disassociating device for when I need to escape for a moment or turn off my brain. I love listening to Prince, Sinaed O’Conner, Maria Carey, Whitney Houston etc…it is a nice palette cleanser for the other music I listen to imo.
   
   
7. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
   
   I am always a work in progress, some days it moves forward, sometimes it moves back. I am still learning to practice patience and am hoping it will come a little easier with age.
   
   
8. Which of your albums are you most proud of?
   
   My latest trio record, which is coming out this August, “All Of the Colours Are Singing.” I started working on it shortly after I left New York City and moved to Hawai’i and it was a huge transition, not only to a new place but also witnessing the turmoil globally as well with the pandemic, politics, and human suffering happening at the moment. I wanted to make beautiful music as a balm for these feelings and experiences. This record also challenges myself in new ways with territories not yet visited on previous albums.
   
   
9. Once an album of yours is released, do you still listen to it? And how often?
   
   When I am prepping for a new project I will sometimes go back and revisit various albums. I only listen when I am thinking critically about where the music has been and where I want to go with it. Outside of that, I never listen to my music casually because I have already spent so much time with it in the recording process, after that I am ready to move on from it.
   
   
10. Which album (from any musician) have you listened to the most in your life?
    
    I have gone through so many phases in my life and music with albums that had a deep impact and influence on me but there has been little consistency with continuously returning to them. With my time as a younger musician studying straight ahead jazz Wes’ “Smokin’ at the Half Note” was a big one, and once I moved to New York and played in noise rock bands This Heat’s “Deceit” was important to me. There are various guitar centric and improvised albums that I have loved over the years and occasionally return to as well.
    
    
11. What are you listening to at the moment?
    
    During my European tour I made a playlist of composers in each country I visited and listened to it on the train rides between cities. I dug deep into Arne Nordheim’s electronic music, Helmut Lachenmann’s String Quartet music, Georg Friedich Haas, Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” and John Dunstable. I also spent a lot of time with John Luther Adam’s “Arctic Dreams” after finishing an artist residency in Svalbard this past June hoping that it would keep those memories fresh for me.
    
    
12. What artist outside music inspires you?
    
    The natural world and nature will always be one of my deepest inspirations.
    
    Four years ago I fell in love with the visual art world and recently spent a fair amount of time at Mass MoCA the past three weeks for the Bang on a Can festival as a composer. Being immersed in contemporary art was a deeply inspiring time for me with getting to see Anselm Kiefer paintings, Sol Lewitt drawings and James Tyrrell light installations every day. 

Jessica Ackerley on the Free Jazz Blog: 

• Daniel Carter’s Great Year of Duets (Part 1 of 3)
• Patrick Shiroishi - Extremities with Jessica Ackerley (Notice Recordings, 2020)
• Guitar - Solo Part 1: Unexpected arpeggios and surprising onomatopoetics
• Guitars! (Part 1 of 2)