questionnaire

 Alessandro Bosetti
 Alfredo Costa Monteiro
 Andrew Drury
 Axel Dörner
 Bechir Saade
 Bertrand Denzler
 Bhob Rainey
 Bonnie Jones
 Bruce Russell
 Bryan Eubanks
 Burkhard Beins
 Christian Weber
 Christof Kurzmann
 Cor Fuhler
 Dieter Kovacic (dieb13)
 Doug Theriault
 Dragos Tara   new
 eRikm
 Greg Kelley
 Günter Müller
 Heddy Boubaker
 Howard Stelzer
 Ignaz Schick
 Jason Kahn
 Jeff Gburek
 Jeph Jerman
 Jesse Kudler
 Joe Foster
 Julien Ottavi
 Kai Fagaschinski
 Lee Kwang Goh
 Liz Tonne   new
 Lucio Capece
 Mattin
 Michael Renkel
 Michel Doneda
 Reuben Radding
 Róbert Rózsa
 Robin Hayward
 Ruth Barberan
 Sharif Sehnaoui
 Thomas Ankersmit
 Tomas Korber
 Valerio Tricoli
 Will Guthrie

1. Have you got any formal musical training, and what do you draw from it now?

Alessandro Bosetti:
      I had a pretty informal training as a jazz musician. I keep studying as much as I have time for it. I never came to feel really much 'trained' though.

Alfredo Costa Monteiro:
      When I was ten, I took some accordion classes, but it didn’t last for long... And some years later I studied acoustic guitar at the conservatory for a couple of years. There, I had the possibility to listen to some electro-acoustic pieces that set a different approach to what I thought music was. This was a big contrast with the teaching program, but finally I got bored.
      From these days, I think I’ve kept a kind of resistance towards the instrument that leads me to play against it, or better said, against the standard forms of playing it.

Andrew Drury:
      I studied drum set first with Dave Coleman Sr. in Seattle (1979-82) and then with Ed Blackwell in Connecticut (1983-86, 87-88), plus one time lessons with Steve McCraven, Alan Dawson, and Aaron Alexander. I am also a composer, but in this area I am entirely self-taught.
      The drum lessons feel to me as deeply personal interactions. I would characterize them as “informal musical training,” even though they were very rigorous, technical, and sometimes took place in the shadows of established cultural institutions.  I always had the sense that my drum lessons were modeled on ancient pedagogical practices in which elders transmit culture to younger people.  I imagined, since I was learning jazz, that I was receiving African musical knowledge that had been developed and refined over millennia in African villages.  This sense of lineage is very important to me and provides me with a sense of identity as a person and as an artist.
      My relationship with the drum set and percussion has been going on for over 30 years, so what I have learned through studies and playing I have embodied, which is to say it is deep in my imagination and physiology.  It would be impossible for me at this point to play without reference to this experience, though interesting to try to play around it.
      My work in free improvisation, however, has led me increasingly to eschew rhythm, meter, drum sticks, and loudness—which is to say, a lot of my “formal musical training.”  I feel that what I draw from in these situations is a fluency with manipulating percussion objects, a foundation of musicality that exists below the specifics of drumming.  In addition to beats and patterns, drumming is very much about managing the dynamics and energy of the group, and that’s where a lot of my focus goes now.  The basics of musical training help  me operate on these other levels, but I think it was the additional thing of going beyond that and having my own musical experiences outside of training situations that  is most significant.
      A lot of non-musical influences and training are relevant to anyone’s musical practice of course.  Studying poetry taught me about the love and discipline of craft, and about form and composition.  Growing up in the astonishing beauty of the landscapes and nature of the Pacific Northwestern region of the U.S. gave fuel and depth to my aesthetic desires.  Growing up around carpentry exposed me to an activist sensibility vis a vis materials—i.e. I observed from an early age that people make the things they need.  And also, because my experience working in construction was deadening and depressing to me in some ways it also motivated me to work in a field that I loved.  Being a father and a husband provides me with additional spirit and has helped me prioritize.

Axel Dörner:
      Yes, I got musical training from early age on, I started piano lessons in classical music at the age of six at the local music school in the village where I grew up, and some years later a trumpet. Later I had a lot of trumpet teachers from each of them I learned different things which are still valuable for me.

Bechir Saade:
      Yes but never finished or got a degree or something. I guess not much except trying to get the 'sound' right and a bit of discipline to practice.

Bertrand Denzler:
      Yes, I have. But I always felt like an autodidact, so that it doesn't make any difference to me. I spent more time playing (and listening to) all sorts of music and different instruments then studying. What I draw from this experience as a whole is that making music is a natural thing to me, something evident. Like thinking. But I could very well do something else someday.

Bhob Rainey:
      I have played the saxophone since I was ten years old and have studied performance and composition at the graduate level.
      Training, knowledge, and experience should not be avoided, nor should they be seen as a culmination of aesthetic activity. One lesson that you will always learn when you study something is that a great deal of commitment is behind the things you love. What is behind that commitment is the stuff that's pretty hard to teach.

Bonnie Jones:
      I grew up in a musical household. My mother was always playing music - mostly Appalachian instruments, dulcimer, banjo and fiddle. The first instrument I learned to play was a dulcimer that a friend of my mother's made from cardboard. So the idea of playing music and being musical was always around, but aside from about four years of elementary school flute instruction ("Louie, Louie" and "Star Spangled Banner"), I never had any additional musical training. I can't really see the link between my early flute instruction and how I use sound now aside from the fact that playing the flute taught me that I really enjoyed making sounds. I'd probably have to contribute many of my current musical impulses to the work I have done and am doing with text and performance projects.

Bruce Russell:
      No I don't. I studied piano for a few years as a child, but I really didn't learn anything I have used in my own music - except I learned I have no conventional musical talent and I hate practicing an instrument. This insight has been very helpful in directing me towards improvisation and always seeking new instruments with which I have little familiarity.

Bryan Eubanks:
      I took basic piano lessons at age 8 (a horrible winter, 7:00 am lessons!) and saxophone lessons at school for a few years, also as a child, but I don't feel that I draw anything from that other than retaining some knowledge of the saxophone when I started playing again on my own terms 10 years ago. I have learned most from playing on my own and collaborating with other musicians. I plan on continuing this path of study for the rest of my days.

Burkhard Beins:
      No, I´ve never studied composition, nor am I a trained musician of any sorts. Usually I become interested in something aesthetically and then try to learn or develop what it needs to make it happen. For my feeling the fact that I sometimes can´t easily hark back to certain fundamental techniques or knowledge becomes compensated by the fact that I don´t have to free myself from the burden of trained skills and manual sequences, something I can see a lot of musicians coming from different musical backgrounds struggle with quite a lot in our musical area.

Christian Weber:
      Yes, I did and yes, a lot. It gives you a point to start from. If you're out you can start questioning it or take completely different directions. Generally every kind of training helps. If you can see a master prepairing breakfest you can draw a lot from it as well.

Christof Kurzmann:
      I never studied or even learned any of the instruments I´m playing. I learned everything like I learned english: by listening to The Rolling Stones.

Cor Fuhler:
      There was music all around in my family (guitars, accordeons, trumpets, violins) so there was a very natural way of starting to play, (as you might expect from a family with a Sinti background). But I got frustrated with my technique and went to the conservatorium in Amsterdam to study piano - improvised music. And I did trumpet as a second instrument. Graduated in '89.
      It was good to be able to practise on different grand pianos and I met some good musicians I still play with today (Tobias Delius for example). I had a lot of time to listen to various musics without having to worry about money. And I am thankfull for that. But for the rest, most things I learned outside of school. After that I also studied gamelan (siter and rebab mainly), which was great because it's so different to the western sense of time.

Dieter Kovacic (dieb13):
      No. Apart from a little bit of guitar and recorder as a child, I haven't learned any "traditional" instrument, and never attended any course or class.

Doug Theriault:
      I have been a musician my whole life. First with classical piano and trumpet in the 4th grade then with jazz and classical guitar in high school all the way up to college where I took up computer music and singing opera. But hey, reading regular music notation was not me... I had visions of sounds in my head that I never had the chance to actually "hear" myself. And then one day it hit me, when I went to a demolition derby I thought that was the most beautiful music I had ever heard :).
      When I play my music now, it is on guitars that are modified in various ways. the musical training is relevant if i'm playing in a free jazz context, but otherwise it's been thrown out the window.

Dragos Tara :
      As a bass a player, I had some training in Jazz and Classical music, and had opportunities to perform many different kinds of music.
      It mostly helped me to develop close physical contact with my intrument, even when I don't directly use the conventional way of playing.
      As a composer, I have a degree in composition and electroacoustics. My studies have been a moment where I could really focus my own language.
Think about it in different perspectives. The opportunities I had to experiment in electroacoustics were very inspiring.
      But I truly believe that a musician can only be self-taught. Studies are mostly a great opportunity to meet poeple and exchange, but it's still up to you...

eRikm:
      I haven’t got a formal musical training, i’m an autodidact in all of the disciplines i’m involved in (music and visual arts).
      I started doing music as a guitarist in some hard core and industrial bands.
      Daddy long legs
>>>http://www.documentsdartistes.org/artistes/erikm/repro16.html
      Kill the thrill
>>>http://killthethrill.free.fr/index.htm
      My musical practise comes from fifteen years of working in the area of visual arts.
>>>http://www.erikm.com/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=2
      I started using music, sound and noise as materials equal to paper, video, plastic…
      What I’m interested in are the influences which these materials produce when they are placed in different contexts. I’m interested in the social position of a product like music (popular, contemporary, political). I have worked a lot with collages (just like in the beginning). For several years now, I have been spending more time working on alleatorics and synthesis. I understand that this interview is referring more to my music, but to me these different practices are deeply connected.

Greg Kelley:
      I studied classical music at Peabody Conservatory. Any kind of intense period of intimacy, study and discipline with an instrument and music in general is bound to have a lasting impression. In one way or another, I'm sure most of what I do now draws from that experience.

Günter Müller:
      Fortunately not. Without any musical education, I was forced to find my own ways to make music.

Heddy Boubaker:
      I'm mainly a self-taught musician - except for a few classes, I did learn all by myself. This made me a very bad instrumentalist – or at least one with a non-conventional technique - and a musician with many gaps... I learned only what I was interested in or what I needed to know and never took care of what bored me. I think of me as an insane sound manipulator rather than a Musician (with a big capital M).

Howard Stelzer:
      When I was in middle school (14 years old or so) and high school, I used to play tuba and bass guitar, but neither one particularly well. I dabbled in trombone and baritone horn, but knew even less about how to make them do anything useful. My dad was a trombone player when he was young, so his horm was around the house while I was growing up. I thought of it more as a toy than as an instrument, which is a healthy way to think abut it, I suppose. I have also played drums for a few unfortunate rock bands, not that playing them has increased my ability in any measuarble way. I don't think I draw much from any of this experience other than that I've attempted to play music for some time, and only succeeded once I stopped using a conventional instrument.

Ignaz Schick:
      Have you got any formal musical training, and what do you draw from it now?
      As a child I took saxophone classes for a couple of years in a small local music school on the Austrian/German border - the training was in classical music and jazz, and I also took music theory classes there, like rhythm studies, harmony, ... Everything else I learned by doing it hands on, my main education was that I was trying to play as much as possible, with a big variety of bands and musicians, learning from more experienced older musicians, making sure that I would be always be challenged to improve the playing.
      After those classes it took me many years again to forget all this formal training, freeing myself from "doing things the right way".
      For a few years I worked as a technician and assistant for a contemporary composer, Josef Anton Riedl. Here I learned about the urgent need to find unheard sounds, but also about structuring & shaping the material. And how to investigate & amplify the sound within an object.
      What I mainly took from the saxophone lessons is the discipline of practising, how to keep on going even when you are in a (subjective) dead end, how to master living through the crises which will come about every now and then.
      Also in these lessons I became aware of how important the attention to the tone is. No matter what material or instrument or equipment you are using. It is only the very personal tone which matters and makes you unique or recognizable. One little phrase and you know it is Jimmy Lyons, a single note and you know it is Don Cherry, one gurgle and you know it is Axel Dörner, one click and you know it is Burkhard Beins. A whisper and you know it is Phil Minton.
      It is an ongoing issue for me, to find my own unique and personal tone and it is developing very slowly, now that I am coming closer to that with my turntable set up.

Jason Kahn:
      I studied drum set, and Arabic/Iranian percussion privately with different teachers in the USA, England, France and Germany.
      Probably all this study and practicing played a role in sensitizing me to the actual sounds of these instruments, which has become the focus of much of my work today.

Jeff Gburek:
      Some basic music theory for orchestration and also classical guitar training. How I draw from this experience varies according to the projects I am working on.

Jeph Jerman:
      I had two years of drum lessons when I was 13, but it was mostly trying to learn to read music, which i've never really been interested in. I've learned much more by playing with lots of different people.

Jesse Kudler:
      I have a B.A. in Music from Wesleyan University (in Connecticut, USA). It's a liberal arts degree, though, so it didn't really include any conservatory-type training or anything like that. I'm pleased to say that I can barely read music, and I can't really play any conventional instruments in a "serious" fashion. I studied computer music and experimental music and things like that, and I also played in the gamelan. A large portion of my "musical training" at the time included other kinds of playing and listening, going to lots of concerts, researching music on my own, DJ'ing on the radio station, etc. Before that, I took guitar lessons for a long time. My mom signed me up for classical guitar when I was a kid, because I said I wanted to play guitar. Later, I switched to "rock guitar" and started learning a little bit of theory.
      It's hard to say what I draw from that now. I'm probably reacting somewhat against things I saw at Wesleyan that I really didn't like at all - a lot of very busy improvisation, sometimes in thrall to Anthony Braxton (who was a professor there - when his compositions said "improvise," people apparently read that as "go nuts!"). My initial interest in quieter or sparser or less "busy" music may have had something to do with experiences with high-energy players. But also listening to Bernhard Gunter and the first Pita record and things like that.
      Aside from that, I learned a lot of very specific and useful technical things from Ron Kuivila, and I learned about a lot of significant works from Alvin Lucier, who taught several 20th-century experimental music seminars. I think about Lucier's music a lot to this day - that really perfect balance between austerity and beauty; it's often almost stately.
      All that is just part of the picture. I'm sure I take just as much or more from all the informal stuff: concerts, listening to records with friends, talking and thinking, actually playing, seeing music I don't like, etc.

Joe Foster:
      I had two years of very basic piano classes as a child, of which I remember very little.
      I did study poetry in an academic setting for a long time, with well-known poets, however. I suppose poetry informs my music, but there's not much for me to say about that. My poetry education did influence my approach to music, very directly.
      After years of writing and reading poetry, and studying with accomplished writers, my own writing was not very good, arguably even worse than when I started. I struggled for years to find a voice and a way of my own to approach writing, but to no satisfying end. Then, when I started playing music, I encountered many "trained" musicians who were struggling to transcend what they had learned.
      So I made a very deliberate, and somewhat perverse, choice: to only learn from my ears, my instruments, and my playing partners. I've played cornet or trumpet for 10 years and I don't know the notes. My approach has been that I'm playing until death, and by then, I'll be good at something, and this is the strategy that interests me.

Julien Ottavi:
     I studied drums & trumpet... I am an autodidact in sound poetry / voice / singing & percussion in general...
      I have a sense of rhythm... but I learned composition by myself... today this practice of formal musical training has no real straight impact on my activities... I don't draw so much from it now.

Kai Fagaschinski:
      First I hadn't, but when I developed a little of an idea of what I wanted to do with my instrument after some years, I thought some lessons wouldn't harm anymore and so I took for some years "classical" clarinet lessons, which I’ve stopped now, basically because of money reasons. I think these lessons didn't affect my musical ideas, but had a good effect on my tone.

Lee Kwang Goh:
      I did not have any musical or sound-engineering background.

Liz Tonne :
      Yes, I studied piano for eleven years as a child and have taken a few voice lessons here and there. It gave me a great background in the development of musical forms and styles, primarily classical, of the last three centuries. It also taught me how to practice and to understand music as both an art form and a craft.

Lucio Capece:
      Yes. I studies classical guitar for several years and the soprano saxophone and bass clarinet with several teachers. With the guitar I finished my studies in a public Conservatory in Argentina after 10 years. I also studied harmony and jazz improvisation . At some point I began to play saxophone, and finally I stopped playing the guitar as a main instrument. With the instruments that I play now (bass clarinet, soprano saxophone) I studied for several years the jazz approach to them and the basic classical technique, first in Argentina and later in France and USA. I just use the basic techniques that I learned, to produce sound of a good quality, and a few other things like circular breathing. Beyond this basic elements I do not use at all what I learned. The approach that I’ve had to the instruments since several years now, is self-taught I would say. I can say anyway that the relationship that you establish with an instrument after playing it for some time gives an unconscious approach that I find important.

Mattin:
      I have a PhD on Lou Reed's solos on "I Heard Her Call My Name" , I learned that sometimes you should watch out for your ego and sometimes you should just let it go.

Michael Renkel:
      Yes I began playing the guitar at the age of eight and later I studied classical guitar in Hamburg. I got some technique from this and I learned about guitar literature and tradition.

Michel Doneda:
      No I haven’t, I am a self-taught musician. I have been working with the saxophone in my own way from the beginning until now.

Reuben Radding:
      I came to New York in 1988 as a rock musician and quickly became disenchanted enough to go take composition lessons. Later I studied contrabass with Mark Dresser for a few years. I do draw on my training, all the time, but I also had been a musician for a long time before. I grew up in a very creative community of like-minded musicians in Washington, DC., and I learned vast amounts about making music, recording, and touring from them.

Róbert Rózsa:
      I haven't had any formal musical training.

Robin Hayward:
      Yes, I studied classical music, which it's well known can be a hindrance to improvising. When I first started improvising I think it was a hindrance, but this was nearly 20 years ago. Now I use the training occasionally to play a normal note in the midst of mainly noise-based improvising, and the aural training I received helps me judge the interval I'll play if I play a pitch when someone else is playing one too.
      Outside of improvising I use the training quite a bit, as I also play and write contemporary composed music and am involved in exploring tuning systems, which mean being able to play normal tones on the instrument.

Ruth Barberan:
      I studied at the conservatory and later at jazz schools.
      Basically I learnt what I don’t want to do: cut my wings, just imitate, repeat models. On the other hand, i have listened and played a lot of music that still feeds me and that I still enjoy. And I still play formal music.

Sharif Sehnaoui:
       I have had several musical trainings so to say but all where short-termed. The most consistent one for me was studying jazz in Paris. I dropped out of it relatively quickly to focus on free improvisation and an overall approach that leans more towards 'sound' than 'music' proper. Today I could say that I do not draw much from any of my musical trainings. At least not intentionally.

Thomas Ankersmit:
       No, I haven't (with the exception of guitar lessons for a few weeks as a teenager). Musicians who did go to music schools often congratulate me on this, usually implying that it allows me to do my own thing more easily. I'm a little wary of the idea that not knowing something allows me to make better art, though. I guess I'll never know what I missed out on.

Tomas Korber:
      I only have very basic musical training. I had theory/clarinet classes as a kid for about 4-5 years, then some more years guitar classes. I couldn't say what precisely I draw from it now as I don't think it had an influence on what i'm playing nowadays. But I do think it was a good think to be exposed to playing music starting from an early age.

Valerio Tricoli:
       No, I haven't, except a couple of guitar lessons when I was 14 or something...

Will Guthrie:
      Yes, I learnt piano as a kid, and from when I was 12 I played drums. I have different periods where I switch between trying to tap into as much of this 'training' as possible, and trying to forget or ignore as much of it as possible.