Pick
one of the most difficult instruments to play and one
of the most difficult types of music, and you've made
the same improbable choice Tom Varner made: the French
horn and jazz. Ever since his elementary school
music teacher marched out a parade of instruments and
he preferred to choose one from a picture, Tom knew
he was different.
To
be different and still distinguish himself, Tom had
to become a virtuoso, which he's done not only in his
playing, but in his composing as well. His horn
work and writing have garnered praise from critics
and fans alike. Down Beat said of Martian
Heartache, "If a young Duke Ellington were writing
'Harlem Airshaft' today, it might sound something like
this disjunctive, spirited and humorous 15-part mental
soundtrack of urban living." England's Mojo magazine,
in a review of his American songs project The
Window Up Above (New World), described Martian
Heartache and its Soul Note predecessor The
Mystery of Compassion as "dazzling essays
on group writing and playing," going on to call
Tom one of "the most enlightened performers in
New York jazz."
As
a result, Tom has been regularly invited to work and
record internationally with musicians as diverse as
Miles Davis, George Gruntz, Steve Lacy, Franz Koglmann,
Bobby Previte, Orange Then Blue and even Natalie Merchant.
Though
his chosen instrument and musical genre are difficult,
fortunately his music —though ever adventurous —is
easy on the ears. Part of that comes from the
careful planning that goes into every recording, each
of which is always an event. Biblical themes and spirituality,
science and sci-fi, mythology and folklore, down-home
Americana and urban kitsch, James Brown funk and twentieth-century
music are frequent threads in the colorful cinematic
Tom Varner weave.
"It's
a gradual shaping, 'order out of chaos,' like a sculpture
that's being created out of a big block of something
that has no form," explains Tom, about preparing
for a new record. "It usually takes a couple
of years. And within those two years, I'm gathering
the material that's reflecting in many ways where I'm
at during that period of my life, and then shaping
it with as much clarity as I can as it becomes that
final statement."
Swimming continues
the manifold Tom Varner tradition. Realized as
the final part of a trilogy of albums, Swimming resolves
the "spiritual search" begun in Mystery
of Compassion and struggled with in Martian
Heartache. Admits Tom, "it's
a reflection of how my life has changed so much in
the last two years. I've gone from being single
and living alone in one room (the sort of 'starving
artist' lifestyle) now to being married and having
moved and having more of a sense of resolution in many
aspects of my life."
The
title track was written in the summer of 1998 at the
Blue Mountain Center, an arts colony in the Adirondack
Mountains, where Tom was a guest. He had a month to
get away from the daily grind in New York City to just
practice, compose, listen to music, read ... and swim
in a beautiful crystal-clear lake.
"It
was heaven," recounts Tom. "Every day I swam
in this beautiful lake, and every day I wrote new music —'Swimming'
grew out of that." In fact, so did most
of the album.
"Pantoum" was
also born at Blue Mountain, the multidisciplinary convergence
of Tom's doing counterpoint exercises from Walter Piston's Counterpoint and
attending a poetry reading of a fellow artist reading
a pantoum (a poetry form where lines 2 and
4 of each four-line stanza become lines 1 and 3 of
the next).
Interlocking
counterpoint is heard in the high-energy "Strident," described
by Tom as "an in-your-face-strident-and-yet-with-humor-
and-yet-with-urgency" piece. The work ends
with four Psycho-like shrieking stinger notes. After
writing them into the piece, Tom remembers "laughing
out loud, thinking 'That'll certainly be an
exciting but hilarious, crazy, loopy ending to this crazy,
loopy piece!'"
Those
adjectives might also describe parts of Tom's Seven
Miniatures for Mark Feldman. "I
was listening to the LigetíBagatelles for
Wind Quintet (some of the most beautiful things
I'd heard in a long time) and I thought 'Ah! I'll do
some miniature vehicles for Mark Feldman where each
one touches on something different, and some would
just let Mark do whatever the hell he wants.'" And
touch, paw, claw, scratch —and dazzle —Feldman
does.
The
two "biblical" pieces on the album reflect
Tom's long time interest in first-century history,
the upheaval of the Roman Empire, and early Christianity.
"Paul
Goes to Rome" is the result of two more
books Tom brought to the Adirondacks —a famous
counterpoint book by Johann Fux (which Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven used as youngsters) and a biography
of Paul written by A N Wilson. Tom describes
the Wilson as "a fascinating picture
of the first century and that willful, almost strident,
urgent sense of Paul saying 'Okay, if I'm coming
to Rome, I'm coming to Rome, if you're gonna chop
my head off, go ahead and chop it off, baby!'" It
reflects a mixture of what Tom calls "apocalypse
and transcendence."
"Samuel
Gets the Call" merges what Tom characterizes
as the humor of "Yvonne DeCarlo as the Pharaoh's
wife" and the "dead seriousness of serving
God through music" with a "lush and sexy
tenor sax feature for Tony Malaby. One
can also hear God calling Samuel, the boy in the
temple, in that opening motif."
"Maybe
Yes" perhaps best epitomizes Tom's newfound
sense of resolution that Swimming represents. The
piece is "about the artist's question 'Is it
possible to be a searching, creative artist and not
be a tortured, searching, creative artist?' In other
words, can I be happy, can I be married,
can I have a slightly nicer home, and have
a lot of good things in my life and keep
doing music?" explains Tom. "I was
finally to that point where the answer to that question
was 'maybe yes.'"
Later
Tom recounted, "When we finished recording 'Chicago
Interlude,' Tony Malaby looked at me and said,
'Man, Tom, I really dig this music. It's so,
so human.' That meant a lot —I
knew I was on the right track. Not maybe, definitely yes."