Surrender, Mortality and why Sound Remains w/ Rez Abbasi
Guitarist, composer and educator Rez Abbasi joins T L Mazumdar for a conversation that begins with music but doesn’t end there.
Born in Karachi and raised in California, NYC-based guitarist Rez Abbasi has long been a bridge between worlds: jazz, South Asian and urban traditions, intellect and instinct, virtuosic precision and play.
A teacher at the New School in New York, apart from being a touring and recording artist, he is known for a sound that is as fearless as it is fluid, garnering him a brand of quiet, irrefutable respect amongst peers and audiences alike that is rare in the current music industry.
His latest album Sound Remains, dedicated to his late mother, becomes the quiet centrepiece of this exchange.
We talk about what happens when music begins to outgrow technique and extrinsic goals, when surrender starts to feel more powerful than control.
We touch on how ‘jazz’, in its modern form, has grown increasingly slick, and how that polish both reveals and conceals something about the times we live in.
Mentoring comes up as well. Not as a profession, but as a practice in awareness, a way of transmitting freedom rather than formulas.
As the dialogue deepens, it becomes less about the conventional mechanics of music and more about what keeps us playing at all.
Rez speaks of loss and of finding presence inside it. I share how the the loss of my father last year, and recent health-scare of my mother, peeled away my tolerance for pretense in an industry and lifestyle in a world where so many of us still feel pressured to play along with very questionable rules.
What emerges is not grief alone, but a quiet clarity about why we keep returning to sound after the noise fades.
(This is the official edited release of our exchange. The uncut version lives inside the community.)
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Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Music and Audio Production: www.everynowheremusic.com
Episode Notes / Text : www.tlwrites.com
Rez Abbasi
Guitarist/Composer
Voted #1 “Rising-Star Guitarist” in 2013’s DownBeat Critics Poll and successively in the top-ten guitarists alongside luminaries Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, guitarist and composer Rez Abbasi is among a rare breed of artists that continue to push boundaries while preserving the traditions he has embraced.
“Abbasi is living, breathing proof that jazz music can be as vital and boundary-pushing as ever.” AllAboutJazz.com.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, migrating at the age of four to the vastness of Southern California, schooled at the University of Southern California and the Manhattan School of Music in jazz and classical music, along with a pilgrimage in India under the guidance of master percussionist, Ustad Alla Rakha, Abbasi is a vivid synthesis of all the above stated influences and genres. Making New York home for the past 25 years, he has developed a unique sound both as a composer and an instrumentalist and is considered by many to be one of the foremost modern jazz guitar players the world over.
With fifteen albums of mostly original compositions, Abbasi continues to forge new ground with his many multi-dimensional projects. From his 2005 organ trio recording Snake Charmer that features Indian vocal sensation Kiran Ahluwalia, to his recent Behind the Vibration (2015), he captures provocative sounds rarely heard in jazz. Abbasi’s sixth album, Things To Come (2009) features a star-studded group of Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Dan Weiss, Johannes Weidenmueller and Ahluwalia and was included in DownBeat’s “top CD’s of the decade” along w… Read More
T.L. Mazumdar
Musician/Educator, Founder: Holistic Musician Academy
Indian-German Producer/Singer-Songwriter T.L. Mazumdar grew up on 3 continents and 4 countries.
Mentored by a series of iconic musicians like Kenny Werner, Kai Eckhardt, Dr John Matthias, and the late Gary Barone, his artistic journey has aptly been described by Rolling Stone magazine as one that ‘...personifies multiculturalism’.
Time Out Mumbai has referred to him as ‘’...amongst a handful of Indian (origin) musicians who don't have to play sitars or tablas''
He has been nominated for German Music awards
Bremer Jazzpreis and Future Sounds Jazz Award, and been called ''...a major talent'' by Jack Douglas (Producer: John Lennon, Miles Davis, etc.). .
