With “A Million Forests of the Fall” (Unit Records), the Japanese-Austrian guitarist and composer Kenji Herbert, together with his two colleagues Vinicius Cajado and Lukas König, presents an album on which the subject of jazz is viewed from a truly different perspective. What you get is a sound that fuses jazz and improvisation with the sound aesthetics of indie rock and develops a unique, unconventional musical character in a multi-layered yet harmonious way. In an interview with Michael Ternai, Kenji Herbert talks about the influence his cosmopolitan background has had on his music, his fascination with improvisation and the musical ideas he wanted to bring to life on the album.
The album of your trio project was released last November. How long has the trio been around – your trio was founded in New York, wasn’t it?
Kenji Herbert: That’s right. That’s where we played in this line-up for the first time. If I remember correctly, it was a house concert at my home. The house I lived in had a basement area and my roommate at the time, who is a pianist, and I regularly organized concerts there. We invited colleagues and friends, cooked and played. At one of these concerts, I played with Vinicius Cajado and Lukas König. Vini had just moved to New York at the time, and he suggested we do something with Lukas, who was in town at the time. So that came about quite spontaneously. But we had known each other for a long time before that.
This trio actually felt very good from the very first moment, and when I moved to Vienna three years ago, I revived it. I had a few sketches that I had written during the corona period and we tried them out. Relatively quickly, we went to Markus Wallner’s studio and recorded the pieces. However, the session was initially intended to be more of a demo. But the recording quality was so good that we thought: Okay, then we’ll release an album.
So there was no plan to make an album together at the beginning.
Kenji Herbert: I would say that in the beginning, the focus was on playing together. I didn’t think that the trio would become my project, so to speak. But things often turn out that way for me. Because I’m also involved in many projects as a sideman or contributor, the rhythm section or the people I’d like to do a project with often come together quite naturally.
The interesting thing about this project is that a lot of different things come together in it. You are three musicians with very different musical and cultural backgrounds, and each of you has your own musical language. Would you say these are the best prerequisites for an extraordinary music project?
Kenji Herbert: Because I have quite a ‘cosmopolitan’ background, I think it’s easier for me to communicate with my fellow musicians and to find a common language that is characterized by great openness – not only culturally, but also stylistically. On the other hand, I wouldn’t say that this is a prerequisite for a collaboration. The fact that this trio is now so international was not necessarily intentional. But yes, it’s definitely a recurring theme in my life and it seems to crop up in my projects.
Musically, the trio definitely presents itself in a very unusual way. The kind of jazz you three play has a very unique sound and a special vibration. On the one hand, your music is characterized by great stylistic diversity, but on the other hand, everything seems very coherent and harmonious. The focus is on the sound of the group.
Kenji Herbert: I’ve often really enjoyed working with singer-songwriters. In this context, there are often no written-out charts or fixed parts. Someone brings a song to rehearsal and you learn the piece by ear while thinking about your own parts. It’s often about atmosphere or emotions. From this starting point, the band develops a musical world together.
I sometimes missed this approach in the jazz context – especially in projects I was involved in. There you often bring in charts that have already been written out or work with very complex pieces where you have the feeling that it takes a long time to get to the actual music because you have to learn everything first.
When I was writing for this trio, I had in mind that the music should be more of a songwriter’s style – that I wouldn’t come in as a bandleader with ideas already worked out and show the others what it’s all about. I wanted something that was catchy, that you could learn by listening to it and that you could improvise on.
This in turn meant that the basic ideas had to have a strong character and the information I wanted to pass on to the band had to be short and concise.
What also stands out on the album is the sound. On the one hand it sounds pleasantly warm, but on the other hand it also has edges. It is anything but polished.
Kenji Herbert: The sound basically came about by itself. We recorded in a room without headphones. We completely dispensed with overdubs and other gimmicks so that the pieces sound exactly as they were actually played.
But I also remember that Markus (Wallner) initially created a very rough mix for us, in which everything sounded extremely compressed and dry. Nevertheless, the whole thing had a certain vibe that I thought suited the music well.
Pran Bandi and Charles Van Kirk were responsible for the mixing and mastering – two companions I’ve known since my student days in Boston and with whom I worked a lot in New York. When I hire them, it’s always more of a collaboration because we have a good understanding of each other. I can also contribute very well, which I often do in terms of sound aesthetics.
To come back to the rough mix: At some point, this rough and edgy thing had become ingrained in my imagination. When I got the first mixes of the album back, there was suddenly a nice reverb on the tracks and everything sounded rounder overall. That wasn’t really what I had in mind. So I told them that I would prefer it to have more of a trashy indie sound and if we could incorporate that. In the end, it suited the music and the overall aesthetic better.
Your music is based on jazz, but it sounds like you deliberately kept the pieces a bit simpler and didn’t take them to a more complex level.
Kenji Herbert: Yes, exactly. We all have a certain access to the jazz language, in the sense that we know how to play with changes and forms. But we are also very much anchored in free improvised music. For this project, it was important to me to keep the musical structures a little simpler. I didn’t want to make the pieces too restrictive in a compositional sense and keep the possibility open for my fellow musicians and myself to break out of the form at any time.
I was more interested in how we talk to each other about the material and how we play with it – in other words, the improvisational aspects that happen above the structures – than in the compositions themselves. These are more or less the topic of conversation that is placed in the room – the rest happens.
What fascinates you about improvisation? When did you discover this form of musical expression for yourself?
Kenji Herbert: Improvisation became part of my idea of sound relatively early on. For me, it is to a certain extent the ideal state within music – that you can create music together with other people in the moment, without predetermined material.
As many people know, I am Peter Herbert’s nephew. He once ran a series of workshops in Salzburg, which I have regularly attended since 2005. I think it was called “JIMS – Workshop for Jazz and Improvised Music Salzburg”. And as the title suggests, it was about both jazz and improvised music. So I came into contact with improvised music very early on. I became interested in how the more traditional jazz idiom could be combined with free improvisation. And that’s basically how I slipped more and more into the musical world.
Although you were born in Austria, you grew up in Japan. What influence did this have on your musical socialization? What kind of music did you grow up with there?
Kenji Herbert: All kinds of music. There is a very lively jazz scene there. There are many smaller clubs where a lot of jam sessions took place in my time. As soon as I started playing guitar and became interested in jazz, there were many opportunities to experience and play this music live, especially in Kobe, where I grew up. Although I have to add that what happens locally in this scene is more traditional. But that definitely had a positive effect on me, because it gave me a foundation for the musical language. Especially when I went to the States and wanted to find my way around the jazz scene there, I benefited from my understanding of tradition.
Before I even started playing the guitar, I was classically trained on the violin and played in school orchestras as well as in chamber music contexts. That was certainly a very important foundation for what I do now.
So you’ve taken something essential from everywhere you’ve been.
Kenji Herbert: You could say that. Looking back, it does feel like that. But I think it’s a constant theme in my life as well as in my music. The experiences I’ve had in different cultures and traveling through different countries are naturally reflected in what I do. I play with different influences and try to bring things together that are supposedly far apart. I love to let extremes collide and see what comes out of it.
What’s next for the trio? What plans do you have for them? Vinicius, Lukas and you are very popular and busy musicians who are involved in many other projects. Are you thinking about this trio in the longer term?
Kenji Herbert: Yes, we do. Ideally, we’ll still be playing together a lot. The trio is meant to go beyond this album and the next few gigs. I also get on very well with Vini and Lukas personally. I would say that this project is one in which the vibe also fits perfectly on a personal level. For this reason alone, I want to continue it. And I’m already working on what we could do next.
You moved to Austria from New York three years ago. Why did you do that?
Kenji Herbert: This was triggered by two things: firstly, the coronavirus pandemic and the simultaneous expiry of my artist visa for the USA. Secondly, many colleagues from my close circle of friends moved away from New York during this time.
My thought was: Okay, I’ll stay in New York and see what happens next. But in the end, it really felt like rebuilding networks because so many of my fellow musicians were no longer in the city. Applying for a new visa under these circumstances would probably have been just as stressful and difficult as a complete change of scene. Since I had also lived there for exactly ten years at the time and felt that a certain chapter was coming to an end, it made sense to take the plunge.
I had always wanted to move to Europe, and it didn’t necessarily have to be Vienna. My ideal idea was to build something up over the years – regardless of where I lived – through projects and tours in Europe. That would have been a smoother transition. But the post-pandemic period with all the uncertainty didn’t exactly make things easy. In the end, however, I’m very happy with my decision and feel I’m in very good hands here.
Thank you for the interview.
Michael Ternai
Translated from the German original by Arianna Alfreds.