Frank Presley's interview with pianist/composer Sean Wayland 17

Historical article recovered from a Wayback capture dated 2018-02-24.

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April 2005

Frank Presley:

Tell us about how you became involved with music?

Sean Wayland:

My parents gave me a Beatles record when I was 2 or 3 and I was listening to a lot of music, as they were music lovers. I got interested in the violin when I was at school. I learnt the violin. My grandmother was a concert pianist. I was always interested in the piano as well. When I was 12 my parents bought me a beat up old upright piano and I had some classical piano lessons and I continued with the violin at school and played in orchestras and Sydney Youth Orchestras.

I became interested in jazz as a teenager. My father had jazz records and I heard people play it but I found it hard at the time to get any information about it but finally I met this guy John Bostok when I was about 18 and he explained it to me technically and more importantly he said go and listen to this record and listen to that record. In 1986 it was pretty hard to find jazz records in record shops. CD’s were just starting to appear but nothing had been released on CD at that point. The record companies had phased out a lot of the jazz. You couldn’t buy ‘Kind of Blue’ on LP new!

The two important things that happened were I fell in love with the sound of the Fender Rhodes not knowing what it really was. My father knew someone who had one for sale. He showed that to me and I was fascinated by it. He also played me some of Herbie Hancock’s funky records like ‘Thrust’ and ‘Headhunters’.

FP:

Do you still pick up the violin from time to time?

SW:

Very very occasionally. It hurts my neck. I got pretty interested in piano at the end of school. The jazz bug took over. I think I wanted to play the piano all along but I found the violin first. My grandmother was quite a formidable figure. She was a very talented musician. Rather than being someone who I could aspire to it was put to me in terms of - this person is extremely talented and a genius and you’re not, so forget about music or playing the piano. That was part of the reason why I didn’t play the piano when I was very young because it was in the realm of impossibility almost.

FP:

It was too overbearing for you to come up to the standards that your family had set?

SW:

That’s basically it

FP:

You were fortunate enough to receive an Australia Council grant in 1999 in order to live and study in New York City. How much do you value that grant in terms of the development of your career?

SW:

I would have gone there eventually. I was waiting to get that grant. The five years before I got that grant a lot of people got say $15,000 or $20,000 out of the government to go and live in New York. It really set up a few people like Nikki Parrot and Lisa Parrot and Ashley Turner to a certain point. It really gave them a foothold in that place [NYC] is very expensive. By the time I got it [the grant] it had gone down to about $5000 I think and it bought me an airfare and a few pots and pans.

FP:

I guess the experience of playing with a number of people that you wouldn’t normally have been exposed to would have been a huge kick along for your career?

SW:

Oh yes. I’m not downplaying the experience of being in New York. Just the grant itself wasn’t the most important thing about it. I put so much of my own money, my parents money, my car, everything I had went into surviving in New York and setting myself up there. It was a fantastic experience.

FP:

Roger Frampton was one of your teachers. How do you regard Roger Frampton and his contribution to Australian music?

SW:

That’s a difficult question. It’s hard because he’s not alive now and when he was alive, I was pretty much his student. I wish that he was alive now and playing and I could experience it again because you can’t always grasp what’s going on around you. The jazz scene in Sydney has always suffered a bit. The venues haven’t been great; the pianos haven’t been great not for everyone’s efforts and I feel that musicians of his generation weren’t as fortunate as I am to have grown up in such an educated environment. Having recently revisited some of his recordings, he was certainly an unbelievable musician, very creative and a truly inspired musician but the experience at the time of seeing him in the environment of and playing with that generation of people who suffered through indifference and bodgied there way of playing. Now I look back at it and think it’s a beautiful thing and it’s something that I treasure about our Australian culture. However at the time, having not been to New York, it was easy for me to say ‘those guys were trying to play like Americans but they’re not doing it as well’. In hindsight that’s not actually true. I don’t think that there is an Australian sound. What was Australian about it was that he used to play on a really messed up piano in a pub. Whereas the recordings I have of Herbie Hancock are on a beautiful piano in a concert hall with Miles Davis and an attentive audience of thousands of people. Herbie played with a rhythm section that defined the music so the experience of seeing Roger play in a pub with a bunch of musicians who kind of fashioned a funky version of jazz themselves, at the time it seemed second best to me. However now looking back at it, I certainly didn’t realise how brilliant Roger really was. I didn’t put enough value on those musicians’ personal experiences and their personal expression.

FP:

Looking at jazz on a macro level. Is jazz destined to remain a minority music and where would Sean Wayland like to see the music go from here?

SW:

I probably disagree with the statement that it’s a minority music. Look at all the singers recently who have become successful. Madeleine Peyroux, Norah Jones and Diana Krall. They are jazz people I think; they’re in the jazz world. I think in all types of music, films, rock bands whatever, a lot of those musicians are firmly in the jazz world. I think there is a jazz world of musicians certainly. There’s an international network of people who are interested in improvising and who are joined by a love of the jazz tradition. There’s no way that will go away. I think about it in terms of New York City. New York has changed a lot. Certainly the golden days of 52nd Street are long way gone but still when I think about me and music that interests me, which is not just jazz, a great deal of it comes from New York and a great deal of the people who I would consider to be the greatest musicians alive are still living there or elsewhere in the world a lot of the other greatest musicians and composers are jazz people.

FP:

Looking at it on the basis of record sales however, you’d have to make the concession that even with the Diana Kralls, your Norah Jones in America, the statistics on jazz record sales still only come up to about 3 or 4 % maximum and in Japan 7 or 8 % maximum.

SW:

I see that way of looking at music, like trying to create categories and trying to put some sort of music in that category and say how much it sells, from a scientific perspective it’s absurd. In terms of data analysis, to have really fuzzy categories that aren’t distinct and to try and use that to create some statistical meaning or relevance, to me, the whole concept is so poorly defined.

FP:

It comes down to the old saying ‘File under Jazz’. They’ve got to put it somewhere in the record shops. Some of Miles Davis’ final albums, many would suggest that they may not have been or should not be filed under jazz but nevertheless that’s where you’ll find them.

FP:

Andrew Denton when interviewing James Morrison last year said that he could not ‘get’ jazz. In other words he did not understand it. What are you thoughts on the perception that you need to have some level of technical understanding of jazz before it can be appreciated or enjoyed?

SW:

That’s a difficult question. If someone says they don’t ‘get’ jazz, it’s almost as absurd as someone saying I don’t like Chinese people. It’s just a silly generalisation and someone who says that is I think a fool.

FP:

Even the term ‘jazz’ or the idea behind pigeonholing the music is absurd.

SW:

I think the term is a useful term. I use it and it’s a descriptive term.

FP:

So is jazz meant to be understood or is it meant to be accepted and enjoyed without that understanding?

SW:

I haven’t really answered your question I can see that. I certainly think that it would be fantastic if people were better educated about music worldwide. I don’t think that jazz is rocket science. I teach jazz at a tertiary level and I always say to my students ‘if you can learn long division you can understand music and jazz’. I think on one level the concepts that are involved are much simpler than the lexicon of English. I see it pretty simple and it’s a shame that not more people don’t understand it and I believe that if people did then more people would enjoy it and would ‘get’ it. However everyone likes Norah Jones all over the world. Look at how many people like James Morrison. They don’t have to understand what he’s doing. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.

FP:

Given the number of talented pianists Australia now enjoys, are the performing opportunities in Australia increasing or decreasing?

SW:

The music that’s on my latest album (‘Australian Rhythm Changes’ SEEDCD007) which is an art music, the opportunities to play that sort of music, for most people I don’t think have changed or are getting worse. However when I was 25 jazz funk was popular and there was more work to do that, so I can see that I was fortunate that I grew up in a time when there was work around for musicians and that there was a little bit less on one level, but jazz funk wasn’t a totally creative art form. It comes back to how commercial you want to make the music and how much money you or someone else is prepared to spend on marketing it. I know for myself it was easier to get publicity in the beginning. There’s a tendency in Sydney, possibly Australia that everyone gets a go and if you’re a new face, you get your CD reviewed and then that’s it! Then you’re lucky to get a CD reviewed ever again for the rest of your life even if you’re a legend you know. That still doesn’t mean you’ll get your CD reviewed! What’s changed is that everyone’s got a CD player now. When I made a CD 10 years ago or so, there were people who didn’t have a CD [released]. I mean Bernie McGann didn’t have a CD. I think I probably beat him to it and I was 20 and he was 50.

FP:

Tragic isn’t it?

SW:

It is but he probably didn’t see it as tragic. It just became possible to make a CD at home. I see on one level that things are getting better, musicians are organising themselves better. They’re a bit more proactive. An older musician might say this is a used to just get paid and we didn’t have to promote ourselves or do anything and it’s all hopeless now. You have to book the gig, promote the gig but on the other hand, there is a lot of energy now. A lot of young people with the get up and go to do something. Things that we started like the Jazzgroove Association are quite successful. I basically started Jazzgroove with a few other people. I certainly put it together and organised it. We had a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I certainly never believed it would get off the ground anything like the way that it has.

FP:

It has certainly blossomed hasn’t it?

SW:

Well it’s fantastic. It’s so successful. Considering how little money has gone into it and the fact that it’s basically done gigs early in the week in a pub somewhere and it’s had to change venues. Considering all that I think it’s a miraculous success story.