Michael Vlatkovich, pfMENTUM, February 2000

By Jeff Kaiser

Let's start with the biographical information...where were you born? Where were you raised? When did you first take up the trombone?

I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. I took up the trombone in third grade, playing in the grade school band, and took private lessons from the band director every week. He played saxophone. It seemed like all the band directors I had played saxophones. In sixth grade I played saxophone, but yeah, trombone in the third grade.

Was your family always encouraging you to get involved with music?

Well, they were always very encouraging, but I was the one that decided I should do it. But they've always been very encouraging.

That's awesome. When was your first exposure to the less traditional musical forms, the path you took to the music you do now?

Well, probably not until college. In high school I was very interested in Don Ellis. I liked that sort of jazz-rock element of his music, that high-energy sort of thing. And more of the longer forms also. So, maybe him, possibly, although I played quite a bit of Oliver Nelson's music, and some of Oliver Nelson's music has a longer aspect to it. Those were the things that I liked but it wasn't until college that I heard the New Composers Orchestra, Michael Mantler, that I found very fascinating.

What year did you start college, and where did you go?

Started college in '69, I guess. And I went to...

Ah, the summer of loooove...

[Laughs.] And I went to the St. Louis Institute of Music for awhile, and then I went to North Texas State for awhile. From an incredibly tiny school to a big school.

Did you have fun at North Texas?

Not really, no, I didn't. I didn't really like it that much. But it was very good for me. Very, very good.

You didn't like the big band environment? Were you more interested in other forms?

The part of the music school that I was involved with was exclusively in the big bands. Which, I like big bands well enough. I didn't have a real problem with that. There are just so many people there, and it is just hard to get, well, there is just no time really for improvisation in those groups. You know, it is very traditional, you know, you have sixteen bars, thirty-two bars. You play the head of the tune, then there's a solo or two, and a shout chorus, and then it's over. You know, those sorts of arrangements. I learned how to read there, which was very good.

Did you finish college? Or did you just go out and start playing?

I just stopped. I came out to Los Angeles in 1973.

What were you doing? Studio work? Mowing lawns?

I was doing what I could, playing in a lot of bands, just doing whatever I could.

I heard you used to do a lot of salsa...

I wasn't doing that then; I was actually playing in a ragtime orchestra. A very good group. Very, very good group. Much better than Gunther Schuller's group. It was called Crystal Palace. Liza Minelli wanted to take us on the road but we were too expensive. [Laughs.] We recorded with Peggy Lee and played with Ian Whitcomb a lot. It was a very, very good group. Malcom McNab played trumpet. Jim Canter played clarinet. A lot of very fine players were in that group.

At this time were you pursuing your own projects as well?

Yeah, I was playing at a place called the Cellar Theater, which was on Vermont and Third Street, maybe once a month or so. And I played at the John Anson Ford Theater and some other places. It was a group with electric bass, guitar, vibraphone, drums, percussion, two woodwind players, trumpet and trombone. I did that for quite a while. I did that in the '70s and then around '75 I got married and was doing things with my wife. We did this musical called the Bird Book, a very short thing. We did that at the John Anson Ford Theater and this theater on Melrose. And then probably by 1979 I was doing more of what I am doing now. I found that the people that could read music had trouble leaving the page, and the people that could leave the page had trouble reading music. At that point I was more interested in leaving the page. So I just started writing music for any combination of instruments, and I wanted to use any combination just to get rid of the role playing that instruments cause people to do. That started to happen in 1979.

I've heard jazz guys say, "Improvisers are better legit players than legit players are improvisers." But I think that distinction has become more blurred into the '90s. In my generation, I see a lot of guys like me that were classical players but at the same time were playing in punk bands and then grew up, and now we want to do improvisation. We may not have the knowledge of the changes that a traditional improvising player might have, but we have a different vocabulary.

I'm not even talking about playing changes, but about being able to play some sort of complex written musical idea and then improvise on that complex musical idea, and then go back to the written musical idea later. That is hard for a lot of people who I feel do a good job of developing the complex musical idea. Partially because that is what they have spent their time doing. They haven't spent their time reading complex musical ideas; they've spent their time improvising complex musical ideas, and vice versa. The people that read those sorts of things don't necessarily know what to do after they have nothing left to read. People that play in these big bands have a much more, uh, I hate to use the word narrow, but a more specific focus on what they want to do with the space that they have in which to create. So it [leaving the page] becomes much more difficult for them.

So, at this point you've been making your living playing trombone?

Well, in the mid-seventies I was doing lead sheets for A&M Records and writing songs for several companies where people would send in lyrics, and we would write music, and they would get back a recording of their song.

I remember that! You were one of those guys! [Laughing.] I would see those little ads in the back of Rolling Stone Magazine...

I would do those; I did a lot of them.

That's great. In your bio it mentions that you have done a lot of work with pop bands as well.

I did a recording session with Oingo-Boingo, but I don't remember which one it was. Toni Basil was someone that I have fond memories of. She would do these "events." We did this thing at the Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island. I have a picture of us on this boat. She was married to Dean Stockwell, that child star who was later in Quantum Leap. There is this picture of us on this boat, and Stockwell has this gun and is wearing a cowboy hat.

Was it then in the '80s that you hooked up with Vinny Golia?

Yeah, I think I played with him first, and then I asked him to play with my group. I did this concert at this Unitarian church called The Onion.

There is a church called The Onion?

There is a church called The Onion in Sepulveda. And it looks like an onion.

And they had new music there?

Oh yeah, you know how the Unitarians are...

How long has your sextet been around?

Well, probably, '82-'83 I was doing a quartet with Mark Underwood, Dominic Genova, and Ken Park. We did that group for quite a while and we played in Santa Barbara at the Day of Music Festivals.

I played at those! Our paths crossed...

I was doing stuff with the poet Chuck Britt then, too.

When did you move to Portland, Oregon? You're still kind of bi-city in that you spend a lot of time in L.A. as well...

You know, I don't know. Three, four years ago. I think. I'm not sure, I don't remember. Yeah, I don't know, Los Angeles, I felt that it was time to go somewhere else. But I never knew where to go, and I never had a reason good enough to go anywhere else. But it always had interested me, and then it happened. I had been going up to Portland quite frequently, at least twice a year for quite a long time. And I like the Pacific Northwest a lot. And particularly coming down here. They are so different from one another, so it makes it even more enjoyable. Having the contrasts, the sun all the time, and then not.

This trio should be interesting. You, Bruce Fowler on trombone, Chris Garcia on drums. What can people expect to hear at City Hall?

Well, I am hoping it will be a musical ensemble that is convincing, convincing meaning that you won't be missing something; you are not going to wish there was a bass player or piano player, string section. We are just all going to function as melody, harmony and rhythm in some form or fashion. I've wanted to play with Bruce for a long time, but for whatever reason never had, and I thought this is an opportunity to do it, so here we are. It will be good, a lot of fun. Bruce is extremely talented, a very conceptual individual. It will be neat to have that call and response sort of thing going on. He is the exact opposite of what we were talking about earlier. He is somebody who can read the page and go off the page. The perfect person for what we will do.

You have a couple of new CDs out?

Yeah, two CDs. A trio CD and a sextet CD. The one I want to put out next actually has a cut from The Onion concert!

And these are out on your own label? Thank You Records?

Yeah, it's been around since '81...

Just to touch on your method of composition. You compose with methods that are sometimes more common to contemporary classical composers than jazz composers.

Well, a lot of the time, with several exceptions, and it seems like always when I am talking about this the exception is right there. But, I transpose the subject into musical pitches. The title is sometimes the subject; sometimes the title has something to do with the subject, or is the subject hidden for various reasons. And then I go from there. I just make up the composition from the subject. Sometimes I get more involved with it than others. Sometimes I will just use the subject as the melody, and come up with an accompaniment that just works, but has nothing to do with the subject.

Let's take one step backwards. When you say you are mapping the subject, or possibly the title, do you mean like Messiaen did, where you take a text and put a pitch map to that and follow it sequentially?

Yeah, it's a sequence. It is pretty consistent now. I don't do it differently very often. I go from A to G, which of course, is the same [as the alphabet]. And then Ab becomes H and so forth. So then you go through the alphabet with each letter representing one of twelve tones, and then you take those notes in sequence and come up with something. And sometimes it is just the theme with an accompaniment that you just like and has nothing to do with the subject, or sometimes I use exclusively that entire material for the composition, harmony et cetera. The rhythm is freely imposed; I haven't really fooled with that aspect of it, although I would like to. I have enough problems with trying to figure out how to get this sequence to sound, to NOT sound like a sequence, to sound like music. Or what I consider to be music. [Laughs.] Putting another limitation on it would make it much harder. I like that game aspect of it. I really like that. And it gives you something to work with. You don't have to come up with one of the hardest things, which I think is the theme. I guess after doing it for so long, I find myself doing similar sorts of things, so, you can certainly get in a rut doing this also, but for me, it helps me not to get in a rut.

Did this technique come out of a study of serial techniques, like Schoenberg, or any of the ultra-serialists?

Not really, no. I just decided to do it this way. I used to do it differently; I was doing it from one to nine. It actually came out of, in a way, numerology. I was very interested in numerology. It came from my interest in numbers. And then I decided the way I do it now with letters, gave me more of an atonal, or more than one key feel. Because when I was doing from one to nine I was essentially in one key. This sort of opened it up a little more in terms of the harmonics of it. I usually deal with just a word or two. But once, I took an entire short story by Chuck Britt and transposed every letter of the story into musical pitches and made every word a chord so I could keep track of it. But I didn't like it. So now I'm re-writing it in a linear form for brass trio. I am up to measure 600 and still have a way to go.