he's got it covered - robert glasper...

HE'S GOT IT COVERED - ROBERT GLASPER TALKS

Written by Charles WaringFriday, 19 June 2015 12:17 - Last Updated Friday, 19 June 2015 17:34

Robert Glasper is undoubtedly the man of the moment. The 37-year-old Texas-born pianistand two-times Grammy winner has just released his sixth Blue Note album, ' Covered.' He also features heavily, playing keyboards, of course, on Kendrick Lamar's acclaimed newhip-hop album, 'To Pimp A Butterfly,' and is the producer of a soon-to-be-unveiled star-studdedNina Simone tribute album, 'Nina Revisited,' due for release via BMG next month. Not content with that, he's also contributed to thesoundtrack to actor/director Don Cheadle's forthcoming movie

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Miles Ahead, a cinematic portrait of iconic jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis, during his 'lost years' of themid-to-late 1970s.

Though he started out as a fairly orthodox straight-ahead jazz pianist, Glasper has never likedbeing pigeonholed and isn't afraid to experiment. The two Grammy awards that adorn hismantelpiece he won as an R&B artist - he took the Best R&B Album award for his long player'Black Radio' in 2013 and earlier this year grabbed another 'gong' alongside collaborators LalahHathaway and Malcolm-Jamal Warner in the category of Best Traditional R&B Performancefor their potent version of Stevie Wonder's 'Jesus Children.'

His latest opus, 'Covered,' is different again and finds the affable pianist reconvening hisacoustic jazz trio in a live setting in front of an invited audience at Los Angeles' famous CapitolStudios. His repertoire, though, only includes one standard - 'Stella By Starlight' - and insteaddraws from the worlds of rock and pop. Talking to SJF's Charles Waring from a hotel roomsomewhere in Japan, Robert Glasper discusses not only his new album but also other musicalprojects that he is working on and, perhaps more significantly, talks candidly about the racismand police violence that is impacting African-Americans in the USA today...

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Regarding your new album, 'Covered,' what made you want to go back to the acousticpiano and the jazz trio format? I had taken a rest from my trio for about five years so I figured that I wanted to go back becausepeople were asking me asking me about the trio and they missed my piano sound because withthe Experiment and the 'Black Radio' stuff, I'm not playing a lot of piano when you see a liveshow. The piano is not at the forefront, it's mixed in, and people are missing that and sometimesyou've got to go back and remind people that you play the piano (laughs). I wanted to have abreather and take a break from the 'Black Radio' stuff so I figured that this was a nice way to doit: to take a break from 'Black Radio' but still keep the music to where people that like 'BlackRadio' will still like this album as well because there's a common thread. What was it like recording live to tape in Capitol Studios? Did you get a sense of historyfrom being in that place? Yeah, because as soon as you walk in your looking at all the photos on the wall of all the peoplewho recorded there ...and I play the same piano that Nat King Cole played. Who was in the audience? It was a mixture of some friends of mine and record people and some celebrities as well. It wasvery low key and wasn't open to the public. Tell me about the guys playing with you, bass player, Vincente Archer, and drummer,Damion Reid. Vincente and Damion were both a part of my original trio. When I first got signed to Blue Note in2005 both were on my first two trio albums. I love Vincente because I love his sound on thebass and I love how versatile he is because he listens to so many styles of music and he is veryversatile which is an important thing in my band. The same thing with Damion. I've played withthese guys for years and Damion's a jazz drummer but he doesn't sound like anyone else and Ilove people who sound original. So Vincente and Damion both have an original sound and itworks because I feel that I have an original sound too and so three original sounds togethermakes for good and interesting music. It certainly works. You got some rock covers on there as well some R&B songs. I wasinterested to find out from you what drew you to Joni Mitchell's song, 'Barangrill,' fromher 'For The Roses' album. I love that song...but the funny thing is I've liked that song for a very long time. Three nightsbefore I was going to record I was at home and my son was singing the song. He's six yearsold. From that, I was like "oh, I'll put that on my album!" (Laughs). I've always loved that songand I've always been meaning to do it but I never just got around to doing it so when he sang itsparked something and I said oh, shit, and so I picked up a pen and literally wrote anarrangement right there on the spot. You also cover the Radiohead song, 'Reckoner.' What is it that you like aboutRadiohead? Radiohead, they're dope (laughs) because their songs lend themselves to jazz very easily.That's because the melodies are pretty sparse: they're not super-complicated melodies, so itleaves a lot of room for you to do shit, you know. And they do things in odd time signatures andthey have really good chord changes and those are great things for jazz musicians: we lovedifferent time signatures and chord changes and melodies that don't have a lot going onbecause it's easier to re-harmonise and change things. You've got a guest cameo on the album from veteran singer and political activist, HarryBelafonte on the song 'Got Over.' How did that come about? Harry actually reached out to me to be a part of his organisation that he has called San Kofa,which is basically artists who are active and giving an artist a platform that can speak on socialthings. Much like his whole life, that's what he did. And he asked me to be part of that to helphim with a project so while I was having a meeting with him about that we became pretty cool. Iknow I like to document time periods when I do albums and document what's going on in my lifeor in the world. And there was a lot going on in the world at that time and now still, so I wantedto document that musically and I felt that it was appropriate and made sense to have Mr HarryBelafonte on the record speaking, basically giving hope to people because a lot of people don'thear that side of things; they just hear people telling you, stop doing this, stop doing that, but ifyou hear somebody's story saying that they came up in horrible conditions as well and that theyalso made it through, that's inspiring. Talking of documenting the times we live in, the final cut on the album, 'Dying Of Thirst,'is very relevant to what's going on in America at the moment in relation to policeviolence, isn't it? Yeah, totally, totally, and you know I used my son, Riley, and his friends for that because whenyou hear a child's voice it registers differently to you that when you hear an adult's voice. It'svery important when I hear all this stuff happening in the world I don't think about myself - I thinkabout my son all the time and the world that I want him to live in so with all this stuff happening Ihad my wife choose a bunch of names for Riley and his friends to say, people who werewrongly killed by police violence. What's your take on what's happening in America? Is it becoming a police state? It's always been that way. Nothing is different. The only difference is cell phone cameras.Literally, this isn't anything new, it's just now. Now you can actually see it for yourself. But thereality is it's been happening for many years, since the '50s and '60s. Malcolm X spoke aboutthat. He said the same thing and he said the Ku Klux Klan turned in their sheets for policeuniforms. It's always been happening and now we have the ability to record things so peoplecan see it because for a long time it was our word against theirs.

Moving on to something else, is it true that you've been working on Don Cheadle's MilesDavis film, Miles Ahead? Yes, I scored the movie. What was that experience like for you? Working with Don Cheadle was amazing. He's an amazing actor and he is such a musical guy,you know - you'll be really surprised at how musical he actually is. He plays a little piano, a littlebass, a little drums, and saxophone, and he went to college playing saxophone. He learned howto play trumpet by himself and he spent five years studying it. Just to do that role? Yeah, he's really taken it seriously. This movie has been secretly in the making for a few yearsbut it was great, man, and an amazing experience. I got a chance to put my best groupstogether to sound like the Miles Davis band. We had to do our best Miles Davis impression. Sothere were times when I had to recreate the sound of the 1968 band, the 1964 band, and'73...you know different sounds. Some of the stuff is me recreating the sound of different bandsand some of the stuff is original music of mine and some of the stuff is actual Miles Davisrecordings. It's a mixture of different things. I read somewhere that you were able to remix some of Miles's original tracks... Yes, that's a different project. I'm almost finished with it now. It's an album that Sony Music hiredme to do. I'm literally in the last week of mixing it so they basically let me in the vault and takemulti-tracks of a bunch of Miles Davis albums and let me make new songs out of them. Wemade new songs by taking samples from different parts of recordings and putting them togetherand making an artist make new songs, so it's really cool. How did it feel being able to access the original tapes of Miles's music? It was fucking amazing! (Laughs). They brought Miles back to being human and some of myother idols on there to being human. I have a bunch of outtakes of him just talking in the studiogoing over things because you could hear mistakes and things that remind you that they'reactually people (laughs).

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So what lies beyond this current album? I believe you've got a Nina Simone project in theoffing as well... I literally just finished that last week. It's a Nina Simone tribute album that is going along with aNina Simone documentary that is coming out on Netflicks called What Happened to MissSimone ? It's coming out onJune 26th and the album drops along with it on June 30th. I produced the whole album andthere are a bunch of special guests on it. We pretty much did a bunch of Nina's songs andarranged them. Lauryn Hill's on the album, Mary J Blige, Usher, Gregory Porter, Alice Smith,Jasmine Sullivan, and a few other artists. Of all the people that you've worked with, who taught you the most do you think? Probably (singer) Bilal. Me and Bilal went to college together, that's where we met. When he gotsigned in 1999 to Interscope Records I became his music director and I got to travel the worldwith him for eight years so I got a chance to see and watch how a jazz cat jumps into this R&B,soul music world - at that time neo-soul was just starting. I got a chance to watch him navigatethrough all of that and through that I learned a lot of things and that's how I'm able to navigatemyself through things, watching Bilal and seeing how he handles things, seeing how peopleperceive him, you know, and just being in that whole circle. That really helped my career. 'COVERED' IS OUT NOW VIA BLUE NOTE RECORDS

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he's got it covered - robert glasper...

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