7/27/2019 DB [11.2013] Warren Wolf

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 Warren Wolf at the 2011 Detroit Jazz Festival

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ON THE WALL OF WARREN WOLF’S WOLFPAC STUDIO IN

Baltimore, there’s a painting o the musician as a chubby 3-year-old boy, wearing agreen dashiki and standing on a chair above a vibraphone. “Look at those eyes,” says

his ather, Warren Wol Sr., nodding at the painting. “otally ocused. He was already playing Charlie Parker tunes.” Te proud papa, sporting a bushy salt-and-peppergoatee and Aro, glances ondly over his oval glasses at his son. Tere’s no baby at onJunior these days. Wol’s muscular physique is the result o a regimen that takes himto the gym six days a week.

As a child, he pursued a dierent regimen. By the time he was able to go to school, the young boy had a daily schedule o 90 minutes o practice aer dinner: 30 minutes on vibes, 30 minutes on piano and 30 minutes on drums.During summer vacation there would two 90-minute sessions a day. Tough he sometimes resented the workload, itpaid o: oday, he’s terric on all three instruments. Tough audiences outside Baltimore know him only as a vibra-phonist, his hometown audiences know him as a drummer and pianist as well. You can oen see him in those rolesat the city’s top jazz clubs, such as An die Musik where he recently laid down a Dennis Chambers-like groove behindChick Corea’s ormer bassist Mike Pope.

Wol became such a powerhouse percussionist, in act, that his riends still reer to him as “Chano,” aer Dizzy Gillespie’s conga player Chano Pozo. On the same wall as the painting, there’s a gig poster or “Wolpack and Chano”at the Sportsman’s Lounge, rom when the grade-school boy played with his ather’s band at the Baltimore club. AndJunior has played piano on occasional projects, such as Bobby Watson’s 2007 album From Te Heart (Palmetto).

On his two major projects this year, however, Wol sticks to the mallets. He plays the vibes on all eight tracks o Christian McBride & Inside Straight’s People Music (Mack Avenue) and on eight o the nine tracks o Wol’s ownalbumWolfgang (Mack Avenue). On the ninth track he plays marimba. It makes sense or him to ocus—no one everbecame a huge jazz star by being a utility player. And i he had to select just one path, mallets were the obvious choice,or it allows him to use everything he learned as a pianist and drummer; it allows him to play both tunes and beats.

“Honestly,” he conesses, “I think o mysel as a vibraphonist-slash-drummer. But I’m trying to make my pres-ence known, and the vibes have given me the most recognition, so I lean in that direction. When people hire me,they tend to put me on vibes. It’s an instrument you don’t see every time. At almost every show I play, at least one per-son comes up and says, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen a xylophone out ront beore.’ I say, ‘Tanks, but it’s not a xylophone.’”

“It’s pretty unny,” claims bassist Kris Funn, who plays on Wolfgang and has known Wol since middle school.“On the vibes, he plays by the book, but on piano or the drums, he has a more unorthodox style. His ngerings are

weird, and he plays drums le-handed even though he’s right-handed. He plays them so wrong but so right. I’ve

By Geoffrey Himes | Photo by Andrea Canter

 Warren Wolf

 A CompleteMusician

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46 DOWNBEAT NOVEMBER 2013

called him or gigs on all three instruments.”“It’s harder or a drummer to become a bandlead-

er,” adds Wol. “Tere are hundreds o drummers outhere but only about a dozen serious vibes players. I hearpeople say, ‘You’re so good on vibes you couldn’t pos-sibly be good enough on drums because you couldn’thave practiced enough.’ I they only knew. But I alsolove vibes because it gives me a chance to play melody.”

Melody is an element that distinguishes Wolfgang  rom dozens o other records released every yearby straightahead jazz virtuosos educated at BerkleeCollege o Music (as Wol was) or similar conserva-tories. Te disc’s strong themes may come rom theblues (there’s an arrangement o the traditional tune“Frankie And Johnny”), rom classical music (theMozart Requiem is incorporated into the title track)or rom Wol’s own head, but the tunes always havetwo qualities: Tey’re easy to grab and hold onto andthey make the listener eel something.

“A lot o jazz nowadays is too thought-out,” Wol laments. “A lot o musicians—and I’m guilty o thismysel sometimes—are playing or ourselves and notthe audience. o get away rom that, I want to choosetunes that will connect with people. ake any popu-

lar song—‘It Don’t Mean A Ting,’ ‘ake Five,’ ‘Mercy,Mercy, Mercy,’ ‘My Girl’ or ‘Billie Jean’—and you’llnd a strong melody. You can solo all day and run allthese changes over all kinds o meters and the averagelistener can’t ollow it. I think o all the hours o train-ing that guys like me have had at Berklee, Juilliard orelsewhere. We’re the best trained musicians around,and oen we can’t come up with a simple melody thatsome uneducated guy might come up with at home.”

Tis is not to imply that Wol is playing pop orr&b instrumentals where the tune is everything. Tisis theme-and-variation improvisation that worksbecause the themes are especially strong and the vari-ations are just as compelling—and the one is clearly tied to the other. You can hear this on the new album’s

opener, “Sunrise,” recorded with Wol’s working bando Funn, pianist Aaron Goldberg and drummer Billy Williams Jr.

It begins with a ballad melody that evokes theromance o a new relationship. When the track shisto a medium-tempo, mid-morning pulse, Funn’s jag-ged, descending line on upright bass and Goldberg’spush-and-pull phrasing prompt Wol to reconstructthe theme into orms that echo but never duplicate theopening statement. It’s an illustration o how a themecan be reshaped repeatedly yet still sound melodic.

Something similar occurs in the second track,“Frankie And Johnny,” recorded with the rhythmsection o McBride, pianist Benny Green and drum-

mer Lewis Nash. Green bangs out a unky blues ri;McBride introduces the amiliar olk melody as a pizzi-cato stroll and then shouts “Hah!” with pleasure. Wol picks up the tune, plays it once and then starts mess-ing with it. But he doesn’t just run the scales; instead,he invents new blues melodies in the same neighbor-hood. Green does something similar on his solo, andNash gives everything a nger-snapping strut.

Te same approach can be heard on the title track,“Wolgang.” (Tat title nods to the similarity o thenames Warren Wol, his band Wolpac and WolgangAmadeus Mozart.) Recorded as a duet with pianistAaron Diehl, it begins with quotes rom the MozartRequiem that are reworked into a jazz ballad and theninto a New Orleans blues. It’s an astonishing trans-

ormation, because Wol can play the classical snip-pets with a lilting precision and can play the blues

with sassy eeling. It’s as i he were channeling bothJohn Lewis and Milt Jackson rom the Modern JazzQuartet.

“Yeah,” Wol agrees, “that was infuenced by theMJQ. I had that line rom the Mozart Requiem that Iliked, and I developed it by repeating it in dierent keyswith counterpoint. It’s like the way Chick Corea took that line rom the Concierto de Aranjuez and turned itinto ‘Spain.’ I needed a pianist who was good at classi-cal and jazz, and Aaron was an obvious choice.”

“I heard Warren when he played with Christian atthe Vanguard,” Diehl recalls. “I had just been studyingthe archives o John Lewis because I wanted to recordsome o the Modern Jazz Quartet material, and whenI heard Warren, I said, ‘Tis guy is a virtuoso like Milt.’Tat’s what made the Modern Jazz Quartet: the con-trast between Milt’s soulul, bluesy quality and John’smore genteel, more baroque sensibility. Warren hasboth—a real soululness but also a thorough knowl-edge o classical music.”

Te rst time Wol encountered Green and

McBride was on Milt Jackson’s 1997 album, Burnin’ In Te Woodhouse. “I liked the way Benny compedbehind the vibes,” Wol says. “A lot o piano playersdon’t know their job. Tey’re supposed to support you,

but they play over you; they’re supposed to ollow you,but they want to lead you. It’s the same with drum-mers. I want a drummer who knows when to be busy and when not to be busy.”

Wolfgang is Wol’s second CD or Mack AvenueRecords (ollowing 2011’s Warren Wolf ) but his sixthoverall. He did two earlier discs—2008’s RAW and

2011’s Warren “Chano Pozo” Wolf —on his own labeland two more—2009’s Incredible Jazz Vibes and 2010’sBlack Wolf —or Japan’s M&I Records. Te latter twoalbums, which are very hard to nd now, eature pia-nist Mulgrew Miller, who passed away on May 29.

“Mulgrew helped me out a lot in the beginning,”Wol says. “Not only was he the second person to

take me out on the road—right aer im Wareld in2003—but he also introduced me to a Japanese pro-ducer. Mulgrew was a nice guy who played a hell o alot o piano. He brought a whole history o the pianoto jazz, but he never got the recognition he deserved.Tose older guys pass on the experience o the stillolder guys they played with when they were in their20s. When you’re playing with Mulgrew or Bobby Watson, you’re getting that experience o playing withArt Blakey, that attitude o ‘Yes, it’s my band, but youhave to give other people a chance to shine.’”

Wol rst met McBride in 1997 when the ormerwas attending Berklee and the latter was perorm-ing at Boston’s Regatta Bar. Te young student askedthe bassist to sign some CDs and declared, “Hey, Mr.

McBride, someday we’re going to play together.” Wol soon realized that jazz stars hear that a lot, but three

years later he was invited to Jazz Aspen SnowmassAcademy, where McBride was the artistic director.McBride wasn’t aware that a vibes player would beattending, so he didn’t have a score or a vibes part inthe big-band arrangement o “Shade O Te Cedarree,” McBride’s composition or Cedar Walton (whodied on Aug. 19).

“I said I didn’t need it because I knew his music,”Wol remembers. “And I played it through withoutthe score. Aer that we exchanged numbers and hesaid, ‘Someday I’m going to call you or a gig.’ Tat callnally came seven years later. A woman said, ‘Hello,Mr. Wol, Mr. McBride wants to know i you can play with him at the Village Vanguard.’ I did six nightsthere and gured it was over. I said, ‘I got to play withChristian McBride. Good.’ But his manager kept call-ing or the next six years.”

Unlike many vibraphonists, Wol preers twosticks rather than our. When he’s tried our-malletplaying, he’s oen developed a sore on the inside o hisindex nger. Plus, the two-stick approach allows himto strike the keys as i with drum sticks, and it’s thatathletic approach that makes his sound so distinctive.

“I’m dierent rom most vibraphonists,” he says,

“because I work out a lot, and that allows me to play ashard as possible. When I was at Berklee in 1997, [theBaltimore drummer] John Lamkin invited me downto Wally’s Caé. At that point I was still using a classi-cal approach, but I ound that no one past the rst ew rows could hear me. When I complained about it, my roommate at the time said, ‘Let’s go to the gym.’ I start-ed going all the time—which I still do—and beorelong I was playing the vibes so hard that I was knock-ing the tubes out o tune. And that’s hard to do.”

Te other quality that distinguishes Wol is hisconnection to Baltimore. Tere’s something aboutmusicians rom that city that combines the unki-ness o the South and the thoughtulness o the North.Maybe that’s because the town sits south o the Mason-

Dixon Line and north o the Union/Conederate bor-der along the Potomac River.

“Te musicians rom Baltimore who’ve made it—Gary Bartz, Gary Tomas, Dennis Chambers, GeorgeColligan—all bring a real re to the stage,” Wol says.“It’s a blues thing. A lot o them come rom the black church where you’re playing hard all day.”

Te Copy Cat Building in Baltimore is an oldindustrial warehouse that has been converted into stu-dio spaces or painters, sculptors, reggae bands andindie-rock bands. On the wall o the Wolpac Studiois a display with a hand-written sign that says, “100Years o Baltimore Jazz.” Below the sign are photos o Junior’s great-grandather pianist James Nelson Wole

sitting at a piano; his grandather the pianist JamesNelson Wole Jr., also sitting at a piano; his ather andhimsel standing by their vibes; and Junior’s two sons,6-year-old Kaden and 9-year-old Devaughn sittingbehind drum sets. On the ledge o the catercorner wallsit nine carved drums rom Arica. Warren Wol Sr.explains the provenance o each, one o them datingback 150 years.

“Tey say you need to play an instrument or10,000 hours to master it—by the time he went toBerklee, he’d had 15,000 hours o practice,” says theather, a ormer history teacher, about his son. “I want-ed to prepare a jazz musician who would be ready orthe rst Intergalactic Jazz Festival to calm the aliens. Iwanted him to be a superstar, because I couldn’t do it

mysel. When I saw him go past me musically at age 6or 7, I knew what the deal was.” DB

“[ Wolf] plays drums

left-handed even

 though he’s right-

handed. He plays them

so wrong but so

right.”— Kris Funn