Interview with Kevin Kastning - December 2022

“Strands,” can you please tell me how you came to work with Carl Clements, and some story or stories about your many collaborations over the years.

I met Carl in early 1985. We were housemates and were students at Berklee College of Music. Carl and I played our first concert together in June 1985 at the Berklee Concert Pavilion in Boston. That concert was with The Kevin Kastning Unit, which was my jazz group that played in Boston in the mid to late '80s. I wrote all the material for the Unit, but Carl also contributed some pieces. At that time, I was playing electric 6-string guitar only, and Carl played mostly tenor saxophone, but later in the group's existence he branched out to soprano sax, too. The Unit stayed busy, and there are some studio recordings from 1987 and 1988.

As my compositions became more complex and were arguably no longer within the jazz realm, I disbanded the unit and focused on composing for a few years. By this time, I was composing chamber works such as string quartets, wind quintets, piano sonatas, and other chamber works. There are also some chamber orchestra pieces. In the late 1990s or so, Carl and I again started playing a few duo performances together around Boston and New York City. We recorded our first duo album, "Dreaming As I Knew," around 2005 or so. "Strands" is our sixth album together, with more already in the works.

Since the first time we played together, Carl and I have had a strong artistic connection. It's just always been there. We became close friends almost immediately, and I think that strong friendship connection may have further enhanced our artistic connection as well.

What have you discovered to be the idiom of this combined music?

For my music, I don't really think in terms of labels or categories. Over the 30-plus years that Carl and I have worked together, we've gone from a jazz framework of music to music composed in real-time, which is the direction and approach for each of our duo albums.

Carl and I have many musical and artistic influences; most of those are shared. Carl’s principal area of influence is jazz; Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane. When I was studying and playing jazz, my primary influences were Bill Evans, John Coltrane, and various artists on ECM records. Prior to my jazz period, I studied classical music, and still do. My principal influences are not, nor were they ever, guitarists. My influences and heroes are classical composers: Bach, Weiss, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Webern, Shostakovich, Carter; too many to mention. Additionally, I’ve been strongly impacted and directed by the solo piano works of Keith Jarrett. Carl, too, is passionate about classical music, so we have large areas of overlapping influences. We also live in the world of real-time improvisation, and over the years have had hours and hours of discussion surrounding this approach. I believe that no matter the compositional medium; be it manuscript paper or tape, composed music is as valid as music composed in real-time. They are equal. I see composed music as frozen improvisation, so the two models have far more in common than most people realize or consider. However, to be effective in real-time composition, I believe that you have to first be a composer.

What has it made you feel?

Working with Carl brings a sense of freedom, which is true of all my collaborators. Carl is not just a player, but also a composer, so we can move in the same directions at the same time. It brings a feeling of no boundaries, really.

When you are improvising together, we have established that there is a process of trusting the music that you are hearing and playing that about which you don’t feel a sense of personal ownership. The process is too fast for calculating and controlling. I believe that fosters a mindset similar to “mindfulness.” How has your adaptation to real-time collective composition affected your processes in real life? Have you been able to incorporate listening for the music in family interactions or daily decisions? Has the required processes that create this music changed your decision-making process? Has this music taught you to live differently? Are you living more in the moment?

I don’t think the music or its direction has impacted my day-to-day life. However, I believe that if you’re an improvising musician, who and what you are is what is heard in your music. Ergo, for me, life and music are so tightly integrated that it’s hard to say where one leaves off and the other begins.

How has this form of collaboration changed your approach to improvisation, listening and teaching.

I no longer teach, so it’s had no impact on that. However, when you’re in the realm of non-solo real-time composition, listening is key. It’s the first and most important thing; it’s the prime directive. Not only listening to the other person or persons, but to the composition itself. I’ve been working in duo settings since before Carl and I started recording together, so I can’t say that this collaboration has impacted my approaches beyond any kind of real-time duo setting. However, Carl and I tend to have a kind of mental telepathy when working together. Of our six albums, the first five were recorded at my old studio. We were in separate rooms with no windows and no visual contact. Visual cues were obviously not possible, but when you listen to those records, it all sounds composed. I credit most of that to our long-running partnership, and the rest of it to listening. “Strand in Strands” was recorded as a remote project, where one of us would record our part and send the tracks to the other person for them to record their parts. I like working in both modes, and tracking remotely worked out very well for us. I usually prefer being “live” in the studio, but remote recording projects are equally valid given that you have the right people, and just another method or approach. I feel that “Strand in Strands” is our strongest record to date.