Name: Marc Mezgolits
Occupation: Bassist, composer, improviser
Nationality: Austrian
Current release: Unchanging, Marc Mezgolits's debut album as a solo artist, is out via Unit. He is also a member of Christian Muthspiel's "Orjazztra."
Recommendations: I’ve recently stumbled across records I haven’t listened to in a while. Two I would recommend anybody to listen to are: In Love and Death by The Used and A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard by Ambrose Akinmusire.

[Read our Christian Muthspiel interview]

If you enjoyed this Marc Mezgolits interview and would like to keep up to date with his  music, visit his official website. He also has a page on the website of his current label, Unit Records.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Whether I listen to music with my eyes open or closed is always different. But when they’re closed, I am more focused.

When I listen to music there are many different things that pop up in my mind: Colours, how I imagine the band looks like, and adjectives that describe what is happening, both musically and emotionally.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

For me, music is not a valve for escapism, but a beautiful way to deal with everyday life.

As a composer and listener, I am mostly drawn to beauty, which I believe is most often found in simplicity.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

My parents made me take piano lessons when I was six or seven, and while I was good at it, I never wanted to practice. Today I am very grateful for having this opportunity, because I had the chance to learn about basic musical principles at a young age.

Nowadays I love the piano – to me, it’s one of the most beautiful sounding instrument.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

When I picked up the bass guitar at fourteen, I instantly knew that I wanted to play this instrument for the rest of my life. I am grateful that my parents made me learn how to play the piano, because at last music was actually “my thing”, I just hadn’t found my way of expressing myself yet.

When I was a teenager, everything was about playing bass and music – and it still is! What changed is that at some point you must organize yourself, and it’s not just about making music anymore – it’s about gigs and providing for yourself.

However, I’m very lucky to teach electric bass at a great school and have enough time to practice daily.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

Most days I spend hours with my bass guitars and my amplifiers – which, in my opinion, are part of my instrument. Through that I get to know them inside out and develop a certain feel for them. They are tools necessary to my craft and art, and they are dear to my heart.

Also, I feel blessed that I play an instrument I can travel with. For example: I can’t imagine what it’s like playing on a different piano every night, and to adjust yourself to a foreign tool on a regular basis. I have a lot of sympathy and respect for colleagues that do.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I don’t know where it comes from. However, I do believe that the impulse to work and to create are two primal human urges that on one level or another most of us have. I am simply lucky enough to work and create in a field that I truly love.

I had to think about the second part of the question a lot, because my compositions are hardly ever directly inspired by dreams or other art (however, other art and musicians certainly have a huge influence on my aesthetic choices).

I think that my biggest inspiration are personal relationships, and the emotions that come with them. My first shots at composing were highly influenced by singer/songwriters and bands of the “Hamburger Schule”, which in my opinion always had a very dry approach to worldly topics most of us can relate to.



I think that even to this day this music is the foundation for my compositional work, even as a contemporary “jazz musician”.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I think that - for better or for worse - my music is very reflective of how I live out my personality in daily life. My key ideas in music would be that I believe in simplicity and sticking to one idea.

If you exploit all compositional tools and possibilities, there is nothing you can’t do with one short phrase, harmonic idea or anything else. Also, if you can explain something in a logically sound manner, it will sound logical.

And last, but not least: music and art are full of contradictions - I am sure there are some in this interview!

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

If we consider music a language, we can communicate a lot of different moods and emotions, as long as we think about what we want to communicate and who we are trying to reach. What grammar is to language, theory and harmony are to music, and to explore all artistic possibilities to play with and break these “rules”, we must thoroughly study them.

Also, we must first consider if we are serving a functional or artistic purpose. If it is functional (for example in commercial settings) we best avoid misunderstandings by studying what works for what mood and emotions.

In a purely artistic setting, misunderstandings cannot be avoided – they should rather be celebrated, as art is one of the few things in life that does not necessarily have to be rationalised by the audience.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?  

Even in music that seems to be “simplistic” or “obvious”, there are always things to discover.

I strongly believe that there is beauty in the most mundane things in life, this is also true for musical structures that we believe to know inside out.

Speaking as a jazz musician, I regularly hear and transcribe improvisations over forms I have known forever, yet the possibilities of interpreting a jazz standard and improvising over its form seem to be endless.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

What always fascinates me is how often we can identify intervals in daily life: whether it be a minor third between two different vehicles, or a bird seemingly intonate a sharp fourth perfectly, they seem to be all around us.

It proves that musical concepts are a part of our life, and that music plays a far bigger role in our everyday existence than we expect it to.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which cannot?

Music and numbers are inseparable. My favourite example: Jazz, funk, pop and related genres all depend on melodic and harmonic phrases whose number of bars can be divided by two.

Once a composer is aware of this concept, it is great to write music that logically is one bar longer or shorter – unconsciously, the audience notices this, but might very well not be able to describe why something feels a little off, which makes the listening experience even more exciting.

Or, to put it in simpler words: Through addition and subtraction, we can express familiarity or unfamiliarity. This is a tool I use regularly.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Music has been one of the biggest parts of my existence for almost twenty years now. It is part of my life, therefore making music does not reflect the way I live my life, it is the way I live my life.

If there is a sentiment I live my life by, I hope it’s best reflected by the following quote by talk show host Conan O’Brien: “Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

I don’t think that we as human beings need to understand music – or any kind of art for that matter – on a deeper level. We are mammals burdened with self-awareness, and as such we try to consume art exactly in the way that’s needed in the moment.

Whether you need to blow off steam in a club whilst dancing to sick beats or want to contemplate your life during a folk gig in a shady bar, everything’s equally relevant and important.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

In our industrialised society, surrounding ourselves with sound is not always a choice – choosing between sound and silence is a privilege.

Whether I choose to experience everything sonorous around me or use my noise cancelling headphones, both options have a lot of value: depending on the situation, I can get lost in and/or inspired by both noise and silence.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Anything can be either mundane or artistic. To me it is all about your intentions, and the willingness or ability to communicate them.

Let me give you an example: when I cook a great meal for a loved one, it is my way of telling them: “I want you to know that I love you, I want to provide for you and I wouldn’t necessarily do this for anybody else.”

You can just as easily play a gig poorly and in that way tell your audience: “I do not care about your experience, I do not want to be here, I am just here for my pay check.”

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I am grateful to be part of a generation that cares deeply about our craft and art, and artistically speaking, I won’t utter any wishes, because I’m confident that we will express our generations issues artistically, politically and emotionally.

However, I do hope that we stop selling ourselves below value.