Name: Benjamin Lackner
Nationality: German-American
Occupation: Pianist, composer, improviser
Current release: The Benjamin Lackner Quartet's Last Decade, featuring Mathias Eick, Jérôme Regard, and Manu Katché, is out via ECM.

If you enjoyed this Benjamin Lackner interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on twitter. 

To keep reading, we recommend our earlier Benjamin Lackner interview about his creative process.



You told me that it took you five years to get to the point that you could actually record something for ECM. During that time, the projekt changed considerably. What did you originally pitch to Manfred Eicher in the first place?

I originally pitched the trio. And I wrote an entire album and had a meeting in Berlin with Manfred in a hotel lobby. That was 2017. And he was interested, but then it kept getting delayed and nothing got confirmed, Eventually, it sort of fizzled out. The material I wrote at that time turned into the album Drake which I released on Ozella.

Actually, the process of talking to Manfred and seeing if we could make it happen took so long that I had Drake recorded and finished at one point. I think I even showed it to him but it didn't do the trick.



In the end, I didn't have enough patience to wait. So I moved on.

The second chance to approach him came after I talked to Manu Katché. How I got in touch with him is as follows: He's been playing with Jérôme Regard, my bass player in the trio, for 15 years and through that connection, he saw us play in Viersen as far back as 2006. Much later, in 2019, he played at Quasimodo in Berlin and I went there and we hung out backstage and talked. He told me he remembered the Viersen performance, and he liked it. Later that night, we ended up talking about putting the project together.

Manu has obviously done many, many ECM records with the likes of Jan Garbarek and released his own work through the label as well - Playground comes to mind.



It was important for me to not have it be a trio record.

Why not?

Because that would have been the end of the old trio. At least publically it could have been perceived that way.

And then there's the fact that I also wanted to include a horn player because it changes the way you write your melodies.  I had seen Mathias Eick play in Bremen, live, about six months before I met him in person. When I asked him, he immediately said, yes. So it all just worked out perfectly.

I produced 30 songs and a demo version with looped drums and everything. These didn't sound very ECM'ish yet because they were quantized and rhythmically boxed in.

We took all those songs and freed them up again in the studio.

I find Manu Katché's drumming very important in this regard. The playing is very relaxed, but it's also thematical almost.

Drums have always been very important in how I think about music.

Even when the drums are played quietly, it's it's kind of the rhythmic foundation of everything. And so the pianist and bass player adapt to the drummer. But ultimately, if you have the same drummer and you change the bass player, it's also going to be very noticeable.

It's like a conversation with a different person. That's how I see it. And if you try to ignore that, and just treat everyone the same, I think the music's not gonna freeze.

Do you tend to prefer drummers who are subservient to the music or ones who actually add something distinct to it?

Well, I've had both experiences. Sometimes, it can be dominating to the point where I feel like they're not integrating themselves into the project. Clearly, that it doesn't make sense. But if it's a drummer with no personality, that it's sort of dull also. So it's a balance.

I do prefer someone who'll listen to what's going on and who will provide contrast – contrast with me, but also contrast across the evening or album as a whole. Someone who can play high energy but play quiet as well.

The band sounds very much like a unit.

We didn't really consciously think of it that way. But everyone was so restrained in the studio that it turned into this collective thing as we were recording, I didn't really make that announcement.

It just maybe had something to do with us meeting for the first time. Like a polite conversation. The next one is going to be totally different.

Do you generally subscribe to this romantic ideal of a band or an ensemble has as a bond of brothers or sisters? Or do you prefer the freshness of that first encounter?

That's an interesting question. Actually, if I'm completely honest, I've had this plan of doing something for ECM with several different bands. I contacted old mates from 20 years ago, some of them contacted me as well. But it just never led to something tangible. The fact that it happened with a completely new formation was actually super unexpected for me.

Thinking of it now, it probably happened precisely because it was a new formation. There's never just one solution or one way. I do think, however, that all the collective experiences of being in all these different bands helped me be the kind of bandleader that I am today. Which means being pretty open to everyone.

Why is that something you prefer?

I mean, what I've found over the years is that people tend to play their best when they're comfortable, when there's no pressure. And everyone that I've worked with has told me that they liked that I'm actually letting people be themselves.

In a way, that's what Manfred Eicher did for us, too. He let us go freely, do our thing, and then he would, see what we came up with. Maybe that's even why I was subconsciously drawn to ECM. That label is about the personalities of the musicians. And I like that.

But I'm definitely more clear on what I want now. Even my current trio has a more democratic approach than this quartet. In the quartet, I can play at the Warsaw ECM festival with a completely different lineup than on the album. Ultimately, these are my songs, and it's clear that I'm the bandleader.



What was the input of the others on the songwriting?

I mentioned that the drums are very important to me. But the bass plays a big part in how I hear my songs as well, I actually hear Jérôme Regard playing when I compose. So, for Last Decade, before heading to the studio, we met at Jérôme's house and I listened to what he had to say. His opinions on the arrangement are really important to me.

Meanwhile, Mathias, whom I hadn't even met yet, sent me recorded versions of his parts. And I would add them to my Ableton files, so that I could get a sense of how everything would fit together. I created a blueprint of the album. The drums were played by me, and I'm a disaster on the drums. But in Ableton, you can move stuff around and make it all sound somewhat decent.

I felt like Mathias really understands my melodies and the way he phrases them injects more of a dynamic range into the melodies. That simply wouldn't have been possible on the piano.  

Tell me about the recording sessions for Last Decade in France.

By the time we started, I had reduced the material down to 15 songs. And we ended up with nine on the finished album. 15 songs spread out across two days means not too many multiple run throughs. Still, it's a pretty easy process with Manfred Eicher.

My back was to the sound booth where Manfred was sitting. And basically, if I look back over my shoulder and no one was at the window of the booth, it just means: keep going.

The learning curve was pretty quick. After the first take, nothing happened. So I said, well, let's do it again. I think after the second or third take, Manfred called us in, and you can see in his entire body language, if he liked it or not or if he's feeling the music. He's really an extension of the sound. There's not a single take we ended up using which we didn't all like.

It wasn't like we had to fight about anything, it was always really clear.

What did you do with the material you were not satisfied with?

There were some solos that went nowhere on my part. But instead of just redoing them, we just scrapped the whole song, we never really took any parts from another song and spliced them together. Which is something I've done before with the trio. We would have a track that we'd be happy with, but back then, I would regularly re-record my solos. That's something we really didn't do on this production.

Mathias had already done several records for ECM and he he could tell what would be the best arrangement process for some of the songs. So he would actually say, let's just delete bars eight through 30. That way, you would simplify songs. Since I spent too much time writing alone, some of the songs were getting too heavy. And he would pull out the most pure parts. We did that on the spot for three or four songs, sometimes two minutes before we started recording.

What's the studio like?

It's one big room with a really high ceiling. It's an old country house which they refitted. And then there are two sound two separate studios, with glass for the drums and the bass. So you have three isolation rooms.

The drums were recorded completely separate anway so there's no bleed from the instruments into the drums. And then we had trumpet and piano in one room. Mathias said, it's kind of like getting into a taxi and making sure you know how to get home, because it keeps getting more and more expensive if you lose your way.

So you have to be on super focused the whole time. And it was quite intense.

As an outsider, it always seems really unnatural to have the drums apart from the rest of the band. Doesn't it change the dynamic?

Oh yes, definitely. But it also allowed Manu Katché to do things he could not have done in a different scenario.

Like, even when he was playing with brushes, he had a huge sound and his pulse was really big. And I think if we had been in the same room, he would have had to perform slightly smaller and quieter and then everything wouldn't be as clear.  

What, would you say, is Eicher looking for?

He is certainly looking to lay down a personal vision. But if we're all not happy, then he's not happy either. Ultimately, it's just apparent to everyone when the song turns out in a way where the melodies are flowing, and it sounds organic.

On the third day the band left but Jerome and me stayed with Manfred. I got to watch him work and within three hours, it turned into an ECM record with that ECM sound. I mean, I already had an amazing piano sound just on the basis of the initial recordings. But then he would add his reverb and do some adjusting with the equaliser on the piano and it suddenly had this warmth.

Watching the music morph right in front of my eyes was pretty amazing. It's not a gear thing. It's ear magic.



Now the quartet recording is done, will you be returning to solo mode again from time to time?

That's actually one thing that's on my mind for the near future, doing solo concerts. There's a part of me that wants to discover that world and really explore it. That said, it's probably the hardest thing for me.

I had an interesting conversation with a bass player who was doing a solo bass record. And he said, if you can plan the piano solo album in a way that it features all your strengths, and treat it exactly like you would treat one of your band records, then it's not scary at all. Make it all about the songs and the contrasts. And that made me feel more relaxed about it. Because there's this fictitious idea in my head, that it has to be really virtuosic. But It doesn't really have to be.

I guess that's also why Keith Jarrett is the biggest influence on me, although I'm a completely different piano player: Even though he's very virtuosic, he never loses sight of the melody and lyrical phrasing. Like that trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian has very, very clear melodies. It's very beautiful.



I guess that's where I see Last Decade as well: In between different directions, between the traditional and the modern, between a more rhythmical approach and the theme-oriented one.

Someone I always admired was the Ahmad Jamal Trio. The old albums in particular. Where they would not be afraid to play time. And Jamal would just groove his ass off. No soloing. And I guess in the quartet, we work by holding back, kind of like cooking on a lower flame.

When you do that, what happens is you can clearly see the interaction with this breathing space around you. That's basically the idea.