Part 1

Name: Benjamin Vergara
Occupation: Trumpet player, composer, improviser, educator
Nationality: Chilean
Current release: Benjamin Vergara teams up with Amanda Irarrázabal on double bass for último sosiego, out January 5th 2024 via 577.
Recommendations:
Los Jaivas - el volantín (1971)
I think this is a very special album for a Chilean band from that decade, and all that's into the record is the product of a strong intuition and impressive collection of collective sounds that were in the air at that time. Listen here.

Max Beckmann: "Self- Portrait with horn" (1938)
I really like this painting because I feel that this guy is observing the world through his horn with a cool attitude, and he is preparing the playing, not playing. The music needs that observation, otherwise is a monologue with herself.

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

Over the course of his career, Benjamin Vergara has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including Fred Frith, Lia Kohl, and Mazen Kerbaj.

[Read our Fred Frith interview]
[Read our Lia Kohl interview]
[Read our Mazen Kerbaj interview]



Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in improvisation?

Yes, clearly. My interest in improvisation started in a very open, uninformed, and intuitive version in my youngest age.

The trumpet seems to have a special relationship with improvisation in the twentieth century, mainly in jazz and popular music, so from an instrumental point of view, it is difficult not to see that, and apply it in certain contexts.

When did you first consciously start getting interested in musical improvisation? Which artists, teachers, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

Probably the starting point was with the audition of some records. Albums like In a Silent Way by Miles Davis, Brown Rice by Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman’s This is Our Music, and an indecipherable trumpet solo of a Minutemen song called “The Product,” impacted me with different intensities but in a very strong level.  



Also Jack Dejohnette's New Directions. It was the first time I listened to Lester Bowie, a god damm revelation!



In my view listening to records was and still is, like a door that opens ways to capture elements that you don't know and for any reason they capture your attention, and that is a lot.

Add to that, I live in a retired point in the map of the exercise and tradition of musical improvisation. So records again represent more than just sound information.  

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. What made you seek it out, what makes it “your” instrument, and what are some of the most important aspects of playing it?

I see the instrument as an extension of ideas in a musical context. It is like canalizing a big portion of how you perceive the world through the trumpet.

At the end, sound is what defines what I am looking for, and it’s not just the sound by itself, but the way how I move that sound, solo or collectively.

Playing the instrument is a summation of forces between your body, your beliefs, your limitations, your mind, your tendencies, your appetite or not. And all these components are dealing with something pretty fragile, a fragile balance. That's nice, isn't it?  

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument – is it an extension of your self/body, a partner and companion, a creative catalyst, a challenge to be overcome, something else entirely?

Maybe I kind of answered that in the previous question. I don't feel so close to this old idea that the instrument is part of your body, because first, the trumpet is a piece of metal, and your body is flesh, blood, bones and much more.

I see the instrument as an external element with which you create a daily relationship, to put sounds that you hear and try to reproduce, though it doesn’t mean that you actually achieve it. In fact, on the road of pursuing your listening, in the instrument, there starts to appear other interesting and fantastic stuff that surprises you.

To me that is one of the most interesting points in the stage of improvisation and experimental music: you can include these new sound details that were not expected. You just play what you can do, not what you want to do all the time, and that's perfect, just remain open.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. What kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

In the aspect of transformation in improvisation, I have a strong interest in repetition and the observation of how time manifestation gives form to that.

In a more specific way, I feel very attracted to how melodic material can dialogue with noise material and the possibility of repetition. Sometimes I detect that the aspect of melody is something elusive in free improvisation music. Maybe there appears some strange internal judgment in the players that stops that. Not always of course.

Sometimes I don't feel so attracted to the idea of eternal and quick variations in free improv. But at the same time I love to listen to records like Karyobin (1968) by SME.



That music is quite rapid, and the volume/dynamics in it makes so much vertigo inside ... it is very intense in terms of atomization and transformation of sounds, it is great. It is funny that there are things that you enjoy hearing, but the feeling of playing [them] is so different.

Perhaps I prefer to dig, dig and dig in the same spot for a while and see what happens. I don't know, you cannot control it, that's part of the game.

Do you feel as though there are at least elements of composition and improvisation which are entirely unique to each? Based on your own work or maybe performances or recordings by other artists, do you feel that there are results which could only have happened through one of them?

Sure, what I see in composition is the idea of coordination, a certain amount of people (or elements) creating some specific sounds in a specific amount of time, where there is a guide or map for that. In improvisation, this apparent coordination is filtered through the vulnerability of every action from the people involved in the act of improvising, and the results are modulated by their own beliefs and listening.

Another point that I detect sometimes, is that there is more effectiveness and consistency in an improvised solo pieces than composed solo pieces.  What I see is that impro solo player are way beyond the writing stuff (score), in terms of details, kind of timbres, movement, and instrumental development in general. I see that this happening when composers start to use some sounds, effects or whatever from the player and the results are not so effective.

It is not like playing a straight solo line from J.S Bach partita, you know, that's very transparent and walks for itself. I am just talking about effectiveness, and I would like to help.