Name: Jim Snidero
Nationality: American
Occupation: Alto saxophonist, composer, author and educator
Current release: Jim Snidero's Far Far Away is out via Savant.

If you enjoyed this interview with Jim Snidero and would like to know more about his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?

When I was about 13, I had a great middle school band director that started a jazz band.

From the very first rehearsal, I knew I was going to be a jazz musician, and started improvising.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

Like many alto saxophonist of my generation, Phil Woods was a huge draw when I was a teenager. He was very accessible, and a master saxophonist and improviser. I also loved Rusty Bryant, a great jazz / soul tenor player on the Prestige label. I’ve always been attracted to the blues.

There were many, many more influences, but these two captured my imagination in the beginning.

Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

Sure, coming from a liberal arts education, I was taught to be creative, think out of the box and look at all sides. This really applies to most aspects in life.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

There’s often a misunderstanding when it comes to jazz improvisation, that somehow you’re making it all up as you’re going along out of thin air. I am part of a tradition established by the greatest jazz improvisors - Bird, Miles, Coltrane, Rollins, etc … -  which is that there is plenty of pre-conceived material that is used when improvising. You hear it time and again on recordings of jazz greats, the same language on multiple recordings. The trick is to be in the moment, listen, react, and most importantly, be musical.

There will be times that you play something that you’ve played many times before, times when you’re playing variations of things you’ve played before, and times when you play something entirely new. It’s about how you put it together and how in the moment you are when improvising.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

Learning the language and executing it on the instrument takes time, and I’d say this is what holds back most aspiring jazz improvisers. There’s a lot there to master, and that’s really the challenge, a tremendous amount of work.

The breakthrough arrives when you’re able to transcend all the technical aspects and create meaningful music.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?

The alto saxophone is the maverick of saxophones. Because of its range and resistance, it’s truly a challenge to reach what I consider timeless tone qualities regarding warmth, center, intensity, projection, and personality.

For me, tone is the most important quality, the one in which all else flows. Getting this out of the alto can be a major challenge, but when you’re there, the alto is really unmatched. It’s absolutely worth the effort.

Can you talk about a work, event or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

That would have to be my recording entitled Strings.

I worked on the project for over one year, composing and arranging for a chamber string group and jazz quartet. The day we were to record in New York was Sept 11, 2001, and we were on the way to the studio when the terrorist attacks began. On a personal and professional level, absolutely devastating.

We finally recorded a couple of months later and was released on the very important Milestone label. Many respected publications have described it as a masterpiece, one of just a few highly successful recordings in this genre, so it really was a triumph. Here’s a short documentary about the project:



Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

Virtually any musical idea is endlessly transformable, so that’s pretty vague.

It’s more about the quality of the material, and the best material generally comes from the best improvisers. Basically, all the answers are on recordings. As an aspiring jazz improviser, to ignore artists like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc … would be akin to a classical composer ignoring Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and so on. It doesn’t make any sense.

So you learn from the masters, you absorb and you personalize, or as the great jazz trumpet player Clark Terry used to say “imitate- assimilate- innovate”.

When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances?

As I mentioned, the best improvisers have plenty of pre-conceived concepts. And it’s not only the raw melodic material - specific phrases, or “licks”, as jazz musicians call them. It also involves timing, pacing, range, dynamics, and so on. There are certain personal preferences a musician leans towards that dictates what’s being played, part of their personality, which is obviously a good thing.

Once again, the important point is that there’s a balance between knowing and not knowing what you’re going to play next. Sometimes you lean one way, sometimes another. In the end, it’s an artistic judgement, but it has to come from a position of knowledge and mastery to be consistently meaningful.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

Of course there are rules, which are clearly demonstrated time and again by masters on recordings.

The point is that, the more you understand the rules, the more options you have to bend or break the rules. You’re working from a position of strength, not weakness.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

Mastery of the music and instrument gives you a sense of confidence that allows you to dig deep.

There’s no replacement for true mastery. It allows you to enter a state of oneness with the human spirit and moment.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

Im very sensitive to timbre and acoustics, and try to find the best “spot” on the stage to hear and project.