Name: Paul Flaherty
Nationality: American
Occupation: Saxophonist
Current release: Paul Flaherty's Wednesday Weld, featuring Larry Derdeyn on keyboards and Jim Matus on electric and baritone guitar, is out July 21st via 577.

If you enjoyed this Paul Flaherty interview, visit his bandcamp account for more music.

Over the course of his career, Paul Flaherty has worked with a wide range of artists, including Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano, Greg Kelley, Bill Nace, Mette Rasmussen, Jim O'Rourke, and Heather Leigh.

[Read our Bill Nace interview]
[Read our Mette Rasmussen interview]
[Read our Heather Leigh interview]
[Read our Jim O'Rourke interview]



When did you first start becoming interested in musical Improvisation?

I started playing sax at age 10 in the school band (marches, classical). One night (age 12) I found jazz on the radio and was instantly hooked.

I assumed they were reading their parts but became even more amazed when I realized that they were making some of it up as they went along. I guessed that it was genius.

I began listening to a 3 hour Sunday night jazz program each week. (well ... usually)

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

I began trying to improvise along with records at age 16 and the first players that helped me learn were Eddie Harris, Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan. Search for the New Land was a Lee Morgan album featuring, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, that I still love today.



At the time I was aware of Coltrane, Miles and Ornette but they seemed out of my reach. For the next 7 years I improvised along with records of all kinds of music, learning to play on top of them but eventually learning to play with and inside them. I very rarely sat in with bands and assumed that I'd always be a closet musician.

The year that I finally started playing music with actual people (late 1971), I heard Pharoah Sanders' Karma album and realized that I had a very long way to go.



Focusing on Improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from personal motivations for looking for alternatives was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

The first person that I actually started improvising with was my 17 year old cousin Danny Flaherty. His parents had bought him a drumset and he was an instant natural. The first time we played was a totally free experience and amazingly I felt that I'd found my music.

We played together a few times each week and I figured that this was what Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman were doing. I thought the world would really love this. Not exactly. We added a rhythm guitar and a trumpet and performed our first gig ever at a biker / Country rock bar ... They hated us, threatened our lives and the audience chipped in and hired their own band for the next week. We were barred from entering.

Welcome to free Improvisation. I did learn something about booking the wrong place to play.

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?

My approach, from the first moment through the present, has simply remained the same. Whether on stage, a recording studio, the street, a jam session or alone ... Just begin without a plan or discussion and let it end when it ends. Surrender to the music and let it create itself.

Later, if it's been recorded it can be edited, or on certain nice occasions it all works, and needs no editing. I tried fitting into other forms of improv in my 20s, playing with people who played standards or original compositions, because no one I knew wanted to play free ... But at age 30 I decided to devote myself to freeform music only ... It left me alone a lot and many late night (1:00-3:00 am) street concerts followed.

I think a lot of players approach music freely but often act like it's something else. They talk about their own unique theories and their own disciplines. (of course more power to them ... to each his own) This is partly because to say you're a totally free player, a freeform improvisational musician, is a good way to never become accepted by the "grant givers", or be invited to teach at a University ... Those in charge quite often respect only the pieces or concepts that can be written in some form. They don't appreciate the term" spontaneous composition".

I'm not sure how many musicians historically admit they're playing totally free (no plans or outlines, no leader once the music starts). Two free sax players that go back to the early 70s, and that I've recorded with, are Daniel Carter and Wally Shoup. The two drummers that I've made many albums with, Randall Colbourne and Chris Corsano are both absolutely at home with total freeform. Joe Morris, Bill Nace, and Jack Wright are another three outspoken advocates of free and actually it's grown greatly amongst the" out" musicians.



My initial inspirations to do this were Ornette and Cecil but they had more plans going on than I realized at first. Just the fact that they spoke about" free music", and the music that they produced, seems to have changed my life. (Albert Ayler of course, but I only became aware of him later through late Coltrane and Pharoah who both were influenced by Albert. And even Albert began his pieces with set themes.)



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

I learned the basics of saxophone playing in the school band but no improv. It came slowly, playing along with the records of professionals.

I realized early that I shouldn't learn their licks but find my own that somehow fit in. I saw how flat and surface my notes sounded compared to Lee Morgan or Coltrane ... How do they sould so deeply within themselves? I learned from the records how to connect with “the feel" and find a sound in myself that seemed to come from the heart. When I first played with a strong piano player I almost fell over when he related to something that I'd played. I'd spent 7 years just relating to records without them ever responding to me.

Over time, like anything, you learn to trust, trust that the music will come if you let go, ask it to play.
 
Can you talk about a work, event, or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you?

There have been so many wonderful concerts. Three times in Dublin, Ireland with Chris Corsano in a tiny club with the crowd packed wall to wall and screamin' approval. A crazy concert in Minneapolis with Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and Chris Corsano that I missed half of because I was smoking a joint, not realizing that we were on.

A strip club in Hartford where I stopped the dancers so Danny Flaherty and I could perform sax and conga freeform (they bounced us out fairly quickly). A magical night in Rome that ended with us and the concert crowd eating breakfast outdoors at an all night street restaurant.

A wonderful night in Balogna Italy, one great night in Paris, an afternoon in Willimantic, Ct. with Lao Dan visiting from China, a concert with Chris in London, with Randy Colbourne in Ottawa, a concert at the UConn ballroom in Storrs, Ct. with Gordon Cohen, A show with Chris at the Roxy in Boston, warming up for Sonic Youth with 1100 people cheering us on. (not used to that experience).

I played solo one night (3:00 am) at a pond in Storrs, Ct. that was loaded with frogs. They croaked away, ignoring my sax playing, but something started happening. They started becoming louder and croaking faster, but not because of me. A train was coming closer in the distance, blowing its incredibly loud, deep, vibrating horn. The closer it got, the wilder the frogs got ... Probably 100 frogs trying to match, worship, the oncoming Giant Frog train ... Crescendo hits as the train passes and the frogs slowly calm down as it rattles away, still blowing it's horn. My horn had become silent.

A night in Willington Ct. when I stopped to play on a back road before going to sit in with friends. Suddenly I heard a great commotion and roughly 40 cows came mooing over the hill and were trotting toward me. I kept playing and they kept coming until they were just feet away, howling the whole time. Their savior had arrived.

It was 11:00 pm dark but I began to notice the cows begin to part and a strange dark shape started to come toward me from behind the females. As I still played, I realized that 6 black Bulls had lined up, like a football team, and slowly approached. There was a tiny wire fence between me and them. I stopped ..." I'm just a human". I told them. The minute I spoke, every cow became still, and the Bulls broke up and left. I began playing again and was totally ignored.

A night in Hartford at 2:00 AM when I sneaked into the area where the Ringling Brothers kept their dozen Elephants. I stood before the biggest and felt their rhythm as they all rocked with chains on one leg. I began a blues improv that matched their movements and after a few minutes the elephant before me reached out his trunk to touch me. My hand touched his greeting and then suddenly he rose into the air above me, and stood on one leg. He stared at me, eye to eye, from this position as I played, until suddenly a guard was screaming at me and demanding that I leave.

What a connection.

Around 7:00pm at dusk, I climbed a very small mountain in some Ct. Town and began playing on a cliff. About 20 minutes into it I began hearing a guitar that seemingly was accompanying me. No one was near so I began following the sound while continuing to play along with it. It led me back down the mountain, past my parked car and toward a street with houses. I noticed that the entire street was filling up, everyone had left their houses to hear what was happening and I began to walk, still improvising, down the street toward the music.

Then I saw that a man had placed his Amp on his porch and was indeed playing electric guitar with me as I approached. When I got near, we nodded to each other, and I turned around and walked away, both of us still playing, disappearing without speaking, no one ever said a word. I have no idea where I was.

Obviously I have to leave out hundreds of experiences, but one gig at a Cleveland bar has to be mentioned. A duo gig with Corsano, playing full blast with a "full house attentive" crowd, and suddenly we stopped and froze ... And didn't move or make a sound ... As time passed it became clear that the audience and waitresses and bartenders had frozen also ... Silence ... No movement ...

Suddenly a bus pulled up to the front door. People got off the bus and walked in. No one in the bar moved or made a sound. The bus riders looked around, stood there as if in the twilight zone, and then left ... A few minutes more and we began playing again ... The bar came back to life. Later ... No one mentioned it.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you" gaining" or" sacrificing" something in collaboration?

Both solo and group improv are needed to feel whole ...

Solo puts you on the spot and helps you believe you have the music within you. It's scary and liberating. Group improv brings the harmonies and the energy and can result in wonderful collaborations. (hopefully). It's not one or the other.

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

Both I guess. I'm just letting it happen so it's inventing itself. But even the Subconscious has to use what's there and will re-arrange patterns and lines you've used before.

It's always new, but at times might not seem all that new.

To you, are there rules in improvisation?

There aren't any rules. Each person or group should just do what they'd like. Set your own standards.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work - and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

In all my 50 years of playing freeform music, we've never discussed what was coming. It's partly listening and reacting, but on a deeper level it's listening and becoming. It's how an improvised group piece can be incredibly tight. The music itself has taken over.

It doesn't always work but when it does it can feel mystical. When everything works, it's because you've let yourself get out of the way.

Solo ... Same thing.

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

Personally, it's surrendering to whatever is about to happen.

I deal in freeform so I don't have to worry about what we planned to do. We didn't plan anything so surrendering to the Subconscious feels natural.

I've used Meditation, prayer, drugs, booze. But it all comes down to just letting it happen.

No difference for me really whether it's solo or group improv.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What do you I feel that music and improvisation expresses about life and death?

Actually, almost everything we do is an improvisation. Each conversation, the clothes we decide to wear, the food we decide to eat, the people we choose to hang with ... and on and on. People sometimes say "There's nothing new under the Sun."

Truthfully, there's nothing old under the Sun. Everything is always different as the Universe improvises itself each split second. We are all part of it ... Tap your life in and go with the flow, if possible.

Life is improvised.