Bruce Forman: A Jazz Master at the Height of His Powers

An interview conducted for a feature appearing on JazzWest.com, September 2003

By Jerry Karp

Guitarist Bruce Forman has been an ever-intensifying force in the jazz world since he first gained notice outside San Francisco (where he first came of age as a player) by hooking on with alto saxophonist Richie Cole in the late 70's. Over the intervening years, Forman has turned himself into a master guitarist with a singular style highlighted by lightning fast yet graceful bebop-influenced lines that never sacrifice clarity or tone. He has also made great contributions as an educator and a writer of instructional music books.

For many years, Forman has been a fixture at the Monterey Jazz Festival, both as a performer and as a steady participant in the Festival's education workshops. Recently, Forman took his education efforts several steps further by initiating the JazzMasters Workshop. Now operating in several venues in California and New York, JazzMasters provides classrooms where budding young jazz musicians can receive hands-on instruction and mentoring from professional players, all free of charge to the students.

In 2003, the Monterey Jazz Festival included Forman, along with local greats Calvin Keys and Eddie Duran, in its Tribute to San Francisco Bay Area Guitarists. Two weeks before the Monterey tribute, Forman sat down for a phone interview to discuss the upcoming event and the inspiration behind JazzMasters. We also talked about his early days on the San Francisco music scene, the evolution of his famed guitar style, his two recent CDs and his new novel, Trust Me.

• 2003 Monterey Jazz Fest Tribute
• The JazzMasters Workshop
• Getting Started in Jazz: 1970's San Francisco
• Developing a Singular Technique
• The Importance of Knowing the Words
• Two New CDs and a Novel
• The Evolution of Personal Style

It must be a kick for you to be honored at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

It definitely is, especially alongside Eddie Duran and Calvin Keyes, guys I grew up listening to, playing with and learning from. And in such a prestigious place like the Monterey Jazz Festival, it's very, very gratifying.

Who will you have in your group?

It will be my trio that I played with all those years at Pearls, and with whom I've recently recorded again—Vince Lateano on drums, John Wiitala on bass, and we'll have a special guest, a saxophonist from New York named Sherman Irby. He was most recently in Roy Hargrove's band for a number of years and also played in the Wynton Marsalis Lincoln Center Orchestra. He's working with me on an education project I've been doing for the last several years.

The JazzMaster's Workshop?

Right.

Before we move off of Monterey, I do want to ask you about your history there. You've performed there many times, haven't you?

(Laughs) Yeah, I have. By last count, I think this will be my twenty-first appearance there. I've pretty much played every one since 1979.

Do you have any special memories?

Obviously, playing with Dizzy Gilliespie was one of them. That was the year that my band was the house band for Monterey. Then later I joined the All-Star band, which was the house band. One of my first experiences there was at a guitar summit, with a rhythm section of Shelly Manne, Hank Jones and Andy Simpkins [with guitarists Ron Eschete, John Collins, Eddie Duran and Mundell Lowe] was definitely a highlight.

I guess that's one of the great things about jazz, is that the great players get to perform with each other. All the great classical violinists, for example, don't get to play together.

I never thought of it one way or the other, but one of the beauties of jazz is that we have a language. When we play together, we have a conversation. We tell our stories and work together to create new ideas. Our training and our experience are geared toward that type of expression.

I guess the basic language is way the music is played, and also there's the standard repertoire. You know you can say “How Long Has This Been Going On?” and everyone on the stage will know how to play it.

Right. And they'll all have their own ideas and we'll all work to find common ground. It works like a conversation or even a business venture.

This leads naturally into something I wanted to ask about your teaching. You've said that students often have to be convinced to learn the repertoire, that they're more interested in learning scales and getting the technical areas down. Does that change with maturity, with learning more about the music, understanding how to open up and embrace that common language?

Well, you know, I've often wondered about that, because at first it was mystifying to me discover that attitude among my students. It was definitely not the case with me when I was their age. Realizing that that's how students were thinking was one of the major factors that led to JazzMasters. There's not a lot of experiential opportunity for young people now, so the need to know the repertoire is not so great, either. And you have a lot of people who are coming out of, perhaps, rock and roll who are thinking, “OK, there are the chords and there are the scales to go with the chords, and it's all like a puzzle to be put together.”

In fact, the way you learn any kind of music is by playing it with other people, and you need the repertoire for that. But with diminishing opportunities to play with good musicians, students are not understanding the need for repertoire. When you go into more of a practice mode, naturally you're going to shut your brain down, and your creativity, and go more towards the technical minutia, rather than the overall sense that, “Hey, I've got to play this tune in order to make it through the gig.” Well, it's not a gig, so . . .

That's what JazzMasters is about, providing opportunities for young musicians to play, and to play with professional players who can be mentors. We believe that the repertoire, then, will naturally come along. If people want to play with other musicians in this setting, they have to know the tunes. So it becomes self-evident and a hell of a lot easier to teach.

I have recently interviewed several jazz musicians who are heavily involved in education. Ellis Marsalis is one. He always talks about, “Let's just play.” Khalil Shaheed and his Oaktown Jazz Workshop follows very much the same philosophy.

Everybody who plays well learned by playing. That is a universal fact. What we need to do is provide opportunities for experience within the context of educating. These things are learned differently by different people, and they're learned in ways that do not necessarily fit the classic didactic mode of teaching.

Is the problem also that a lot of music students get a lot of music education, say, in a high school big band, and maybe the teacher's not a jazz musician at all?

Right, but that big band is still providing a wonderful component to their education. It just should not be the only component. To drop all that onto a high school teacher who's dealing with orchestral music concert music and marching band music and is probably worried about his own gig because of budget cuts, and say, “Oh, he's not a jazz musician so he's a failure,” that's just a pessimistic and cynical way of looking at it. And it's unfair to the person who's in that position.

This is why I started JazzMasters. We, the jazz community, need to provide the schools with jazz-oriented, jazz-savvy kids, so these kids can shine in that wonderful context where they are all in school together, and they do have this person who's a trained musician to lead the band. And sometimes, then, the students can teach the teacher. It happens often. One of the better musicians will bring in record and hip the teacher to something. And most of the good teachers are totally down for that. I think we have an overly cynical blame-oriented concept in this society right now. Instead of seeing what we can do to fix things, everybody wants to find somebody to blame for everything.

You mentioned that this is why you got involved with JazzMasters. Can you talk about that just a little? It seems to me that so many of the jazz musicians I've talked to have made education a major part of what they're about. It doesn't seem to me just that it's part of what they need to do to make a living. It seems to me that jazz musicians, more than any other musicians I talk to, are passionate about educating younger people in their art form.

Hmmm. That's interesting. Obviously, there is an economic component there. The diminishing of clubs and things of that nature has demanded that jazz musicians diversify into different ventures. That being said, I do believe that jazz is a language that has always been taught in that mentoring way. All of us who've learned to play were mentored by somebody. There's a responsibility that when you reach a certain point in your life and your career and your music, you feel the need and the desire to give back. If you've ever taught anybody anything that you really care about, and you see the light bulb go off, you see that they're not only getting it but they're loving it, and they're feeling what you felt, the personal rewards for doing that exceed the economics.

JazzMasters came about in part because I was very fortunate. I came up in San Francisco when there were a lot of great players and a lot of clubs, and everybody was very supportive to me. I got into the scene very quickly and learned so much, formed lifelong friendships, met people who taught me things.

It seemed so simple to me, that just by helping young musicians get to play with good players we could help move the music forward. We'd also help society, in the fact that kids need something. Music is a discipline that helps in so many ways. It's enabled me to achieve many things outside of music, simply because I understand that if I apply myself, and go get advice from the best people and hang out with the best people who do that specific thing, then I can succeed at that pursuit. It's a very simple schematic for achievement.

I just thought it would be good to get the institutions out of the way and put the musicians together directly with the kids in a nurturing environment that was free of charge. Because I also saw that kids whose parents had the most resources were gaining a real advantage in terms of exposure to quality training. What was happening was that, well, it costs a lot—the instruments and the private lessons and the music camps. The music was losing its common thread throughout our society.

My idea of JazzMasters was to put a non-profit business model together, so that we could raise money through donations and grants and things of that nature, and then provide free workshops for students. And that has been going very well now for three years. While we were going, we also realized that the kids coming up weren't as good as the kids before them. Upon some research, it wasn't hard to realize that elementary school programs were dwindling and challenged.

So we decided to start a development program in a Boys and Girls Club here. These kids have never had an instrument in their hands. I get local musicians, and we get in and we play and we bring instruments and have the kids play. They're just playing one-tune grooves and getting excited about music. What we're basically doing is creating our own farm system, in a way, but also providing these kids with contact with people who are passionate about what they do for a living. That's a really good role model to show some of these kids in the lower income brackets, because they don't see a lot of that.

And to also get enthused with music and to learn about the discipline and the culture of music and everything. There are a million studies that show that kids who play music in schools do better, anyway. We can do our part, because we're the musicians, the one's who are best suited to doing it. And without a huge beaurocracy, we can provide this service at pennies on the dollar compared to the average group that tries to do it. And we've been so successful now that we've got five or six programs running—we have regions opening now, we have new regional directors. We have a program in NY, we have a program in LA, and we’ve expanding into San Francisco, where Eddie Marshall is regional director. It's an idea that not only the public has taken to, but the musicians as well. We've provided a model that's so easy and so cost effective that it's a lot of fun for all of us.

Maybe part of it is that everyone realizes just how bad things are, so musicians are starting to say, “Well, we have to take part.”

Well, I don’t think that sitting around complaining or being a talking head is really productive. It seems to be a national sport right now, but I think that making a positive effort is definitely the way to go.

Rolling up your sleeves is always the most satisfying thing to do.

Yeah, especially in this case. What are we doing? We're playing music. If we go out, which we won't, but if we did, what would be the down side? We played music with a bunch of kids for free. Gosh. If that's the downside, here, I can live with that.

How does playing with the kids inform your own music, or does it?

It really does. The big thing is that music is wonderful, but the music business can get you down. It's got elements that can be very frustrating and can really put a weight on you. Playing with kids, especially the younger kids, puts you in touch with why you play music in the first place. It's constantly reaffirming. Oh, you do this because it feels good. You do this because you like it. You do this because it's magic, because you're communicating with people and expressing yourself. On that level, it's a hell of a lot easier to get up on the bandstand and just be in love with your sound and in love with the music you're playing.

When you've just got finished looking at it through the eyes of a six-year-old who can't believe what they just did with a drum or a recorder.

Right. And you're simplifying your statement in order to help them understand it. It brings a whole new foundation and depth to what you do, as well as an emotional connection to it, which gets stronger. We all feel better about ourselves because we're doing something, and it's the right thing to do. That turns into every aspect of your life, from your health to your emotional well-being to your business to everything.

I'd love to talk about your career a little bit, about your history. You were talking about getting to play a lot of great people as you were coming up in San Francisco. I guess Richie Cole was one of the first . . .

Well, no, Richie was the first big touring act. But by the time I played with Richie, I'd already played with Woody Shaw some. I played with Smith Dobson a lot, and Hadly Caliman. And I'd played with Dave Marshall and Eddie Moore. You know, the guys around town. Pony Poindexter, John Handy. Just phenomenal talents who were living in the Bay Area. I'd even played with Joe Henderson. Not in his band, but a number of times.

We're talking about the late 70's?

Well, the mid 70's really.

So that was a great era for jazz here.

You know, it's always a great era for jazz, whether people know about it or not. It was kind of underground. There were a couple of good clubs around. The Reunion was one, there were a couple of clubs on Union Street and the Keystone was hitting its heyday.

I remember Passim's.

Yeah. There were clubs all around. They came and went. Even some lounges, like Montefusco's. I would just go around to the clubs and play, and everyone was really cool about it, and then I started working gigs. You know how it is.

You mentioned in a couple of interviews I've read about being taken by Charlie Parker, that his sound was something that really turned you on to jazz. Richie Cole was certainly a proponent of that jazz style. Did he hear you playing that way and get interested in you for that reason? It's sort of a chicken and egg question, I suppose.

Sure, I know what you mean. The funny thing was that I met him through Vince Lateano. Richie had come to town and used Vince. His thing was going around and using local rhythm sections. He was playing with Smith Dobson and Vince. Vince and I had a gig at a place in North Beach at the time at a place called Paydas. And Vince said to him, “I've got this gig down on Columbus. Why don't you come over and play?” It was at Columbus and Union, right down there. I think it's an Italian restaurant now.

So Richie came down and sat in with us. I guess after the first solo he heard me play, he walked over and said, “Hey, you sound like Sonny Stitt on the guitar.” Which is not far from Bird, and the fact is that I did listen to almost as much Sonny Stitt as I did to Bird. His playing easier was to bring off the record, if you know what I mean, but equally incredible.

Later, Richie said, “Well, I've got these dates coming up. Why don't you come play on them?” Richie really loved the sound of a guitar playing a harmony below the alto sax. It's a really good sound. It was very easy for me to play like him, which a lot of guitar players would find difficult, because of the instrument and where they were coming from. So that's where it started, and I did that gig for a number of years.

To prepare for our interview, I pulled out my copy of Live at the Village Vanguard that you guys did in '81. Also my copy of Bop for Kerouac, the album you did with [vocalist] Mark Murphy.

Oh, that was a fun little record.

I was a jazz DJ in New Orleans from '79 through '86, so I was listening to those records and playing them on the radio in those days. It was a lot of fun to go back and listen to them again. Here's a non-musician's question for you. You were talking about your phrasing and your ability to play that kind of music. Is there a particular challenge for a guitarist to take Sonny Stitt or Bird and transfer it onto your instrument that would be different from what a horn player goes through?

Sure! Well, a horn has a distinct quality. You can blow it. So therefore, you can get longer notes on the instrument. You can actually swell a note. If you just blow harder while you're holding a note, you get a crescendo. A guitar cannot do that unless you have some kind of electronic process.

A wah wah pedal.

Or a volume pedal. Something like that. I wanted to develop a style that was more liquid sounding, fluid, to get the notes to run together like a saxophone can. With a guitar, you have an instrument that's got frets and strings that you have to pick for every time it makes a sound. Or if you slur, it's generally going to lose volume as you do it, because there's no attack to push the volume through. So to develop a touch that will support all that nuance you can get from the saxophone was a big challenge. Now, I didn't do it in a methodical, analytical way. I heard Bird, and I heard Stitt in my head, and I heard Cannonball, and I wanted to get that sound. I almost willed it out of the guitar. Later, in workshops and such, students would ask me questions. "Well, you do this, and everybody else sounds like that. How does it happen?" At that point (laughing), I had to figure out what it was that I was doing.

It comes from a very light touch on the right hand, being very relaxed. A very positive touch on the left hand so that I keep the note resonating until the next note is struck, and then being very, very accurate. When I do go to strike that next note, that next finger has to be there, and I still have had to keep contact until the last second with the other one. It came out of wanted to hear that, but then it developed naturally. Which I think is pretty much how all personal style does. If you put the analytical in front of the sound, you're always going to come up short, in my experience. So, that's kind of how it happened.

And then, piano players always sounded very interesting to me, moving harmonies inside of chords. Guitar players were often playing big, blocky chords, while I liked hearing a lot of inner voices moving, more like counterpoint than like big blocks of chords. So I had to develop a very light touch in the right hand so my fingers would be free to move around, even when I was holding what some people call “grip” or “block.” Your typical bar chords. Without getting too technical, that was more or less the process.

You've also referred to the importance of knowing tunes and even of knowing the words to songs. That is something I've heard musicians say pretty often. I've even heard one musician criticize another by saying, “He plays like he doesn't know the words.”

Well, some people would say that that's just a guy who's trying to find something bad to say about someone. But I'll agree. I find that knowing the words to a tune does make my playing better and makes it easier to play that tune.

Why?

That's the question. Why? Well I guess you could say that I know the story of the song. For me, I think it's more a matter of the length of the notes that I'm playing and which notes that I choose to emphasize. Naturally, if you know the lyric content, you're going to support the words that deserve support. Your way of playing the melody will be more in sync with the lyric phrase, so your playing becomes more lyrical.

That being said, I recognize the difficulty that represents, now, for students, because these are pop tunes that they've never heard. These are their grandparents' pop tunes, or maybe their great grandparents.' So I definitely would love to try the experiment with a school somewhere, doing a control group where I taught 20 people a tune, and ten of the them knew the words and ten didn't. And then have them give a recital and have a jury see if they can identify which kids know the words and which kids don't. Without giving them the ability to mouth the words. (laughs) I guess you'd have to put the kids behind a screen. Just sit and listen to them play the melody and play a solo to it, and really see whether or not we could hear a difference. The bottom lines is I really believe it helps my playing to know the tune.

When you're improvising, when you're past the head and you're soloing, do you have the tune going somewhere in your mind? Or is it so embedded that you don't even need that?

Generally speaking, I hear the melody always has an underlay, a soundtrack to everything I'm doing. Always. Yes. That's what I'm keeping context with. Of course I'm feeling eight-bar phrases and hearing the changes and hearing the harmony, but I'm hearing the harmony constantly altering. The one true thing that's holding me there is the melody.

I wanted to ask you about, The Sound of Music, the recent CD you did with vocalist Michele Weir. Is it different playing with a vocalist? Especially since it's just the two of you on the CD.

Of course it's different. You're supporting the human voice. I really believe that that's what the guitar was meant to do, to be truthful. I guess its lineage goes back to singers and dancers in Spain. It's a very intimate instrument and a very personal instrument. It supports the voice very well, provided, in my opinion, that you don't get try to get too technical with it. The real challenge of that is to stay simple and supportive, and not try to prove you know everything. There's so much you want to do, but you only have so many strings to do it, and basically, you're supporting a singer. So the real idea is that you're constantly remembering that you're supporting something, and, also, to retain that playful attitude. “OK, now we've kind of established this, but we're just going to have some fun and see what we can do with it.” You know what I mean? Egg her on to maybe find something new here. And we're playing without a net, so maybe when things get a little funny, the best idea is to build some tension by, literally, hiding things from the listener. So as you're listening, you're thinking at some places, “Wow, is everything cool? Oh, yeah. Good.”

So I guess a lot of it is that it's a natural place to be. It allows for a lot of personal expression. And of course, Michele's such a great musician on top of being a great singer that it was fun to do. A lot of the arrangements were hers, a lot of the harmonic suggestions she made, which I embellished on as we played through the tune.

How are you acquainted with her?

Actually, I knew about her and we ended up doing a workshop together a year or two ago [Weir is also an accomplished educator, currently on the faculty of the Ethnomusicology/Jazz department at UCLA]. We ended up doing some tunes together. Then she went to my clinic and I went to hers, and that's how it started.

What was behind the decision to keep the whole CD voice and guitar and not to use a rhythm section?

You know, I wonder about that. You'd have to almost ask her more than me. I personally feel some records try to do too much. “Oh, we've got a duo. Oh, we've got a trio. Oh, we've got a quintet. We're going to play a samba. We're going to play some jazz.” To me, those are difficult records to listen to. I think a lot of us make the mistake of trying to play a lot of variety of material on a CD, trying to prove how versatile we are, versus creating a mood. What I like about CDs is that there's not a 1-side and 2-side like records used to have. So you can put a CD on and listen through to the end. And, yes, the mood changes, but the overall mood and sound and texture of what you're into doesn't get disrupted. I guess, if anything, if you put this CD on, you hear a voice and guitar and it takes you to a bunch of new places with the voice and guitar. It's not, “Oh, wow, we've got drums. Oh, wow, we've got piano.” You settle in for a sound and a mood and then you elaborate on that. You dig deeper.

It's a wonderful sound, and for a listener it's a really nice excursion to take in that way.

Personally, I think that the guitar and the voice together are one of nature's beautiful things.

With all of your recording, performing and teaching, you also found time to write a novel, Trust Me, which is out now.

I've been writing novels, I call them manuscripts, I guess (laughs), and finally one was accepted and published. I'm proud of it, and think it's a really cool story, and I think that people who dig jazz and music will really like it, because the main character is a jazz guitarist.

Does it take you a little inside what musicians go through?

Yeah, it does, actually. Without being autobiographical, it does take you through what some musicians, in particular me, feel while we're playing, and what music sounds like to us in our head, in a verbal context, in words. And maybe some of the craziness of the music scene and the business, as well.

Last but not least, I wanted to ask you about BOOTLEG VOL. I: Dedication, your recent trio recording with Vince Lateano and John Wiitala.

First of all, you should know that CD has been bought, and will be distributed by, a company called BluJazz. They're going to repackage it and distribute it.

On the BOOOTLEG CD, you selected musicians who have been important to you, like Ellington/Strayhorn, Ahmad Jamal and Monk, and put your own spin onto some of their songs. Is that kind of a wire that you're walking, a thin line? You want the performances to represent the musicians themselves and the music you heard and that inspired you, but you want the numbers also reflect your own style.

Well, yeah, I guess so. But you know, the fact is that anybody that tells you they're not walking that wire every second of the day is a liar. Let's face it, we are what we've heard and what we've liked. And then we play it our way. That's what jazz is. My intent upon doing that was to allow the listener to get an insight into another artist from my perspective. For instance, I took something from Ahmad Jamal that I particularly liked and made an arrangement and played a piece. Well, naturally it doesn't sound like Ahmad Jamal, but at the same time, now you'll get a sense of a specific aspect of Ahmad Jamal that you may not have been aware of.

You may have just liked Ahmad Jamal because it sounded good to you, but now you've got an insight into his playing so that next time you put one of his records on, you'll probably hear something new, and it will add to your enjoyment. And if you're a fan of mine, you'll get a chance to hear me do something different, and you'll be able to listen to my playing and concentrate on more than just that it sounds good, if you desire to do that.

In terms of the creative process, whether it's there consciously or not, that line always exists. We can't avoid it. We are who we are, and we become who we are by what we listen to and who we played with.

So everything is a synthesis and it all depends on whether or not you're thinking about the process at any given time.

I prefer the word “continuum,” but I agree, yes. Whatever your word is, that's what it is. We're all evolving creatures, and we're all products of our own experience. The idea of developing yourself in a vacuum is, as you well know, a farce.

Well even just listening to the Richie Cole albums from the 80's that you played on, and then hearing Bootleg, you can hear an evolution in playing. I'm sure you'd say, “Thank god for that.” Over all those years, you'd want there to be an evolution. I could ask you, “How did your playing change,” and you'd probably say, “It changed by every single experience I had between one time and the other.”

That's true, and again, there's really not much you can do about it. I have a lot of students who ask, and it's a very young person's question, “How do you develop your own style?” I can remember at a point when I was their age going, “I gotta be me, I gotta be me, I gotta be me.” And then at some point you hit your so-called middle age and you look around and go, “Oh, no. I'm me.” (laughing)

This is what it is. Make the best of it.

It's something you can't get away from. It's gonna be you. So the whole idea is to focus on what you love to do, be honest, follow your heart and let the rest of the stuff kind of fall where it falls.

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