GOIN' OUT WITH DOM MINASI
Guitarist's latest includes reworkings of Miles Davis and Monk plus some great originals
by Marshall Bowden

Read the Jazzitude review of Time Will Tell by Dom Minasi's DDT + 2
Read the Jazzitude review of Dom Minasi/The Vampire's Revenge

Dom Minasi's latest CD, Goin' Out Again, starts with the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves." A gentle statement of the melody is made by Dom's guitar. Then things get a little more busy, with drummer Jackson Krall offering out of time brush work and bassist Ken Filiano punctuating with some springy notes. Suddenly it's off to the races as Dom gives a boppish statement of the melody before launching into a solo. But what's this? The listener is momentarily left wondering what song is being played as the trio shifts into free jazz mode, with the interplay between members intense and sometimes discordant. Welcome to the musical world of Dom Minasi.

There's plenty of method in Minasi's "madness." First, he is driven by the idea that music should be constantly fresh and recreated. To him, the world doesn’t need another guitar trio recording of "Autumn Leaves" (or probably any new recordings of it) the way it's been done a million times before. "I think that all music invites reinterpretation" he says from his home in New York City. I have asked him if he thinks the music of composers he's recently recorded (Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk) specifically invites reinterpretation. "Once a tune is recorded, I don’t care who it is, and they put this tune out and they play it this becomes the standard. Who's to say you can't take that standard and reinterpret it? It's out there, it belongs to everybody now. So what I do with it is one thing, what somebody else does is another…I think it should be, everything should be open to interpretation. And so that's how I feel about that. 'Cause nobody owns the music and once it's out there, it's out there."

Minasi has been on the New York music scene for some 44 years, and in that time he's played nearly every kind of music you can imagine. But he always wanted to play in a free style, to "go for it" as he says. "I saw a lot of the guys play live. I saw Trane…you know, I used to hang out at Birdland when I was fourteen years old, the original one. They had a peanut gallery there where kids could go and sit in the back and have a Coke for $2.50. And they always had two bands on. So you saw the greatest players in the whole world. And those guys were usually the guys who were creating this music and making it happen, and they were going for it. So from the time I was very young I knew if I was going to play that's how I was going to play. I had to go for it."

Of course, the artistic need to "go for it" and the business side of music don't always mix well. "When I became a so-called full time musician and went to make my living at it, and would work in clubs and stuff everybody kept saying 'you can't play that way.' " So Minasi relearned things so that he could play in the styles that were acceptable in clubs and on bandstands. Then he'd get sick of that and revert to his "real" style. "I kept going back and forth," he says. "But now I'm at the stage where I said, I'm just going to do what I want to do. My kids are grown up, I don't have to worry about any of that stuff anymore." He laughs. Minasi is an affable guy. As our conversation continues and he warms to the topics at hand, I feel more and more like I'm sitting in his living room, drinking a couple of beers and listening to some jazz. It's the same sort of intimacy that Minasi manages on both his new CD and the previous one, Takin' the Duke Out, recorded live at NY's Knitting Factory. I wonder if it's harder to play Minasi's intense, free style in the studio.

"Yes, it's much more difficult in the studio, because I love playing live, and the feedback of the audience, and the energy feeds right into it. With the first CD, Taking the Duke Out, we did that live at the Knitting Factory and we had a packed house and it was…the audience was practically sitting on top of me, and you go that whole feeling. The vibe was different. And I was very concerned about doing a studio recording and not getting that same vibe. But we have played enough live over the last year, because of the Duke album, that when we get in the studio we've got that sound that we want, so I was very, very happy."

Since the trio has probably played many of these tunes live a few times, I ask what elements of the performance are worked out in advance. "The arrangements. The introductions, the interlude…like 'Green Dolphin Street' has an interlude that refers back to certain parts of the tune. And on "All Blues' it's actually being played, the second time around, in two keys at the same time. The guys know what I like. I like to take a motif out of the tune…or a section of the tune and go from that. It's kind of very loose as far as how we're going to play it once we're into it. Different things happen all the time."

Minasi's new album features four of his original compositions. They feature really great melodic material and are both beautiful and swinging. "Dumpy" swings along in 6/8, it's melodic episodes supported by Ken Filiano's bowed bass figure. Dom follows a more standard format on his original compositions, offering a more clearly defined head before getting "out there," "The public does not know my compositions" he explains, "so it is important that they have something to hang onto before I go to another place." Both "Trane's Lament" and "The Day After Next" are sheer beauty. The latter composition features searing bass work from Filiano that transports the listener far away. It's hard to believe that Minasi composed these tracks some time ago and wanted to perform some of them on his second record for the Blue Note label back in the early '70s.

 

>>Next Page