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WEHM All Access - Sag Harbor American Music Festival - Daniel Garbin · WEHM All Access

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's WEHM All Access as we get to know the performers at this year's Harbor American Music Festival.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the uh festival welcomes the Daniel Garvin group of featuring Grammy-winning trumpeter Randy Brecker.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And joining us is Daniel Garvin.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, how are you?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Good, thank you.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Very good.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for uh for doing this and sitting down.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a chance to get to know the artists that are performing at this year's festival.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of want to kind of go back a little bit and learn where you came from and what you're involved in these days.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I did read that you grew up in Romania.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is is that true?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and how where did you kind of start to uh to grow up and learn about music?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh first of all, I want to thank you for uh giving me the opportunity to um have this interview.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Our pleasure.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh great a pleasure, and uh also I'm very honored to participate in the festival.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also a great honor to uh participate uh not only with my group but to have uh a special guest, uh Maestro Randy Brecker.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be that'll be great.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's terrific.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up in Romania, um um very close to uh the border with Ukraine where the conflict's happening in Hungary, and so there are many influences there from various cultures, uh musically, culinarily, uh culturally.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that um that helped.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um then later on um I uh joined uh in high school I joined a kind of like a jazz, jazz rock fusion band um with some of the peers from the um high school of music.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh first year of college, I joined the uh jazz big band.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to study economics, uh finances, and banking, but um it wasn't really something I really liked too, but it was something that a lot of people were doing, um, especially you know after the fall of the communism in Romania.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it was um uh kind of like a crowd decision to go where everybody else goes.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I was my interests were were were in mathematics and were in music.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's very interesting.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've described in some interviews I I've looked at and read being fascinated early on by musicians that were around you in your hometown that kind of move fluidly between genres.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm curious when you think about your own work, do you feel that you're still kind of moving between those genres?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'd imagine you kind of are.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh, of course.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um music it's something that speaks to you.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So uh for me that's the most important thing.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than being uh, I don't want to say stuck, but but rather than sticking with a single genre, I stick with the melody that uh and the music that resonates to me.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I mean uh in in in my music, um I I blend together uh elements of jazz with elements of Indian classical music, Romanian folklore, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian music.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And who knows what else the future will bring.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's fun.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: When did you come over to the States?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was um in 1998.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So 28 years ago.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how long have you been a uh you're a press professor of mathematics at Queensborough Community College?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been there?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there since uh 2012.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um so oh yeah, that's some years.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I'm curious the the relationship, because there certainly is one, uh, but with music and mathematics.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: How how has that kind of helped you?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um how the way you compose, the way you improvise, I'd imagine that has an effect in kind of the way you see the world.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, yes, it does.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, of course, there are um there are so many connections between mathematics and music.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we would need a lot of time to go over those.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and but at as far as for me, um so um when you do um when you compose a song, you know, sometimes you have some inspiration, it comes to you, you have some idea, but sometimes you get stuck.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um it takes time for you to you know to you have to ruminate and you have to not give up.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's maybe the the way out, the writing the whole thing head to toe will come in a day, maybe it will come in in a week, maybe in months.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, who knows?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe when you think it's finished, you may have some other ideas that will take you, maybe will take the song into a slightly different direction.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, like um, for instance, I had a song that I realized after we recorded, oh, we should have done this part using a hip-hop group.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, mmm, too bad.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wish I had the idea when before recording it, but nonetheless, now we're playing you know with this new idea, so things may evolve afterwards.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: In mathematics, uh things are very, very much similar.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when you do math research, you may be uh you know, ruminating over problems for months and for years.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So and you have to keep at it, and and you know, you don't have to be discouraged.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just accept that something is difficult and just you know, leave that thought behind and uh work on the things that you have to work on, compose the things that you have to compose, and that's that.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: It teaches you patience, uh for for sure.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course you have the connections, uh, you have all the structural connections, the geometry of music, the geometry of mathematics, um the the physics of sounds and and all those, you know.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that's that could be uh at least one course.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm cute.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I read that you you went to India and led you to the sitar and Indian classical music.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what did that instrument do for you creatively?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it's uh it's certainly interesting how you you came about that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: When did you first uh start?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I went to um the Harish Chandra Research Institute in Al Habad, it's a very famous research institute.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for a math conference, I was in my uh grad school uh pursuing my PhD in mathematics in 2006.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um at that point I was already in love with uh Indian culture.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I because of my uh I was living very close to Jackson Heights, um, so I was there in the Little India and I was really in awe of all the um uh the flavors and the spices and the food.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I saw a sitar in in one of those uh shops and I said, Oh well, maybe one day I'll buy one.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And a few years later, uh in 2006, I I said, okay, I'm definitely gonna buy one, and especially going to India, it's gonna uh allow me to get a much better musical instrument than I would buy here.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I used the help of um one of my uh um PhD colleagues, uh candidate colleagues, so my uh my my friends from grad school, whose uh aunt uh lived in New Delhi, and she was a classical singer.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And she took me to the store and she introduced me to the people, and you know that's how I got a pretty good deal on the guitar.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So how long did it take for you to feel comfortable playing it in in front of people, so to speak, performing?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, uh after that it took a while because I was finishing my PhD, so I put it on the back burner.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: But um, some years afterwards I started practicing.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I started watching um um and starting uh all kinds of um things about you know how to play the music, what a raga is, um, all these uh different technicalities.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um the transition wasn't that difficult given that I had um, you know, you know, I was a musician at that point.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: So uh but still, I mean, um the way you play and how you should play it, and and um the way you build a melody, you know, it's it's much, much different than you know, let's say in in Western music, you know.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So in in jazz, you may have two minutes to build a solo.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a long one.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the classical music, it takes a long time to build that solo.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So now you have to um to sort of like marry the two, you know, not too long, uh, but not too short.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's that's that's the philosophy.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and since I play guitar, it also helped, it helped with the transition towards sitar.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it's not uh it's not the same thing.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh there's different finger rings, there's different ways of playing.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of pulling strings, a lot of pulling strings, and um a lot of practicing on those.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sure.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm curious what your your composing and your writing sessions are are like and how often and are you working on what are you working on now as far as um different different songs and different albums?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so right now, um well while we're finishing uh tracking the sitar dances, so this is an album that we tracked um uh last summer, and there's still a few things to do.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, I'm working on the next uh project.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um and I've I have some I have a good amount of material, so to say.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um two new compositions I've already tried on on live, um, because that's where uh the test is.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I want to try it live, I want to see how it is, and give the musicians uh an opportunity to um you know go over the parts, uh experiment um with different ideas.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's um my love for you.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's one, I mean, if it matters, my love for you is one of them, and uh A Story of Longing uh is another one.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: So those we've already played.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I had some other material that I composed together with my uh wife, producer and producer Simona Pop.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those we haven't touched yet, those are you know ready or not, uh it depends.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And um just uh as of last month, I wrote um um a new piece.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um as far as the writing process, um, I I like the inspiration to come to me.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's not like a nine to five job where you go there and say then inspiration will come through emails or something.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I let the inspiration come to me.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: But once it does, the first thing I do, I record myself um uh using my phone.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe I have the main ideas, and then uh if there's uh if I think that it has potential, then I go start charting using uh worst and classical notation.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned your wife uh helps her um play a role in producing.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: How does that collaboration work with someone so close to you?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: How does that um how does that affect the creative process?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: It helps because you know uh uh we know each other really well, so we know what we want, uh and we can communicate ideas very uh very easily between us.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um when it comes to um doing the production, you know, there's many aspects that you know people say, oh, you're a musician, so you're having fun only.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not true.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: You have to go all through do all these uh you know other things.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, uh make sure um you have the musicians for that particular gig.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or um when you go into a studio, um make sure that everybody has their parts and has their charts, and uh um there's a um there's a lot of uh logistic that goes to it.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, just and and of course, social media is another very time-consuming thing.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to composing together, we've we wrote a few songs together.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it may happen that uh sometimes she may write a melody and I might I may put the chords over it, or um that kind of uh splitting the tasks into two, and then we can consult, we can debate, oh, does this work?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh should we do this?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Should we leave this out?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, things like this.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're involved in a lot of different projects, and then you're you're busy in the city with uh the jazz community uh as well.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious what what because you've been all over uh into various places.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: How does the the New York jazz community compare to different places in the world you've been?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm just curious how uh how different it is, how similar.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what's your what's your perspective on it is?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's I mean, uh for jazz, New York is the place to be.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's just uh it's enormous, you know.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Many years ago, I was thinking like, uh, how come you know, I was just going to the um um Montreal Jazz Festival, and I was like, how come Montreal has a jazz festival and New York City doesn't?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, I was naive, of course.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's you can see jazz every day, like literally every day of the cal of every calendar there you can go to some club and see jazz, and it's not just one club, there's there's many clubs that you can see.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean there is a New York City Jazz Festival, but it's you know it's not as I guess advertised as or as big as it's as the Montreal Jazz Festival, but still, New York City has so much to offer that you know it's uh um you know it's it's something else, it's it's unique.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, other places like Montreal, Toronto, um uh they have um uh a jazz scene, but it's way, way smaller.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Paris has a jazz scene, but it's you know it's uh pretty small compared to compared to New York.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and the caliber of of musicians here uh it's just uh it's just amazing.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you know that's yeah.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, have you ever have you gotten back to Romania recently?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh um no, no.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Last time I was there it was uh seven years ago.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, we've been thinking to go there, but um it just uh didn't materialize.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe next year, but who knows?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with the recordings and with all these things, it's very difficult to get there, you know.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I would imagine.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you are performing on that Sunday, the 27th, at the Sank Harbor American Music Festival uh with uh Grammy winning trumpeter Randy Brecker, and I'm curious uh your relationship with Randy.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you guys known each other?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um well uh I was a very great fan of Randy Brecker and uh the Brecker Brothers.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I really loved um that uh you know the the style of music that that they play, they I mean they they were fluent in so many genres.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um including some folklore, you know, um added towards the um the end Michael Brecker was studying Bulgarian folklore, and I was surprised to find that out.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, so um being such a great fan of Randy, um and um we thought actually my wife proposed that you know maybe we should let's contact him, let's see if he'd be interested into tracking um into doing a couple of tracks for uh uh the sitar dances.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is the recording that I play sitar only.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't play guitar, so it's just sitar.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we uh we have sitar, piano, drums, tabla, bass, uh, and saxophone, but um the saxophone parts um you know didn't quite resonate.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we um we thought that a more mellower sound would would complement the um the tone of the sitar.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So then we thought um I was very nervous.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: We thought, okay, let's contact uh uh Mr.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Breaker.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, oh maybe he'll say no, and I'm like, oh okay.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: But then to my surprise, um he said yes, and I was uh really excited.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, uh give me the tracks, tell me what I have to do, and give me the charts.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's right.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the rest was history.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't wait to see it.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's happening this Sunday, the twenty seventh, two o'clock.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel Garbin Group featuring Randy Brecker at the Sag Harbor American Music Festival.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, thank you so much for your time.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it getting to know you a bit and uh wish you the best and can't wait to see you out there in Sag Harbor.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, thank you.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.