Past Due by the Caballero-Verde Quintet was a welcome breath of fresh (Latin) air last month full of grooves that makes me long for summer finally to appear.
In the meantime the Quintet has been re-named the Danny Green Quintet with Ian Tordella on saxes and flute replacing trumpeter Bill Caballero.
In his jazz-not-jazz interview Danny Green talks about the new energy Ian Tordella has brought to the group, his love for Latin music, his other groups Gente Fina and Trece de la Suerte and much more.
Q: Please tell me something about yourself. You’ve started quite early with music at the tender age of five. How pushy were your parents back then?
Danny Green: My parents were always supportive of my piano studies. They were never overly pushy, but they made sure that I practiced and was prepared for my lessons. I think I went through phases where I really enjoyed practicing as well as phases where practicing felt like a chore. Around the age of twelve, I got pretty tired of the music I was playing and decided to quit taking lessons. Of course my parents were disappointed that I wanted to quit after seven years of lessons, and so my father bought me my first keyboard with the idea that it would keep me interested in music. He was right. I started playing around with the sounds and connecting it to the computer. Soon I started learning how to play the music that I was into by ear, and from that point on, music became a passion instead of a chore. The only pushiness then from my parents was to stop playing so that they could sleep at night.
Q: Who has influenced you musically and how did you discover your love for Latin jazz?
Danny Green: I have had a ton of musical influences throughout the years. I studied jazz piano with Kamau Kennyata at UCSD for three years, and he would definitely stand out as a major influence. My classical teachers, John Mark Harris and Luciane Cardassi, have also been very influential as well as Rick Helzer, who I am currently studying jazz with. As far as artists go, there are so many to mention. I’ve always been very interested in the mixing of styles, and so my two biggest jazz and Latin jazz influences are Brad Mehldau and Danilo Perez. They both have such unique sounds which touch on their roots and move forward at the same time. Other musicians that have influenced me include Chano Dominguez, Caetano Veloso, Wayne Shorter, Ernan Lopez-Nussa, Michel Camilo, Chucho Valdes, Paquito d’Rivera and Ruben Gonzalez. I tend to go through phases where I spend months listening to a specific musician or composer. For the past two years, I’ve been immersing myself in the music of Rachmaninoff. I learned his Second Piano Concerto, and I’m working on the third. More recently, I’ve started doing a lot of listening to Mahler’s symphonies (especially No.2 and 8).
I’ve been into Latin music for about six years. My first exposure to it was seeing the Buena Vista Social Club documentary. Shortly after seeing it, I got some of their albums and started playing along to the music. Eventually I checked out Chucho Valdes and Irakere and fell in love with that music. Through friends and other musicians, I kept hearing of more and more Latin Jazz artists.
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