Compositional Contraptions: Anna Webber Speaks

Matt Mitchell, Anna Webber, and John Hollenbeck. Photo by Desmond White.

by Henry Mermer

For Anna Webber’s last performance at The Jazz Gallery, she and Angela Morris convened their acclaimed large ensemble to premiere newly-commissioned music. Webber’s compositions featured both her trademark rhythmic games and striking microtonal harmonies. This weekend, Webber returns with a much smaller group whose music is just as richly-textured—her Simple Trio featuring pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer John Hollenbeck. We at Jazz Speaks caught up with Anna recently to discuss her compositional philosophy and practice, her recent study of just intonation, and the beauty of working with this group for almost ten years.

The Jazz Gallery: What were you working on this morning?

Anna Webber: I have a commission to write a piece for this group called Anzû Quartet, which is a new music group, but also a new group, made up of Ken Thomson, Olivia de Prato, Ashley Bathgate and Karl Larson. It's the "Quartet for the End of Time" instrumentation. It's actually my first commission for a new music ensemble, and I started out being like “through-composed piece, no improvisation—let’s see what happens.” There is going to be some improvisation in the end [laughs], as I realized through writing it, like, that's what I do, that's how I feel comfortable writing music. There are people who improvise in this group—Ken is a good jazz player, and Olivia improvises too—so I should utilize my strengths as composer. It's due October 1, which is still a ways away, but I'm pretty slow, and I'm also on the road for a lot of September, so just trying to get a lot of it done while I can.

TJG: What is the piece like, so far?

AW: I would say the root of the piece is the multiphonic that you get from playing the lowest note on the clarinet, which is kind of a weird, distorted harmonic spectrum, because the harmonic series on clarinet skips every second partial, but it also shrinks as you get higher up in the range. It's kind of a funny harmonic series—D in the bass clef, and then an A an octave and a half above that, and then kind-of an F diminished triad above that. I'm using that as a starting place and trying to find some sounds that work around that. It's a 15 to 20 minute piece. I’m not really sure exactly how much of that time I'm going to use yet, but the piece is in four or five parts.

TJG: I can't wait to hear that.

AW: Yeah, me too. I can't wait to finish it, really.

TJG: Why do you choose to compose in the morning?

AW: Honestly, I think partially it's just getting it off my plate. I didn't used to be a daily composer, that's sort-of a newer thing for me. I’ve incorporated daily composition into my practice within the last two or three years and have found that doing it at the same time every day just helps my brain to know what's coming up. I can prime everything to be creative at that time of day.

But also, I find creative work to be pretty strenuous. Sometimes I look forward to it and sometimes it’s a chore, which is not to say that I don't love composition—I do love it—but when you're in the middle of writing something and have a deadline and you're trying to make it happen, it can really be like pulling teeth. I think just doing it first thing in the morning kind of sets me up for the day.

I also find that if I get into ‘computer-zone’ first thing, it's really hard to come back from that and get my mind off of the outside world. If I start with composition, I'm just in this pure world where I'm not thinking about getting back to that person about a rehearsal or that thing for a tour I have coming up.

TJG: So, you don't check any screens at all before writing?

AW: Oh, I wish I could say that. I do, but just quickly on my phone. I try to stay away from the computer, and I leave my phone in the other room while I'm composing because otherwise it's dangerous.

TJG: I know that you’re really structured when it comes to practicing—dividing that time into shorter chunks, having specifics goals for each session, and so on. Is it the same for when you’re composing?

AW: Yeah, a little bit. My brain works the way that my brain works, so I do tend to break things apart into tasks. I feel like, especially for the 'generating material' part of composition, I try to break things into tasks because that's the work that for me that can be the most fun, but it's almost the most delicate. If I say, "I have three hours to come up with material," then I might burn myself out. But if I say, "I have 45 minutes and I’m just going to generate as much material as possible," then usually I can stop at a place where I still have more ideas, rather than getting to the place where I’m just dragging my heels. I try to break things up into ‘idea generating’ time, and then ‘assessing’ time, where I analyze my ideas and figure out how to move forward from there.

With this particular composition for Anzû, which has nothing to do with what I'll be playing at The Jazz Gallery, there are basically four movements with an option for a fifth, and I'm just spending a little bit of time each day on one or two of those movements, trying to get them all up to the same level so that I can make overarching decisions, as well as micro decisions, and make sure that everything feels connected and cohesive as a unit, trying to bring everything together at the same rate.

TJG: How does the amount or type of pre-compositional work vary when you’re composing for different projects of yours, for example, this piece for Anzû, or the large ensemble piece ‘Idiom VI,’ or your group Simple Trio?

AW: I mean, I really feel like pre-composition is composition. The research, the development, the coming up with ideas—really being open and creative—that sort-of brainstorming for me feels like what writing music is about.

And then once I've gotten to a place where there's kind-of a piece there already, which, you know, let's say on some sort of flowchart of the amount of time that you have to spend on a piece, by the time you get to the two thirds mark, it's all been pre-composition up to that point. At that point, you can see what the piece is, and then the rest feels like arranging to me.

I forget who it was, but I saw a quote where some well-known jazz composer said they don’t feel like a great writer, so they just have to get to that point and then they can arrange; they kind of have this attitude of “I know I can arrange other people's music, and this is the same thing, so now I'm just arranging my music.” I kind of feel that. I know once I get to the point where the piece is visible and it's just arranging that’s left, that's the easier thing for me, to bring it to the end and put the finishing touches on it. It’s generating and brainstorming material, and then just going through rounds and rounds of editing.

I'm reading this George Saunders book right now, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, where he looks at these Russian short stories and breaks them apart. He says a very similar thing about his own writing process, just putting blobs of text on the page and then printing it out and editing everything over and over again.

TJG: I heard that you’ve been studying alternative tuning systems recently, such as just intonation. What has that process looked like for you?

AW: I guess I've been interested in that stuff for a number of years, though it wasn’t until recently that I did any real research into the subject. I'm the sort of person who has a pretty long gestational period for any new thing or new sound in my music. Just intonation is based on ratios that frequencies have, which create intervals, so for example, a ‘just’ major third is a 5:4 ratio. I first started to think about the polyrhythmic implications of this. I was thinking about some just intonation principals in “Idiom VI,” the large ensemble piece, even if I wasn't necessarily implementing ‘just intonation’ into that music.

I got this fellowship to go to the American Academy in Berlin in 2021 for three months, and I used that time to actually study just intonation. I wanted to know a little bit more about all of the different streams of thought that go into it, to do a lot of listening in a more concentrated way with scores, and from there to think about what the practical implications of this are with my own composition, what is it that I want to take forward. That was really interesting, really useful. I think there's a lot of stuff within the ‘just intonation’ world that I find very interesting, and also a lot of stuff that I don't really see as applicable to my own music.

I’m not trying to write drone music, and a lot of the purist just intonation stuff tends to be drone music. I'm interested in groove, and I like things to move a little bit quicker. That was a really interesting study period. I feel like it's so rare as professional musicians that we have a chance to step back and study something for a little while in a focused way, and it was a really cool opportunity to be able to do that. I had filled this notebook full of little sketches, and I actually just finished writing a set of quintet music that I'll be premiering and recording this fall with Adam O'Farrill, Elias Stemeseder, Mariel Roberts, and Lesley Mok.

I've been studying this stuff but I still feel like a baby at it, and I'm kind-of just cherry-picking what makes sense to me, which is kind of how I approach composition in general [laughs], and with other things too, I try to find the thing that resonates with me and just sort of run with that, you know. I wouldn't say that I'm writing ‘just intonation music,’ but I'm writing music now that has some more elements of just intonation within it after many years of exploring microtonality from various perspectives and the natural microtonality of my own instruments.

TJG: When you were in this concentrated study period in Berlin, who were some of the composers or thinkers about just intonation that you were drawn to, those who resonate with your own approach and the music that you want to make?

AW: There's a lot of people. I was checking out some stuff where people weren't necessarily calling it just intonation, but where people were starting to be interested in, like, “the seventh partial [of the harmonic series] is lower than the equal tempered seventh partial. I'm not really sure how I'm going to write that down, but let's try some stuff." I love Ligeti's approach to, what I'll call for my purposes, just intonation. He has equal tempered notes right against these natural partials, and I really love that rub between pure just intonation and straight-up equal tempered harmony. I think that kind of encapsulates what resonates to me about it—it’s not necessarily the purity of having the same fundamental and then running with that, but having a mash-up of various things that creates something that sounds interesting to my ears.

Ben Johnson’s string quartet, as well, “Amazing Grace,” is incredible. I was checking out [Gerard] Grisey also, and he's not a ‘just intonation writer’ either, but I think there's a lot of overlap between the spectral school and the just intonation school just in terms of people looking at alternate tuning systems based on the harmonic series. Mark Sabat is somebody that I really respect for how much research he's done in the field, and he's definitely codified a lot of the notational symbols for that and has created a lot of software (that is basically freeware which you can download,) so he's pretty influential. Catherine Lamb has been working in just intonation for years too, and she’s incredible.

There are tons of other people that I was checking out too. Ellen Arkbro has this piece “For organ and brass,” which is not in just intonation per-se, [because] she actually uses meantone temperament [for the] organ, but it's great. Then there's a tuba trio called Microtub with Robin Hayward and a couple of friends of mine actually, two Norwegian tuba players, Peder Simonsen and Martin Taxt, and all three of them are playing microtonal tubas. They come at the overtone series, like, you hear the overtones, rather than the difference tones.

TJG: I’ve heard you talk about the advantage of the jazz musician as a composer-performer, insofar as they are in the unique position of creating and shaping the environments that they will be improvising within. Can you say more about this and how it informs your compositions?

AW: I mean, this is pretty fundamental to my compositional philosophy. I feel like it's a real advantage that we have as improviser–composers where, first of all, you're probably going to be playing your own music and will write something that is interesting to you as a practitioner of music, as well as a composer. Often when I'm composing for saxophone, I'm writing something that I think is just a little bit outside of my reach, something that I want to be able to play. I think the same goes for creating ‘rooms’ for yourself to improvise in.

A lot of times it's based on something that I'm interested in getting better at exploring in an improvisatory way. There's an element to it that allows you to perfectly create something that will exactly speak to your interests, to the direction that you're trying to go and the way that you’re trying to expand your own ears. And then on the other side of that, you know what you want to play over and what you think you'll sound good on and what's fun for you.

I love playing other people's music, but, you know, you don't always get to improvise on the thing that you think would be the most fun, and that’s not to say that I don't enjoy the challenge, but there's something satisfying about being like, "this would be really fun, and guess what, it's my solo."

TJG: How did you form your group Simple Trio, and how has the band developed over time?

AW: I had been a student of John Hollenbeck’s at the Jazz Institute in Berlin from 2011–2012. I did a one year masters program there after I had already done a masters at Manhattan School of Music. That was actually the first time that I started taking composition really seriously, studying with John. I had this relationship with John, I really wanted to work with him, and I had gotten a grant to write some music and figured that was a great opportunity to put together a band with him and somebody else.

When I moved back to New York, after having been in Berlin for a year, I met Matt Mitchell, and we hit it off and had done a couple of sessions and hung out a little bit. I was blown away by his playing, and I asked him if he wanted to be a part of this band, and he seemed down. So yeah, that was kind of it. I asked these two guys to be part of this band and then I wrote the music for the first album that we recorded in 2013.

I wasn't sure if it was going to keep going or not, it felt like a special project that I was getting together for this recording, but then I was able to get some gigs happening and do a couple of little tours, and then I was able to get some more funding from the Shifting Foundation for the second album that we did. It just kind of kept going from there and reached a place where it seemed to have some momentum of its own.

In terms of how the band has changed over the years, this is the ninth year that this band has been playing together, which feels like a lot. I definitely notice a difference in what I'm writing. I've actually written some new music that we’ll be playing at The Jazz Gallery, and my goal was to write some stuff that was on one page and that we could rehearse right before going on tour, but that didn't happen. I wrote some more epic compositions.

Anyway, I feel like I'm writing music that that suits them better, that is less like ‘one size fits anybody’ composition. I'm not totally certain that I could play most of this music with anybody else other than these two guys, and there's just a level of trust that you get after playing together for that length of time, especially playing this music, which is definitely the most challenging music that I've written. Just to be able to play with people that I trust so much is really special.

TJG: I’m such a big fan of the Simple Trio music, and one piece that’s always stuck out to me is the composition “Binary” from the album of the same name. It’s one of those pieces that somehow finds its way to so many different places, but is also always ‘one,’ static, non- moving... Can you tell me about how you composed this piece?

AW: The album title references binary code because everything from that record uses the internet, in various ways, as source material. For the piece “Binary,” I found a random binary digit generator that spat out a series of 10 number–letter combinations—numbers one through seven or eight, I think, and letters A through F. So, I just had this string of binary digits, like, 2F, 3E... it was completely random. I took that and tried to see if I could write something with it.

I created a little internal logic based on the numbers. I’d have to look at my notes to be sure, but I think I ended up using the number as something related to the time signature and the letter as something related to the pitch. Then I took that a little bit farther and looked at all the different possibilities that were within that, what was there and what wasn't there. I believe that the end section was almost a negative of the beginning section. The piece actually has a binary form also. There’s an A section and a B section, and the whole middle part of the piece is just an interpolation of those two sections; one slowly morphs into the other.

TJG: What are you most looking forward to with your upcoming performance at The Jazz Gallery?

AW: Playing with his band again. This is a tour that has been rescheduled four times. I'm really looking forward to going on the road for a couple of dates before this Jazz Gallery show and just playing with these guys again, getting back into it. I'm also looking forward to playing these new pieces that I've written and testing them in front of an audience. One thing I love about The Jazz Gallery is that you can play the two sets, which will be a nice chance to re-visit some stuff that we haven't played in a while, because we've really only played one gig since 2020, but even before that, we were really just playing the music from “Idiom.”

Anna Webber’s Simple Trio plays The Jazz Gallery on Saturday, September 10, 2022. The group features Ms. Webber on tenor sax & flute, Matt Mitchell on piano, and John Hollenbeck on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. E.D.T. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 reserved cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 for livestream access (FREE for members) for each set. Purchase tickets here.