Thursday 12-04-2018 - 13:49

Cast your mind back to Christmas, when internationally respected bassist Jasper Høiby made his way to Durham to teach a masterclass for Durham University Jazz Society. Sander Priston spoke to Jasper about teaching, time signatures, and touring.

It’s the day of the Christmas market. The streets are bustling with tourists, and it’s actually sunny in Durham for once. This is convenient since it is also the day internationally respected bassist Jasper Høiby is coming to Durham to teach a masterclass. Lugging a double bass along cobble-stoned streets, the tall and slender Scandinavian effortlessly paves his way through crowds of sightseers.

I’d hoped to interview him over a quick bite to eat, but all coffee shops were unsurprisingly chock-a-blocked. As I frantically dragged him from café to café, Jasper eventually stopped me in my tracks and asserted politely but firmly “Sander, I need a coffee. Now.” All at once, I sweat about half my body weight.

Thankfully I found him those things and the masterclass was a success. About a month later, Daniel Garel and I called him to conduct an over-the-phone interview. Introducing myself as “the boy who couldn’t find you a coffee in the smallest city in England,” he chuckled and simply replied with “I know mate, I remember you.” I nervously laughed back.

Jasper’s trio Phronesis is a big deal. Winners of the 2017 'Jazz Ensemble of the Year' award at the UK Parliamentary Jazz Awards and nominated for ‘Best Jazz Act’ at the MOBO Awards, they featured on the front cover of Jazzwise Magazine which called them ‘One of the most exciting bands on the planet today!’ Their international tours have involved gigs at The North Sea Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival and New York’s Jazz Standard. So yeah, pretty big.

 

For their newest album The Behemoth, the trio teamed up with Frankfurt Radio Big Band to record plush and innovative big band arrangements of their own pieces created by Julian Argüelles. How was your experience of playing with a big band?

‘It was great to hear all of those massive arrangements and see what Julian had done to our pieces.’ He added though that working with a big band was ‘a learning experience,’ and that there was a clear difference between the way he and his trio like to rehearse music and ‘the job-like mentality’ of the big band.

Jasper Høiby’s own music is filled with odd time signatures. At the workshop, we played a piece of his called Behind Bars which is in 11/8. So my next question was: what was the strangest odd time signature you remember playing in?

He chuckled at my question and replied by saying ‘I don’t think any time signature is stranger than another. Once you start getting into that world it’s all part of the same thing. It’s all little divisions of twos and threes mixed in an infinite amount of ways.’ This is the advice 2^nd year sax player Zach Fox took away from the workshop, whose favourite moment was when ‘we wrote down all the different ways you can group the beats for Behind Bars and it created some really cool rhythms.’

What do you get out of teaching?

‘Moments where people go “ah, I hadn’t thought about that!” Even doing the masterclass with you guys, it’s like everyone wants to go play with each other and practice and that’s such a great reward – even if you have to spend 8 hours on the train somewhere.’ Honor Hornsby, a 1^st year trumpet player who attended the workshop, told me it made her ‘more open minded about the possibilities of improvisation.’

Jasper recently toured with his band Fellow Creatures. What was it like playing with the Fellow Creatures, and tell us about your recent tour?

And in typical jazz musician fashion he simply replied, ‘Awesome yeah.’

Are you currently working on any exciting projects that you’re willing to tell us about?

He said yes. A solo bass album. Possibly. But beyond that he said little more.

 

We all ended the interview politely, Jasper saying ‘thanks for phoning, I prefer it to typing up answers’ to which we replied, ‘thank you for taking the time to speak to us.’ Then came the ‘you’re welcome, now f*** off…’ to which we tautly listened out for his charming laugh to reassure us he was only teasing. He was. The deep voiced Danish man had a brilliant sense of sarcasm that even the English were unattuned to. Either that, or someone hadn’t had their coffee that morning.

If you would like to find out more about Durham University Jazz Society, find their Facebook page here. You can find more about Phronesis here.