"It's All About Origins:"
The Bicoastal Worlds of Aaron Lington and Paul Tynan
by Jim Dupuis
Plenty of good musicians from all around the world have studied at the University of North Texas. Among them were, a trumpet player from eastern Canada and a sax player from Houston, Texas. They met while studying music at UNT and have gone on to produce five albums of contemporary jazz that are original and breathtaking. Their most recent project Bicoastal Collective Chapter Five has been recently released on OA2, the branch of Origin Records that handles jazz. While this project is important to them, they are also important music educators in their respective countries. Dr. Lington is professor at San José State University where he serves
as Coordinator of Jazz Studies. Paul Tynan, M. Mus. is an
Associate Professor of Music at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where he
teaches jazz trumpet, jazz theory, and arranging. In their spare time (if you can believe they have any) both are/or have been parts of various bands and orchestras playing with other famous, world class musicians in the jazz, pop, R&B and Latin jazz fields. I caught up with them in August of 2017, and of course they were on separate coasts. We had a chat about the new album and their early influences--I guess it really is all about "origins."
Aaron Lington, Paul Tynan
JD: This is
Jim with Jazz Notes on 92.5 the X and tonight I’m speaking with two people who
are on different coasts. I guess we could say they are bicoastal. That will
mean something in a minute or two. I’m speaking to Paul Tynan who is in Antigonish, Nova Scotia and Dr. Aaron Lington who is in San Jose,
California. I will start off with Aaron. Did you have a lot of music around the
house when you were a child?
AL: I had a
fair amount of music. My mom was a pretty good piano player, playing church hymns
and sort of simple songs on the piano. My dad was a huge country and western
fan. He played guitar. He would play Willie
Nelson songs; Waylon Jennings; Ricky
Skaggs; Eagles and some bluegrass stuff. I was surrounded by that growing
up. I enjoyed hearing it and learning a lot about it, as I was pretty young,
six, seven, eight, nine years old.
JD: What
about you Paul?
PT: Similar
story. There was a lot of music around the house. My mom was a traditional
Irish musician. My dad was a traditional Irish dancer. I grew up in that kind
of environment. Sessions at the house. Being taken along to my parent’s gigs,
that kind of stuff. Ya, there was a lot of music in my house growing up.
JD: When
did you guys start taking lessons and what were your first instruments?
AL: I
started taking some piano lessons when I was eight years old and did that for a
few years, until I started playing violin in my middle school orchestra. I
actually started playing violin for a pretty long time—about fifteen years. I
took up guitar in about 1988. I still play a little bit of guitar. I was pretty
heavy into guitar for a long time. Mainly rock and metal and stuff like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani and thing like that. Then I started playing saxophone
in 1990 and really shifted all my focus to saxophone in 1990.
PT: For me
I started playing trumpet in grade six. Playing trumpet specifically and went
through your typical middle school/high school band programs. So, that’s how I
got my start. I didn’t play any instruments before that, really, aside from
some piano lessons, which I hated (laughs), as a kid. So that’s how I got my
start—your typical band program in the schools.
JD: It’s a
good plug for band programs, because you are both wonderful musicians,
composers and educators. You had to start some place and in the school system
is where it is.
AL:
Absolutely.
JD:
Bicoastal. I mentioned that once already. I mentioned it because you have a
series of CDs called Bicoastal Collective
and you are up to Chapter Five, now. Being that you are on different sides
of North America, how did you guys meet?
AL: I’ll
start on that one. Paul and I both started at the Masters program at the University of North Texas in the same
year. This would have been fall of 1998. There were a group of us that bonded
together early on and got to be friends. Played a lot of jam sessions. We were
in a lot of the same classes together. We played a lot of the same ensembles
together at North Texas. When Paul left to take the job in Canada in 2001. Paul
got hired at St. Francis Xavier and
I ended up staying at North Texas to finish a doctorate degree. When I was
hired at San Jose State University in 2004, I wanted to do a record as soon as
I got out there. So in the spring of 2005, I had only been there not very long,
less than a year at San Jose, I called Paul and said “I’m going to do a record
of original compositions called the Aaron
Lington Quintet.” I used some of the really great musicians in the Bay area
and it was a really fun experience. I learned a lot. It was my first album as a
leader. It was not my first experience recording but it was my first experience
as a leader. It was the first thing Paul and I had recorded on together as sort
of the focus of an album. It was one of those things where you thought man I
really think you could take this a few steps further and try to do something
pretty unique with it. So, in 2008 Paul got a grant from the Canada Arts
Council to write a something called The
Story of Langston Suite. It was for a ten-piece jazz ensemble and he said,
‘Let’s do this album in San Jose.” He was on sabbatical and he came out to San
Jose for the year. We brought in people from all over the U.S. and we decided
to call this first album The Bicoastal
Collective and we’ve been going ever since then with Chapter One, Two,
Three, Four and now we are up to Chapter Five.
JD: You
mentioned, for that recording (Bicoastal
Collective Chapter One), you got together with all these musicians. Have
you done any of these recordings where you don’t see each other but do them in
separate studios and get them mixed?
PT: No. And
I personally don’t have any interest in doing that. In part and part about this
great project is that we get to go and hang out together. We actually have a
lot of fun, you know, doing that. Sitting in a studio somewhere and flying
tracks in just wouldn’t have the same thing. It would lose a lot of the magic
of what the Bicoastal Collective is.
Maybe we could do that if there were some editor things that needed to be done
or something that we missed during the actual tracking process when we were
together, but as far as an album concept I don’t know if that would be the best
scenario, musically. You just can’t catch the vibe of the room and the vibe of
the people. You lose a lot.
AL: I
agree. All the albums have been live in the studio. I have been part of some
other projects where I’ve flown in tracks. I understand the need to do that in
certain circumstances, but it’s not what this group is about. This group is
about the vibe and the hang and the camaraderie and making the music the way it
is supposed to be made, which is live and on the spot.
PT: Yes,
agreed.
JD: I think
it shows, too, in the music. There is definitely something there, like you
said, with the vibe and the camaraderie and all that. Now, I think big bands
disappeared because it got too expensive to move them back and forth between
places. Has the Bicoastal Collective
ever done live concerts?
PT: We’ve
done a lot of concerts in various formats. For example, in a few weeks, we are
getting together to play at the San Jose Jazz Festival and we are using the
instrumentation of Bicoastal Collective
Chapter Four, which was a smaller band. There has been some talk about
having Aaron and I come down to one of the universities in Texas to play this music,
again, live, with one of the major university bands down there. We hope that
works out.
 |
| Paul Tynan, trumpet, Aaron Lington, baritone sax |
JD: I hope
it happens and I wish I could get down to San Jose for the jazz festival. It
sounds like it is a lot of fun. You both have a CV that goes on, and on and on,
to the point of ridiculousness (laughs). You guys have played with so many
amazing musicians and ridiculous in a good way of course. For Paul, I follow
you on FB and you were playing in Seville with Dave Liebman?
PT: I
didn’t play in Seville with Dave Liebman. I was in Seville for a month playing
with a bunch of people. I came back to Antigonish and played with Dave Liebman at St. Francis Xavier. But Seville was fantastic. I spent a lot of
time playing music at a club called Café
Naima. It was a great hang. I went there to write a good portion of the
music that appeared on Bicoastal
Collective Chapter Five. That happened and it was pretty cool.
JD: Bonus,
bonus, bonus. Aaron, baritone sax player, composer, educator and plays in a Steely Dan cover band? Is that true.
AL: It’s
not—in a sense yes. It’s not really a Steely
Dan cover band. This is a group called the Tommy Igoe Groove Conspiracy.
It’s lead by a very powerhouse drummer named Tommy Igoe, a New York native, the son of the very famous jazz drummer,
Sonny Igoe. Tommy, like I said is a
really powerhouse drummer and really, fantastic in a multitude of styles. He
relocated to the Bay area a few years ago and started a band with some really,
wonderful players. The saxophone section for example: I am the baritone
saxophone player, the tenor sax player is Tom
Politzer, who is the lead saxophone player in Tower of Power. The alto player is Mark Russo, who is currently with the Doobie Brothers, but he was the long-time saxophonist with the Yellowjackets, back in the day, when
they were winning all their rewards and doing all that stuff. It’s a wonderful
band and we’ve done a wide variety of different kinds of music, but about a couple of years ago, Tommy Igoe,
ended up hiring a really, great guitar player named Drew Zingg, who had
relocated to the Bay area. Drew Zingg
is an alumnus of Steely Dan. We
tried to find some stuff to feature Drew
Zingg on and Tommy (Igoe) was
like, we should just do some re-arrangements of Steely Dan tunes as
instrumentals and feature Drew Zingg on them. I’m one of the primary arrangers for Tommy Igoe’s band so I did several
arrangements for an album we did of all Steely
Dan music. That particular album, I guess you could call it a Steely Dan cover band, but that’s not
really what the band is. We did a recent album of all Steely Dan music.
JD: I
didn’t mean to denigrate Igoe’s band
and it was just easier to say it that way and I am aware of the differences and
would like to hear that album. Aaron, you are more-or-less in Silicon Valley.
Do you find that there is more money for the arts due to all the rich tech
companies in the area and does any of it trickle down to jazz, or it is what it
is?
AL:
(Laughs) I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I don’t have any figures to support or
contradict that. I can say that I do feel that the arts scene in the Bay area
is very strong. That may be due to the fact that the average household income
is higher than the national mean, so people have more disposable income to
support the arts and attend live music and go to concerts and all that kind of
stuff. There is some support in terms of some of the high-tech companies hiring
musicians for parties and what not, just for casuals, but speaking for the arts
scene in the Bay area, I feel it is pretty healthy. I do think that in part
that is due to the success of all the tech companies out here.
JD: Thanks.
I was curious about that. Now, Paul, I noticed you played with a guy, whom
everybody says was their hero, the late Kenny
Wheeler.
PT: Actually
it was quite a few times. I was really fortunate. I met Kenny (Wheeler) in ’97 through Greg
Runions, out in Kingston (Ont.). We got to play with Kenny for a week in ’97.
A few years later he came to North Texas (University) and was the Gomez artist
(Glenn E. Gomez Artist-in-Residence)
and we did an album, with the One O’Clock
Lab Band, which was really, quite a humbling experience. Then, another time
we played with the Canadian Big Band.
He was a featured soloist in Toronto, for a while. Actually, John Hollenbeck played drums in that
concert. That was very, very cool. There had been quite a few times where I had
gotten to interact with him on a musical level. All I can say is, every single
time it was a humbling experience. He was a beautiful musician, composer, and
improviser and such a soft spoken and gentle human being. I can’t say enough
good things about him. He obviously had a huge influence on my music and how I
write music and how I think about music and how I play music. So, I am very
much indebted, for sure.
JD:
Speaking of composing, what process is involved in composing, for both of you?
Where do you start? Why do you start—that kind of thing?
PT: My
answer is really quick. I sit down at a piano. I play a chord. I sing a melody.
If I like it, I write them both down. It’s that simple. I figure out what the
next chord is going to be and I just keep singing through the melody, like
that. Sometimes they stay as small band charts and sometimes I explode them up
to big band pieces. It’s funny you mention this. I sent a message to Aaron (Lington) just a couple of days
ago saying, all of your pieces started as large ensemble pieces and all of my
pieces started as small ensemble pieces and ended up being blown up to large
ensemble pieces. That’s my process. There’s no real magic of anything to it. I
try to channel the melodies that I’m hearing.
JD: So,
Aaron, what is your process?
AL: Ya, I
would say it is similar in that, I write in a melody driven way first and I
think that melody, at least for me, in the vast majority of things that I write
or want to write, the melody is the most important thing. I tend to start with
the melody and usually I will play the melody on my saxophone first, rather
than the piano. Then, I will go to the piano and then I will try to harmonize
that melody and expand it into something larger. Sometimes I will have in the
back of my mind, well, maybe this piece needs to be this style, or this style
or whatever. That will change a little bit about how I think about the harmony.
Circling around, it’s all about the melody, first and foremost.
JD: Ok, with
the new CD Bicoastal Collective Chapter
Five, how do you split up the composing duties?
PT: We try
to keep it roughly 50-50. Sometimes I write a little more—sometimes Aaron
writes a little more, but it ends up being around there. There’s no formula. It’s
like, “I wrote this. This is cool. What else do we need? We need a ballad. Well
ok, I’ll write one.” That type of stuff.
JD: So my
favourite track off Bicoastal Collective Chapter Five is “S’up.” I think you
guys have been hanging around some funk clubs and stuff. Tell me how this one
came about, please?
AL: Yes,
this is a composition of mine. This was actually commissioned by a very good
high school band out in the Bay area. It’s a private Catholic high school in
Hayward California, lead by a man named Ted
Newton. He wanted me to write a funk tune. I came up first with a riff or a
four bar hook, that the rest of the piece expanded around. I ended up playing
it with a few college bands and a few high school honour bands over the last
couple of years. We didn’t have anything remotely like that in style planned
for this Bicoastal album. It was a piece of mine, that I felt pretty proud of,
in so far that it was one of the very few written in a funk style. I wanted to
include it on this album just to be stylistically, a foil, to the more
traditional and more modern style tunes.
PT: It
really balances the album. It’s a really cool piece to have on there.
JD: Another
track on Bicoastal Collective Chapter
Five “Four Tawainese Folk Melodies,” also intrigued me. Is it based on four
Tawainese folk melodies, or is that a cool title?
AL: No, no.
It is precisely based on four Taiwanese folk melodies. That particular piece
was commissioned by an old studio mate of mine from the University of North Texas named Cheng-Yu Lee and he is a Taiwanese saxophone player and he teaches
in Taipei. He runs the Taipei Jazz
Orchestra. They were going to do a big concert. He approached me about
writing a piece of music that would be something that a Taiwanese audience
could listen to, connect with and be proud of. So, he sent me these four folk
melodies. They were all in the key of C—for simplicities sake. I expanded from
there. I basically took each of the melodies and reharmonized them. I did keep
the melodies intact, from a melodic stand point. But I didn’t use a simple
harmonic setting. I did a reharmonization of these melodies. I decided to do
one as a medium swing 4/4, which on the recording features the soprano
saxophone of Bobby Selvaggio. Then,
the next melody goes a fast jazz waltz and that features Marcus Wolf on tenor sax and Noel
Johnston on guitar. The third melody, I ended up setting as a kind of
ethereal, out-of-time chorale with very thick chords, with the whole ensemble
within. It features baritone sax, which is myself, baritone sax with piano. The
fourth melody is a 3/4 time ballad, which features Steve Jones on alto sax. I
didn’t set out to make it that long (15 min. 32 sec.). It’s four separate songs
strung in one piece, so if ended up being about fifteen and a-half minutes.
JD: You have a large number of great musicians on Bicoastal Collective Chapter Five.
It’s wonderful that you can feature that many is great. And the fact that you
are willing to do it is also admirable. I find that both of your compositions
are unique. With other musicians, I often hear Ellington, Weather Report, etc. Your stuff just seems original and
I would really like to thank you guys for that. You are doing contemporary big
band music and you are doing it very, very well. So, if I want to get Bicoastal Collective Chapter Five,
where’s it at?
AL: You can get it through the Origin
website, which is originarts.com and you can follow the links there. Origin has three labels, all under its
umbrella. It has Origin; Origin
Classical; and, OA2, which is the
branch of that label that we are on. You can purchase it from there. Paul and I
are easily found online. You can certainly contact us by any means and we can
get a recording to you.
PT: You can get it on Amazon,
and iTunes, too. It’s easy to find.
JD: For both of you, what do you have for gigs for the rest of the
summer?
AL: For myself, I am going to several gigs at the San Jose Summer Fest. The Bicoastal
Collective will be playing there. I’m playing with Tommy Igoe. We’re going to be doing that Steely Dan music, there and I’m also going to be playing with the Pacific Mambo Orchestra. This is a
group, of which I am a founding member, and we are going to be closing the Salsa Stage at the San Jose Jazz Festival.
That’s a group that won a Grammy back
in 2014 for our debut album and it’s a really great salsa and Latin jazz band.
So, those are the big three concerts I’ve got coming up in the next couple of
weeks.
PT: For me, I’ve got some duo gigs. One I’m particularly looking
forward to, with a young guitarist in Halifax named Sam Wilson. That will be really fun for me. I have some stuff
coming up. There’s a record with Ken
Fornetran, the great Canadian alto player, who has been living in Prince
Edward Island for a while. That will be fun, with a bunch of the guys from
Prince Edward Island. I’m really looking forward to that. In August I’ll be
heading out to play with Aaron, as he mentioned and the Bicoastal Collective has its own gig at Stritch in San Jose (Café Stritch), which is really cool. In
the long future we’re bringing Marshall
Gilkes, the great New York trombonist, to Nova Scotia to do some playing
and I’m really looking forward to that. So, there is some cool stuff on the horizon.
JD: Great! I’d like to thank you guys for coming on the show tonight.
Wow, I’m glad I’m not as busy as you guys.
AL: Thank you very much.
PT: Ya, thanks, its been a pleasure.
https://originarts.com/oa2/catalog.php
https://bicoastalcollective.com/
