His creative thoughts churn and turn, intense and sporadic.
“I have to write and write — there’s so much stuff to sort through,” said Canadian saxophonist Joel Miller with energetic, arms-length gestures, sitting on the edge of his Upstairs nightclub stool.
The soft-spoken, curly-haired composer, known for the ingenuity of his unique jazz conceptions , spoke of where his tunes come from and where they’re taking him as a musician.
“I’m trying to develop my melodic and harmonic ideas so that my style becomes a signature,” said Miller of his sextet’s esoteric, melodic mixes.
After almost two decades of performances, four albums since 1996, and collaborations with jazz greats like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ben Monder, and Brad Turner, Miller said he’s getting to the core of himself as a musician and it’s no easy task. “I get shades of [the core] here and there.”
“It’s a process of weeding out ideas that don’t work,” said Miller. “I’m getting rid of redundant parts so that I can get the maximum power out of the instrumentation.”
No aspect of the music or the instruments is taken for granted, he added. “I’m using each instrument to its fullest,” as in not just using the double bass for bass lines.
And the process never lets up. Usually he’ll get one or two new ideas for things to write or perform every day. After recording those ideas with a Dictaphone kept close at hand, Miller builds on them in binges of time alone, writing compositions out “in little messy sketches.” “Sometimes for a whole week, thinking and writing and creating are all you do,” he sai d.
The result is a mix of Miller’s influences with his own twists. “People are always looking for something new in music,” he said. “My new things come from combining different ingredients and styles, then adding my own [new elements].”
You can hear some of those ingredients in the almost Hassidic jazz of Miller’s song “Caboose”, inspired by three years in an orthodox Jewish wedding band, and its unique beats like Frelach — akin to the rhythms of klezmer and ska. Playing in that band “was another world,” Miller said.
Or take his tune “Chevrolet”, inspired by cumbia – a Colombian dance groove, and notably by Miller’s greatest musical role model, cumbia-rumba-salsa legend Jo
