Hi,
an interesting interview with BRIAN ROLLAND. His last CD is already
on air on RADIOVINILEMANIA in Italy:

http://www.vinilemania.net/vBRIANROLLAND.htm

Ciao ciao Pietro

COURTESY: http://www.ejazznews.com

Interviews: Brian Rolland's Dreams Of Brazil Posted by: eJazzNews
Readeron Sunday, August 06, 2006 - 05:03 PM


Brazilian music is as deep and as wide as the nation itself. The
traditions and styles of their musical heritage include concert
forms like choro, which features violins, woodwinds and piano; samba
drumming, which is the melding of the European marching drum corps
and African drumming; and jazz music that blends samba rhythms with
the Afro-Portugese sounds of bossa nova. This is the music explored
by guitarist extradordinare, Brian Rolland, whose clear love and
affinity for that music is celebrated on his CD, Dreams Of Brazil .
This record is a musical evocation and celebration of the country
and its people.




The opening track, "Along the Amazon," contains guitar lines that
both float ethereally and get down into the music's earthy guts
(much like American blues). Bassist John Lockwood plays in a way
that imitates a deep drum, and percussionist/drummer Bob Weirneri
plays shakers and other hand percussion as well as the trap drum
set, which add a subtle propulsion to the music as well as primitive
(i.e., ancient and original) coloring. The song musically takes you
down the river.


"Bolem do Pora" is a jazzy tune reminiscent of the old jazzy bossa
nova sound of Brazil. Lockwood and Weirneri play a light, spacious
groove under Mr. Rolland's tasty and complex variations and
explorations of the gentle melody that is stated at times by various
vocalists.


Another highlight is Rolland's version of "In A Silent Way", a Joe
Zawinul song that is better known as the title track of a ground
breaking album Miles Davis album. This moody piece explores the
spaces between notes and sparse melody fragments. Mr. Rolland
reinvents the song by turning it on its head by filling in the
spaces swirling the melody by strumming sheets of chords and
harmonies, in a style deeply rooted in flamenco and classical guitar.


But these traditions are used as a basis for his highly
individualized style of jazz. His musical personality was forged by
early exposure to a wide range of musical experiences, thanks to a
creative, musical family. "My sister and I used to sit under the
grand piano while dad sang Gershwin, Cole Porter, Leonard
Bernstein's 'West Side Story,' and other great show tunes from the
early decades of the 20th century, accompanied by mom on the piano.
I still have those songbooks that were kept under the hinged seat of
the piano bench. I used to spend a lot of time browsing around that
little goldmine wondering how he turned those little dots on the
pages into such wonderful sounds."


His parents also used to fill the house with other types of music
such classical music by Mozart, Bach, Claudio Monteverdi, and
Debussy. They played traditional Spanish flamenco guitar music. The
jazz of artists such as Al Hirt, John Coltrane, Fletcher Henderson
and Duke Ellington was often heard in the Rolland home. And, not
surprisingly, Antonio Carlos Jobim and other Brazilian
musicians. "Early on my parents used to give blood to get money to
buy records," he exclaimed. No wonder that young Brian grew up with
a passion for music.


"My dad was a wonderful amateur musician. Besides piano, he was a
cornet player. He was the lead trumpet in the Hannibal Missouri High
School Band, which reigned as state champ. Some nights his Uncle
Bub, who raised him, would drive him over to Quincy, Illinois, to
play with the jazz bands on the river boats on the Mississippi
River. That was in the late '30s, early '40s. By the time I was in
college I was playing big band jazz behind trumpeters like Clark
Terry and, once, Dizzy Gillespie. These guys were my dad's heroes."


Another part of his musical development came from being in an
artistic environment outside of his home. Though he spent some of
his formative years in New Hampshire, essentially, he grew up in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was thus exposed to the vibrant music
scene in Boston in the 1960s. One particularly special place was
Club 47.


"In those days you had to be a member, and they always told me I was
the youngest member at age 12. I keep looking for my membership card
from 1966. I was fortunate to have an older brother who took me
around a lot early on. There I heard Tom Rush, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy
Waters, the original Paul Butterfield Blues Band and others. Let me
tell you, those electric blues bands made a major impression on me
in that small room! Sunday afternoons in the summer there were
concerts on the Cambridge Common. We were there every Sunday until
the music stopped at nightfall. I remember seeing Ike and Tina
Turner (Miles Davis opened for them), The Youngbloods, the Allman
Brothers, and B.B. King. There was a club called Boston Tea Party
where I saw the Velvet Underground, Big Mama Thornton, Procol Harum,
and other great groups. We also went to the Jazz Workshop quite
often. There we saw McCoy Tyner, Return to Forever, Weather Report,
lots of jazz cats. My mom was always taking us to museums and art
galleries. Arts, music and aesthetics were being pumped into us all
the time."


Another important experience for young Brian Rolland was when he saw
Miles Davis with his early electric band at The Boston Globe Jazz
Festival in 1967. This group included Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul,
Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett. This lead to his love of the
electric jazz of Weather Report and Corea's Return to Forever. "That
music was natural," he explains. "I loved jazz improvisation and
loved electric guitar. John McLaughlin certainly became influence."


[Kirby] What were your first bands like? What style of music did you
play?


[Brian Rolland] I played classical piano and clarinet first, then
switched to guitar when I was 11 or 12. The early bands were two
guitars, bass and drums. Later it was bass, drums, one guitar and
pedal steel. Our first gig was a wedding reception at The Club
Casablanca under the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square in Cambridge
in 1968. We played way on the blues side: "Smokestack
Lightning," "Mystery Train," things like that. We were listening to
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Yardbirds, Muddy Waters, early Taj
Mahal, Chuck Berry. Actually, we were listening to everything else,
too, but this was the stuff we could play well enough to gig on. I
was fourteen."


[Kirby] How did someone who started out playing the blues and folk
music evolve to a classical and acoustic jazz style, with a more
elaborate strumming style?


[Brian Rolland] Guitar teachers I had heard it in me and kept
pointing me first to jazz, then to classical. In the end, my most
intensive training was in classical guitar, then I worked my way
back through the other styles again, always playing jazz along the
way.


[Kirby] Give an example or two how you mesh the various styles of
flamenco, Latin, and jazz in your songs.


[Brian Rolland] I think the flamenco technique is always buried in
there somewhere, a natural result of living in Spain for a while in
the '70s. The classical music is in there, too, just as a natural
result of that training. It's a way of thinking about the guitar as
an orchestra that's brought alive by the way you approach left-hand
fingerings and right-hand tone qualities, then the improvisation
comes mostly out of jazz for me. The tune "Please Make Love With Me"
is a good example. It starts as a simple bossa nova on nylon
strings, adds a second guitar that has classical finger picking, but
on steel strings, then adds a third guitar which plays an improvised
jazz solo.


Though Mr. Rolland weaves various elements into the music, the heart
of the album is in Brazil, which has elements of both natural whimsy
("When Caravels Sailed") and earthy gravitas ("Berimbau"). Mr.
Rolland states, "I've always had a thing for Brazilian music since
the first time my parents put the soundtrack to 'Black Orpheus' on
the turntable 'round about 1960. There are some samba and bossa nova
underpinnings on that album, and a lot of influence from Brazilian
master Milton Nascimento. But mostly it's about a feeling of gentle,
but undeniable energy that infuses so much of Brazilian music. I
have yet to visit Brazil, though... except in my Dreams."


Article by Mark Kirby