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In recent years, California jazz has been closely associated with this community led by tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington—a community in which several artists work at the intersection of 1960s acoustic jazz, hip-hop, and electronic music. One naturally thinks of Thundercat and Terrace Martin, among others, many of whom had collaborated on Kendrick Lamar’s recordings a decade earlier. However, there are other creative communities in Los Angeles, starting with the extended family centered around drummer, singer, rapper, composer, and big band leader Louis Cole. Colombian keyboardist Isis Paola Giraldo, who lived in Montreal for many years, is part of the big band, in addition to leading her own project, Chiquita Magic, with the superb drummer Justin Brown. They performed this weekend at Le Balcon and were joined by Louis Cole and David Binney late Thursday night into Friday.
Earlier, the Louis Cole Big Band had delighted thousands of festivalgoers at the event. Two singers dressed in medieval armor (no, this isn’t an ad for Bélair Direct) roamed the stage while the drummer, on the right side, pulled off one percussive feat after another, all while singing and conducting this large ensemble of excellent musicians. We’d seen him two years ago at Studio TD; Louis Cole has struck the perfect balance between entertainment, humor, and complex creativity—that is, electro- and hip-hop-inspired grooves (breakbeats, house, jungle, drum ’n’ bass, footwork, etc.) lie at the heart of the rhythmic framework of an orchestral composition entirely centered on these new grooves, which dictate the wind instruments’ parts and their harmonic support.
The following day, Friday at the Gesù, veteran saxophonist David Binney and his Action Trio allowed us to discover another facet of Louis Cole’s work. With the support of the excellent Serbian bassist Pera Krstajic, David Binney once again finds a way to refresh his sound; he remains a virtuoso on the alto saxophone, always in tune with the freshest and most contemporary jazz of the moment.
And since David Binney and I have known each other for 35 years, it was relatively easy to gain access to the green room for this conversation. Anyone who truly loves jazz will enjoy the story of this extended family!
David Binney : Good to see you!
PAN M 360 : Good to see you! Well, you know, I had this idea to have a chat with you and Louis (Cole) and Pera (Krstajic), so if that’s fine with you we can chat.
David Binney : All three of us , it’s a band, you know.
PAN M 360 : So how are you?
David Binney : Okay. Okay. All right, let me just get Louis.
PAN M 360 : Did you fly from L.A. to here?
Pera Krstajic : Yeah, we did, but we got here two days ago to play the Louis’s big band show yesterday.
PAN M 360 : Yeah, I saw this gig. Great! I also saw the gig two years ago also at the studio. Were you there?
Pera Krstajic : No, this was my first time playing.
PAN M 360 : Is it your first time in Montreal?
Pera Krstajic : Yeah. That was great so far.
PAN M 360 : Yeah, that was a great gig yesterday.
Pera Krstajic : Thanks, yeah. We had a lot of fun. It’s a good city. Very vibrant, yeah. I didn’t realize that this is such a big festival.
PAN M 360 : Well, it’s huge. Well, it’s probably the biggest on this continent.
Pera Krstajic : Right, yeah. Pretty crazy.
PAN M 360 : All right. So, I know David since like maybe 30 years, something like that.
David Binney : 1990, I think. Yeah, something like that.
PAN M 360 : So, 35 years. Well, we don’t chat every year, but once in a while we catch up. And it’s time to catch up because I like all this new bunch of people coming from Los Angeles; your Action Trio, Louis big band which includes you guys and also Chiquita Magic, Isis Giraldo.. Well, what happens with you, with Louis. And I also, as I said, I know Isis Giraldo because she lived in Montréal and was involved at the Café Résonance where she played a lot.
David Binney : Yeah, we played with Isis late night until 3 in the morning, that was an epic night!
PAN M 360 : And you Louis, how did you meet Isis Giraldo ?
Louis Cole : She was at my friend’s wedding. I have a band with Genevieve Artadi called Knower, and our mutual friend, Hans Berhnard, who also studied in Montreal, played bass. And so isis liked what we did at the wedding.
PAN M 360 : Well, I found out that she was playing in your big band 2 years ago when you came at Studio TD. So, Thursday I saw this band for a second time. I also listened to your project with Jules Buckley and Metropol Orkest. So he was very loyal to your sound.
Louis Cole : Well, I mean, he let me do all the arranging and all the orchestration and stuff. So he was cool in that way. So I think it was easier. So, I mean, which was one of the reasons I wanted to work with him, because he was like, yes, you can do all this stuff.
PAN M 360 : After your writing, he was conducting.
Louis Cole : Yeah, which is, I didn’t really know what level of importance that had or what exactly the details of that job were. But after seeing it, he really knows how to structure a rehearsal and pull, like, a good sound out of the orchestra. And basically take, you know, like, I tell him kind of the best way I can what I want, and he does a good job of, like, getting that performance out of the Metropol Orkest.
PAN M 360 : And did you experience with other big ensembles like that?
Louis Cole : We had one orchestra gig in London once, which was, like, people that he knew personally. His own orchestra, I think, that he put together, which was amazing. Yeah, they sounded great.
PAN M 360 : And what happened in the last chapter of your evolution, of your ensemble, your artistic direction, the way you want it to be?
Louis Cole : Like, what I just released most recently?
PAN M 360 : Yeah.
Louis Cole: Well, I mean, that was, like, the orchestra thing. So, I don’t know. I mean, it would be cool to do that again, but I’m trying to figure out what the next thing is. I’m just writing every day.
PAN M 360 : That’s always like that
Louis Cole :Yeah.
PAN M 360 : And sometimes something emerges, and that’s it.
Louis Cole : Right.: Yeah, I mean, I know that if I just give it some more time, it will start to take more of a shape. But for now, I’m just kind of writing and seeing where the inspiration builds to.
PAN M 360 : What is very interesting is ithat it’s always entertainment at the same time. So, you have a creative quest, and also you love to generate some fun.
Louis Cole : Yeah, I mean, I guess I try to stay true to what I would want to channel through the music. And we’re always, like, screwing around all the time. So, I mean, it’s pretty genuine, I think.
PAN M 360 : Yeah, it happens naturally. Also it’s a big tribe, so it has to be organized in a way.
Pera Krstajic : Yeah, but everybody’s a professional in this process. We know our job. Nobody’s raging , so, we don’t have to be, like, a bigot or anything. Everyone’s a friend, basically.
PAN M 360 : And so, what would be the next project in the next six months or one year?
Louis Cole : I mean, I’m just going to keep writing every day.
PAN M 360 : Is it a sort of permanent workshop?
Louis Cole : Yeah, I mean, I won’t call up the band members until I know for sure what the music is. You know, until I write the music and arrange it. At least as long as I’ve done music, it’s always been like that.
PAN M 360 : Well, this is the way to build a real building.
Louis Cole : Yeah, I think so, too. Yeah.
ABOUT ACTION TRIO
PAN M 360 : Now, let’s talk about Action Trio. So, maybe I’d like you to remind of your relationships with all of you.
Louis Cole : I mean, I was together in a relationship with Genevieve Artad. And Dave Binney was hitting on her at the jazz club. Genevieve stayed in touch and sent our music to Dave. And I’d heard of Dave, too.
David Binney : Let me tell, because there’s a couple more details. So, there’s Genevieve. We’re both in… it’s packed. What was that gig, by the way? I don’t remember what the music was, but it was packed. Genevieve’s there, and I say something to her. And you know Genevieve is, she’s just hysterically funny right away. We start laughing. And then I kept asking her if she wanted a beer. I literally asked her like five times. And she finally said yes. And then I was like, wow, okay, great. I’m drinking a beer with her, and then you come over.
And she goes, oh, this is my boyfriend. And you just remember it like it was yesterday. You just like, kind of a, hey, how are you doing? And then you just took off. I was like, okay. But she sent the music that they were doing. And I listened to it, and I was like, wow, this is great. And then he emailed me the next day. I was like, dude, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that was you. I’m a fan of your music. Wow. And then from that point on, we’ve been super close. It’s like a family. And we’ve done tons of music together. And it’s like a family.
And then I met Pera in Serbia, in Belgrade, Serbia. In Belgrade. And he was 18. And he was at a gig that I was playing with Vasil Hadzimanov. Vasil was in my band in the 90s in New York. But I didn’t know that he had gone back to Serbia, but I hadn’t talked to him in years. And he asked me to come over and do a tour. And I went and did a tour.
Pera Krstajic : There was like the acoustic part of the gig, which I played, and then the electric, which actually you guys kept touring with that band.
David Binney : And I had no idea that Vasil was famous in Serbia. His parents were famous, and he’s famous. And so we did this kind of cool tour. And I kind of fell in love with Belgrade and the whole thing. We started a trio there, kind of similar to this one. And Pera and I became friends and we started this Action Trio, I ended up marrying a girl from there. So I was going a lot in Serbia so we would hang out together and then Pera came to the States, down in LA and we started this trio since.
Photo credit Louis Cole Big band: Benoît Rousseau
