By Filipe Freitas

Name: Avam Fefer
Instrument: saxophones, bass clarinet
Style: modern creative, avant-garde
Album Highlights: Calling All Spirits (Cadence, 2001); Eliyahu (Not Two Records, 2011); Testament (Clean Feed, 2019)

Can you tell us about your influences?
I always found it interesting to compare musical backgrounds with other musicians when I play jazz. Some jazz people have a more classical background, some people more rock n’ roll, church, or punk. For me, it was a combination of light jazz, funk, and musical theater. Although I was a Jewish American kid, I always felt a little on the edge of American culture because of my father’s immigrant background (he was born in a labor camp in Siberia). R’n’B was what really touched me in my teen years - Earth, Wind And Fire, Stevie Wonder, Harry Nilsson, and the Ohio Players… while my first jazz influences were Stanley Turrentine and Grover Washington Jr., followed later by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Thus, I had this kind of funky side in me early on, more than say bebop or ‘heavy’ jazz. And then, when I was in Paris in the 1990’s, I met the cornet player Graham Haynes, who introduced me to Moroccan music. I also started to play with musicians from the other French colonies such as Senegal, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast, and became influenced by their sounds. In Paris I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of music from Ghana and kora music from Guinea and Mali, and when I arrived in New York, I started to work with the West African musicians Francis M’Bappe, Famoro Diabate, Yacouba Sissoko and Mamady Djibate. That influenced me a lot in my feeling of jazz. You know, the definition of jazz for me is European and African music meeting in America. I guess I would say that I have deeper influences from the African music side than the European.

What are your first musical memories?
Apparently there is a photo of me on my 3rd birthday walking thru a park in Stockholm, Sweden with my parents while Duke Ellington’s Band is performing in the background, but I don’t have an actual memory of this. I do remember that my father played the acoustic guitar and I would play the bongos with him at an early age. I’m sure I was terrible, but we played the music of Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; and a lot of liberation music, including Jewish and Negro spirituals. And then, the most influential recorded music I heard was the music from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein. Both the movie and the music were so powerful in triggering my young imagination…romance, rhythm, race, sex, dance, immigration, New York—it was all there!! I also listened to my parents’ Herb Alpert Records a lot and started to play along on clarinet when I was 10 or 11...

What led you to make the decision of being a professional jazz musician?
I started playing in the elementary school band when I was nine years old. In high school, I started playing the saxophone in the jazz big band, and I loved the experience. It was a life-changing experience to be one of the soloists and section leaders in a swinging big band, to be part of that power! Then I went to Harvard, intending perhaps to be a doctor, but I changed my mind pretty quickly… After some wonderful musical exposure thru Tom Everett, the jazz teacher there, and a number of brilliant and creative friends who turned me on to all sorts of poetry, literature, drugs, and philosophy, I was becoming much more myself, and more aware of my creative side. By the time I graduated, I was around 20 years old and getting more serious about music as a pursuit. I started to feel very strongly about the importance of music for me personally, and for the world at large. I thought it would be a noble challenge for me as a human being to dedicate myself to jazz and to try to touch people deeply thru music. By the time I was 21 or 22, Sonny Rollins trio recordings had made a huge impression on me and reinforced my desire to improve and express myself as a saxophone player.
I had my first overseas tour in the late 80’s in a band that featured drummer Mike Sarin and pianist John Medeski. We had a great time and I received some pretty good press which helped me weather the hard times that came in those early years… Soon afterwards, I moved to Europe and began playing in the streets of Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Paris…making my money day-to-day and getting arrested on numerous occasions… Eventually I was offered enough steady club work that I found that I had transitioned from playing in the street to being what you might call a “professional Musician”.
After that, it’s just a question of continuing to pursue Music until Music tells me to stop…

Being in the New York scene for so long, what are the main differences from back then and nowadays?
For me, personally, there was a much stronger sense of community when I first came to New York, although I probably appreciate that fact more in hindsight. I lived in the Lower East Side, and it was the drummer Denis Charles, whom I met in Paris, that said that I should move to New York and he helped find an apartment for me here in 1996. The music in New York at that time was really beautiful and there were a lot of places to play. I was working three or four nights a week and actually being paid for the gigs. I was based in downtown Manhattan and although I was part of the downtown scene, in a way I was never really a “downtown” player because of my African influences. But there was always room to play at the Knitting Factory and Tonic, which was my favorite club of all time. Tonic was only a couple blocks from my apartment, with a great social vibe and where you had a lot of different kinds of high-quality music and people happening in the same venue from one day to the next. I really liked that the music could be part of people's lives while integrated into the fabric of the city, but we’re losing that a little bit. Today there are more small venues with a bunch of chairs and a small but obsessed group of people listening to music.
Obviously, the music business has changed completely over the past couple decades. When I was in Paris, I was on a major label with an ‘acid-jazz’ band and we could make money from recordings, but that started to change over the last 25 years. So, I would say that now there are so many great musicians that it is a great time for Music, but not necessarily Music Business. Also, many musicians come out of the academic environment, but maybe not knowing a lot of other things about life. When I started out, people still lived the jazz lifestyle -- late nights, drinking, doing drugs, partying... Now, I feel the connections are a bit colder and a bit more distant than before, but perhaps healthier.

Guitarist Marc Ribot plays on your new quartet album, Testament. This was the first time you guys recorded together. How did that happen?
Two years ago I left the Lower East Side, where I'd lived for 20 years, and moved to Brooklyn. The first year, when I moved, it was kind of a hard time. I was going through some personal problems and it was a very hard year for me. So, I said: ‘I need to put out a new album with Eric [Revis] and Chad [Taylor]’. Meanwhile, I played a few times with Marc Ribot and another guitar player, Marco Cappelli, at Nublu, but this was all improvised, not my music. While I was planning the trio recording, I had these gigs at Bar Lunatico, where I was presenting quartet versions of my songs with different musicians. So one day I sent a message to Marc, asking him if he would like to join us. He said he was busy but would love to record my music if I ever wanted to do it. So I said: ‘I was planning to record in trio. However, instead of playing a lot of new music, you could play guitar on some of my older tunes.’ We put it together to see how it sounded, and it was just a beautiful feeling. Marc is a very generous player and he could feel my music right away. I think we have a similar approach to music: strong and a little bit rough, but also incorporating a sort of spiritual side.

Can you tell me three of your favorite jazz records?
Wayne Shorter - Schizophrenia; Charles Mingus - Mingus at Antibes; Miles Davis - Live at Plugged Nickel.

Can you name two persons who influenced you the most as a saxophonist?
I have to say a few more than two: Stanley Turrentine, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Jimmy Giuffre, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Steve Lacy, Archie Shepp.

Can you name two persons whom you’ve never collaborated with but you’d like to?
Afel Bocoum and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. One artist I’ve worked with but would love to work with again is Archie Shepp.

What would you have been if you weren’t a musician?
Probably a school teacher. I love kids and I love teaching. I would teach them ways to improvise and to think critically about a variety of different subjects.

In which projects are you working at the moment?
I have a couple projects in the works related to abstract interpretations of literature and the release of a duo or a trio album with a West African kora player. I also want to put together a large group project where I’ll do some conductions and controlled improvisations. And, of course, I’d love to do a follow-up recording with Marc, Eric, and Chad as soon as possible!!