Jochen Rueckert - With Best Intentions

German-born New York jazz drummer Jochen Rueckert was kind enough to answer a few questions about his recent release With Best Intentions featuring Mark Turner on tenor saxophone, Nils Wogram on trombone, Joris Roelofs on bass clarinet and Doug Weiss on bass.

Check out his new music here: https://jochenrueckert.bandcamp.com/album/with-best-intentions and learn more about Jochen and his musical activities on his website: https://www.jochenrueckert.net/

Jochen Rueckert - With Best Intentions

1) Tell us about your latest recording!

I just released my 6th (jazz) album as a leader. It's called "With best Intentions" and features a quintet with tenor saxophone giant Mark Turner, Swiss/German trombonist Nils Wogram, Dutch bass clarinetist Joris Roelofs and NYC bass mainstay Doug Weiss. It's available at: https://jochenrueckert.bandcamp.com/album/with-best-intentions 

2) How did you choose your repertoire and sidemen?

Well I have been trying to get Mark Turner and Nils Wogram together for a long time; they have been the two main pillars of my musical life - Mark has been playing in my quartet for over a decade and I have been playing in Nils's bands since 1994 or so! Mark is my favourite living tenor player and Nils is pretty much the only trombone player that doesn't do any of the stuff that makes people hate the trombone so much. I wrote almost all the songs specifically for this band, except for two quite old ones that I resurrected for this. It was pretty hard gauging if this little run of concerts in Europe and the recording were going to happen during the pandemic or not, so when it was finally confirmed I found myself a few tunes short so I dug through some old stuff. Kind of nice - in a nostalgic kind of way - to play some older unfinished stuff - like sleeping with the high school girlfriend you only got to first base with back then - at your 10 year class reunion, but in a nice hotel you paid for with money you made playing drums which she thought was just a hobby back then.

3) What inspired you to pursue the vibe and instrumentation that you did?

After four albums with guitar, tenor, and bass I wanted to try something with 3 horns and without a chordal instrument. I don't know how to write for trumpet - alto saxophone is a terrible instrument - so out of the question - and I hear my melodies more in the range of a tenor or the trombone so extending lower to the bass clarinet came naturally, especially after hearing Joris play a couple of years ago. Bass clarinet is like modern jazz fairy dust - you can sprinkle it on anything and it makes it sound better. Kind of dangerous!

I wanted to keep things kind of simple, something I often try and fail at but I think this time I actually got close, or as close as I probably can.

4) Who are your influences with regards to your style of writing and playing?

Playing - pretty much any jazz drummer known from their work in late 50s and 60's is a heavy influence then many drummers I listened to a lot during my "formative years" - the 90s : Tain, Brian Blade, Hutch and Bill Stewart.

Writing - oh boy. Duke Ellington, Wayne Shorter, Monk, Herbie Hancock, Gershwin, Bird, Bud Powell. Not that you could tell lol.  Of course a lot of my peers - Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, some of Nils's writing; many of the people I play with....like Sam Yahel, Brian Charette, Sean Wayland kind of...Some less obvious folks that I steal ideas from are Olivier Messiaen, Deftones, Midlake, and other rock bands.

5) What are you practicing/studying/listening to/researching these days?

Researching: mostly how to make my son do his homework without crying and expanding his culinary palette beyond four items.

Listening: tons of electronic music, new stuff mostly, rediscovering lesser known gems from the 60s: Duke Pearson, Ahmad Jamal, Harold Land, Bobby Hutcherson etc. Some fringe things like Car bomb, I like this droney organ music by Kali Malone. I listen to whatever comes out these days, you know, by the jazz youngins, and I do go see a lot of music at the Village Vanguard, Smalls, Jazz Gallery etc. Last night I caught a glimpse of Billy Hart listening to Al Foster in Peter Bernsteins's band !

I don't have much time to practice these days - when I do it's mostly maintenance/upkeep and expanding on some odd groupings and polyrhythmic things I've been working on over the years.

6) What other current and future projects do you have on the go at the moment?

I play a lot with Fred Hersch and also piano trios with Henry Hey and Sam Yahel are back! I am doing less touring this year but am busy playing around NYC with many great musicians. I still program and perform electronic music under the alias "Wolff Parkinson White" https://wolffparkinsonwhite.bandcamp.com I have a tour with that in September. Not much jazz band leader things on the horizon, I've been a bit burnt by the booking process and am just now slowly digging out of the COVID hole. My quartet is still going though it's harder now as Mark has moved to California, Lage to Norway and travel has become very expensive.

7) How does the drums and your overall approach to rhythm factor into your compositions and concept?

Well after years of maybe overcompensating by writing things with many many chords I slowly have been pushing towards overall simplicity as I said before, though I still like to use little rhythmic devices like displacement (that song "Mark of the Beast" for example) or odd forms or meters, but much less than before. The older I get the more I realize swing is one of the main things that draws me to jazz so I have been putting a lot of emphasis on having material that swings. It's much harder to do than you'd think. It's very easy to get into iffy/cheesy territory and also easy to overachieve, leaving the band sounding uncomfortable.

8) What advice do you have for younger, aspiring jazz musicians and jazz drummers?

I hear many amazing young drummers here in NYC, I mean just tons of very great young musicians overall. I sometimes I wish I'd hear more swinging music played by the younger musicians; it is one of the hardest things to do - especially as a drummer- and in my opinion maybe eschewed by many for that reason. It is sort of the litmus test, I feel like many musicians won't think of a drummer as great until they hear them play something swinging, or at least something that feels good otherwise.

Beyond NYC my advice for young drummers would be to play along with more records, play with as many people and better or more experienced musicians you can, and really find out what it is you like about the music you like and study that intensely. I would also like to remind many folks that nobody has to be a jazz musician and that it's maybe not the most rewarding or respected or practical job of all times. Maybe you're better at something that would be more useful.

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Jochen Rueckert is a jazz drummer, composer, band leader, and Oxford Comma-enthusiast born in Germany in 1975, currently residing in New York City.

Besides a decade of touring with his own quartet with Mark Turner, Lage Lund, and Matt Penman, he is known for his work recent work in Melissa Aldana's and Fred Hersch's trios, the mid-2000 Kurt Rosenwinkel New Quartet, Nils Wogram's Root 70, 12 years of the Marc Copland trio, his electronic music programmed under the alias "Wolff Parkinson White", as well as his series of ebooks aptly titled "Read the Rueckert - travel observations and pictures of hotel rooms". Jochen's deliberate avoidance of formal music education, albeit initially for budgetary reasons, provides a great lack of erudite nonsense in his playing and writing. He's celebrating his 6th album as a leader, titled "With Best Intentions".