Jon Hassell | Ambassador From the Fourth World

Jul 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Geary Yelton

           
 

JON HASSELL REVEALS THE FASCINATING MUSICAL HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY BEHIND HIS LATEST RELEASE

Jon Hassell
Photos: Jason Vaughn

The first time I heard trumpeter Jon Hassell's music, I thought, “That isn't a trumpet. I don't know what it is, but I know what a trumpet sounds like and that's not even close.” The year was 1980, and the album was Fourth World, Volume 1: Possible Musics (EG Records), a groundbreaking record that marked the beginning of Hassell's long association with producer Brian Eno. Possible Musics changed the future direction of progressive pop music, influencing everything from Peter Gabriel's Security to David Byrne and Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which, in turn, influenced everyone from Paul Simon to Hank Shocklee, Public Enemy's producer. Years later, TV Guide named Hassell's sample-laden theme for the television series The Practice one of the “50 All-Time Favorite TV Themes.”

Like fellow trumpeter Miles Davis, Hassell is a unique talent, a visionary innovator in the first degree. His ever-evolving musical style consistently defies categorization, which has no doubt made the road to widespread recognition virtually impossible, especially in the United States. Yet his reputation with adventuresome musicians is immense, as is the debt of gratitude many feel toward his contributions to modern music.

Bonus Material

Jon Hassell on Post-Production

After receiving a master's degree in orchestral trumpet from Eastman School of Music in New York, Hassell got a grant to study electronic music in Germany with Karlheinz Stockhausen. When he returned to the U.S., he attended State University of New York at Buffalo, where he played on Terry Riley's seminal recording of In C (1968) for Columbia Records' Music in Our Time series. He studied raga with visiting Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, who had a tremendous and lasting influence on Hassell's phrasing, his playing technique and his “diagonal, shape-making” approach to melody, harmony and rhythm.

Though perennially popular on the European stage, Memphis-born Hassell recently completed his first U.S. tour in nearly 20 years. I caught up with him in Knoxville, Tenn., where he performed at Big Ears 2009, a three-day music festival also featuring Philip Glass and many other extraordinary musicians. His concert was absolutely mesmerizing, with the audience silently transfixed for the duration of the performance. During our conversation the next morning, Hassell was accompanied by Peter Freeman, who has not only been his bassist, occasional co-producer and technical right-hand man for nearly 20 years, but has also written for EM on numerous occasions.

You're known for creating new musical forms, but everyone has a hard time categorizing your music. How would you describe your new album for the ECM label, Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street (2009)?

Hassell: I can't describe it. It's not classical, it's not jazz. The word “avant garde” signals thorny, difficult, something you have to take like a bitter medicine of some kind. I could answer your question, and say, “Well, it's Fourth World.” Then you'd have to ask, “What's Fourth World?”

That's a good question.

Hassell: It came from knowing that you've got to have some little knife, a quick logo that cuts through, to give journalists something that they can say about [my music].

And you've been using that description for decades now.

Hassell: Yes, and it means a combination of third-world, traditional, spiritual and first-world technology — hopefully, a blend that's respectful of the third-world sources it came from.

What can you tell us about your use of live sampling onstage?

Hassell: It goes back to Possible Musics, the record I did in 1980. If anyone happens to be doing their doctoral thesis on the origin of live sampling, I'd like to know whether anything ever predated what we did there. Michael Brook was playing guitar then, but he was also mixing live, and we had the Lexicon Prime Time.

That was what you were using to sample?

Hassell: Yeah. He would snag some trumpet phrases and things like that.

Freeman: [We now have] probably the two premier live sampling guys in the world, [Jan Bang and Dino J.A. Deane]. Dino is a bit older; he was a pioneer of that. He was on some of Jon's earlier recordings from the '80s.