What’s Up with Sumi Tonooka?

Pianist-composer Sumi Tonooka, a native of Philadelphia, has always been a very thoughtful artist with an exceptional touch at the keyboard and an uncommon cultural sensitivity based in equal parts on her diverse background and growing up in one of the crucibles of jazz.  She has always kept good company so it was no surprise when she showed up on piano in master bassist Rufus Reid’s band at the Kennedy Center Jazz Club some months back.  But for me this was my first Sumi sighting in many moons and it was a delight renewing acquaintances with an artist who has always had a distinctive point of view.  Her latest album Long Ago Today on the independent Artists Recording Collective was welcomed with open ears by listeners to my WWOZ radio shows, an exceptional date with a real working trio concept featuring Reid and the late drummer Bob Braye.  So what’s up these days with Sumi Tonooka?

Willard Jenkins: I was delighted to see you at the Kennedy Center Jazz Club with Rufus Reid because it had been some time since I last heard you.  Where have you been? Why the relative hiatus between records, and how long has it been exactly?

 Sumi Tonooka: It’s been ten years since my last release as a leader (Secret Places on Kenny Barron’s label Joken).   I am just glad that I could and did take things into my own hands regarding this state of affairs and got it together to release something on my own this year.   I’ve been doing what I always do:  staying active, at the piano playing, studying, teaching, and composing music.  I’ve been a member of the John Blake Quartet for 18 years (as well as Rufus Reid’s Quintet), I have also been performing and traveling with musicians who live upstate [New York] and there are quite a few of us. I have been composing for film and dance as well.

WJ: The differences between the issues that women practitioners of this music face as opposed to male musicians have been somewhat well-chronicled.  As something of a sub-set of those differences what issues might you consider particular to musicians who are also mothers raising children?  

ST: That answer depends on a lot of factors, such as what our personal situation is as far as our partner, financial picture, etc.  I think that what holds true is that there are always compromises that women make.  Its important to realize that you can’t have it all and all at once (not easily).  Motherhood is wonderful and demanding, and takes a lot of a certain type of energy.  It challenges you to not lose sight of your dreams.  You have to maintain a certain amount of discipline, and consistency of devotion to your art to keep growing, and all of that can be a bit of a balancing act, especially for a woman.  The word "multi-tasking" comes up a lot when I talk to other musician moms about this subject…  as well as needing a sense of humor.

WJ: As someone of blended heritage – Japanese and African American – what would you say those two cultural heritages have contributed to your music in the aggregate?

ST: A lot, especially in ways that I am not consciously aware of, which makes it difficult to articulate.  I had to purposely set out to explore my Japanese side because my mother was born in this country and her culture was present in my life mostly through contact with my grandparents, who lived with us for the last years of their lives.  Being around them helped me make the decision to compose a piece of music called "Out From the Silence" dedicated to al the Japanese and Japanese Americans interned during World War ll — my mother’s family among them.  This piece took me on a path of exploration into Japanese culture, music and poetry in a very specific way.  Had I not decided to compose that work, the windo into that way of seeing may have stayed blurry. 

African American culture was in my life in a more obvious way; I grew up in West Philadelphia in a very diverse neighborhood called Powelton Village.  My mother was the big jazz fan.  Both my parents took me to see Thelonious Monk for my 13th birthday at The Aqua Lounge on 52nd Street.

I think all of my siblings and me had to figure out for ourselves what being of "mixed heritage" means.  Each one of us has a different experience of that.  For me, it has to develop a stronger sense of self because it made me come to grips with the nuance of race, identity and culture in a very individual way.

ST: My very generous friend John Hodian was leaving to go on the road for a month and basically handed me the keys to his studio, with the words "here, its yours".  I knew it had been too long since my previous recording and I wanted to do something about it.  So this presented the perfect opportunity.  The studio was in his home in Woodstock.  It had a wonderful Yamaha grand — I usually prefer Steinways, but this piano had something special.  During that month I produced the trio recording Long Ago Today — as well as co-produced a quartet date with tenor saxophonist and composer Erica Lindsay.  We hired a wonderful engineer, Bob Beleicki, a great rhythm section — Rufus Reid and Bob Bray — and went to work.  We had a whole week in the studio.  Erica and I had been playing together for a few years and had often talked about wanting to document our musical collaborations.  I also had quite a few new compositions for trio.

ST: The major difference is that all the responsibility, time and expense was mine.  It’s a big committment and investment and it took vision and patience to see it all through.  There are so many phases of producing a recording and releasing it on your own.  Its important to have a plan.  There is the creative and fun phase, that is making the music (hopefully under ideal conditions), then there is the production of the audio, recording, mixing, and mastering.  Then there is the packaging and design, the pressing of the CDs, and promotion, airplay, publicist, etc.  Many of the decisions that you make depend on what you can afford.  Ideally you want to be able to hire the best people for the things you are not able to do, or find creative ways of thinking outside the box to get things done.  It’s daunting, but the upside is at the end its yours. 

A lot of musicians run out of steam after the CD is released, as far as promotion and marketing, and that is very understandable (because of the physical, emotional, and financial exhaustion) but not wise to stop there, because yuo need to find ways to make the CD work for you and get people to the product.  That can entail a whole plan on the other side of the release.  The internet is a powerful tool and the world is just a click away, but the problem is there is so much music out there.  So what are you going to do to make your CD stand out?  I had a lot of help and support from Chris Burnett from ARC Records.  He helped me put together a business plan and once a week we would talk and check things off the list.  It helped me to stay focused and not get too overwhelmed.

ST: I’m working with Erica on the mixing phase of our quartet date.  It has the working titke of "Initiation".  Erica is such an outstanding player and composer and I am very excited about this recording.  I think that the album is very interesting in the way our material works together as a whole.  There is also an incredible musical chemistry on this recording that is hard to describe but easy to hear.  It also features the work of world class drummer Bob Braye who died early this year.  Erica and I are both deeply saddened by Bob’s passing and will miss him greatly, but we are also so grateful that we were able to document Bob’s playing before he left the planet.  Rufus and Bob sound so amazing together!

WJ: What other projects and activities are you working on these days?

ST: I’m composing a documentary film with the working title of "Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter".  It is about a Malian refugee mother living in West Philadelphia who is seeking asylum in order to keep her daughter from female circumcision in Mali, where it has been the custom for centuries.  I feel fortunate to have a working association with a wonderful group of women filmmakers in Philadelphia whose work centers on human rights.  This film is produced by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater and has received funding from the Sundance Institute.  Composing for film is challenging and enjoyable work.

Contact: www.sumitonooka.com 

KENDRICK SCOTT: Interview with a real self-starter

I’m always interested in the efforts of artists who aren’t sitting around longing for some elusive record deal but who are putting their music on the marketplace themselves; and not just the vanity project purveyor but those who show real entrepreneurial spirit.  Such an artist is the very promising young drummer Kendrick Scott, another in a growing line of musicians out of Houston (see our earlier Q&A with pianist Helen Sung) who were trained in part by renowned high school educator Bob Morgan.  Over the last year Kendrick has been steadily growing his World Culture Music (WCM) imprint, releasing not only his own music but also those of exceptional colleagues as well.  I recently caught up with the busy Mr. Scott for a Q&A on the whys & wherefores of World Culture Music.

Willard Jenkins: Generally young artists like you when they do start their own imprint they do it purely to support their own releases.  Why and how did you determine to record other artists as well as your own music on the label?

Kendrick Scott: When I first decided to record my own CD it was going to be for a small label.  The deal essentially was they would give me a nominal fee, with no future returns in sight, and I would give them a record… period.  After deep thought I realized how ludicrous that was.  So I decided to do it on my own so that I will have total control over the whole process and own my master.  While I was in the process of doing my CD I found myself recording three other CDs with friends of mine who I felt have strong voices.  These musicians possessed a very important trait, they are strong composers as well as players.  I developed World Culture Music (WCM) as an artist collective so that we might bring our creative expression and vision to the listener in an honest and sincere way that could also benefit the artists.

WJ: What is your mission for WCM?

KS: Our mantra is "Progress The Music and Expand The Culture."  Through the artist collective effort we want to empower our peers of younger accomplished jazz musicians.  In today’s society we are missing a sense of community, which is why on another level you see our country coming together this election season.  It takes a strong collective of people to make things flourish as well as strong will to act on your dreams and not leave it in other hands.  WCM is a part of that community that says it’s our turn.  And that’s the type of label we want to create, a gathering of minds.  We want to continue that sense of community by not only catering to our established jazz fans but tapping into a younger audience of our peers who may not listen to jazz.  And we adamantly want to develop a fresh new marketing model.

WJ: How have you gone about developing your label?

KS: We’ve done a lot of market anaylsis on the jazz industry.  We have looked at a great deal of things from record sales and trends to market development and beyond.  Next we set up a Board of Directors which includes the artists in the collective and also an advisory board of young professionals in the music industry, business, and other ventures.  Both of these structures aid us in our decision making while developing our various revenue streams, marketing model, and returns for the artists.

WJ: What have you done about tackling the distribution question — even though the business paradigm has shifted with the near demise (or at best the diminshment of importance) of traditional 4-wall retail record stores?

KS: We had been in negotiations to partner with another established label in order to get our product into stores.  The reality was that brick and mortar stores are on the way out and it wasn’t cost effective for us right now.  However, we do want to be in stores.  For young musicians presenting debuts on their own, 4-wall distribution can be a rough undertaking.  Right now we are concentrating our efforts in online distrubution and later in 2009 we plan to be in stores.

WJ: How do you get your releases to the press and electronic media?  And given the fact that the media receives a blizzard of new releases, what steps have you taken to try and make your releases stand out from the pack?

KS: The first thing that I wanted to stand out from the crowd is the music itself.  We want to release music that will touch people’s life in a great way.  We try to make everything from the record concept and the recording quality, to the art top notch.  I feel if that is the basis for everything that we do, then we are headed in the right direction, whether it stands out now or down the line, which is the ultimate goal.  Each of the artists in the collective has been blessed to play, as a sideman, with many of today’s leading artists and visionaries, as well as our many exceptionally talented peers.  This has been great for us in piquing interest in our music to those who may never have heard of us.  Our publicist, Jason Byrne from Red Cat Publicity, has helped tremendously in introducing our names and music to the jazz world individually and as a solid collective.

WJ: How effective have your early efforts with the label been so far?

KS: WCM has been doing very well so far.  Each of the artists has released a CD for a total of four.  We have been blessed that they have been well received and have had critical acclaim by writers (New York Times, All About Jazz, Downbeat, JazzTimes), musicians, and listeners alike.  My record The Source received 2007 end-of-year poll wins in the Village Voice and All About Jazz, and (guitarist) Mike Moreno’s record has been chosen by JazzTimes as one of the top 50 CDs of 2007.  Julie Hardy’s CD The WIsh was also well received.  Downbeat magazine said "[vocalist] Julie Hardy interacts as a skilled, challenging improviser and vocalist, leading the way melodically and rhythmically."  Trombonist Nick Vayenas’ release is doing very well too.  We had a record release performance with Nick’s band at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in May.  And in June we had a WCM weekend celebration at the Jazz Gallery.  Our music is doing the talking for us and if we keep that up we will be on our way in following the masters in terms of developing a strong body of work and continuing their legacy; that’s our marker.

WJ: Will you always be concerned with making hard copy releases or do you ever foresee a day when your whole catalogue will be purely downloadable?

KS: I think the music industry is headed toward being totally digital, but I think that most jazz fans are also collectors in some way.  I am a young guy but I do remember seeing the eight track in my parents’ car and I have a nice collection of [vinyl] records.  For me nothing can replace the feeling of having a record like Barry Harris’ Live At the Jazz Workshop in your hands.  It’s really a romance I don’t think people will totally get away from in the long run.

WJ: What else do you see as the ongoing benefit of hard copy releases besides that tactile need?

KS: For those of us who have had computers crash and lost everything on our hardrive, there is the obvious reason for having the hard copies.  As I stated in the previous answer I think listeners across the board still have somewhat of a love/hate romance with the hardcopy, at least when the music moves them.

WJ: What kinds of artists are you interested in recording and releasing on your label?

KS: Our interest is in artists who have a strong vision for their music; artists not just in the now but who have the drive to develop their craft over the long haul like all of the great masters have.  I believe now we are in a one hit culture and I think we should represent the opposite… but we should also make hits!  We want to have not only strong players but strong composers on the label.  We want artists with an attitude to promote the collective. 

WJ: Talk about your future plans for the label and for your own playing career.

KS: I plan for the label to develop a strong catalog of what is happening in the present.  Jazz is undergoing a revival.  It’s so great to be in New York right now and to play with my peers that many people don’t know about… at least for now.  My goal for the label is to get those voices heard.  The next WCM CD will most likely be my own.  I am in the process of writing right now and plan to release it in the first quarter of 2009. 

As far as my playing career I’ve been extremely blessed.  I am really saddened that many of the masters are passing away.  That’s one thing I feel our generation needs, we need to be around the masters on the bandstand and off, at the bar and on the plane, on the street, at rehearsal, etc.  Those are valuable lessons.  I was on a three month tour with the Monterey Jazz Festival All-Stars earlier this year.  One of the most memorable moments for me was when James Moody was at rehearsal and he asked ME how he should play my music!  He’s James Moody!  That really caught me off guard and taught me a great lesson.  If he is 83 and his thirst is that heavy, that’s all I want to wish for my own future.  I never want to be stagnant.  My future plan for my playing is to have as many of those experiences as I can get of playing with the greats and continuing their legacy through carrying on the tradition, not in style but in spirit.

Catch up with Kendrick Scott at www.kendrickscott.com and www.myspace.com/kendrickscottoracle.

Learn more about WCM at www.worldculturemusic.com.

World Culture Music Discography

Kendrick Scott, The Source

Julie Hardy, The Wish

Mike Moreno, Between the Lines

Nick Vayenas, Synthesia