8 minute read
Interview with Adam O'Farrill
A CONVERSATION WITH TRUMPETER ADAM O’FARRILL
Interviewed by Wanjiku Kairu
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In getting ready for this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival, we had the opportunity to interview several of its players. The interviews were originally shown on Chicago Jazz Festival’s Facebook and Instagram pages and highlighted some of what people could expect from the artist’s performances. But each interview also delved into the artist work and life. We hope you enjoy this one with the talented and young Adam O’Farrill!
O'Farrill comes from a rich musical background, with his grandfather being the Afro-Cuban-Irish composer and arranger Chico O'Farrill, his father being the cultural boundary-pushing composer and pianist Arturo O'Farrill, his mother Alison Deane being a classical pianist and educator, and his brother Zack O'Farrill being a drummer, composer, and educator. Adam is of Mexican, Cu-ban, and Irish heritage on his dad's side, and Eastern
European Jewish and African-American on his mom's side. This, combined with growing up in a place of immense cultural diversity, has shaped his tendency to break stylistic borders within not only his original music, but also in terms of who he works with a sideman. O'Farrill was subject of an article in Jazztimes entitled, “Adam O'Farrill Does Not Play Latin Jazz”, where he spoke about the unfair treatment and pigeonholing of Latinx musicians.
Wanjiku Kairu: Hey, I'm Wanjiku Kairu with the Jazz Festival and the Jazz Institute of Chicago. And today we're talking with Adam O'Farrill of Stranger Days. Adam is playing at 3:00 PM at the Von Freeman pavil-ion. Adam, how are you doing today?
Adam O'Farrill: I'm doing good. I had some travel over the weekend, so I'm just recovering from that, but I'm good. Wanjiku Kairu: Where did you go?
Adam O'Farrill: Pennsylvania. It's not that exciting.
Wanjiku Kairu: So exotic.
Adam O'Farrill: Yeah. Corn fields and farms and everywhere and everything, but it was nice. It was a gig with my family. It was fun.
Wanjiku Kairu: Nice. Nice. Well, tell us about the work that you're going to be performing today.
Adam O'Farrill: Yeah, so I'll be playing with my quartet, which is called Stranger Days. And we have been playing for about almost nine years now and we've made three albums. The quartet is coming from that tra-dition of the cordless quartets of people like Ornette Coleman, Albert Isler, Don Cherry, Charles Mingus. And the music that we began to play, my originals reflected a bit of that spirit, but lately we've been moving in broader stylistic directions, playing music that is influenced by chamber music, electronic music, and trance, ambient music, a lot of influences. And it's still a lot of my original music, but we've covered pieces by people like Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom York, Gabriel Garzon Montano and then even Thelonious Monk, Irving Berlin, people like that as well. And we made three albums. The last one, we experimented a little bit more with the production and mixing of it heavily influenced, at least for me, heavily influenced by Radiohead and the way they take the sound, the natural sound of their instruments and their band, and really use production in a way to really high-light moments in the music that are already there in the music, but just to look at what you're able to accomplish in the studio and after the fact that you can't accomplish as much in the moment while performing.
Wanjiku Kairu: Nice. So how would you compare performing in the studio to performing on stage?
Adam O'Farrill: Well, I guess it's different from this band. We just recorded our fourth album, which will be released at some point in the future. I can't really say right now.
Wanjiku Kairu: Oh yeah, we'll be waiting.
Adam O'Farrill: Me too. Me too. But we actually recorded, so we had recorded that album right after a week of tour-ing and in the studio we would just record in sets. So we did four or five, maybe six, even full sets of our music. And that was something that we had done before, but the producer who I brought in, Spencer Murphy, he wanted us to do that because it's really hard to capture the energy of a band live in the studio and the best way to do that isn't necessarily to dig in on one tune and do five, six takes in a row just to get to that perfect take. But it's more just to record a set at a time so that when you get to that tune, you're in the midst of that flow and that motion and momentum of playing a set that you get when you're playing a gig.
Wanjiku Kairu: Yeah. There's definitely something to be said about the flow of music in jazz. And so I want to say you are Mexican, Cuban, Irish, Jewish, and African American, and come from a rich musical back-ground. How has your diverse heritage played a hand in your development as an artist?
Adam O'Farrill: Well, I feel very lucky because I really feel like I have the opportunity to pull from a lot
of different places culturally, stylistically, in a funny way, I don't know if I can ... I don't know. It leaves me feeling very untethered because I'm this background I have to play this music or anything like that. It makes me feel very low pressure in a way and just makes-
Wanjiku Kairu: Like you're not going to be letting any one of them down?
Adam O'Farrill: I think if follow one too closely, I'll let the other one down. But also, I don't think that's even that true either. I think because it also, I think maybe in a bit more of a subconscious way allows me to really see the thread between all these different places that I come from. And that is what I like to really hone in on. And yes, there are certain times when I'm like, okay, I want this mantuno in my music or I want certain hand percussion in the music or things like that, but I'm not really looking that in terms of satisfying, representing this part of myself or that part of myself, it's more just because that's what I know and grew up with. I have it at my disposal of just knowing it. Wanjiku Kairu: Nice. Well, it all comes together and it sounds really great.
Adam O'Farrill: Thank you.
Wanjiku Kairu: Yeah, of course. You've accomplished so much in your career. You were listed as one of the best jazz albums by NPR. You've appeared in critically acclaimed records. What has been your greatest achievement so far?
Adam O'Farrill: Honestly, I don't know if it's the answer that you're looking for, but just meeting the people that I've met and forming the relationships that I've formed with people in my band and all the different band leaders I've worked with. And that's something that I really, because you release an album and you release another one and you get a commission, you do all these things, all these moments happen and these accomplishments and everything, and those are great. And I've been very lucky and very proud of the work I've done, but I think what really ties all that together is just the people. And that's what makes it possible to be recognized is when you have the right friends and collaborators bring-ing you there pretty much and so that's something I really feel the most proud of is knowing the people I know and having a relationship with them that I have.
Wanjiku Kairu: Nice. And you're most proud of your collaborative relationships. I think that's such a great thing to be proud of.
Adam O'Farrill: That's what music is.
Wanjiku Kairu: So is there anyone that you were excited to check out this weekend?
Adam O'Farrill: I really want to catch Bill Frisell. Oddly enough, I've known about him forever, but I've only recent-ly started to really dig into his work and saw him play earlier this year live and I'd seen him years before, but yeah, I think I really want to catch his set. I think he's one of the most interesting musicians I know. I'm really, really, really honored to be playing at the Chicago Jazz Festival. I don't know. I'm very appreciative that people are going to get to hear this music and this band. And that really means a lot. I have two albums in the works. I don't really know again, when everybody will hear them, hopefully sooner rather than later, but one of them is with this band and will be playing a lot of mu-sic from that album, which I'm excited about. And I also have an album of music that I wrote for Octet, which is very different from this music and has some really great people, a part of that. So I'm also excited to share that.
Wanjiku Kairu: Very nice. Well, we'll be excited to hear it, so we'll definitely wait for it. Be sure to check out Adam O'Farrill of Stranger Days at 3:00 PM on the Von Freeman Pavilion. Thanks so much, Adam.
Adam O’Farrill: Oh, thank you.
