Katisse Buckingham
Katisse Buckingham is a marvel of a man. Over the course of the last three years, I have had the privilege of developing a profoundly inspirational friendship with one of Los Angeles’s finest jazz musicians. It was a great surprise to learn of his commission, Still Time, by Pacific Serenades, having known him initially through his monthly sell-out performances at the Baked Potato in Studio City. At this venue, Katisse could be found sporting baggy clothing and a baseball cap, surrounded by his equally astounding colleagues who performed with him to create an ensemble that skillfully fuses jazz, hip-hop, pop, and world music. I wondered at how his musical vision-with its fiery, impassioned virtuosic soloing on flutes and saxophones, hip vocals (and Katisse is a formidable beat-boxer!), lush harmonies, and complex meters and rhythms-might play out in a classical chamber music setting.
Still Time, for alto saxophone and string quartet, is in three movements: Trails, Powder, and Tides. In Katisse’s own words, the work was composed “with a specific goal in mind: to illustrate the emotional and physiological aspects of mountain biking, snowboarding, and surfing.” Katisse says that his active lifestyle correlates well with music. “This piece is married to those three sports-they influence my music in that there is an element of development of skill, there’s an element of kind of ‘going for it,’ even when you are not quite sure if it’s gonna work, if you’re going to be okay. So it has definitely built up my sense of confidence in preparing and going for it musically-if you’re riding down a mountain on a bike, and you’ve never ridden this trail before, it’s all improvisation, these last-microsecond adjustments. It really feels a lot like that.”
He makes another interesting connection: “These sports, here, for the most part, are individual efforts. They’re personal bests, be they competitive or not-they’re just you and the terrain.” Musicians can readily relate to this analogy: It’s us versus the terrain when it’s us versus our instrument. “The main thing is overcoming fears, and trying to just flow, and not just to be in the moment overthinking everything. When you’re hurling down a mountain, you can’t overthink things. You have to be in that alpha state. And I think that’s a good place to be when you’re writing a song or improvising.”
Being intimately familiar with Katisse’s album, Lyrical Worker, which features only a fraction of his “personal bests” (you’ll have to check out his month-end Baked Potato show to hear the others), I feel that Katisse is really at home with lyrics and spoken word. Much of the music on this record rests in Katisse’s vocal stylings, in the various raps or beat-boxing interspersed between instrumental soloing. I asked him what compositional or performance considerations he had to make in composing Still Time, especially without having lyrics to support the images suggested by the movement titles. “Things just kind of come out differently when I’m writing a song. A lot of times I’m sitting at the piano and I’m writing chords or harmonizing melodies. A lot of times I might start with a rhythmic motif, or maybe a lyric will imply something. In this piece, because of the theme-because I literally wanted to encapsulate aspects of the sports, with an emphasis on still time-on the moments when time stands still-I literally just pictured one of those scenarios and just thought ‘What does it feel like?’ and then just started writing from there. What sounds do I hear? What textures, what tempos? Is the harmony bright? Is it dark or dense?”
This commission is also noteworthy because it is the first time Katisse has composed music for string quartet. “I’m not really a string writer, per se. I couldn’t help but see a lot of the quartet as working like a rhythm section. Periodically, you’ll hear things that sound like improvised solos. Not a lot of the writing is extremely virtuosic; when you get down to it, I just wanted it to be musical. Sometimes if things are too ‘burning,’ they sort of step away from the ensemble sound. It was more the goal to have the five voices moving around together as one.” Indeed, a lot of the active sections of string writing throughout the work involve setting a tight rhythmic groove or weaving through a series of lush harmonies. Katisse compared the opening of the second movement, Powder, which features staggered entrances by each of the strings imitating the same syncopated figures, to a snowboarder “entwining trees.” He contrasts these rhythmically and harmonically very active sections with more subdued, plaintive solos from the saxophone representing the fleeting feeling of hovering alone in midair.
As for the perceived disparity-among musicians and music lovers alike-between composition (“classical”) and improvisation (“jazz”) as art, Katisse’s point on the matter is enlightening: “I really feel that composition and improvisation are one in the same. This topic is beautifully illustrated in the great pianist Bill Evans’ liner notes to the Miles Davis classic record, Kind of Blue. Evans equates improv with a style of Japanese parchment painting in which simple, quick strokes are used rather than those one might use if you could go back and change things and really think about it.” Katisse’s clever infusion of his eclectic style into a traditionally classical ensemble make Still Time a refreshing adventure for listeners of any persuasion.
