Peter Zummo and Eve Essex Talk The Fabulous Truth

Peter Zummo is a New York-based composer, who is heralded as a pioneer of avant-garde/experimental jazz; Eve Essex is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Brooklyn. Just before the release of Eve’s record The Fabulous Truth — which Peter features on, on the closing track, “Honeypot” — the two got on a Zoom call to catch up about it. You can read their conversation below.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music 

Peter Zummo: Hello, Eve.

Eve Essex: Hi, Peter. It’s nice to see you.

Peter: Where are you?

Eve: I’m in Memphis. I’m sort of in the midst of a very drawn out tour. I played in Cleveland a couple weeks ago and did a couple shows in New York to kick things off. But I’m in Tennessee right now for a residency until August, so I’ll play in Knoxville this weekend, gonna head out to Nashville, and then do some shows on the leg home as well.

Peter: I just spent a long week in Canada. I did four shows. 

Eve: What kind of shows were those?

Peter: Well, I had a rhythm section from Toronto, acoustic bass, vibraphone, and a percussion setup — three congas and hand percussion. We played a couple of shows in Toronto, one in Montreal, and the Hotel Wolfe Island, which is a pretty cool place.

Eve: Did you bring your regular band with you?

Peter: No, I just had the Toronto guys. They’re all cooks.

Eve: Like literal cooks?

Peter: Yes. They talk about food, and we try food. They make sauerkraut, forage for mushrooms, make tempeh.

Eve: Sounds like the perfect crew to be on the road with.

Peter: [Laughs.] So you have a new album almost out — or is out.

Eve: Yeah, I think by the time this makes it to the internet, it will be out. But it’s coming out Friday, so very, very soon. I’m excited to get it out. Some of the work on it started in the weeks right before the pandemic, so it feels like a really long time coming, and I’m relieved to finally close the door on that record.

Peter: It takes a long time getting it out. When did I record those tracks for you? I don’t even remember now. 

Eve: That’s a good question. I think it might have been in 2021.

Peter: Wow.

Eve: It would have been at some point when the pandemic was still really going, because we did it remotely.

Peter: Yeah, I did it at home. I had the euphonium — I wouldn’t have carried it. I listened to the two tracks that are on Bandcamp today. You doing electronics, does that include these organ sounds that I heard? 

Eve: Yeah, those are mostly MIDI for the organs. I write those out basically as a score, and then I put them into Ableton and find my ideal organ sound to work with them. For the most part, I assembled all the electronics in Ableton, using VSTs. “Room With A View” is the one with the organs.

Peter: And the other one that I heard on Bandcamp—

Eve: “The Fabulous Truth,” which is the title track.

Peter: It sounds to me like you like to get a big sound going so that you can sing with it full out.

Eve: Yeah, I guess that’s been a new development with this record. I think on my first record, it was mostly assembling in real time with hardware synths — and actually very little sequencing, which leads to a much more kind of restrained and slow moving sound. And because I’m fiddling with so many knobs, the vocals are not as present. But in this project, I feel like I’ve kind of embraced the idea of being a vocalist and really moving towards songwriting and letting the voice be the instrument that I’m performing with.

Peter: Also in “The Fabulous Truth,” after three minutes, it opened up a little into a more transparent thing, and then a minute later it shifted into a more open sound, I thought. That’s cool. I like that.

Eve: Yeah, that one I think is maybe the earliest of the tracks that I started working on from this record. It’s kind of like a bridge between my earlier work and the newer work, because it was developed in basically a live setting and improvising. So I think that influenced the structure and how it works, because I was using vocal samples that were recorded in real time from vocal elements earlier in the piece. Its structure, I guess, is a bit more organic or intuitive than other pieces, which were really scored and charted and explicitly determined from the beginning to the end. That one also — similar to the process of how we were working together — I worked with a guitarist, Jenghis Manning-Pettit, who took the track and recorded a bunch of his own work on the guitar remotely, and that was brought into the process.

Peter: And when you’re working with electronics, either before where you’re turning knobs more, or now more virtually, do you feel you can control it?

Eve: That’s an interesting question. I would say thinking about it as an instrumentalist, it’s very different from, say, woodwinds — like with the woodwinds, I’ve been doing it for my whole life and I know how to predict how the instrument will react. I also have my own habits or inflections that I use. So playing the saxophone feels a lot more just like talking, and conversational, and I can be more freewheeling with it. The electronics are definitely not so intuitive for me. [Laughs.] I’m trying to develop an understanding of synthesis and how that works, but it is definitely more exploratory right now. So I’ve found that when I’m using hardware, it is a bit more open-ended, or I surprise myself a lot, just in terms of not knowing what’s going to happen all the time. But when it is something more structured, like using MIDI or sequences that are playing through instruments, I think it’s become kind of challenging to open up the sound. That’s actually something that I’m trying to work out right now, here on this residency, finding ways to use the electronics in more open-ended kind of ways.

Peter: Still songwriting?

Eve: Maybe, or I might be branching out into more kinds of practices. I’m looking at doing some pieces that are mixing instrumental improv with electronics. I have been looking at writing scores for instrumentalists. We’ll see how far I get in the next couple of months, but I really want to do some pieces for a saxophone quartet. I’m still working on songwriting also, but I feel like now things are branching into separate kinds of streams.

Peter: I asked about controlling the electronics because I got a new synthesizer. It’s a Roland, and it’s supposed to have artificial intelligence. If you watch the video — I got the portable one — the guy gets on the bus after the gig and pushes buttons and plays the keyboard, and a normal song comes out. And whenever I do it, it’s something very, very different. [Laughs.]

Eve: I mean, do you want a normal song?

Peter: No, no, I don’t — I suppose that has to do with it. But I find that I can’t control it, but I get to interesting places, so I just set up to record before I start playing with it and now I have all these [tracks]. I’m using them as unfinished backing tracks. And the drum machine might come in part of the time, or it might be there all the time, and then I have the band play with that. Or I use it to interrupt the band — that’s what I was doing in Canada.

Eve: I’m curious, if it does have an AI integration in it, maybe it will teach itself to play — or [play] like you.

Peter: It arpeggiates if you push the button. The way I put it is, it attempts to play what I would have — or should have — played if I were better at it. It’s fun. But, you know, I learned analog synthesis in the late ‘60s, where maybe you could control it, but when your three hours in the studio is coming to an end, there’s nothing else to do but to record it, because you’re not gonna get it again. I wish I had those tapes.

Eve: [Laughs.] Me too. I would love to hear what you were doing with synthesis. And now, too. 

Peter: Yeah. So, when you sing, I hear — like many singers — that you’re not always singing notes. I mean, you have a portamento or glissando that you use a lot, which I like.

Eve: Yeah, I guess that’s one of my vocal tics. I was doing some voice lessons early on in the lockdown period where I was sort of being trained out of it, but it is something that I love so much, that flexibility. I think also, it’s something that I use in woodwinds, too — especially on the flute, just sort of bending things. There’s something about that kind of soaring energy that feels so expressive to me. I’m not fully ready to let it be trained out of me.

Peter: Well, one does not have to sing fixed pitches all the time. I think of raga, or anything across the Middle East where you have curved note kind of things. And you hear it a lot in pop, too. Or jazz, I imagine. 

Eve: Yeah. I still feel new to being a vocalist. And these days, I think people often think of that as my instrument, which is still a little bit like… my brain isn’t there yet. But I think developing expressivity and the ability to improvise and turn things while I’m singing is something that I really hope to build on as I’m making my journey into being a vocalist.

Peter: I always think of piccolo and alto sax — when we play together, that’s what usually you’re doing. Did you play flute on this one?

Eve: Yeah, there’s a little bit of flute. Alto and piccolo are the main ones; those are the instruments that I’m definitely the most comfortable with. But I used some soprano saxophone, used some of the full-sized flute, and also a very tiny bit of bassoon.

Peter: Wow. Well, I watched a lot of television during the pandemic and I started listening to the ads that have singing, and I noticed that there’s [this move where] you kind of slide into a note from above and change the vowel sound at the same time. Or if you listen to Frank Sinatra, he’ll slide down an octave to the next note. I call that the inverted scoop and started practicing it, on the trombone especially. And then also microtonally moving by a half step and just hitting that lower note just with a quick slide into it. It took a while, but I added it to my vocabulary. It’s another little tool you can have.

Eve: When you first mentioned this idea of the glissando, I was thinking that, although I can kind of do it, just a little bit of bending on the flute or the saxophone, you have full access to that as a trombonist. Your instrument is so much closer to how a vocalist would operate. I’m curious, do you often use vocals as a touchstone when you’re thinking about your sound?

Peter: I don’t know if I think about it. Just as an aside, Roswell Rudd said the trombone is the closest to the human voice of all the instruments. 

Eve: I would say he’s particular as a trombonist. I always hear it’s cello — but I think trombone is actually closer because you’re literally breathing through it.

Peter: You’re using the breath in the same way. I’m not sure if I do that, but I do think in terms of characters. I select some mutes to carry to the gig, and I can change voice if I look at the mutes I have in front of me. I can pick one up and decide to be that character. Also with the voice, I’ve been doing this spoken word stuff, so I sort of fell into what I think is voice acting or doing characters. If I’m rendering a brief bit of a conversation between two people, I’ll do a low and a high voice, or something like that, to differentiate. I think it’s similar that on the horn I’m looking for all different kinds of sounds, not to have a uniform sound. Either that or I’m not capable of it.

Eve: I think it’s definitely one of the joys of watching you play, and also just being beside you playing. The way that you interject with the horn feels extremely conversational.

Peter: Well, you said that before, that it becomes like speaking when you’re very familiar with the instrument. Extemporization, or something like that. 

Eve: I don’t know if I have fully gotten there on my horns. I feel like that’s an area that I should start thinking about more. For example, at the show that we played with Love of Life Orchestra a month or so ago, I was struck by the ways that you interject into what is happening. And sometimes just even the smallest notes bring so much attitude with it. I love about watching you play.

Peter: Yeah. I like to think of dynamics within a melody, but also within one note, whether it goes from dark to brassy, and comes back and all that. Dealing with milliseconds, but also the larger picture. I was interjecting partly because Peter Gordon — well, we didn’t find my folder with the latest music in it. I never take it home in that band, and he’s always updating the arrangements. So I remember in rehearsal, I went over and sat next to Larry Saltzman, who had a score, and he was doing the guitar part. So I learned some parts that had never been in my trombone part in one of those songs and worked on them at home before the show. I also didn’t have music for all of the pieces we played. So it was an opportunity to play like I play. [Laughs.] 

Eve: Well, I loved it. And I imagine after however many decades you’ve played together, you don’t need the chart anymore. You know how to work with each other.

Peter: Yeah. It’s fun to have a relationship that long. It must be 45 years or something like that. Knock on wood.

Eve: There’s 45 more.

Peter: [Laughs.] I remember we were doing sound check at Bowery Electric and you asked if I could hear you in my monitor, and we were working on trying to make it so that you could hear yourself.

Eve: Well, for this tour I invested in some in-ear monitors, which has made a huge difference. I think for the vocals, it’s really hard if you can’t hear yourself. The horns, I can feel it in my body much better. I know where it’s going to sit. But when it comes to the vocals — and especially Peter Gordon has me singing insanely high — the monitors are crucial. But I’m trying to make my touring setup much more compact and predictable, and cut out whatever I can.

Peter: And you took off and sang something insanely high that I doubted was a written part. Or maybe it was, but there was a moment there that was pretty cool. So with the in-ear monitor, your ears are plugged up with these things?

Eve: Yeah, basically. I can do just one of them. But, yeah, I’m just putting my mixer straight into my ears.

Peter: Do you use reverb?

Eve: Yeah, a little bit.

Peter: I figure that way you can separate the sound you’re hearing in your head from what the mic is doing, if you have reverb in the cans.

Eve: Yeah. I just get the whole mix, whatever’s going through the mains.

Peter: Yeah. I don’t like to play with both ears in. And then if you take one out, if you have to play to a track, they say that you’re going to turn it up too loud to hear it properly and it’s not good for your ears. I don’t care for it. Someone brought up, “You should get a clip-on mic.” I said “I don’t want that. I want to be dancing in front of the microphone and moving around.”

Eve: Yeah, I gotta say, I’m kind of tempted by the wireless mics, just in terms of being able to move around more freely. But yeah, honing the gear has been something I never really worry too much about until I’m traveling and every place I go to has a different setup. I take some stress off of myself by making my own situation as predictable as possible.

Peter: Do you ever do a handheld mic when you’re sitting here?

Eve: I have been lately. I don’t want to be trapped in one place — which, I guess when I’m playing the horn, I still need to be up at the stand. But I’m trying to get out and move a little more, get around the room. Which kind of changes based on the room if you’re going to get feedback if you walk off the stage. But I’ve been enjoying being able to get out into the crowd, or just take advantage of the entire space of the stage.

Peter: So, what else can we say about the new album? New direction in terms of production and singing. A lot of players on it. 

Eve: Yeah. I think this record is the first of my music that has other instrumentalists on it that will be released. I think part of the reason that came about was that I wasn’t enjoying playing by myself early on in the lockdown. It kind of bummed me out, improvising without an audience or without anybody to react to or listen to. I got very into writing scores in MIDI. At first it was not for any kind of specific group of instrumentalists; I was just making scores and listening to the MIDI playback and coming up with different sounds. So the instrumentation of these pieces is not consistent at all across them.

Peter: You extracted recordings, I think, from a variety of places.

Eve: Yeah. A lot of these pieces came together like how we worked together on “Honeypot” where it was sending out a part to someone. There were parts recorded in Canada and Mexico and LA. One of the fun elements of working in this way was that I could work with a much wider group of folks than would be possible just staying in the city. But there are a lot of locals too. I think it also came together quite slowly. I recorded five or so songs in Brooklyn a few years back with Max Gordon, and then added more. So there kept being more studios and personnel added on as new songs were added, older ones were dropped. 

But I think the experience of playing with Love of Life probably is what gave me the confidence to actually start writing charts for folks — seeing how a really large group can come together, and how to rehearse a group that big, even just formatting the charts for a large group of people. Being in that group really opened things up for me in terms of thinking about what might be possible if I wanted to expand my sound.

Peter: You did send me printed parts for the song, but I think I played them slightly differently.

Eve: Which is totally what I wanted to happen. 

Peter: Sometimes it’s the octave or the turn of the phrase that doesn’t quite work on the instrument…

Eve: Yeah, that’s one of the challenges of writing for instruments that you don’t play, being able to understand where everything is going to hit. But I didn’t really want any of the parts that I wrote to be played exactly to the letter, because then what fun is working with great players like you who have so much character around what you do? Let them open up the part.

Peter: Well, if you send me a part, I try to behave, but sometimes I come up against my own limitations so it changes. And that’s part of the fun of doing all this music together.

Eve: Well, I love what you did, and hopefully we’ll be able to do more projects together in the future.

Peter: Congratulations on the new record.