FIVE QUESTIONS WITH THE WESTERLIES

Formed in 2011, The Westerlies, the New York-based brass quartet comprised of trumpeters Riley Mulherkar and Chloe Rowlands and trombonists Andy Clausen and Willem de Koch, has seen its profile steadily rise since the release of its 2014 debut, Wish the Children Would Come On Home: The Music of Wayne Horvitz, and The Westerlies, the double-CD set that followed two years later. As dedicated as the four are to their genre-transcending group project, The Westerlies has also garnered a reputation as a valued collaborator, with artists such as Fleet Foxes, Common, and Dave Douglas including the quartet on their recordings. textura recently spoke with de Koch, one of the group's co-founders, about a major change in personnel as well as other matters, including how the band sees itself and the remarkable range of material featured on its latest release, Wherein Lies the Good (reviewed here).

1. Obviously The Westerlies experienced a recent major change in May 2018 when trumpeter Chloe Rowlands replaced Zubin Hensler. What impact has the change had on the group?

Chloe brings an entirely new personality and perspective to the group, both musically and socially. She's an incredible trumpet player with impeccable technique, which has allowed us to challenge ourselves with new repertoire. She also has a very extroverted approach to playing the trumpet, whereas Zubin had a somewhat introverted approach to the instrument (both very valid and beautiful), so it's been interesting to see how the rest of us in the band have adjusted to having a different voice on that trumpet part. The addition of Chloe to the group has altered the timbre of the ensemble in a lot of exciting ways.

2. I see elements of both the jazz quartet and string quartet in The Westerlies. How does the group see itself?

I think we see ourselves as a conglomeration of four unique personalities before we see ourselves as any sort of specific ensemble format or instrumentation that abides by the conventions of a given genre. I think our instrumentation causes us to compose in a way that utilizes a lot of chamber music conventions. However, our identity as a collective of four improviser-composers imbues all of our music with an improvised sensibility and allows us some additional flexibility in the way we approach a piece of music. I think we'd simply refer to ourselves as a band.

3. In what ways does Wherein Lies the Good differ from your earlier releases, the 2014 debut set Wish the Children Would Come on Home: The Music of Wayne Horvitz and 2016's double-CD set The Westerlies?

The biggest difference between this release and our previous releases is the addition of Chloe to the group—she's had a big impact on our sound. This album isn't a big divergence from the aesthetic or approach that we applied to our earlier releases, but I think it is a document of where we are now as a groupand represents the culmination of the past several years of honing in on a certain style and sound. I think a lot of the germination of certain concepts on our earlier albums have come to fruition here, and it will be a challenge on our next album to see how we can take those concepts even further, or try an entirely different aesthetic approach.

4. Could you talk a bit about the set-list on Wherein Lies the Good, a mix of pieces composed by the group's members and covers, among them the title track (a brass quartet version of a setting Robin Holcomb originally wrote for solo piano), two pieces by Charles Ives and one by Arthur Russell, and gospel songs from the Golden Gate Quartet?

The biggest throughline of the repertoire on this album is that they're all songs that have been played on repeat in our tour van for years. The tour van playlist is always an exercise in consensus; we all have to agree upon what we're going to listen to while paying heed to the executive DJ power in the hands of the driver. So the songs and artists that end up getting the most playtime in the van are the strongest representation of our shared musical interests, which in turn shape the core identity and sound of the ensemble. I think if you look closely at each of the pieces on the album you'll find a lot of similarities: an affinity for American folk melody and harmony, an improvisational spirit, a polyglot adoption of multiple musical traditions—all qualities that we admire in the artists we look up to as a group.

5. Much of the album emphasizes the glorious polyphony of the four horns in all its purity, but there are also moments where experimental touches have been woven into the material. Could you describe with reference to a specific album track or two some of the innovative treatments incorporated into the performances?

As a group, we have a deep fascination with timbre and sound quality. Having such a homogenous instrumentation has challenged us to explore the entire spectrum of sounds that we can make with our instruments, both in order to keep the attention of the listener and to evoke the underlying feeling of a piece. We've found that timbre is one of the best tools at our disposal for bringing out the feeling or meaning of a piece, especially when adapting songs with lyrics; since we can't sing the lyrics, we use timbral variety to express the feeling of the song. “Eli” is a great example of this: in our rendition of this song, Andy places tinfoil over the bell of his trombone to evoke the ferocity with which Arthur Russell sings and plays the cello on the original recording.

Bonus: The Westerlies have appeared on recordings by Fleet Foxes, Vieux Farka Touré, Common, and Dave Douglas. How does collaborating with another artist alter your approach compared to when it's the group only that's performing? And who might be on a wish-list of artists with whom you'd like to perform?

The biggest challenge of this group is derived from our instrumentation: we strive to make a fully-realized, complete musical product with just the four of us. This works to our advantage in collaborations with other artists, because it allows us to operate as four individuals and as a self-contained unit within the context of a larger musical group (a band within a band, so to speak). Collaborating with other folks is always exciting because adapting to other people's musical visions challenges us to play to together in ways that we never would have conceived on our own. We're always open to new collaborative projects, but working with some of our heroes—Caroline Shaw, Bill Frisell, and Sam Amidon, to name a few—would be a dream.

web site: THE WESTERLIES

April 2020