Joseph Jarman

In our eyes, heroes, gods, masters do not exist. We love and respect every musician, whether from the past, the future, or... someone who doesn't yet exist... just as much as birdsong interests us.

Well, by the end of the millennium, five, six months from now, we hope to somehow manage to move into a new location where we have the whole building, so we can devote space to all our activities.

Well, remember that we were all members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

We were doing performance art as far back as 1965, just not calling it that.

You know, Equal Interest played at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival Awards and not one musician from that category was even thought of. Even thought of! The idea, that here's this vital energy, and that element doesn't even know it exists!

So okay, I accepted, and I realized while working for that concert that I'd been missing something very important and vital to me, and that something was music.

When Christopher and Charles passed away, I was completely depressed, I felt rejected and real down, and so Roscoe invited me because he had this spirit of compassion, and we had gone to school together, were friends and everything.

Lotta people don't realize when you grow up with people, you have an affinity, a relationship you don't get with anyone else. After you're twenty years old, anyone you meet after that, it's different from the people you knew before.

I hadn't been practicing or playing or anything. But that had been a vital part of my life.

But back to your question, it was a wonderful experience with the Art Ensemble, and I keep in contact and sort of follow what's going on, but it was also very important to make this step, you may say this leap of faith.

To be here drinking a Coke can influence the process of musical creation as much as anything.

In fact, since no one's been interested in my work, I took the responsibility recently to invest in my own work, so I'm producing a concert that was done at the Vision Festival in May.