Kaichi Kato October 29, 2024
“As a musician, you have to wear many hats,” says independent artist Curtis Taylor. “You’re doing advertising and you’re making flyers for your show.”
(Photo: Robert Sanchez)
Becoming an independent musician in 2024 will often require you to take a DIY approach. On trumpeter Curtis Taylor’s self-released Taylor Made, that ethic of independence is reflected in everything from the album artwork to the sound of the mixes.
Painted in blue and framed diagonally with a photo of Taylor playing an instrument, this long player’s jacket has faux creases and a purposefully worn look. Subtle visual effects give it the look of a treasured album that has been pulled off the shelf (and perhaps lent to a friend) many times.
“I painted the artwork myself,” Taylor said. “What I was trying to use was phenomenal, just the industry standard. But because of that, he was in high demand and had backup, and it just slowed down the process. So I was thinking to myself, “Okay, I have to release this album.” I’m just going to do it myself.”
He thought the decision to design his own was a natural one, based on two portraits by photographer Robert Sanchez.
“Being a musician, you have to wear a lot of different hats. You’re doing advertising, you’re making flyers for your shows,” he says over the phone during his summer vacation in Iowa City. (During the school year, he is an assistant professor in the Jazz Studies Program at the University of Iowa.) “Every time we put on a show, we don’t have the budget to hire someone to design something for us. By working on something until I really like it, I have developed a clear eye for seeing things.
“As a composer and one of the musicians contributing to the album, one of the great things about designing the album art is that you get an inside look at what the album is about and the intentions behind it,” he continued. . “We aimed for a visual aesthetic that would give listeners a retro and familiar feel just by looking at the album art.”
Boasting seven swinging original songs, Taylor Made could be called “The Curtis Taylor Songbook, Vol. 2.” 1. He had this pun-intended album title in mind for 20 years. Although these works are not very old, they still stand the test of time.
“The great thing about my compositions is that they are tried-and-true pieces that I have performed live with bands in front of various audiences across the country. We’ve been getting feedback,” he shared. “Often I intersperse the original music with standard jazz repertoire that I think goes well with it. What I’ve found is that I often get a better response from the audience when I play the original.” That’s it.
“That’s a great thing for me as an artist because as a composer you can be very vulnerable. I always try to write and play and perform from a very honest place, but I don’t know if the listener digs it. I don’t know, and I always hope that I’m writing something that resonates with people.”
Not a Coltrane classic, Taylor’s “After the Rain” is a fun and infectious exploration of what sounds like a forgotten standard. The post-bapish “Hightended Awareness” is a giddy number that raises the listener’s heart rate, while “For Her” lowers it with understated grace.
Taylor exhibits thoughtfulness and humility, both compositionally and conversationally. When asked if he always wanted to be a trumpet player, he admitted that the first thing he had in mind was the saxophone.
“But the student model trumpet was more affordable than the student model saxophone. So my destiny was “shaped for me” by his mother’s budgetary reasoning.
What was even more certain was that the Bedford, Ohio native wanted to be a jazz musician. His middle school band director and instructor, Sean Nichols, took him to the nearby Tri-C Jazz Fest Cleveland. John Faddis joined as a special guest in a band led by his future mentor Steve Enos, and suddenly everything clicked into place.
“I remember them looking so happy on stage,” he said with a laugh. “And as a 13-year-old seventh-grader, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I might be doing this for the rest of my life.'” So I’ve been thinking seriously about it for a while. ”
After taking community college classes while in high school, Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and a master’s degree from Rutgers University. (Taylor maintains strong ties to the former through tenor saxophonist Marcus Elliott, a TaylorMade alumnus, and double bassist Jonathan S. Muir-Cotton, a current undergraduate at the school.) Vocalist Collaborations with Gregory Porter, multi-reedist James Carter, and pianists Silas Chesnutt, Patrice Rushen, and Billy Childs were part of his continuing education.
Most of Taylor’s experience is in the straight realm with a dash of gospel, but he’s not afraid to experiment. 2017’s #Hashtagged EP featured a blend of live music and vocals with programmed tracks.
“It was all self-produced,” he recalls. “I really learned a lot about mixing in the process. When the first mix[for TaylorMade]first came back, I wasn’t happy with it.
“But what was great about it was that the mix engineers were able to give us very detailed elements like, ‘Let’s widen the stereo field of the piano,’ or ‘Let’s lower this by 1 or 2 dB,’ or ‘Let’s move this to the left.’ That I was able to articulate ‘or yes’ – very specific things that I wouldn’t have been able to master the language without my experience in audio production. ”
Taylor’s ear found itself in sync with TaylorMade’s veteran producer Kamau Kenyatta (who has produced Porter and Alan Harris).
“What was great was that we listened separately and the same sound came out,” Taylor said. “It really validated everything I’ve been hearing and everything I’ve learned, and we got something really special out of it all.” DB
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