M5: Your recent projects involve the Kundalini Boombox, a new album "Supernatural World" and an acoustic jazz quartet with bassist Gary Brown, drummer Eric Kurtzrock, and Evan Francis, alto saz and flute... How did this particular project evolve, do you initiate it or do others ask you or ... And this is pretty 'traditional' jazz isn't it, compared to some of your other projects... You wrote "Zanagrie" for this quartet...

KW: The acoustic quartet evolved out of a gig that we play frequently at a very elegant Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, called Ana Mandara. It is a big beautiful place with a lounge upstairs, and they have a gorgeous Bosendorfer grand piano there. Gary Brown is an old friend of mine, who I've known since the 80's, when I had my Windham Hill Jazz albums. Though he didn't play on the albums, he was the bass player in my band for many years. Then our paths diverged for a while, but a couple of years ago we reconnected, and he invited me down to play that gig, and we hit it off, as a trio with Eric, who always plays at Ana Mandara too. Then we found this 23 year old genius alto player, Evan Francis, to add to the mix. He is as sweet a person as he is a brilliant player. Amazing that someone so young plays already with such an original sound. So we decided to make this recording, which will soon be available, but there are extended clips to check out at my website.

Actually I wrote Zanagrie several years ago, along with a few other tunes that we are playing, but never really got them played until now. I have such a huge backlog of tunes that have never been played that lately I haven't been writing tunes so much. Spontaneous improvisation is interesting me more now, it almost doesn't matter what the vehicle is. I love standards, because there are millions of ways you can interpret them. Every night the same tune can have a different vibe. I thrive on that kind of energy, and that has been an evolution over my life, from having everything planned ahead of time, to now, where I really prefer to have very little planned out. It brings out the nowness of things more, which is where all the life is.

I also wanted to do this quartet, because it is very easily classified in the jazz category. I have always struggled with this thing where jazz players and fans think I'm too New Age, and New Age people think I'm too jazzy, and straight ahead people think I'm too jazz fusion, and so on and so forth. I love the straight ahead acoustic milieu, and want to work in it. I do want to explore new directions in it though, possibly bring in some electronic elements in the future. But I wanted to just get some good old standards recorded, because I love to play them, and it's like, yo everyone! I do this too! It's funny how whatever you get known for, you get stuck there in everyone's minds.

Then there is the other project, Kundalini Boombox, which is a different universe. This grew out of my love for dancing, and my desire to create a music that could be for what I think of as "dance journeying", where dance becomes a prayer. It is more oriented towards the kind of dances that shamanic cultures do, or the dances used in spiritual practices. I suppose the seed was planted in me by Rajneesh, because dancing was a very important part of his teaching. All of his meditations are done to music, and almost all of them involve some kind of dancing or body movement, the idea being that once you exhaust the body, the mind becomes much more easily still. Also one gets to experience the "still point" even in the midst of total body movement, which really helps when you want to bring your meditation into all of your daily activities.

So Kundalini Boombox is an offering in that spirit, an attempt to find the common ground between stillness and movement, earth and sky. But hopefully it can also just be music that can be listened to and enjoyed, like any other music.

M5: Besides a musician and composer, you also arrange and produce for others. What do you consider the ultimate challenge, musically spoken?

KW: What I love about producing is the process of creating a musical context that really enhances and supports the artist. It is always different, and it is an intriguing process. It all happens pretty intuitively, and often it involves something very simple. Of course there are many kinds of artists, and only some would benefit from a production such as I would do, but when it clicks, it is really fun. It is like creating a painting. There are so many colors available now, what with the electronic palette of all the new music technology, which is an endless exploration. I seem to have a mind for the technical side of things, and have been working with it so long that I can keep a creative flow going even in the middle of dealing with some pretty left-brained stuff.

M5: Regarding music and composing it... What are your views given the fact you so easily blend styles and abandon a perhaps purist's approach of things... Do you feel music should be without boundaries and do you need to experience something 'new' or paths you haven't explored yet... ?

KW: I do seem to have this need to constantly be finding new territory, to find what hasn't been played or written yet, and like I said above, it is getting harder and harder to find. But there is a territory that has very few settlers on it still, and that has to do more with art and music that comes from a place of stillness, and pure consciousness. And I'm not talking about "New Age" music, either. To me, most of the music in that genre misses the boat, because the artfulness has been jettisoned, as if developing mastery at your art were one of the trappings of ego, and therefore something to be shunned. This is a fine point, but really important. There seems to me to be this kind of tenet in the New Age world, that in order to be really spiritual we have to drop the ego, and drop all individuality, and just become kind of amorphous and nondistinct, and most of the new age music sounds like that. To excel at something is put down as an ego trip, and mediocrity is raised up on a pedestal. Most of the New Age music I hear just makes me angry, rather than relaxed. It is rare to hear music in that category that has lasting value as art. There again, that is where the ECM label has really succeeded, I think. But that music is not thought of as New Age. And that's a good thing. Another artist who really hits the nail on the head is Brian Eno. Of course he invented "ambient" music. But it somehow manages to stay art. And he doesn't go off on all this marketing hype on how it is "relaxation" music, "cosmic" this and that. The music speaks for itself.

So I really enjoy finding music that has a natural sense of spaciousness to it, and yet still has the quality of artistic mastery. I really like the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek for that. He has completely mastered music, no question about it. He can play a lot of notes for sure, but he can also NOT play a lot of notes. For some people who can play a lot of notes, NOT playing a lot of notes seems difficult. When Garbarek plays one note it cuts through you like a razor. Of course Keith Jarrett also has this down. There is something about when these artists leave space in their music that draws you in to "interior time". It isn't just a question of not playing so many notes. Even when they play lots of notes there is still that sense of space. But the empty spaces have to breathe with aliveness, and if the artist isn't really present in timelessness, then even if they leave gaps, they won't have that depth and vitality. And there is no shortcut to mastering and embodying spaciousness in that way. That is where music becomes a life-work, a spiritual path, that demands your all. Continue