Billy Mohler’s Open Vision

By Josef Woodard I Jan. 16, 2024

Billy Mohler’s *Ultraviolet* was inspired by Sonny Rollins’ *A Night At The Village Vanguard* and Ornette Coleman’s *The Shape Of Jazz To Come*.
(Photo: Robbie Jeffries)

As part of the finale evening of this year’s Angel City Jazz Festival, bassist-bandleader Billy Mohler took the stage of the REDCAT black box theater in downtown Los Angeles, asserting a deceptively calm-yet-powerful presence with only his double bass, a subtle looping part and neo-psychedelic visuals on the screen behind him. Mohler’s natural anchoring role, laying down foundational riffs and putting forth compositional visions, found its fullest flower with the arrival of his “chordless” band — longtime allies Shane Endsley on trumpet and drummer Jonathan Pinson, with the exhilarating addition of tenor saxophonist Mark Turner.

The band’s nimble, interactive and ever-flexible energy made a memorable impact. The set left the impression that this high-profile gig helped to cement Mohler’s status as a pillar-in-the-making in jazz’s relatively new West Coast school of cool — minus the laid-back connotation of the original “cool” qualifier.

After his Angel City set, Mohler greeted well-wishers and LP autograph seekers. He said the music was approached in an intentionally open way, with a spontaneous and surprise-welcoming spirit true to the working process for his new album Ultraviolet (Contagious Music)

In an earlier interview, Mohler explained, “The concept for Ultraviolet was to write a group of songs that were more like loose sketches, that we could dial in once we got all in the studio. I thought there might need to be some discussion to all get on the same page, but as we were getting sounds, and messing around with the material it became clear that we should just hit ‘record’ and play, so that’s what we did.”

Turner, filling the seat occupied by Chris Speed on Ultraviolet, is an ideal player in these ranks. A Los Angeles native who went east long ago, Turner recently returned to his hometown and has been leading a similarly configured and widely acclaimed “chordless” quartet.

Mohler, a Long Beach native whose musical tastes and career have oscillated between jazz and pop and includes a healthy resume of session work, has his own stylistic homecoming story to tell. After getting lost, and making steady income in the pop world — working in the studio with such artists as Macy Gray, Dolly Parton, AWOLNATION and others — he followed his heart back to a more serious jazz pursuit about five years ago, and now with three leader albums to his name.

Going “chordless” with his own project was a move inspired by such historic and paradigmatic recordings as Sonny Rollins’ A Night At The Village Vanguard and Ornette Coleman’s The Shape Of Jazz To Come, confessing that “both records made a huge impact on me as a bassist and composer.”

Of special locational note, Coleman’s groundbreaking quartet and early recordings took place in the City of the Angels.

“The rawness in Ornette’s music is striking,” Mohler notes. “The Shape Of Jazz To Come was recorded in Los Angeles by engineer Bones Howe, and he talks about that session. The band walked in, set up in a circle and threw down, no lead sheets or music stands, and Bones said he doesn’t even remember any songs being counted off, they just had some otherworld telepathy happening.

“That’s something I’m always thinking about when I’m writing — how to write music, that gets straight to it, so we can have a conversation.”

Musical conversation and communal action are important to Mohler’s sense of artistic self. Looking back over his committed trajectory into music, he says, “I think our friends and family interpersonal relationships play the biggest role, in how and why we end up where we end up. One of my childhood best friends is [drummer] Nate Wood. Nate and I would play death metal, then an hour later set up and play a jazz trio set. We just loved music so much that we wanted to play everything that caught our ears. But during this time my family went through a difficult time, my parents lost everything, financially speaking.

“Luckily, we had some incredible friends that helped us out, but my high school years were rough because my family lived well below the poverty line. We didn’t even have a home phone line. I had to walk to a pay phone if I wanted to call my friends. In hindsight, I’m grateful for the experience, but it was not easy. It had a profound impact on me creatively, as music was my escape. I found endless inspiration in just practicing and wanting to be a better bassist. I still feel that way, and I’m still as inspired to practice every day.”

Conversation partners and the galvanizing spirit of a well-populated artistic environment have been vital to Mohler’s evolution, and he has found himself in the vibrant midst of a renaissance for creative and chance-taking jazz in Los Angeles in recent years, a scene he is now entrenched and influential within. “It’s incredible seeing the shift in real time,” he comments. “(Saxophonists) Chris Speed and David Binney were the first two East Coast transplants, and they really helped kickstarted the scene.”

He points to influential and welcoming venues such as the once-thriving but now-defunct club The Blue Whale, ETA and Sam First as “incubators, so to speak, for creating spaces for the music to develop. Couple that with a mass influx of musicians from New York, and more students at the local colleges than I’ve ever seen, we’ve now got a cool, diverse scene.”

Along his path, and without really trying, Mohler found himself pulled into the session/studio work force in Los Angeles, whether in brick-and-mortar or file-sharing digital facsimiles of studios. “Studio work was something that naturally evolved over time,” he says. “Macy Gray was the first artist I worked with that really utilized her live band in the studio. We’d get off the road and head straight into the studio. She never stops, which is one of the many reasons she’s so amazing. From those early sessions with Macy, I eventually started getting more calls to play on albums.

“I look at being a studio musician and a composer as separate entities. When I’m doing a session, I’m there’s to help facilitate what the artist or the producer wants. I go in as a blank canvas, and whatever they need I try to provide.

“As an artist, the writing and direction of the sound is on me. To a degree they intersect in my mind, in that, I always want to be in the moment and allow the music to take shape organically. That can go for a bass part on a session, or a song I’m bringing to a recording session. The song tells you where to go, so as a session player or an artist I’m trying to stay in the moment.”

On Mohler’s horizon, he anticipates the dual life of a recording and performing jazz musician/bandleader, with studio work on the side.

“I enjoy splitting my time between doing sessions and being an artist,” he says. “I like the balance of the two worlds.” DB