Curtis Taylor: The DIY Trumpeter

Interview, From the Magazine, Curtis Taylor

By Yoshi Kato I Oct. 29, 2024

“Being a musician, you’ve got to wear a whole bunch of different hats,” says indie artist Curtis Taylor. “You’re doing advertising, and you’re doing flyers for your own shows.”
(Photo: Robert Sanchez)

Being an independent musician in 2024 frequently requires adopting a DIY approach. For trumpeter Curtis Taylor’s independently released Taylor Made, that ethic of self-reliance is reflected in everything from the album’s artwork to the sound of its mix.

Bathed in blue and framed diagonally with a photo of Taylor playing his instrument, the cover of this long-player has faux crease marks and an intentionally worn look. The subtle visual effects give it the look of a cherished album that’s been pulled from the shelf (and perhaps even loaned to friends) countless times.

“I did the artwork myself,” Taylor said. “The guy that I was going to use is phenomenal — the industry standard, really. But because of that, he’s so in demand and got backed up. And it was just holding up the process. So I was thinking to myself, ‘OK, man, I need this album to be released. I’ll just do it myself.’”

The decision to design it himself around two portraits by photographer Robert Sanchez was a natural one, he reckoned.

“Being a musician, you’ve got to wear a whole bunch of different hats. You’re doing advertising, and you’re doing flyers for your own shows,” he said, by phone while on summer break in Iowa City. (During the school year, he’s an assistant professor in the Jazz Studies program at the University of Iowa.) “Every time you have a show, you don’t have the budget to hire someone to design something for you. So I’ve had some experience with that and have developed a decent eye for things by working on something until I really, really love the result.

“One of the great things about designing the album art, as the composer and one of the musicians on it, is that I have the inside track on what’s contained on the album and the intent behind it,” he continued. “I wanted the visual aesthetic to give listeners a retro, and familiar, feeling just by looking at the album art.”

Boasting seven swinging original compositions, Taylor Made could alternately be called The Curtis Taylor Songbook, Vol. 1. He’s had the pun-intended album title in mind for two decades. The pieces, though not nearly as old, are nonetheless time-tested.

“What’s cool about my compositions is that they are tried-and-true ones that I have performed with my bands live for many different audiences nationally. So I’ve gotten real-time feedback over the years,” he shared. “A lot of times, I will intersperse standard jazz repertoire that I think fits well with my original music. What I will find is that in many cases, I will get more of a response from the audience when I would play an original.

“And that’s super-flattering as an artist because you’ve got to be very vulnerable as a composer. I’m always trying to write and play and perform from a very sincere place. But you don’t know if listeners are going to dig it, and you always hope you’re writing something that resonates with people.”

A different piece from the Coltrane classic, Taylor’s “After The Rain” is a joyful and infectious exploration that sounds like a forgotten standard. The post-boppish “Heightened Awareness” is a dizzying number that can raise a listener’s heart rate, while “For Her” brings it back down with an understated elegance.

There’s a thoughtfulness and a humility to Taylor that comes out compositionally and conversationally. When asked if he always wanted to be a trumpeter, he admitted that saxophone was what he initially had in mind.

“But a student model trumpet was more affordable than a student model saxophone. So my destiny” — by way of his mother’s budgetary reasoning — “was formed for me.”

What was more certain was the Bedford, Ohio, native’s desire to be a jazz musician. His middle school band director and mentor, the recently retired Shawn Nichols, took him to the nearby Tri-C Jazz Fest Cleveland. Jon Faddis was the special guest of a band led by another of his future mentors — Steve Enos — and it all suddenly clicked.

“I remember they just looked like they were having so much fun on stage,” he said, with a chuckle. “And as a 13-year-old in seventh grade, I was, like, ‘Man, I think I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life.’ So I’ve been serious about it for a minute.”

After taking community college classes while still in high school, Taylor went on to earn his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s from Rutgers University. (Taylor keeps strong ties to the former through Taylor Made’s tenor saxophonist Marcus Elliot, an alumnus, and double bassist Jonathan S. Muir-Cotton, a current undergraduate student there.) Performances with the likes of vocalist Gregory Porter, multi-reedist James Carter and pianists Cyrus Chestnut, Patrice Rushen and Billy Childs were part of his continuing education.

Though the majority of Taylor’s experiences have been in the straightahead realm with a bit of gospel, he’s not afraid to experiment. His #Hashtagged EP from 2017 featured live instrumentation and vocals blended with programmed tracks.

“That was all self-produced,” he recalled. “And in that process, I really learned a lot about mixing. When I initially got the first mixes back (for Taylor Made), I was unhappy with it.

“But what was great was that I could articulate to the mix engineer very minute elements like, ‘Let’s widen the stereo field of the piano,’ or, ‘Turn this down 1 or 2 dB,’ or, ‘Move this to the left or right’ — very specific things that I wouldn’t have had the language for if I didn’t have any experience making audio.”

Taylor’s ear became so attuned that he found himself in sync with Taylor Made’s veteran producer, Kamau Kenyatta (who has produced Porter and Allan Harris).

“What was cool was we listened independently, and we came back with the same notes,” Taylor said. “That really vindicated what I was hearing and all that I learned, and we got something really special out of it all.” DB