Stephan Crump Explores Water

Interview, From the Magazine, Stephan Crump

By Josef Woodard I Jul. 23, 2024

“I had wanted to create a project honoring my relationship with a number of bodies of water that have been very impactful in my life,” says Stephan Crump.
(Photo: Deneka Peniston)

Over the last three decades, bassist Stephan Crump has established himself as one of the significant voices in jazz from the adventurous and avant-minded zone. His resume includes 20 years in the acclaimed Vijay Iyer Trio and work with creative forces Tyshawn Sorey, Kris Davis, Billy Hart and countless others in regular sidemen circulation. Crump’s own series of projects have commanded increasing interest and respect.

The “sideman” cometh forth, boldly, with his most ambitious project to date, the 18-part conceptual suite Slow Water (Papillon Sounds). The unique “chamber jazz” sextet, with strings, brass, vibraphone and his double bass, came together as a 2023 commission from the Shifting Foundation. Foundation head David Breskin gave him journalist Erica Gies’ book Water Always Wins as a point of research and reference; it quickly became a strong impetus for the underlying theme and even musical structure of his piece.

Crump explains, “I had wanted for many years to create a project honoring my relationship with a number of bodies of water that have been very impactful in my life, which are numerous.” He grew up in Memphis, enmeshed with the Mississippi River, along with other bodies of water in Seattle and his current roost of Brooklyn.

From the concept-musical juxtaposition standpoint, Crump points that that Gies book “is clear-eyed about how destructive we’ve been and how challenging our current and ongoing situation is. But at the same time it’s solutions-oriented. It boils down to our need for control and the means by which we have sought to control water. We channel it and we speed it up, and we make it go straight.

“I really took off with that aspect of water, asking myself, what does water want to do? And how can I take that inspiration and even more than an inspiration, take it as a directive for how to approach creating this music and guiding the band into the music? I wanted to create these wetland wonderlands that go from the water and the peat beneath the water and the burling gases that were coming up, to the critters in the water and the trees and plants and the critters flying in the air, the insects, the birds, the breezes, the fog, the clouds. All of that information is part of the composition, but from there, it’s completely spontaneously composed by the ensemble.”

Slow Water represents a new direction in a decidedly varied discography under Crump’s name, which has in recent years included the bass-and-two-guitar approach of Outliers, a trio with Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Cory Smythe on Planktonic Finales (Intakt) and the solo bass album Rocket Love with some recontextualized standards in the mix.

As for the new chamber sextet, Crump says he is “very much engaged in trying to find opportunities. I would like to take it to some educational institutions as well, whether it’s with the full ensemble or me working with students and sharing this approach to collective music building — as a sort of spiritual opening to each other in the way that this project requires.”

Crump has long been working areas where ready idiomatic descriptions fail to register. With Slow Water, in particular, he moves into an area of stylistic flux between jazz, per se, and new music/classical approaches, an area being provocatively explored by artists including Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Weber and Ingrid Laubrock — not to mention Henry Threadgill.

“I have never really been interested in fitting into boxes and notions of genre,” he admits. “There are a lot of different musical traditions that have influenced and inspired me. On this project, I wanted the theme and the research and the inspiration from water and these wetlands and beavers to drive the music. I’m really not worried about what to call it (stylistically). But I know it’s real and I know it’s meaningful and that should be enough. It’s absolutely its own thing. What more could I hope for?

Looking back over his evolution, which began in his rock-minded youth and shifted in a jazz direction under the strong influence of Dave Holland, Crump asserts, “When I moved to New York after college, my goal was to make a life in music. I wasn’t driven to becoming a jazz star or a rock star or whatever it was. I just wanted to make real, honest music, learn and keep growing. I’ve always stayed on the periphery, which has been good because I can have diverse collaborations and keep growing in different ways.

“As far as the nuts and bolts of making a living, it’s all very challenging and seems to get harder, but I’m still managing to do it. I have deep gratitude for the fact that I’ve been able to keep growing, keep discovering things with really special people and keep making music that I feel is meaningful and true. That’s everything that I could hope for.” DB