Regarding GRAMMY nominations, this isn't Ben Wendel's first rodeo. But this one's for an album he recorded chiefly by his lonesome, which adds even more monumentality to its title: All One.
Back in 2009, the saxophonist, bassoonist, and pianist received a GRAMMY nod as part of contemporary jazz heroes Kneebody — alongside keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, and bassist and drummer Nate Wood.
More than a decade later, thanks to a curious exercise during lockdown, he's been nominated again; this time, for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. "It's unlikely I'll ever do something like that again," Wendell tells GRAMMY.com. "But I'm happy how it came out."
Which is a laudably low-key reaction, given this is the highest honor in all of music. But a glimmer of well-earned pride shines through.
"I definitely did the research: I think I can confidently say there is no other album that was done like this," Wendel reports with a smile. "I don't think you can find another album where you have 30-piece overdubbed saxophone, bassoon, orchestra, all played by one person. It doesn't exist.
"So, it's fun to just actually find some little corner of the musical universe that actually hasn't been done yet — which is virtually impossible, but I found a little corner."\
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Despite the title — which is apropos, as Wendel played every instrument — he chose to share this "corner" with some of the music's leading lights. These include Cécile McLorin Salvant ("I Loves You, Porgy"), Terence Blanchard ("Wanderers") and, on "Throughout," Bill Frisell.
Read on for an interview with Wendel about how this sumptuous musical concoction came to be, the role the GRAMMYs have historically played in his life, and much more.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Can you talk about when you were nominated for your first GRAMMY, with Kneebody?
Well, sadly, we didn't win. We lost to Yo-Yo Ma.
That was really interesting, because that was an album I produced where we took the music of a relatively well-known composer, Charles Ives. We took his music and then we Kneebodied it and turned it into improvised pieces. Then it ended up in that category that doesn't exist anymore, called Classical Crossover.
I also produced an album by the piano player, Gerald Clayton…
Huge fan.
Yeah, I produced his [2013] album Life Forum. That got a GRAMMY nomination, but for some reason, I don't get to count that one as a GRAMMY nomination. I don't know why. You know the rules.
Anyway, all that's to say that this one feels particularly special, because it's basically my first nomination as a leader. It feels good, dude.
Where does the Recording Academy fit into your universe and your conception of the music community?
For me, the GRAMMYs are a cultural touchstone. Even when I was 12 years old, I knew what the GRAMMYs were. I was watching those award shows, and it's kind of a meta thing for me.
As an adult now — an actual professional musician and a NARAS member — I understand it from that perspective. So many of my friends are part of that community, and I really love what they do. I love Advocacy.
And then just on a more fanboy level, I can't believe I'm GRAMMY-nominated. The GRAMMY still carries so much weight.
My studio's in this building that has a great coffee shop. I'm friends with the barista. The barista is not a musician — knows nothing about music. I saw him last Friday and I got an espresso, and he is like, "How's your day been?" And I was like, "Man, I just found out I'm GRAMMY nominated." And he was like, "Dude." Everybody knows what that means.
And it's cool, because a lot of the time musicians are just misunderstood. When I hang with a lawyer or whatever, and they don't know anything about music, you have to explain what you do as a career.
But if you say you're GRAMMY-nominated, then it all clicks. Then they go, "Oh, I guess you're serious, then. You're not a waiter at a restaurant who plays guitar on the side."
My experience with the GRAMMYs has been both that macro view, the cultural viewpoint — and then now, more as an adult, that professional viewpoint, that community-based viewpoint.
I appreciated your reaction on social media. Some in the jazz community respond with faux-humility or humblebragging. But you were basically like, "This is really wonderful. Congratulations to all the nominees." No signs of toxic competitiveness.
What I'm about to say is true. I just think there's room for everybody, and this job is so rewarding, but it's really hard. It's such a waste of time not to support each other, or be jealous or be competitive. It's like, why?
Anybody who receives any success in this field deserves it, period. Because it's hard, and you don't have control over half of what happens to you.
If you become successful, yeah, sure — half of it is hard work. The other half, it's luck, it's timing. It's so many things out of your control. So you can't be mad at someone if they do well; you should be happy for them. That's how it should be.
And honestly, in the jazz community, for the most part, tends to be a very supportive community, and people try to lift each other up. But I hear you. The #blessedlife, faux-humility thing has always been a bit annoying. But no, I'm earnestly amazed, and I love it.
Between your two GRAMMY nominations, your career has had quite the trajectory. How would you boil that down for people?
I would say the trajectory is evolving from a sideman to a co-leader of Kneebody to a leader. I'm very much the tortoise versus the hare, in terms of my development as a musician and an artist. I just steadily work on it. I steadily try and I practice every day. I'm just steadily one step at a time kind of guy.
This is a milestone and an acknowledgement that I finally have gotten to this place where I am my own person as an artist, and have my own little universe that I've carved out.
What was your modus operandi for All One, as opposed to previous records? That germ, that spark of inspiration?
I mean, this is a pandemic album; It's just the classic thing. I was about a year into the pandemic — no end to the tunnel, still no idea when music was coming back, desperately wanting to do something creative.
Having this classical background of having played bassoon and my own studio rig, I just thought: Well, how about I just start experimenting with this idea of making these little mini- woodwind orchestras? Let me see what that would sound like.
The first one that I tried it on,I first did a little quintet thing, and I really liked the sound. Then around that time, I had become friends with the trumpeter, Randy Brecker; he lives on Long Island, and I just threw it out at him.
Legend!
I was like, "Man, would you be open to me writing a piece for you, and I'm going to lay out this little mini orchestra and you play over it?"
And he was totally into it. And even though that didn't end [up on the record] — I'm going to use that track on a different album — it was like the test pilot and it was amazing.
Then I thought: OK, this is what I'm doing for the next year. I'm going to just make an album. I'm going to reach out to different musicians I greatly admire and build fracks around them.
And I just did, one at a time. I think Cécile McLorin Salvant was the first person I called. I don't even remember where I was. She was in New York; I was somewhere else — Europe or L.A. I remember putting the phone on speakerphone and literally getting my sax out to determine what key she wanted to sing "I Loves You, Porgy" in.
We found the key, and it took me a couple of months to write that arrangement and record it. Then I sent it to her, and we were off to the races.
It was a really slow, curious process because it was done in this super non-traditional way of: it's all me. That's why it's called All One. It's just, like, these crazy, 30-piece wind orchestras.
And with each guest, there were all these interesting technical challenges to navigate. Sometimes they would overdub their parts, and then I would adjust the arrangements to bring out things that they had done spontaneously to make it sound as though it was planned.
Give me another tune — and guest — and break it down.
I was living in Amsterdam with my wife in the later half of the pandemic, and just by coincidence, José James and his wife Talia [Bilig, known professionally as Taali] were living there. That's how we met. It was just one of those things where I saw Talia do a post and I realized they're living in Amsterdam; I reached out.
So with José James, for example, I was like, "I want you to come over to the studio and I want you to sing 'Tenderly' completely a cappella, out of time, any way you want, any pacing you want, just sing it freely." So, that entire first half of that track before the sax solo — I arranged all of that to how he performed acapella.
In your mind, how do the saxophone and bassoon relate to each other?
It's more coincidence, man; I just happened to be lucky. I went to a public high school in Santa Monica; they just happened to have a really great music program.
I was playing sax in the marching band and the wind ensemble, and then they had an orchestra and they needed a bassoon player. I joined because I was just curious to have that experience. I knew nothing about the bassoon, and then I just stuck with it.
And the bassoon, as I am sure you would agree, has such a character to it. It's so classical sounding. It's so ancient sounding. So, the pairing of bassoon and sax for me is a really great combination, because it's new and old.
The sax is one of the youngest woodwind instruments in the history of instruments. It was only built in 1850. Meanwhile, the bassoon is literally a medieval instrument.
And it's just this fun combination, when you combine those sounds that are very complimentary, and you're able to get this interesting blend of an older orchestral sound. And then the sax brings this more modern sound to it; they work together really well.
Where do you feel you're at in your improvisatory evolution?
I'm in distillation mode now; I'm trying to get to the place where as I get older, I say less and less, and it means more and more.
I'm trying to work on that because it's a very common joke that as sax players, we just love to play a lot of notes. There's a famous story of Miles Davis asking John Coltrane to play less in his quintet. And John was like, "Well, I don't really know. What do you mean? How do I do that?" And apparently Miles, he said…
"Take the horn out of your mouth."
Yeah, exactly. You know that story.
A great guidepost, I would say, for me, would be Wayne Shorter. He had that amazing thing where he was childlike and also [exhibiting] Buddha-like mastery, all at once. So I think I'm at that place now, where I want to start playing less notes, see if I can do more with less.