Artist of the Week	Steve Baczkowski by Lauren N. Maynard

(photo: Rose Mattrey)

Why you should know who he is: Multi-instrumentalist Steve Baczkowski is a Buffalo stand-out in the local “free improv” scene. He’s also very brave; at age 12 he decided to tackle the unwieldy and difficult baritone saxophone as his signature instrument and, by all outward appearances at his raucous and startlingly physical performances, he is well on his way to breaking the wild beast. Baczkowski has produced over 100 jazz/improvisational concerts in countless band lineups and has performed at fringe festivals, CBGB’s, in classrooms and international residencies. For him, rehearsed scores are secondary to that moment of “now” that free improv affords in live performance. His understanding of the lineage of experimental sax players, including such innovators as Peter Brötzmann and Odeon Pope, has helped him “engage the moment, where it sparks. It’s the real deal.” Having just released his first album this year, The Dim Bulb, first recorded in 2003 with drummer Chris Corsano and saxophonist Paul Flaherty, Baczkowski’s latest recording is a self-titled album with the loud and proud free-improv quintet Buffalo Suicide Prevention Unit. It seems this soft-spoken musician’s growing audience recognizes that he, too, is the real thing.

Age: 30

Hometown: Buffalo

Education: Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts; studied music and ethnomusicology at the University at Buffalo

Day job: Music Director at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

Upcoming gigs: CD release party for The Buffalo Suicide Prevention Unit on Thursday, November 10 at Soundlab. Steve also appears at Nietzsche’s every Tuesday night at 10 pm.

Recordings to date: The Dim Bulb (Wet Paint Records, 2005) and a self-titled album with Buffalo Suicide Prevention Unit (Realm of Records, 2005), available locally at New World Record and Home of the Hits, and on realmofrecords.com. A duo recording with Ravi Padmanabha on the Italian Qbico label is due out next fall.

Why so few recordings? “I don’t care much for the studio. Something is just lost in recorded music. For me, live performance is the serious stuff… but I’m also more focused on doing things ‘correctly’ during a show. The best moments for me are when I’m just hanging out with some friends, playing and improvising as we go along.”

Why did you choose the enormous, lung-bursting baritone sax? Did it choose you? Yeah, I was always the tallest one in music class [he is well over 6 feet], and I first started out playing alto sax like my brother and everyone else. But then someone said to me, hey, you could play this, and so then I switched to the bari.”

Do you have to work out a lot to play that thing? “Well, I have been trying to learn how to play it and not injure myself— I was hurting my neck and back— to learn how best to use my body and let the sound come out without moving around so much.”

Do you practice every day? “Yes. You have to with reed instruments, or wind, like the trumpet… your lips have to be conditioned correctly to get the correct pitches and to connect with the reed properly. If I don’t play for a few days, I can always tell.”

Other instruments played: Tenor and alto sax, bass clarinet, didjeridu, bamboo flute, Chinese three-blade jaw harp, nose flute. (The latter two were small, exotic-looking contraptions Baczkowski whipped out of his bag and played briefly for me. He proudly demoed the three tones on the Chinese harp: “You can’t play more than one tone on a regular jaw harp, and I’ve been playing those for years. I saw this one on e-Bay and thought ‘I gotta try that!’”)

Describe the “vibratube,” which you invented: “It’s really a type of didjeridu. It has a plastic sliding tube you play, sort of like a trombone.”

Do any great saxophonists influence your work? “Not really. I first started playing sax because my older brother did. And we didn’t grow up listening to jazz at all. I was playing jazz steadily through high school, and then started going to Hallwalls concerts, which were pretty avant garde. Then I started playing in that style. Now I get categorized as a jazz player because of the improvisation, but I actually like to incorporate everything from punk, rock, and folk to ethnic influences. I am most influenced by the people I play with now, like Chris (Corsano) and Paul (Flaherty).”

Describe your relationship with your audience: “It’s everything… it’s what makes the performance work.”

Where do you rehearse? Does it ever bother the neighbors, or small animals? “I usually rehearse in my apartment… I live in one of the units above Big Orbit Gallery, and so far my neighbors have been pretty cool about it. Although, on this new album we recorded there, you can hear my landlord pounding on the door.

Did you leave it on the album? Of course!