CALLUM MINTZIS & PAT JAFFE seek sanctuaries of quietude

A Sanctuary of Quietude, 2021, MADE NOW MUSIC

A Sanctuary of Quietude is a new collaborative composition from Melbourne, Australia-based pianist Pat Jaffe and trombonist Callum Mintzis. Recorded live in the stunning acoustics of St. John’s Anglican Church, Camberwell, this album captures the June 2021 premiere of the work in exquisite detail.

The album was released in December 2021 and is available exclusively on Bandcamp. It also comes with a companion booklet of poetry by Hannah McKittrick and photography by the artists’ close friends.

A 36-minute suite scored for string quintet, brass quartet, piano and pipe organ, this project marks a bold step forward for Mintzis and Jaffe. The two have played together in a range of jazz ensembles since their high school days and were inspired to co-compose a large ensemble work after realizing they had mutual adoration for each other’s 2020 debut releases (Mintzis’ That Place, Our Place was recorded with the Letter String Quartet, Joseph O’Connor and the ASTRA Choir, while Jaffe’s Eldorado features Iceland’s Siggi String Quartet). Together they assembled an outstanding line-up of some of Australia’s finest young improvisers and chamber musicians, including double-bassist Helen Svoboda and trumpeters Niran Dasika and Ashley Ballat.

In this interview, Pat and Callum talk in-depth about the creation of this unique project.

Interview by Tyler Nesler

Pat and Callum, you’ve both known each other and played jazz gigs together since high school, and now you decided to collaborate on this new large ensemble work A Sanctuary of Quietude. What do you both think are some reasons you two have such great creative chemistry? In what unique ways do you think you complement each other compositionally?

CALLUM: I think the chemistry comes from a few places. Firstly, a mutual respect and love for each other’s work. It’s very difficult to collaborate on anything if you’re not interested in the work of your colleague. Secondly, I think our music has its similarities but also its differences. In a sense, a conversation would be more difficult with somebody if you already agreed on anything. The dialogue only comes from where you differ. We had different enough approaches that we could find something new out of it.

PAT: I couldn’t agree more about admiration for each other’s work – I love both Callum’s compositions and playing. I also find that it’s the things you do together in-between music sessions that lead to the best creative outcomes – whether that’s getting a bite to eat after a gig, sharing book recommendations, or traveling together. Callum and I had five- or six-years’ worth of that “non-creative” relationship stuff before we actually sat down to write music together and I think that definitely helped to establish an exciting dynamic for bouncing ideas off each other and a musical relationship with a lot of trust.

In terms of composition, we both share a commitment to making simple music that we hope audiences can easily connect with and since we both come from a background in jazz, we love the emotive spark that improvised elements can bring to the music. My writing tends to gravitate towards quite diatonic, “floaty” ostinatos, while Callum often focuses on patient, gradual explorations of tension and release. In this piece we often juxtaposed our two natural styles up against each other, but we also found that at times, we started writing more in each others’ style, which helped get us out of our comfort zones.

The publicity statement for the album declares that “This piece is an attempt to capture a range of moments of quietude (or stillness) in the natural world.” What attracted you to this as a thematic concept for the work? Is it in some ways a means to express something organic and innate in contrast to the largely artificial and virtual worlds so many of us have been living in these days, especially throughout the pandemic?

CALLUM: That’s a very beautiful point! I think we’re very disconnected as a species and the pandemic has only made us painfully more aware of this. We’re losing the value of patience, the notion of being able to sit with something, without trying to get rid of it, or change it. In a sense it’s the ability to be honest with ourselves about what is happening. We all tend to want to get away, to avoid something. More and more I feel as though life in the 21st century is a push and pull between this inability to be with ourselves, and to surrender.

I think if there’s ever a place which consistently pulls me back into honesty, it’s being in the company of the birds and the trees. Stillness/quietude does not have an agenda. That being said, I think stillness is very loving, so it understands our desires to avoid, that too is very natural.

PAT: The natural world has definitely been my sanctuary as well during this period. I was very lucky to spend some large chunks of the extended lockdowns at my parents’ property about an hour north of Melbourne (including part of the time when we were writing this piece) and trail running has been one of my main forms of escapism. I love the idea of preserving moments of natural stillness, both for my own memories and to be able to share with others, and music seems to be the perfect way for me to attempt to capture these moments.

The 36-minute suite has five movements that attempt a carefully crafted narrative arc. How did this narrative arc come together? Was it something that you both mapped out carefully from the beginning or did the arc emerge in a more spontaneous fashion through trial and error? What were some challenges of maintaining a narrative flow while also allowing some room for improvisation between the musicians?

PAT: We put quite a bit of time into mapping out the overall narrative, before stepping anywhere near a piano or some manuscript paper. The structure was to start with a simple theme, develop this into larger cyclical chord progressions and extended improvisations in the second movement, then evolve into a darker and more harmonically intricate third movement. After this peak of harmonic complexity, we began dissolving into freer improvisations before reprising the main themes in the concluding movement.

CALLUM: In saying that, we left ourselves with quite a bit of freedom within each movement/track in that initial plan, it wasn’t a completely rigid structure. As far as leaving room for improvisation, we mapped out exactly where improvisation would occur, and gave some guidelines for the nature of each improvisation. Even in the most open section of improvisation (the fourth movement), there were still some structural elements that we planned on reaching, but we left it up to the players to determine what path they took to these signposts and the character that they’d take on with their playing.

The titles of the tracks themselves are indicative of a journey: “Embark,” “Floating,” “Crest,” “Submerge,” and finally “Murmur.” I hear a sense of slow build throughout the entire piece, with mounting tension in “Crest,” followed by a sense of sonic panic/disorientation in “Submerge,” and then a notion of settled resolution in “Murmur.”

The titles themselves evoke a journey possibly more aquatic-based than terrestrial – was water a natural narrative element you both chose to focus on? Also, it would be great to get some details here from you both about the specific contributions of the various musicians to the musical communications/interplays in these pieces (the ways in which the players themselves contributed to the tensions and releases in the musical narrative).

PAT: That’s so nice to hear that you picked up on the journey through the piece! Interestingly, we were thinking more of an aerial/avian context for those titles, birds and flight were a big inspiration for this piece (such as the artwork of Spanish photographer Xavi Bou which became our cover art). But now that you’ve pointed it out, I can see how an aquatic interpretation fits the titles and music just as well. I love that this kind of ambiguity is possible with instrumental music - what I might have intended as a depiction of starling murmuration in a certain section may actually conjure up imagery of an ocean swim for someone else and I think that’s a beautiful thing.

CALLUM: As far as specific contributions of the other ensemble members, the combination Ashley Ballet and Niran Dasika (both on trumpet), was a major part of this ensemble’s sound. They’d never played together before this project but they both play such emotive, soaring lines and hearing their overlapping dialogue floating around the church was particularly magical in the second and final movements.

Ned Wright-Smith is a classical pipe-organist friend of ours who did a beautiful job of bringing life into the third movement, especially considering how slow/patient that section is. Helen Svoboda (double bass) and Niran Dasika were housemates at the time of this recording and the free-flowing discourse between them, as well as the range of sounds that they’re able to explore on their instruments, was central to the fourth movement (where the established form disintegrates).

I think each musician brought their own musical personalities, and we also put a lot of thought into bringing these players together and writing for their strengths.

Are there any other specific musicians/compositions/recordings that directly inspired A Sanctuary of Quietude?

CALLUM: There weren’t many recordings consciously discussed, though we share a similar love for chamber music and improvisation. Personally, I have been rather obsessed with Toru Takemitsu, who the third movement was directly inspired by. I don’t know of many composers whose sensitivity for granularity and patience compare.

I’m also in love with Olivier Messiaen, Charles Ives, Lou Harrison, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bela Bartok, Anton Webern, and now that I’ve gotten thinking the list goes on…

Though despite all these names, the music of our friends is always most inspiring. Knowing an artist as a person is a much-needed context to accompany the enjoyment of their work, and so I feel very lucky to have so many great friends who are creating.

PAT: I was also inspired by contemporary chamber composers who write with patience and varied textures, such as Arvo Pärt, Caroline Shaw and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. I know I also listened quite closely to Helen, Niran and Ashley’s recordings and gigs because I knew we’d be featuring them in this work, and I wanted to write in a way that played to their strengths. I also completely agree with Callum that it’s very inspiring to be a part of the community of young improvising musicians here in Melbourne.

The recording itself took place in St. John’s Anglican Church, Camberwell (a suburb of Melbourne). How did the arrangement to record there come about, and in what ways did you both tailor the compositions to best fit the unique acoustics of the space? 

PAT: We knew we wanted to find somewhere with a special natural acoustic and I heard about St. John’s through one of my teachers, Tim Stevens, who’s performed there quite a bit. Callum and I tested out the space by doing some duo playing there and we just thought it was magical. One of the things I love most about it is that it’s very reverberant (as you would expect from a large church) but the small details still carry to the back of the space. So, we designed some passages to float around the ceiling of the church, but also included lots of interesting little textures and micro-details, particularly for the strings, which were captured nicely in the live recording.  

CALLUM: I suppose we also just had to be aware of the size of the room, which mainly put limitations on our use of complex rhythmic material. And then we tried to make the most of the size/reverb as much as possible. It is such an incredibly gorgeous space.

A Sanctuary of Quietude also has a companion booklet of photography and writing created by artists and friends of yours, with poetry by Hannah McKittrick. Tell us a bit about your decision behind creating a companion booklet for the music, and how some contributors came to be involved in it. Did Hannah compose the poetry specifically for this project, and were the photographs by Callum along with Jeppe Ruud and Vojtech Kettner also unique to the book?  

PAT: The companion booklet was an idea that came when we started working with the fantastic label director at MADE NOW MUSIC, Brodie McAllister. The three of us love the idea of having a physical product alongside an album but CDs are obviously on a bit of a downward trend, vinyl isn’t always realistic for smaller artists and both of those have environmental issues. So the booklet is an attempt to give listeners the experience that we love, of putting an album on and reading through the liner notes as you listen.

CALLUM: Hannah is a good friend of mine who’s the most gorgeous person and her lyrics/prose are so sensitive. She was the obvious choice for me as the writer for the booklet, so we sent her the recordings and asked her to respond however she wanted, which resulted in the most amazing poetry. The photos I contributed haven’t been used for anything else, so they were unique to the book.

PAT: The other photos came from friends of mine who I met while living in Denmark and Sweden. As far as I know they haven’t been published anywhere other than on Jeppe and Vojtech’s Instagram pages.

It was a really lovely way of including a range of people from different circles in our lives into the project and I also love the way the narrative arc of the booklet compliments that of the album. Thank you as well Tyler for including us in Interlocutor, you’ve put together such a wonderful series of interviews and I’ve discovered a really diverse range of beautiful music through them.

A Sanctuary of Quietude is available now.

For further info on the composers, please see patjaffe.com and callummintzis.com.

Check out all of our other coverage of innovative musicians and bands

Tyler Nesler is a New York City-based freelance writer and he is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of INTERLOCUTOR Magazine.