Jonathan Moritz and Mike Pride interview 2024

Neither/Nor Records

Jonathan Moritz and Mike Pride interviewed by Sam Weinberg in June 2024 for the release of Summertime (n/n 024)

Sam posed the same questions to Jonathan and Mike. Below are the two separate interviews:

Interview with Jonathan Moritz

Sam Weinberg: You two have a musical relationship that has spanned close to (over?) twenty years now. The oldest release I could track down seems to be Evil Eye from 2007, where you both contributed compositions. And Mike, I know you've played in Moritz's trio Secret Tempo for over a decade. I'm wondering if you guys could trace some of that history – what attracted you to one another's playing in the early aughts, how that's changed/developed/grown etc?

Jonathan Moritz: I met Mike in 2001 when playing together in accordionist Julian Hintz’s band Acetaminophen. Later that year, my quartet was going on tour in California and the drummer wasn’t available so I asked Mike. It was the first time we bonded musically and the beginning of our long friendship. It was a bit of a blending and flexing of two worlds as I was coming from a traditional approach to playing, having done most of my jazz performance studies at the Brussels conservatory in Belgium which is really conventional. Mike had a more mixed and free background from punk to jazz. The clash of these two upbringings forced me and the group to think and play quite differently and the tension it created gave great musical results. I remember the bass player getting pissed. He insisted that improvisation “needs to be quiet!” when Mike went in hard on an extended drum solo. The bass player left the stage frustrated and furious! Bonding experiences!

Our first collaboration was the band Evil Eye. We played around the city for a decade releasing two albums in 2003 and 2007. Mike and I composed for the group and looked for concerts together. It was such an easy, fun process that In 2011, when I was ready to start my own trio Secret Tempo, Mike was a natural choice. We have such an honest relationship that I can tell him what I want and be critical if needed without having to walk on eggshells. I love his sound, he’s professional and that easy trusting relationship made the music better and the process smooth.

SW: You released "The Invitation" on Astral Editions in June of 2020, your first duo release, but the new record is something very tangibly different. When I first was listening to "Mushrooms" the opening track, I could situate the playing, from having heard and played with you both several times. But very quickly I started hearing jump cuts, edits, layers of collage and almost felt like I was imagining things – the seams of the strictly improvised music came undone so quickly and I had to reorient my expectations for the duration of the record.

How did this idea come about to make this kind of highly edited, manipulated record? Related – did you both collaborate on the structure of how these edits came about? Both contribute these sounds outside of your instruments? It feels like something that could only arise from such trust and familiarity.

JM: The record is all improvised sax and drums duets that we recorded organically in 2020 and 2021 over weekends in Mike’s back yard, studio and near a stream during our family vacation in Maine. The laugher and screaming of our children, the stream gurgling, the splashes of rocks were not added afterwords but in the background during the recordings, an ode to our daily life. I feel this record is a culmination of our improvised, joyful adventures together.

I give Mike full credit for the edits and manipulations. I approved of course but it was all done post production by him. The middle piece, TD-2+, is the most manipulated one of the three. The underlying track is Mike and I improvising double tenors behind his house and the “plus” stands for the added sounds and overdubs: i.e. the bongos…

Also, (spoiler alert!), if you’re getting the CD there will be an additional surprise where he plays saxophone and I play drums as well as a couple extra layers. The creative process was different for this piece. Mike sent me a track that I overdubbed and sent back to him. This ping pong process was repeated until we liked it.

SW: Have you thought about how this approach on this record would influence future duo performances? Obviously so much of this work is about the ability to edit, layer sounds, but I'm wondering if there's a way that one could carry this formal expansiveness to a live improvised context? (if this question doesn't make sense we can scrap it)

Or I guess more generally have you two thought about what the future holds for your duo and was the process of making this album generative of further ideas, ways of pushing this approach?

JM: I mostly imagine us doing acoustic live performances. We have a tour in August.

Each time we have the opportunity to spend time together we record. It’s interesting to hear the intermingling of the “background noise,” and our playing. I wonder what’ll be next, basketball dribbling sounds from our teens? There is something organic and ludic in this collaboration that is at the essence of this duo. I hope we keep that free, unpretentious, creative dynamic going.

Interview with Mike Pride

Sam Weinberg: You two have a musical relationship that has spanned close to (over?) twenty years now. The oldest release I could track down seems to be Evil Eye from 2007, where you both contributed compositions. And Mike, I know you've played in Moritz's trio Secret Tempo for over a decade. I'm wondering if you guys could trace some of that history – what attracted you to one another's playing in the early aughts, how that's changed/developed/grown etc?

Mike Pride: I think we probably met in the fall of 2000. We started playing in a band led by the accordionist, vocalist, composer, Julian Hintz. He had a band called Acetaminophen. Pretty sure that’s how we met.

A year after after we started playing in that band, Jonathan hired me from the recommendation of one of the other band members, to go out to California with him for a week or so, and do some gigs out there. I was psyched for a “jazz tour”, and fuuuck, it was fun!

It was literally the first, modern jazz, I had done that wasn’t super peculiar, intentionally or not. Me and Jonathan immediately hit it off and always had a great time together. I really pissed off some of his band members on that tour. I was too loud and too out. So I probably put him in a fucked up place. But man, he was always cool about it. Seemed he loved me pushing it around.

And I always love Jonathan’s playing. I’ve been listening to him play now for almost 25 years. Like really listening. You know, I don’t even have to listen, you know what I mean…? So I respected his control and sound. So, I was just trying to refine what I did as quickly as possible to keep up with him, honestly. I remember this tour was just after the September 11 attacks. So, we were definitely starting to play more by the fall of 2001. We became fast friends. We started Evil Eye with Nate Wooley and Ken Filiano. We made a live record, and then a studio record after that. Then that kind of died off as collabs do. But all along, we’ve been playing in other peoples bands together, whether it be Sam Mickens, or Jonathan subbing in From Bacteria To Boys, or Jonathan sitting in with virtually any band I had at any time, and of course, Secret Tempo Trio. We met a lot of amazing music with Chris Welcome. Lots of stuff… we also just happened to always spend a lot of time together - making music, hanging out and having a good time. This definitely lead to a constant musical / vibrational relationship.

SW: You released "The Invitation" on Astral Editions in June of 2020, your first duo release, but the new record is something very tangibly different. When I first was listening to "Mushrooms" the opening track, I could situate the playing, from having heard and played with you both several times. But very quickly I started hearing jump cuts, edits, layers of collage and almost felt like I was imagining things – the seams of the strictly improvised music came undone so quickly and I had to reorient my expectations for the duration of the record.

MP: Mushrooms in fact is not edited. That’s a live performance of a piece we wrote that afternoon, while on mushrooms. :-) That was commissioned by the Infrequent Streams series. However, the middle piece was recorded in my backyard with each of us on tenor saxophones and fucking around with my kids and the dense nature sounds going on. Playing sounds off the lands natural echoes & reflections. It’s a beautiful sounding yard. It was like a long freak out thing. The insects and animals on my property are insanely loud, so there’s always a lot of sound happening out there by the woods where we were recording.

I edited it up, Did my thing with it, and we were both pretty psyched about the results. That one definitely has a lot of edits. But, that’s a huge part of my trip. And Jonathan knows that super peculiar music of mine more than anyone else. I don’t really play it for anyone. Haven’t released it properly yet. But sound collage is a huge part of my daily work.

SW: How did this idea come about to make this kind of highly edited, manipulated record? Related – did you both collaborate on the structure of how these edits came about? Both contribute these sounds outside of your instruments? It feels like something that could only arise from such trust and familiarity.

MP: Yeah, Jonathan completely trusts me. And if there was anything he didn’t like he knows I would change it for him in a second. But our taste aligns pretty easily. And neither of us gets big dick syndrome about it, you know? We are just enjoying working with each other.

The final piece FYI is not edited either! That is a live field recording of Jonathan and I improvising while in a stream while we were on vacation together in Gray Maine. We had microphones or devices set up on each side of the stream, so the stereo field is pretty nuts. I made it sound how it sounded to us there that day. I might’ve done a few little psychedelic kisses here and there, just as a coda or interlude, but for the most part, that is just a document of us playing down in the stream behind the yurts we were vacationing at with our families.

SW: Have you thought about how this approach on this record would influence future duo performances? Obviously so much of this work is about the ability to edit, layer sounds, but I'm wondering if there's a way that one could carry this formal expansiveness to a live improvised context? (if this question doesn't make sense we can scrap it)

Or I guess more generally have you two thought about what the future holds for your duo and was the process of making this album generative of further ideas, ways of pushing this approach?

MP: If this album taught us anything, it’s that when we’re playing duo together, we really can do anything. There’s no way we don’t make good music together. Honestly. So this new record is maybe a little fucked up seeming… Maybe not… But either way, it’s each of us just listening and trying to contribute something to the sound that’s going on around us in our own peculiar ways.

I’m not sure I see us incorporating electronics, or anything like that in our future duo performances. We try to keep it pretty natural. And again, SUMMERTIME isn’t all that crazily edited after all. And in fact, there were some strange psychedelic edits on our astral spirits, cassette, “the invitation”. But people didn’t notice it. It was kind of a joke on our part. Even better if people missed it. Hahah. So it’s funny this time, that people may think there’s way more editing going on than there is. Just that middle piece really.

Just at this rate, no mountain is too high to climb. We can always get deeper, and we can always get weirder. We’re each always developing on our own. Like, for real. His shit just keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And while I don’t always get the opportunity to present it, I’m going deeper into the well nearly every spare hour of my life. And fuck, it’s just fun! It’s beautiful to have an evolving, consistent project, that doesn’t involve all the usual forms of anguish… You dig!? So duo it is! Haha!

Jonathan’s the best man. Most have really no idea the depth there. My brother!

Photo credits:

The album cover is a photo taken by Mike Pride.

The photo of Jonathan and Mike together taken by Mike Pride.

The photos of Jonathan and Mike while playing were taken by Peter Gannushkin.