My third chat with bassist Mark Wade

Welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World, where I interview musicians about how their music helps make the world more harmonious.

This is the third episode featuring bassist Mark Wade - the first was in July 2020 and the second in person in April 2024.

It was great to talk in person again about Mark’s new album - New Stages - which I have also now reviewed. I also saw Mark live at The Cowshed a few days after our chat.

If you’d like to find out more about the courses and concerts at Benslow Music, click here.

Thanks to Mark for allowing me to play extracts from New Stages alongside our conversation.

Thank you for listening to Harmonious World. Please rate, review and share: click on the link and subscribe to support the show.

Don't forget the Quincy Jones quote that sums up why I do this: "Imagine what a harmonious world it would be if every single person, both young and old, shared a little of what he is good at doing."

Transcript

Hilary 0:35

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World. My name is Hilary Seabrook, and for this episode, I am delighted to be joined for the third time by bassist Mark Wade, whose new album New Stages is out now on Dot Time Records, and in fact I met the boss of Dot Time Records when I was recently in Bremen. What you're listening to now is Yezu, which I guess you probably recognise the reference. And I also heard Mark performing with his European trio at a marvellous new venue, The Cow Shed. Jazz. So all the links are in the show notes, and I hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Mark Wade. So welcome to Harmonious World, Mark Wade. It's an absolute delightful, I think our third chat.

Mark 1:34

Third time, uh third time's a charm. It's good to be here for sure.

Hilary 1:37

Yeah, absolutely. And you've got a new album out, which we're gonna talk about. Um, and you're touring at the moment, you're just coming to the end of the UK tour.

Mark 1:46

Yeah.

Hilary 1:46

So talk to me about the album and uh when you wrote the pieces.

Mark 1:50

Sure. So the new album is called New Stages. It's um out on the dot time uh recording labels, my first time on dot time, so that's exciting. Um, the music from this album is uh essentially inspired by classical music that I like. Besides playing jazz, and my band is jazz, it's a jazz piano trio, but just as part of my career, I also play classical music, and I've always been inspired by those sounds as well. Um, and over the years I've kind of uh collected certain pieces and melodies that really hit me very hard over the years. And I knew that you know I wasn't going to do anything with the originals, of course, for my band, but there was something about it that I said, I've got to find a way to use this material somehow, some some way to incorporate this into what my jazz piano trio does. So over the last eight years, I've been putting together this collection of uh pieces that I really like. Everything from Baroque music through the modern day. Some of the composers are very well known to people, and some would be more obscure unless you're really into the classical music world. And the goal for me was to take these works and kind of bend them through the lens of my own creative um thinking and uh composition process, so that what came out sounded like it belonged in a set of my original music, as opposed to uh just a tribute to a certain composer or whatnot. Um, and so you know, eight years later, here it is, uh, new stages, and at the time of recording, today is the actual release day for the album, so it has literally dropped as we speak.

Hilary 3:24

That's fantastic, yeah, and it is a lovely album. I mean, I love your playing anyway. I've I've really got into bass players, and and um hearing the difference between the way bass players perform. I saw Dave Holland on Monday night, and I mean he's a genius, but he has his very own individual style. Yeah, and um and you definitely do, and um, it's really nice to hear new stages. I think it feels like that's a very it might have taken eight years, but it feels like a moment in time in your in your style.

Mark 3:57

Well, thank you. Yeah, I I it's it's funny because when I the very first piece of this was I wrote probably right after I finished my first album, Event Horizon, which came out in 2015. Um and I wrote it and I've liked it, but it was different enough that I thought, well, what am I gonna do with this? Like what what do I do with this piece? It's nice, but does it how does it fit or what should I do? And so I really kind of took my time putting together all this whole set of music. So um, but we've been working this music since, you know, um, you know, all the way back then, on and off. In in between, I wrote two other albums worth of material and released those as well. But I knew I didn't want to do it before this because it just didn't feel like the right time for that project. I wanted to a kind of make my name more for writing my own original compositions, you know, maybe without that kind of source material, this kind of concept album. But having done that and satisfied my own, you know, needs for such things, it does feel like this is the right time specifically for this album.

Hilary 5:00

Yeah, that's that's amazing, and I think it with albums, I think there are there often is a specific moment in time when they are they are ready and you are ready with it. So brilliant. Um so you're currently in the UK, obviously, because we're talking live. Um you're in the UK, you've been travelling around and doing a lot of work with Marco Marconi, especially the pianist of from Hit from around Hitchin, although not originally. Yes. As anyone that talks to him will know. And uh I'll put all the links actually to the previous episodes where I've spoken to Marco and I've spoken to you. Um but one of the nice things that you've been doing is you've been working on this course up at Benzlow Music. So, what was that?

Mark 5:46

Yes, so this was actually my fifth trip to Benzlow Music, uh, and I really love my time there working with the students. It's really I truly enjoy it. So, Marco and I um we we both teach a course at Benzlow Music for just jazz improvisation, getting better at being a jazz improv improviser. And uh it's open to all levels, all instruments. Um, this year we had a record-high 17 course participants, so quite a few people, and with a waiting list on top of that of people to come in. So it's the course has really taken off and has been successful. Um, I most of the time in my professional work, I'm a performer, but I do teach, and I've always really enjoyed teaching. Um, and uh at home I I'm on I'm an adjunct faculty member at a university back in the States, and I teach about once a week out there. So teaching is something I really love, and the thing I've always really enjoyed about Benzlow is just how um how excited the students are, and just their attitude and their spirit and how they they come to the course and really challenge themselves in a very intensive environment. It's it's it's quite a lot of instruction that that gets packed into about two days. Um so it's it's great fun to work with them. I'm happy to say that they have already booked us for 2027. So the the it's it's official. I will be back just about the same time next year. Um, and uh, you know, we also we we give a concert, two days of teaching, and so it's quite a nice little um kind of corner of time there.

Hilary 7:18

Yeah, and uh I know Benzo Music is sort of going through a period of change, and it's really exciting because you know I live in Hitchin and we call it up the hill from the town centre, and um we're very keen on kind of bringing people from the forces down here into the town and bringing people from the town up the hill. Um, but obviously, you know, for a course like yours, I mean that's that's amazing to have 17 people signed up and a waiting list. So that's really good, and so we'll see you again next year.

Mark 7:51

I'll be back.

Hilary 7:52

Yeah, and the concert as well. I think that's a really nice opportunity for people to see really world-class musicians in Hitchen, in just a little Mount Market town outside London.

Mark 8:03

It's a great venue, you know, but where they have the concerts there at Benslow, it's it's really a great venue. I I love the concert there. Um it's it has both the course participants who have signed up who come to watch us, but of course, open to the public. And um, you know, we we get you know audience members on both sides of that aisle. Uh and uh yeah, it's it's it's really a very it's always a highlight of my trip over here.

Hilary 8:27

Yeah. So and where else have you been playing? You were at Pizza Express Live, is that right?

Mark 8:30

Pizza Express, Dean Street on Wednesday night after finishing the course. Um it was a a very quick mad dash to London for a sound check. Um and uh so that was uh a Wednesday at Pizza Express, and last night, um Thursday was uh in Cambridge, my first trip to Cambridge, so that was exciting. We played at Hidden Rooms for the Cambridge uh Modern Jazz Society there, um, and that was a really great concert. Um great to be there. I've heard great things about hidden rooms actually from the uh the record label uh from Dogtime Records. The owner had been there and raved about it, was excited to hear that I had booked myself there and it didn't disappoint. Really a great night. We'll we'll definitely be returning there. Um and then tonight we'll be um in the the Hertfordshire area at um a place called the Cowshed Jazz Club. Um, who is uh Marco Marconi, who's playing the gig, is also the artistic director at this club, so there's the connection. Um it's I think just outside of Sandon, if I'm not mistaken. And uh so uh and that will be the last show for me here in the UK, and that will be the end of the tour for me, and I finally head back to New York.

Hilary 9:37

Yeah. Brilliant. So and then and then what's next? Do you do you have some dates planned to tour new stages?

Mark 9:44

Yes, so then I I head back home, and then we have a couple of album release concerts back home in the States, um, one just outside of New York, um, at Shanghai Jazz Club in Madison, New Jersey, where we're you know been kind of in residence now for the last few years, and uh and then a concert in New York in uh in Long Island City, my neighborhood, just across the the East River in Queens, at a great venue that's there called Culture Lab. So uh that we're looking forward to those shows too.

Hilary 10:12

Brilliant. And one of the things I particularly enjoy about your playing is that as you say, you do lots of classical stuff as well, and anyone who everybody should sign up for your Instagram because there's a there's a great sort of sequence of different people you play with and different organizations and different styles of music and things like that. And I think that it all feeds in, doesn't it, into your your style.

Mark 10:33

Absolutely. Look, I I'm a firm believer of you know, you you should always uh copy uh in the beginning, you know, the greats, and you want to absorb as much as you can from the people who came before you. But in the end, no matter how much you would try to copy someone, you're always gonna you're not you're never them. You're always gonna end up being you. And once you've done your homework of accumulating a um an informed opinion, then it's time to have one of your own. And I feel like uh you that those are my strengths. You know, I I I draw from a wide variety of music, and um and classical music is one of them, but it's only one of them. It's jazz, it's popular music, it's whatever. I I grew up in a household that wasn't particularly tied to any particular strong musical tradition, um, so I kind of forged ahead and made my own.

Hilary 11:21

That's really interesting, and I and I think one of the nice things about jazz is that it takes its influence from all over. You know, I was saying to you earlier that I saw Dave Holland with Lionel Louecki on Monday night, and obviously the two of them, you know, Dave Holland originally is from Wolverhampton, which is you know just up the M1 from here, and Lionel Louecchi is from Benin, and so they have very different backgrounds, so they bring very different things, and it's lovely when they come together. And I think with you and Marco, you I I've seen you play together quite a lot, and I love the sort of Italian New York mixture, you know, which is which is I think very interesting. Yeah. Excellent, right, and so when can people expect something else from you in terms of um albums? Have you got anything else brewing?

Mark 12:13

Well, the um the label seemed to uh the initial uh impression from them was that they liked new stages so much that they were being asked if I would consider doing a volume two at some point. So it is possible that that could be in the works. I am an avid writer of music. So while I have, you know, this album has just come out, I'm sitting on a more than probably maybe as much as two albums worth of material at home. Um, some of that I've it's been sitting there a long time, some of it is fairly newly written, but I'm always writing music. So I can't say precisely what the next project will be. There is some talk um with Dot Time Records. They like to do a live album series at a um at a venue in Augsburg, Germany, of all places, which I I have actually done not for myself, but for one of the other artists on their label um uh vocalist by the name of Lizzie Thomas. That's kind of how I got on the radar of Dot Time Records. Um so I played on her album at uh the Abraxes Culture House in Augsburg, Germany, a few years ago. So it's possible that I'll be headed there maybe to do a live record. Um maybe that I will be working on uh more new material for a follow-up to this one, depending on how things go. But I also have a boatload of other dudes as well. So, you know, the um the possibilities right now are quite open, I would say.

Hilary 13:36

Fantastic. Well, we look forward to whatever it is that you uh that you next release. But thank you for joining me, Mark. It's been great.

Mark 13:43

It's great to be here, it's great to see you again, and um look forward to coming back.

Hilary 14:01

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation with Mark Wade. A little bit of clattering in the background, but I think it was a lovely opportunity to chat with him while he was over from New York. What you're listening to now is IDL, which is also taken from New Stages. All the links are in the show notes for the things that we talked about, so please do take a look. Discover new music, which is why I'm here, really. Uh, lots and lots of reviews on my website, hilarysebrook.co.uk. There are now more than 330 episodes to listen to, so I will see you a bit later. Uh, lots more coming up. I have some great interguests booked in and more who I'm talking to about becoming on the podcast. You can also find me on Patreon and Substack at all the usual places. So do take a look. And if you come to this on YouTube, then welcome from there as well. So thanks for joining me once more for Harmonious World, and I hope you have a really good week.