{"id":19283,"date":"2011-05-15T02:49:32","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T06:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=19283"},"modified":"2011-05-15T02:51:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T06:51:34","slug":"justins-japan-qa-with-grammy-winner-marcus-miller-on-his-concert-for-japanese-tsunami-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/15\/justins-japan-qa-with-grammy-winner-marcus-miller-on-his-concert-for-japanese-tsunami-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin’s Japan: Q&A with Grammy Winner Marcus Miller on His Concert for Japanese Tsunami Relief"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Japan has been a really beautiful place for a musician to play jazz. And so when I heard about the disaster, I said, man, I\u2019d love to be able to give back a little bit.” (Andrew Dunn)<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

By<\/em> <\/strong>JQ magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Justin Tedaldi<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0page <\/em>here<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to subscribe for free alerts\u00a0on newly published stories.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Born and bred in New York, Marcus Miller is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer who\u2019s worked with everyone from Miles Davis to Luther Vandross to Frank Sinatra while waxing a score of records on his own.\u00a0On May 15, the Grammy winner returns home to New York\u2019s Highline Ballroom<\/a> for a special one-night all-star benefit concert to provide financial relief and support to those devastated by the recent tsunami tragedy in Japan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMarcus Miller Presents: A Concert for Japanese Tsunami Relief\u201d will feature performances by cutting edge artists from around the globe and across the musical spectrum, including African vocal superstar Ang\u00e9lique Kidjo, hip hop\/jazz pioneer Q-Tip, trumpeter Wallace Roney (Miles\u2019 heir apparent), drummer Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson (of the Roots), and taiko drummer\/bamboo flautist Kaoru Watanabe, among others. In this exclusive interview, I spoke with Miller about the show, his three-decade history with Japan, and other high points of his career.<\/p>\n

How did this benefit concert come together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I heard about what was going on over there, and was trying to figure out\u2014probably like a lot of people\u2014what can I do? And I figured, you know what? I might be able to put together a benefit concert to try to raise some money, because at the time [of the earthquake] it seemed devastating, and as the weeks have gone by we actually realized it was much worse than we thought, with all this radiation and stuff. So you just want to do whatever you can to help, and show everyone that we\u2019re thinking about them and trying to support them.<\/p>\n

How did you choose the performers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I just wanted to try to present something that was unique, you know what I mean? That kind of represented New York, because there\u2019s a whole lot of different things going on in New York, and this is where I\u2019m from. I thought it was a nice opportunity to bring a lot of different elements together.<\/p>\n

Tell us about your history with Japan.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first when to Japan when I was nineteen years old. I went with a saxophone player called Sadao Watanabe<\/a>, who was the first Japanese musician to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston; one of the really early jazz musicians. And he\u2019s really, really famous over there, you know, like a national icon. So it was a great introduction to Japan, because we went to every city in Japan\u2014we went to the Japanese cities that Japanese people haven\u2019t been to.<\/p>\n

So I got a taste of the country and a taste of the culture, and I\u2019ve been going back ever since. I\u2019ve been there with the Brecker Brothers; I\u2019ve been there with Miles Davis; I\u2019ve been there with my own groups; with Herbie Hancock. And their appreciation of American jazz is just incredible\u2014at first you can\u2019t believe it, because they know every record that you\u2019ve ever played on. I\u2019ve had people waiting for me in hotel lobbies with a stack of a hundred LPs, and they want me to sign each one because I played on each one of them, you know? I sat there in the hotel, man, for an hour (laughs<\/em>) signing LPs just because I admired their enthusiasm so much. So it\u2019s been a really beautiful place for a musician to play jazz. And so when I heard about [the disaster], I said, man, I\u2019d love to be able to give back a little bit.<\/p>\n

What are some of your favorite memories of Japan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My early memories\u2014anybody who\u2019s visited Japan probably has the same memory\u2014first is the incredible jetlag. Staying up all night, and then wanting to go to sleep right before your concert, you know? If you ever saw Bill Murray in Lost in Translation<\/em>, sitting on the edge of his bed in the middle of the night, everybody goes through that (laughs<\/em>). But also, how generous their culture is; it\u2019s very polite. Everyone is bowing to everyone, and when you get back to the States after you\u2019ve been in Japan, you\u2019ve got to remember to stop bowing, because then people think there\u2019s something wrong with you, you know? The food is always a trip, interesting, and learning how to use chopsticks.<\/p>\n

And the fact that they never really say \u201cno\u201d in Japan. Like if you walk into a store and say, \u201cDo you have size ten shoes?\u201d they shake their head yes and say, \u201cYes, I don\u2019t think we have any,\u201d you know what I mean? (Laughs<\/em>) You begin using that. And like I was talking about, the enthusiasm for music is incredible there, and the beauty of the country\u2014we go from city to city on the high-speed trains, so you get to really see in between the two cities; you get to see all these incredible fields and flowers and rice fields and workers in the traditional kind of Japanese clothes. It\u2019s a really beautiful country. So those are the kinds of things that strike me about Japan.<\/p>\n

You mentioned Sadao Watanabe before. Do you have any other favorite Japanese musicians?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a guitarist named Kazumi Watanabe<\/a>. I guess Watanabe\u2019s a pretty common name, but Kazumi Watanabe\u2019s a musician that I went to Japan with who\u2019s also a great guitarist. I\u2019ve played with a bunch of great Japanese American musicians\u2014Teruo Nakamura<\/a> was my first Japanese American musician who I played with and really learned a lot from; he\u2019s a bass player. But they have some incredible Japanese musicians\u2014I played with a Japanese koto player who plays the traditional instrument in a very contemporary style, very cool.<\/p>\n

Read the complete interview <\/em><\/strong>here<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Japan has been a really beautiful place for a musician to play jazz. And so when I heard about the disaster, I said, man, I\u2019d love to be able to give back a little bit.” (Andrew Dunn) By JQ magazine\u2019s\u00a0Justin Tedaldi\u00a0(CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0page here\u00a0to subscribe for free alerts\u00a0on newly published stories. Born and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,25,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-interviewprofile","category-justins-japan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-511","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19283"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19287,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283\/revisions\/19287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}