Robert Glasper on Bringing His Multi-Faceted Piano Music to Austin City Limits, New Song with Mac Miller: “He Was a Trailblazer”
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The post Robert Glasper on Bringing His Multi-Faceted Piano Music to Austin City Limits, New Song with Mac Miller: “He Was a Trailblazer” appeared first on Consequence.
Austin City Limits might not be the first place you think of when you want to hear jazz, but if anyone could bring the genre to the wide-spanning music festival, it’d be Robert Glasper. The four-time Grammy winner is a renowned pianist, record producer, and songwriter, whose collaborations span roots-rock mainstays like Brittany Howard to modern hip-hop legends like Kendrick Lamar and the late Mac Miller; to call Glasper just a jazz musician would be immensely reductive.
When Consequence caught up with him backstage at Weekend 2 of ACL just ahead of his set at the Tito’s Vodka stage, Glasper seemed relaxed, yet excited to return to his home state for the fest’s second weekend. It’s a little surprising given the circumstances; he’d just arrived from his current home base New York City, where he’s on year four of his annual six-week residency at the iconic Blue Note Jazz club.
Though his schedule is packed — he hinted at a few film scoring projects coming down the pipeline — Glasper seemed happy to shake it up for a Sunday. Check out our full Q&A with him below, and grab tickets to his Blue Note Jazz Club residency via Ticketmaster.
How do you approach performing at your residency versus performing at a festival?
The club is, like, 300 max, so you can get away with certain thinks that you can’t get away with when there’s 2,000 or 3,000 people. You have to make sure your set is high energy. You gotta move the crowd. You don’t want 3,000 people looking bored — it looks weird.
And you’re in a unique position, because you dip your toe in a few different genres with the people you work with, but jazz is at your core. Jazz isn’t always represented at a major festival. What do you think the state of jazz is like in 2022?
It’s in a good state now. I think a lot of younger people are getting into it because of people like myself. And there’s other artists like Christian Scott and Esperanza Spalding who are doing something cool and modern with it, so younger people can look at it and see themselves in it.
When I was coming up, I thought jazz was just for my parents or my school principals. I didn’t see it for myself growing up, personally, until I saw Roy Hargrove — rest in peace — and he made me feel like, “Oh, I can do that.” He reminded me of myself. So, I think that’s happening more with younger people now. They realize they can do what they want with it. The freedom is there, though it should’ve been there a long time ago.
Do you have any formative experiences that shaped how you perform and write as you were coming into your own as an artist?
I grew up in Houston and went to the Kinder High School for Performing Arts, and being around other kids who had interests in the arts was very, very important. And then going from there to New York in the late ’90s, when hip-hop with live jazz bands was really becoming a thing. So I think my timing was just perfect.
How have you seen New York’s jazz scene change over the past 20-something years?
It’s gone from kind of primitive, classic jazz being everywhere, to now you see younger kids mixing the music — it’s jazz, but for 2022. Jazz should not have an expiration date. I’m starting to see it expanding in that way, and in the different venues that jazz has been played in.
Speaking of younger people in music, you recently put out a new song with Mac Miller, “Therapy pt. 2.” How does it feel to put a song together with someone who’s not only passed away, but impacted a whole generation?
Mac was my boy. We would hang out, we’d go to studio sessions sometimes and mess around, he’d come to my shows, we talked all the time. It was heartbreaking that he passed — he was definitely a trailblazer. It was great to have that connection with someone a generation younger than me.
Hip-hop was in him. Now, for a lot of people trying to be rappers, the bar is so low for what’s supposed to be good. They want one song to be hot and to get famous. But he really loved the music. He’d pick up a guitar, play the piano… he was a really respected person in the arts.
Tell me about the third part of your Black Radio trilogy that you put out earlier this year.
The funny thing is that it wasn’t supposed to be a trilogy. The first one we put out in 2012, we got a Grammy [for Best R&B Album], so I thought, “OK, we have to do another immediately.” Part II came out in 2013, and then I was good on that. I didn’t want to beat a dead horse, and be like Rocky with, you know, seven parts or something. But people kept asking for more, and when the pandemic hit, I thought, “people need medicine, and music can be medicine.” It also just gave me something to do. A lot of my artist friends were going through it — depressed, sick. I felt like I needed Black Radio III for me, too.
How do you hope your ACL set leaves people feeling?
I hope people take something away from it that they need. It doesn’t have to be a deep thing — as long as it does something, even for a moment, that’s fine.
Robert Glasper on Bringing His Multi-Faceted Piano Music to Austin City Limits, New Song with Mac Miller: “He Was a Trailblazer”
Abby Jones
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