For the last forty years, alto and soprano saxist Trevor Watts’ musical workshops have been providing European jazzmen with decisive means to emancipate themselves from the American canon. Watts’ biography speaks for itself. In 1966, with John Stevens and Paul Rutherford, he is co-founder of SME, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, a landmark for all those involved in the then rising British jazz scene and a cornerstone of the free music scene of Europe; SME ranked among others Kenny Wheeler, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker. The decade under SME’s seal wasn’t but the starting point of a long, searching path. Around the same time, in order to better express his musical soundscape, Watts establishes Amalgam. Amalgam will produce ten record in thirteen years (1967-1979): a composite of jazz, improvisation, folk and world music, joining such musicians as Barry Guy, John Stevens Harry Miller, Colin McKenzie, Keith Rowe, Keith Tippett, Liam Genockey and reaching its peak towards the end of its life cycle with the four-records album Wipe Out and with Over the Rainbow. Since the Ode album (1972), he is at the same time a major player in Barry Guy’s project, the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Amalgam folds, and Watts joins briefly forces in a trio with John Stevens and Barry Guy. In the early Eighties, a new venture: Moiré Music. The inter-cultural focus of this project, whose lineup ranges from trio to 35-pieces band, proves once again to be ahead of its times: thick in rhythmic and melodic texture, at once complex and jubilant. The Drum Orchestra, The Celebration Band and several meetings with African musicians and percussions, always centered on rhythm, follow in a similar vein.  More recently, Watts pursued a sober practice of solo improvisation (World Sonic) and sometimes a duo with Veryan Weston (6 Dialogues). He also played duets with percussionist Jamie Harris (Live in Sao Paulo and Ancestry), an experience he considers to be concluded. Anyway, this was just where our conversation started.

Can you briefly tell us something about your last tour in Brasil with percussionist Jamie Harris? In 2005 you recorded a live concert in Sao Paulo before an enthusiastic audience and you have had musically speaking many connections with centre and latin american musicians and countries (eg. Mexico). Could we say that Latin America is your second “artistic country”?  
The visit to Brasil on this last occasion (December 2007) was an invitation to take part in a Jazz & Blues Festival at the SESI Theatre in Sao Paulo, Brasil. This festival featured a lot of Blues players like Stanley Jordan for instance. It was a return visit after our very successful tour in Brasil in 2005 where we played more cities that time around. We found a great enthusiasm for our music, and my interest has always been rhythmic and melodic in the main, with an emphasis on strong rhythm, so people seem to relate to that very strongly wherever you go in the World and they LOVE it in Latin America that’s for sure.
Also I have visited many Latin American countries like Bolivia, Brasil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Dominican Republic etc, and on many occasions. This included major collaborations with my Moire Drum Orchestra (7 piece) and Singers/Dancers/Actors and musicians of the Teatro Negro de Barlovento (Venezuela) we collaborated together and made a 35 piece group under the title Una Sola Voz which was taken from the Moire Music recording called With One Voice. We recorded for the BBC and also played the Saalfelden Jazz Festival and Crawley (UK) Jazz Festival and some work in Venezuela as well. I have some recordings at home of this. The other major collaboration was with a musician from Mexico called Gibran Cervantes who built this huge instrument with strings & gourds, and that can be beaten, plucked or bowed etc. He called the instrument an Urukungolo, and the group that featured it Enjambre Acustico Urukungolo. This band originally featured the Brasilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. We also played with Bolivian indigenous Indian musicians on our tour there. So I have a very strong connection with Latin America. Currently I have been asked to play some saxophone on a Brasilian project, which initially will be a recording. Although a very memorable collaboration for me was with Sudanese African musicians at the Khartoum Festival.

You have been always interested in strong rhythms and melodies with a particular attention to percussive elements that we can find in Asian, African and Latin American musical tradition. Could we say that your actual duo with Jamie Harris is a sort of synthesis of your previous experiences, notably the Moire Music ensemble you formed in 1982?
The duo with Jamie has been a distillation, and continuing study of all the rhythmic and melodic elements I have been involved with from 1982 onwards I would say. And of course this includes Islamic Arabic, African, Latin American, Asian and Celtic influences. However that duo came to an end after our last visit to Brasil.

Emanem has just released an old duo recording previously unissued Bare Essentials with you (soprano sax) and John Stevens (percussion and cornet). What’s the main difference between this experience (and others with John Steven, eg. Face to Face) and your contemporary duo with Jamie Harris?
Those recordings that Emanem have released were recorded by myself in 1973/74. There’s not just one main difference between the two duos, but many. A lot of the time with John Stevens it was about pure experimentation and more related to abstract free playing within a tight set of principles laid down by John. So rhythm as we know it, and melody were not an intrinsic part of it. The music I could describe more as pointillistic. Plus I have been through so many things since those times that the playing with Jamie bears no resemblance to the earlier stuff whatsoever. The influences with Jamie are drawn more from the previously mentioned Folk traditions than modern Avant Garde practices. However the duo with John developed many practices that are still being used to this day on the improvisation scene by lots of other players. It became a part of that language.

You have had a very important duo with drummer Liam Genockey but there are no recordings. Could you briefly describe that experience?
I have recordings with the duo with Liam, and maybe I’ll check through them and find enough to release. That was a very important duo for me also in that it came out of Amalgam. Liam had a strong rhythmic feel, but came originally more from Rock and Blues so that duo differed from the two previous duos in that we left the music very free and open, however it had a strong rhythmic/melodic content but not as worked at and structured as the duo with Jamie and not as abstract as with John. Somewhere in between.

How do you look back to the music you made with Spontaneous Music Ensemble? 
I don’t really look back very often. I am the type of player who likes to look forward. But that period of time was important for all of us who took part in the SME in terms of finding new things and experimenting and all the struggle and work leading to individual voices like that of Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Paul Rutherford, and I like to think myself also. There were many fights and struggles, but birth can be painful sometimes.

Could you just tell us something about your absent friends, John Stevens and Paul Rutherford?
I went to Paul’s funeral last year. It was very sad to see how unhappy he had become. John was also unhappy in those last years and somehow it seemed like the struggle had almost become too much. 

John always pushed himself to the edge with everything he did, and I almost felt he had a death wish in some ways. He seemed to live with a lot of tension in his life, and Paul always suffered from depression. In fact there’s a lot of musicians with problems of one kind or another, and this in some ways is where their creativity comes from.

Another key experience was Amalgam. How do you judge now that “free” and creative experience?
Those free improvisational experiences, or in Amalgam’s case, improvisation and freedom within a musical structure, and also the experimentation of adding noise guitar (Keith Rowe), with funky bass (Colin McKenzie) and Jazz & Jazz Rock drumming from Liam with my voice seemed very logical at the time. I still believe there are many ways to make music, and I still like combinations outside of the conventional norm, or if they are conventional combinations like sax, drums & bass, trying to find a way of doing it in a more original way. So they were all manifestations of my beliefs regarding putting music together. So in that respect the earlier combinations have still a strong relationship to what I do today.

You evolved from the free jazz ferocity of your first albums with Spontaneous Music Ensemble to the more controlled virtuoso explorations of your recent cds, eg. Ancestry with Jamie Harris. How have you changed you approach to improvisation?
I have changed in this respect. When I was younger I practised a lot, but I believed, in those more totally improvisational times, that I should start each concert with an empty head and relate to whatever comes up in that moment. The way I play now is still to practice, but to work at things I can work into the improvisation and get to understand everything around any structure that we decide to develop. When I look back I realise now that my attitude was quite rare in the fact that I believed on starting with a blank canvas, so to speak. Other musicians, even in the so called free improvisational World did what I am doing now. Worked at things that they could do within the improvisational context. I naively believed in a purer form. Consequently it then becomes harder for critics and people listening to actually know its value.

You are a legendary pioneer of British jazz and you have had many musical connections with musicians from radical and mainstrean areas You have also played with many American jazz musicians as Steve Lacy, Archie Sheep, Don Cherry and others. Which artists have had the biggest influence on you?
I hope that I am thought of at least as a pioneer of European Jazz, not only British Jazz. An important connection was the group with American trumpeter Bobby Bradford, who was the first trumpeter to play with Ornette before Don. But by the time I played with all these people my influences had already done their work. I was brought up on Jazz since the 1940’s as my Father had lived in Canada & The States in the late 20’s and early 30’s. In fact he also had a Canadian passport as well which I have just discovered. So we had all those 78 r.p.m. recordings of Duke Ellington, Tex Beneke, Artie Shaw, Nellie Lutcher, Bob Crosby, Art Tatum etc, etc. So I feel I have lived with the music and now intrinsically understand it because of this long exposure to it and involvement. So it is better for me not to say one player influenced me, but the sum total of listening to hundreds of players over all those years. I feel a strong affinity with the music, but the music always said to me play your own way, sure, study and listen to all the older stuff, but find your way. What can I put in to the music, not just take out. This is strange given that there is an Independent production company here now called Somethin Else Productions who produce all the Jazz programmes for the BBC and they have decided (in their wisdom) that my music no longer is Jazz?? So, in effect I am banned from the BBC Jazz programmes.

Do you agree with the idea that jazz does not have to have an American accent to be original and innovative?
I agree, but without where the music came from we wouldn’t be where we are today, so I don’t like Europeans being anti American in trying to build up their own egos. Why can’t we just get on with what we do, and if it has an American accent to it or not doesn’t matter. Some Europeans can get very strong feelings against music that has an American accent, if they think their music does not have it. In a way it seems to be covering up some kind of inferiority complex. Doesn’t matter what it is, if it sounds good it is good. We’re all influenced by something as we’re not in isolation and music doesn’t belong to an individual.

Would you say you are still learning at this stage in your career?
Very much so, and so therefore it’s exciting and still a struggle to some extent. But it’s great to get the feeling of having just that bit more knowledge than you used to have. I am in it for lifelong learning and never lose my optimism about music, although I am surprised sometimes at some critics and promoters choices, but in the end it doesn’t really matter, as for me it’s the study of music that feeds my soul.

What's you opinion about jazz and electronics? Many musicians have experimented this marriage and  have developed a pioneering integration of jazz, electronics, spontaneous music. Are you interested in this sort of approach?
The thing is about electronics, jazz and spontaneous music. Well it's pretty logical that this has happened. But like everything else, it isn't that radical when you think that everything comes out of everything else. I mean the early seeds of things like that I could claim to be in groups such as Amalgam, because if you hear the way Keith Rowe deals with the sounds within that music, and this is 1979, take Ongoing Situation for instance, well the principles are there. And also you've got Jimi Hendrix in Rock taking the stuff out. So all you're talking about is new refinements brought on by new technology. So, like everything else, it's not the ingredients that matter in themselves, rather like cooking, it's how you put them together. Some food has all the best ingredients, but not always the best results,  as that relies on the cook.

Finally could you anticipate new projects or recordings? Any new reissues in the pipeline?
Just released is a Trevor Watts Drum Orchestra recording from 1989 called Drum Energy on the Hi4HeadRecs label HFHCD 006. This is “live” in London.
Then Nick Dart of Hi4Head is releasing a duo recording from 1999 of an improvisational piece of music by a yet another duo of Peter Knight (Violin) and myself on saxes. This will be under the title of Reunion Peter is a famous “Folk” violinist, and is best known for his involvement with Folk/Rock group Steeleye Span. But Pete is featured also in the Drum Orchestra and some of my Moire Music recordings. Finally there’s a recording from 1985 that FMR records are going to issue and it is of my original 10 piece Moire group. This recording was originally issued on ARC, my own label, as a vinyl. And as well as Peter Knight features such as Veryan Weston (Piano), Lol Coxhill (Sop sax) and some good duos from African percussionist Nana Tsiboe and Liam Genockey.
Regarding projects. With the demise of the duo with Jamie I am now at a stage of wondering “where to next?”. So that’s quite exciting. New realms to be discovered. In the meantime I work at the music every day.