Jean Luc Ponty

Jean Luc Ponty: Footsteps of Innovation

By Brian Tarquin | Photos: Michal Sykora & Guillaume Laurent

Tarquin: As everybody knows, Jean Luc Ponty is the jazz pioneering violinist who has played with a variety of artists from Mahavishnu Orchestra to Frank Zappa. I had the great pleasure to sit down with him and we spoke about his new reissue, Life Enigma, which was originally released in 2001, so he tells me the recording process.

Jean Luc: It’s a label in the Germany, Edel Music & Entertainment Gmbh, who reissued Life Enigma. We decided to first release 3 singles out from it, and I thought it was a good idea. The original mastering was very good. We needed just a new package. They will also be reissuing some other albums from my most recent catalog.

I feel that this album is among my best compositions. It’s really one of these albums where I started improvising on keyboard synthesizers and coming up with new ideas. The songs, I found, were inspiring me and influencing the type of melodies I wrote. I came up with the structure, you know, putting one voice over another little by little. The initial idea was just to do a demo. I came up with new compositions and added the baseline and some drum samples just to have an idea of the whole arrangement. It’s so interesting that I decided to just do the album like that, mostly with me playing everything and adding the guests on different tracks. I used the musicians who have toured with me before, who were part of my European band. Two West African musicians, the bass player and the percussion. Guy N’Sangue the bassist is from Cameroon, we have been collaborating for about 20 years now, and then the percussionist was from Senegal, Moustapha Cisse. And so that’s why they are appearing as guests on different tracks. And then the French keyboardist, William Lecomte, recorded the album with me because he was touring with my band.

I had sampled some sounds I had created in my Synclavier as well. You know I got a Synclavier in 1985 and used it for 10-12 years. I had sounds I had created and had saved, thank God! It’s really a rich sounding instrument. I also had a Prophet 5 and other synthesizers. It was interesting. I sometimes like to do this. I feel like a painter coming back to the studio. Every day adding a touch to the sounds. I like using the studio as a tool like that because it’s a total contrast to playing live with my band. I enjoy both a lot, but I like the two extremes

I was living in LA for such a long time that I was cut off from the music scene in France. I discovered some great African artists who had moved to France. There was a whole movement of African musicians who moved to Paris in the mid 80s. I was intrigued, so I met a few and some of them knew my music. They were listening to fusion bands like mine, so I said, well, that’s interesting. It was good to find out that there was a musical link between us. That’s why I started the whole project and brought them to America. We toured for eight weeks, and we did one album called Tchokola, which has nothing to do with chocolate. It means the Shaman who is healing people in the language from a tribe in Cameroon. It reflects rhythmic elements from that African experience. Like the “Infinite Human Caravan” is based on a Jùjú rhythm from Nigeria. And which is why on that track I had my African percussionist. So, it would really have this authentic move to it. In fact, it was the first time I use Pro Tools. I took some classes to know how to manipulate Pro Tools, so I learned enough to do some of the engineering myself. When we went into the studio to record the percussionist, drummer, the keyboard player, the pianist, I had a professional engineer with me. He did the mixing, and I did a bit too.

Tarquin: It’s amazing that Jean Luc recorded a lot of it himself, and it’s so cool that he took this African experience that he had and brought it into the music. Now he tells me about other upcoming re-releases and possibly new music in the future.

Jean Luc: Right now, I’m working on re-releases though I still have musical ideas coming up occasionally. I feel if I do another album one day, because I’ve done so many already, it will have to be worth it in my opinion. To just release another album like I have done before with the same concept is not necessary. There are enough out there already. So, a new one would have to be at least a bit different than from my previous productions. I’m not like a Baker who can come up cooking breads every morning.

The next re-release will be The Atacama Experience and that one is a bit more of a band project. In fact, the concept of that album was influenced by my touring South America, and especially within many cities in Chile. Chile is an amazing country. The Atacama Desert is in the north and in the south it’s Antarctica. I was intrigued and I decided to take a vacation there at the end of the tour, I stayed in Chile to visit the Atacama Desert. So, I was not sure how special it would be to visit another desert, but that one is really different. You feel like you’re on another planet altogether. Yeah, there is almost absolutely no vegetation at all. And so, this was the end of a year of touring. With that band, we started the year in India, so that’s why there is a song called “On My Way to Bombay.” The Atacama Experience is a notebook in music for all the different countries we visited.

Tarquin: That sounds like a really cool experience in Chile to go through those different climates. Now he goes on to tell me about his violin equipment and how he really forged a path for the electric violin.

Jean Luc: The Zeta solid body violin is unique because there is a pickup under each string, so it’s really sophisticated. You can adjust the level of each string, and you can also EQ each string differently which gives many sound possibilities. It also has a Midi system with a special cable that connects to each mic under each string separately. It sends this information to the interface and into a synthesizer. In fact, on the album Life Enigma, I have a track where I used that Midi system. It’s called “Pizzy Cat” which comes from the term when you pluck strings. On the violin the classical musical term comes from the Italian word “Pizzicato”, so my title is a play on words. I don’t use the bow at all. I only plug in the violin like a guitar. But because of the MIDI system, I’m plugged it into a synthesizer, and I have an organ sound that sustains notes behind it.

My Zeta violin model was created in the early 2000s and I used it on the album Life Enigma. And I still have it. I also have a newer one which sounds even better. I also went back to a more electro acoustic concept sound, so I went back to my Barcus Berry violin again. Especially because of the wood and the wood finish. It has this great combination of electric and a touch of a grainy acoustic sound. This is also the one I used on your track, “Beyond the Warrior’s Eyes.” Barcus Berry gave it to me in 1980 or 1981. They had the violin made in Europe, but it is a real acoustic violin. They put their own electronics in it with a pickup in the bridge and a wire going inside to a volume control.

Barcus Berry did the first 5 string violin in 1978 and it took me a few months to get used to it. Once I got used to it, it became my main instrument. I love to have that extra low string to go tonally deeper. Nowadays there are young musicians who use up to seven strings, but it is bit too much for me. I have had 6 string violins that were made by an electronic guy in England, and it was OK. It was pretty good, but theoretically to have a deeper string you need a larger-longer instrument. You know when you go to a cello to have a deeper sound and then down to a double bass for even more of a deeper sound the instrument gets larger. So, it’s OK to have some lower strings like that on a shorter instrument when simplified. Because when you go through an amplifier it’s a trick because of the volume increase. But there is a limit to how far you can go with it to me.

I was one of the first to dive into this crazy idea of violins to have more strings than the traditional instrument because I was open to experimenting. I was one of the rare ones! But now the new generations are really getting into it. Really impressive. They grew up with all these different possibilities with instruments. And some of them are really talented and intelligent. At times I felt lonely, and I was wondering, am I right to do this? Because no one would follow me for years. Maybe it’s too crazy? But now that’s why I’m smiling. I’m a happy man, because I see all these young musicians caring a lot and getting in contact with me asking my advice. So, it’s great. You know, I feel like I have opened some doors and at least now there are people entering these doors.

I really enjoy your questions. I mean, it’s something else to talk to a real artist and musician like you. You know, that’s why I enjoy this interview. Because it’s different from my usual stories. It’s always the same question about my life, about this and that. Very interesting. You had me think about all this evolution of the electric violin.

Tarquin: I had a great conversation with Jean Luc and as you know I’ve worked with him in the past and he’s such a wonderful musician and human being. It’s so great to see that young violinists are really appreciating his work today. It is a rich innovating path he forged for all of us instrumental musicians to follow.