Name: Benjamin Lackner
Nationality: German-American
Occupation: Pianist, composer, improviser
Current release: The Benjamin Lackner Quartet's Last Decade, featuring Mathias Eick, Jérôme Regard, and Manu Katché, is out via ECM.

If you enjoyed this Benjamin Lackner interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on twitter.  



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

It's interesting, because I got into this routine of writing five days a week, and trying to actually make it more like a craft that way - at the end of the week, I'll have X amount of product. And that doesn't work all the time, obviously, because I'm not creative every day, or inspired every day. But just to be in the flow of it, to sit at the piano with a pencil and allow myself to have an hour or two, is great. I've written 75 songs in the last three months. And that's because I make time for it.

This hour in the morning is a mirror, it's a reflection of whether or not I'm relaxed. And at the same time, it makes me relax. It's kind of a meditative activity. I developed it during the pandemic, while preparing for this album. So the way it works is I do ear training in the morning for about half an hour, then I do rhythmic training. It's really dark and unromantic, mostly intervals and listening to chromatic melodies and notating them. It's almost like doing warm up exercises before the actual sport event. It makes my ears more aware.

And then I do polyrhythmic exercises. If you want to play with great drummers, you have to have good rhythm. Finally, I'll sing a first melody without touching the piano. Afterwards, I'll write down exactly what I sung and I don't evaluate it in that moment at all. I just write it down and there's no judgement for an hour. That's my rule. I'm really paying attention to not disturbing the peace. Charlie Haden always talked about the song already being there and you're merely uncovering it, like a sculpture.

How much of this material turns into finished compositions?

On Monday, I'll listen to everything I made from last week to this week. And maybe I'll get one song that is a keeper per week If I'm lucky, or half a song, and then that turns into a new one. It's about trying to generate material every week. I have enough. A lot of it sounds too similar but you need to leave enough space to see that. Like a month, that's even better. Because then I can instantly hear: Oh, no, that's bullshit.

One inspiration for the process was how Prince would go into production, and he would finish the entire song in one session. And I prefer that. I have many friends who'll have 1000 fragments and then end up not finishing anything because they get overwhelmed.

Of course with me, it's not really a finished product entirely, more like a finished demo version. But it allows me to judge if it's worth making a song out of it or not.

I find it interesting that your first melodic impulse is voice only. For a pianist, you draw a pretty strong dividing line between the instrument and your own voice.

The ultimate goal is still to make those two things come as close as possible. Like when I'm improvising, and I'm in the moment, what comes out of the instrument is what I'm hearing. You don't want to get caught up in the patterns you've worked out before.  

Do you visualise the music in some way?

No. My wife does. I am, however, pretty attached to dissonance and minor keys. It's really hard for me to write in major keys with no chromatic notes. Because then I come into the sphere of things feeling too simplified. It's just a matter of taste.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example?

That's part of the joy of having my own studio now: I can have everything set up. It's almost like I'm turning into this freak that needs everything to be in the same place. My sister is a painter …

… she drew the cover to your album Drake on Ozella …

… right … and she talks about the same thing: It's a process of getting ready for something, the pencil has to be on the piano. And it has to be precise. It's almost like I'm turning OCD.

What I do is I set up my Neumann microphones in a certain way, and hook everything up. Which means I just have to record. I may not actually record for another hour at least, but it's ready. And I can't start writing until I finished that setup, it's like a ceremony.

There's people who thrive on chaos. But I do well with structure. And it's something that I've gotten better at since I came to be a father because my time is limited. My entire creative process has to be done by 4pm. There's just no way around it.

Many musicians have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process certain aspects of the narrative are out of the hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process? Or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I love that moment where you let go.

When I'm playing something and then all of a sudden, I hit a different patch on the keyboard than intended and then I go with that. And then I go back to the drums and then you're just working you're not thinking about anything anymore ... it's actually the same feeling as onstage improvising, where there's no judgement and thought.

Again, it's basically similar to meditation. You pretty much just look at the clock and three hours have gone by. That's the best, that's why I'm doing this whole thing.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I would say that I learned a lot about this over time. I do feel like my older stuff was over-produced in post production. Drake was more spontaneous, but with the other five, we would lay down the beat first and then create different versions and then rearrange everything in the mix.

I think that's why this newest album resonates with a lot of people - more than all the other ones. I feel like that's because it uses “organics” only. I'm really happy still with Drake, but the albums before that, to me sound a little bit forced into a search. We took too much time, and there's something nice about knowing you only have two days.At least for a jazz record. I think with a more poppy direction, we probably need that much time.



But personally, I like the spontaneous aspect and not killing it in post production. Which is really easy to do - to destroy the vibe. If you overdo it and splice too much, if you replace the kick drum, move stuff around ... And I've done all that. And at the end of the day, it just disturbs the essence of the recording.

Even if you end up with some mistakes on the finished product?

I feel like it's not important that everything's correct, that there's some microsecond that isn't accurate by jazz school standards. That doesn't mean anything to me. And you get a little traumatised as a jazz musician when you're studying. You're constantly judged very harshly on whether you're grooving or not, if you're swinging or not, if you're playing all the right voicings and shit. And that really damages you.

The thing is, if you pay attention to all of this, you're just thinking about the “correct way” and not your own way and not about what makes sense in that moment.

Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a cup of coffee? What would you express your music and you couldn't or wouldn't more mundane tasks?

I think it's definitely different.

I'm not a poet when it comes to coffee. Although I think you can be. But my current album puts me in touch with my family and my parents, and it connects everything in a really warm way. Maybe that's why people respond to it so much, because it has an emotional openness.

Making this music turns me into a better, more relaxed person at home. I really helps me in my everyday life. Coffee is nice, but it's not as profound as that.