Clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Don Byron has been a trailblazer in music since his first albums came out in the early 1990s. His contributions extend a small-but-powerful legacy of artists — including Eric Dolphy, Bennie Maupin and David Murray — whose work as improvisers and composers has established a prominent role for the clarinet and bass clarinet in modern jazz. But Byron’s music extends far beyond jazz, too, with his strong explorations of Latin, Western classical, Klezmer, R&B, hip-hop and gospel music.

Byron’s work has spanned over a dozen albums on labels including Blue Note and Nonesuch, performances at international venues and festivals, soundtracks for film and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship. His collaborators have included diverse musicians from Jack DeJohnette to Bill Frisell, Ralph Peterson to Cassandra Wilson to Vernon Reid. He is also an accomplished educator and a brilliant social critic with deep knowledge of music, culture and history.

As a bass clarinetist and clarinetist myself, discovering Don Byron’s music was crucial to my development when I was getting into jazz in the late ’90s. He showed me what was possible on my instruments and his musicianship inspired me to build on his legacy. In 2011, he was a special guest on my album Inheritance and in the decade-plus since, we have continued making music together in concerts and tours.

We will return to the stage this Friday, in Havre de Grace, Md., for the first in a trio of shows with my quintet. That run will culminate at Blues Alley on Monday, Nov. 11. Ahead of those concerts, Byron and I got together via Zoom last month to talk about all things clarinet, what it’s like to be a touring musician in a post-pandemic world, and our work together over the years.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Todd Marcus: With all you’ve done musically, in your career as a player and a composer, what’s been your biggest focus in recent years?

Don Byron: Well, in the past I’ve studied figures like Luis “Perico” Ortiz or Mickey Katz or John Kirby. And a couple years ago, when I was in Denver, I started studying Pixinguinha, because the people out there are Latinos but they don’t know the tropics. They’re Mexicans, so to assume that they know what happened in salsa and merengue or in Brazil — they really didn’t. So, I started transcribing these Pixinguinha things — beautiful little things — with flute and him on tenor: little trios but heavily arranged, beautiful writing, beautiful counterlines. I just love his music. I’ve been just trying to play. When I was doing duos with Aruán Ortiz we’d always play some Pixinguinha. 

Lately I’ve been back to studying Joe Henderson in a very intensive way: just studying a lot of the solos I came up hearing. Back then, I really couldn’t transcribe in the kind of detail that I can now, because of all the digital. When I was a kid, you could have a half-speed tape recorded, but then you’d have to listen to the thing down an octave. Now, just transcribing Joe Henderson, I’ve discovered all the blur of notes I could never tell exactly what it was. That’s the most interesting part! He plays a lot of fives and sevens and they come off sounding swinging, but when you slow them down, they’re like — [pauses]. He’s a master at playing these things that read one way, but when you slow them down, they’re completely something else. I would say I have more respect for him as a player of ethnic ornamentation. It’s clear that sometime in his life he studied certain Greek and Middle Eastern stuff pretty intently, and then took those elements and could move them around in chord changes like he could do all the other material that he was working with. Like, he recorded “Painted Desert” with Nat Adderley, and he comes out and it’s all this — if you’ve studied Greek stuff, you know what it is. 

When I discovered him, I was in college and trying to play some jazz on the clarinet, baritone in some big bands, klezmer conservatory band, all this Latin jazz stuff that ended up being six musicians. I was doing all these different things. I used to see a lot of people studying different things the way that I was studying things. And when I discovered Joe Henderson, I could see that he had studied the blues in a certain kind of way: very ethnographically. I was just really impressed with that. Lately, I listen to something like “Song for My Father” and it’s completely just all ornamentation: it’s the blues and ornamentation. He’s a guy that can make a solo out of anything. He could take some little, weird accents and just play a chorus doing that and be completely interesting. 

So, I’ve been studying a lot of Joe Henderson. I would say it’s my obsession right now. 

TM:  So, especially with us having these gigs coming up in a couple weeks, it just always has me thinking about trying to get the word out and how much the music industry has changed. I was thinking about you and how much has changed in the time that you’ve been working and as someone that’s done everything — from independent projects to major labels to festivals to grants and awards — what is your take on where opportunities were and where things are now? 

DB: I wouldn’t know, because I’m not really applying for a whole bunch of stuff. I won some of that stuff, but I’m not up on it. I’ll tell you one thing: When you decide to tour the States, you better have some funding, because you’re gonna take a beating, because everything is against that…. I remember somebody from some committee or government asking what I thought I should do to make more things happen. I said, “Well, just get an airfare to just give everybody the tickets. If you did that, people would get to hear a lot of different stuff.” Even a club could be subsidized in that way. Everybody that they wanted to bring from New York, it takes a lot of the cost out. I don’t know much people are actually touring, but from where I sit, travel and hotels — when you put together a budget, that’s a lot of it. 

TM: Has that impacted your approach to doing stuff as a leader?

DB: Yeah, sure. You know, I don’t have the management that I’ve had in the past. So, when I did a tour, it was very mom-and-pop, and you could really see that a sizeable amount of the budget for doing something is not musicians. 

TM: Speaking of performances, you know, man, it’s over a decade now we’ve been doing performances together. I was curious to ask you if you feel like either one of us had changed musically over that period of time. And if so, how?

DB: I mean, I know how I’ve changed, but I’m always working on it. I think your new horn sounds very different than your old horn. And you sounded better on the Spriggs [clarinet ligature] than you did before you had the Spriggs. So, I think I turned you on to the Spriggs, so I’m happy that you’re happy with it…. I think we both made some upgrades to our equipment. I’ve really got on the pony with my bass clarinet’s sound and studying bass clarinet in a more formal way and trying to learn bass clef, reading bass clef stuff on bass clarinet. That’s really been amazing for me. I’ve been playing the Bach cello suites on bass clarinet for a couple years now.

I think I have more openness to bass clarinet than I did, because when I was kid, like in high school, they had the brothers on the harmony clarinets to keep you out of the first clarinet in the orchestra. It was all brothers — even Eb, all good musicians…. Everybody likes a brother on bass clarinet. Everybody don’t like a brother on clarinet. Black musicians, they don’t really know the clarinet; they don’t know the sound. Nobody in jazz even knows what the clarinet’s supposed to sound like — straight up! If you think the clarinet is supposed to sound like what Benny Goodman sounds like, you don’t know clarinet. You can’t even get a degree in that. But nobody ever says that. 

TM: Why do you think though, specifically with clarinet, that that’s an instrument — when you look at all the other instruments and the racial makeup of who plays instruments — that is so white heavy? 

DB: For years I avoided the clarinet groups on Facebook, because I knew what it was gonna be. But during the pandemic I succumbed. There was this white girl, she’s got this list of jazz clarinet players, and the only Black person on it is Doreen Ketchens. There’s no me, there’s no Jimmy Hamilton, there’s no Buddy Collette. Jimmy Hamilton! I mean, that should be on the top of anybody’s list of who’s playing jazz, and he was very modern. And no Buster Bailey. Like, none of that! It’s just all these whites. It’s white-centrism: not quite racism, but the clarinet is white-centric. You feel that as somebody when you’re pursuing clarinet — like, “This isn’t you. This isn’t you — that’s you.” That’s my whole career! Even after I had a good deal of clarinet under me, I’m still feeling that sometimes…. So, Black people, they don’t want to hear about it because they don’t really like the Benny Goodman stuff that much and that era when it was Black music played by white people, and that was pop music. There’s no Black bebop clarinet because that’s a reaction to that era. Nobody would even think about that.

I used to play in this big band led by this guy, famous guy, and he had a girlfriend that played flute. He would let her play these flute solos, one after the other, just aimless whatever. So, one day, when I had my solo, I whipped out a clarinet and he said, “You want to play on that?” He said that on a gig — he said that to me on a gig! 

So, it’s not that it’s just white-centric, there’s no Black support for it either. I’ve got bandleaders, they don’t want to hear me play clarinet. They don’t want to hear it! Don’t bring it — play that bass clarinet. And then I feel like I’m back in high school.

TM: To wrap up, for those that might be discovering you or getting deeper into your work and the scope of it: I like to tell people how deep your river runs with all the work and compositions you’ve done around jazz and klezmer and Latin and hip-hop and gospel and classical and R&B. So, I wonder, is there anything you want audiences to know at this point?

DB: Just that I’m still working on all kinds of stuff. I feel like this pandemic period I really worked hard on my playing. I think I improved my sound and I feel like I sound good. I feel like I sound good! I’m playing some of the world’s great clarinet — I said it. Yeah, I said it! People always want to dance around that shit because they don’t want me get any credit for anything. But I have to own it because it’s fuckin’ true! 

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