Jon Hassell

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Trumpeter/composer Jon Hassell saw his future years ago when he had lunch with legendary jazz figure Gil Evans and realized that Evans was not a wealthy man.

"I thought, 'How could a guy like that not be extremely wealthy?" says Hassell. "But, you know, he just didn't care. He cared about music. I guess that's the reason I'm not sitting talking to you now beside a trumpet-shaped swimming pool."

Hassell has a reputation. He has the respect of peers (working with Brian Eno) and he has a devoted following in Europe. However, Hassell's appearance at the Big Ears Festival will mark only his second performance in the United States in the past 20 years (the second date of a small tour) and the first time that the Memphis-born Hassell has performed in the state of Tennessee.

"I used to joke: 'I do country music, it's just a question of what country,'" says Hassell.

Indeed, Hassell's music, which he describes as "Fourth World," incorporates Indian and other styles with Western jazz and classical. As is displayed on his new album "Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street," Hassell's music is both subtle and beautiful. His trumpet sometimes emulates the sound of Indian vocalists. Some pieces feel like the musical equivalent of watching fog moving over a field - but then noticing all the less noticeable things in the landscape as well.

One of his goals, says Hassell, is to create music that can be appreciated on several levels.

"You can enjoy it on this level or that level or just appreciate it as a sort of sonic massage," he says. "Subtlety is a good thing for me."

Hassell grew up in Memphis and was struck when he saw a performance by Stan Kenton's Innovations Orchestra while he was still in high school.

"There was a full string section, five trumpets and five trombones and (trumpeter) Maynard Ferguson screaming at the top," says Hassell.

It was the lush harmonies that the orchestra created that enchanted Hassell and it is that quality that continues to fascinate him to this day. At the time, though, he didn't picture himself as a jazz musician.

"I was a white kid growing up in a segregated world and my aspirations were to go away to conservatory and study classical music," says Hassell.

He earned a master's degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and then went to Germany to study electronic music with visionary composer Karl Stockhausen. Later returning to New York, Hassell encountered Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath.

"I had to put aside everything I'd been taught as far as playing trumpet was concerned," says Hassell. "Then I started to see the rest of the world's music through the lens of raga and to pay attention to the way that raga created a shape ... Suddenly, I heard Johnny Hodges playing with Duke Ellington through that lens and how it related to this idea of shape-making."

He describes it this way:

"There's this abstract grid in the background and you're drawing this beautiful musical line touching lightly this point in the grid or staying away from this other point. I started hearing those distinctions. What that little dip in the tone or that little fall-off at the end meant."

When Hassell encountered Brian Eno in 1980, the two collaborated on the album "Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics." It pre-figured an appreciation of world music in general.

"It was an emerging consciousness about the world - I just happened to hear the beat before some other people," says Hassell.

Hassell is usually classified as a jazz artist, but he isn't always happy to reviewed by jazz critics:

"Jazz is kind of frozen in time," he says. "Come to Disney World and walk through Jazzland!"

He says jazz has become so intellectualized and concerned with technical dexterity that it ignores the passion:

"It doesn't speak to the whole person the way Ray Charles or Joao Gilberto or Duke Ellington does."

Hassell is working on a book called "The North and South of You: Making the World Safe for Pleasure," which, he says, explains his position.

Hassell says he is thrilled to be playing in the United States again and especially in a festival like Big Ears. He isn't expecting that he's on the path to riches, but you never can tell:

"Maybe next time we talk I'll be calling from beside that trumpet-shaped swimming pool."

Wayne Bledsoe may be reached at 865-342-6444.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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