{"id":7800,"date":"2013-10-07T11:10:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T09:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tomajazz.com\/web\/?p=7800"},"modified":"2016-11-13T19:34:48","modified_gmt":"2016-11-13T18:34:48","slug":"wolfgang-haffner-straight-to-the-point-interview-by-arturo-mora-rioja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomajazz.com\/web\/wolfgang-haffner-straight-to-the-point-interview-by-arturo-mora-rioja\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolfgang Haffner: Straight to the point. Interview by Arturo Mora Rioja"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most important figures of European jazz, drummer Wolfgang Haffner is now a resident of Ibiza, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea. Right after publishing his new work, Heart Of The Matter<\/i>, on the German ACT label, and on the first stages of an European tour, Haffner spoke in length to Tomajazz contributor Arturo Mora in a Madrid cafeteria.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Arturo<\/a>
Arturo Mora with Wolfgang Haffner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

ARTURO MORA: Why have you decided to live in Spain?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: I was never living somewhere else. I was travelling a lot and, when I was not touring, I was always going to Spain for holidays, either Canarias or Balearic [islands]. In 1995 or 96 I started to go to Majorca as a friend of mine lived in there. Then I went to Formentera and I met some people there and decided to make some music, and I always had to fly to Ibiza, because there\u2019s no airport in Formentera, and someday I was having a coffee in the airport of Ibiza and I thought: \u201cWhy not staying there?\u201d That was in 2009. In early 2010 I went there in winter, looked for a house, and since then I\u2019m there.<\/p>\n

I love the Spanish mentality, it\u2019s very close to me. I\u2019m German, of course, and I love my country, that\u2019s not the thing, but since the very first day I came here to Spain… There\u2019s something, I don\u2019t have to tell you [laughs]. The mentality, the climate… Besides in winter it\u2019s a little more difficult to travel from Ibiza because they don\u2019t have direct flights, just to mainland Spain, but I\u2019d rather connect flights to Palma, or Barcelona, or Madrid. But it\u2019s great living there and not having big snow every winter and… I feel close to you guys. I also love to come to Spain for playing because there\u2019s great music listeners, music lovers, and it feels like my second home.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Wilkommen aus Spanien.<\/i><\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Danke!<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: What can you tell us about your latest work, Heart Of The Matter<\/i>?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: I think it is my number 13 album. I always wrote songs because I come from a classical music family, everybody\u2019s playing music in my family. My father was a classical musician who composed for choir in church, so I grew up with Johann Sebastian Bach, that\u2019s my main influence before Miles Davis and everything. When I was a little kid I was sitting next to my father on the organ or on the piano and I saw how he composed, so I wrote my first composition, a children composition, when I was 13 or 14, and I started writing. Then I had some songs and I said: \u201cOk, let\u2019s ask this guy, let\u2019s ask this guy, a bass player, a guitar player, a keyboard player and record it.\u201d And I\u2019ve done this in every album, just writing songs and then record them.<\/p>\n

With Heart Of The Matter<\/i> I knew exactly, for the first time, who was gonna play, who would be in the band, but I hadn\u2019t written anything. So it was the other way around. Normally I write compositions and then I think: \u201cOk, who can play this?\u201d Now I knew exactly I wanted to have Dominic Miller, the Sting guitarrist, I knew the trumpet player who plays with me in my band now [Sebastian Studnitzky]… I had the sound already but I hadn\u2019t written any note. So I was writing the music with the band in my head, which was new for me.<\/p>\n

\"Wolfgang<\/a>
Wolfgang Haffner. Fotograf\u00eda \u00a9 Sergio Cabanillas, 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It has a sound which is connected to Ibiza in a way. My music has become more tranquilo <\/i>over the years. I\u2019m 47 years old and before I was touring around the world like crazy, playing sideman for a lot of people. Now I\u2019m concentrating more and more on my own things. That\u2019s another part of why I moved to Spain: I wanted to leave my comfort zone. I was a session player for other people and I was touring a lot for other people, and now I said: \u201cWell, I\u2019m gonna get out of most of it, I wanna live somewhere else and start building a new life.\u201d And this means also I\u2019m playing a little less because I\u2019m concentrating more on my thing, so when somebody calls me and says: \u201cCan you go on a big tour?\u201d I first check whether there\u2019s anything I want to do with my band and, if not, I might do it. My own music is on the focus now, it\u2019s number one, and it wasn\u2019t number one in the past. It all started when I moved to Ibiza with an album called Round Silence<\/i>, which was also written in Formentera. So this was my main concern. I was spending a lot of energy for other people, which is great, playing with so much great musicians on the planet, and I still do that, but first of all it\u2019s Wolfie [laughs].<\/p>\n

It was very new for me to have a sound immediately. Do you know Mezzoforte? Eythor Gunnarsson has been one of my main influences from the mid-eighties. He has these trade mark synthesizer sounds. Sebastian Studnitzky, the trumpet player, is very unique, and for Dominic Miller I wanted acoustic guitar, which I had never used (I mean, maybe one or two songs in the past, but now I wanted a lot of acoustic guitar). It\u2019s a very special sound. Something also new for me was to do cover songs: \u201cHello\u201d and \u201cHere\u2019s To Life\u201d. There\u2019s no commercial way of thinking like \u201cI\u2019m going to do \u00abHello\u00bb because I\u2019m selling a lot of albums,\u201d because you don\u2019t. Maybe you sell two albums more, maybe. I believe you cannot fool people. And true music will always find a way to the heart of people, and if you do \u201cHello\u201d just to make money people will recognize. I just did it because I loved the song, I always loved it, and I had a sound in my head. I was walking in the beach in Ibiza and they played \u201cHello\u201d, and I said: \u201cWow, it\u2019s so beautiful. This will fit perfectly.\u201d And then there\u2019s this beautiful ballad, \u201cHere\u2019s To Life,\u201d which I heard by Shirley Horn. I\u2019m doing music that I love, I\u2019m not thinking like \u201cI have to do Scandinavian mixed with Flamenco\u201d or whatever, I just do what my heart tells me.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: The heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER. Yeah. The title is because… We recorded 16 songs, but there are 10 on the album. Heart Of The Matter <\/i>means like going to the essence. I was listening very carefully, all the songs were good, but this is not as strong as this one… So from 16 I went down to 10. Heart Of The Matter<\/i>. I also stripped every song down: \u201cWhat is the important part of it?\u201d Sometimes I took things off the recording to leave more space. What is the essence of the song? The melody, the groove… And sometimes it doesn\u2019t need much. In the studio I took guitars away, keyboards, pads… just to leave space. That\u2019s a process I love to do, get to the essence. That\u2019s what I was looking for in life, there\u2019s too much \u201cblah, blah, blah\u201d, bullshit, but…<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: \u201cGet to the point\u201d.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Exactly, that\u2019s my main concern. And if you can\u2019t do it in life you can\u2019t do it in music. In my case it really goes along with my life, so Heart Of The Matter <\/i>and leaving Germany for Ibiza is one direction: getting to the point. I never, ever think of what will people think. I mean, for Round Silence <\/i>I got the German Grammy, which was a big thing, but I\u2019m not calculating music. Of course I like that people like it, it\u2019s beautiful. I don\u2019t have to work in a gas station or a supermarket, I can play music and people come and enjoy it, which is a privilege I\u2019m thankful for. So that\u2019s, basically, Heart Of The Matter<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"wolf2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Precisely I was going to ask you if Heart Of The Matter<\/i> is a continuation from Round Silence<\/i>.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: It is.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Was it like a kind of new path that opened?<\/p>\n

\"Wolfgang<\/a>
Wolfgang Haffner. Fotograf\u00eda \u00a9 Sergio Cabanillas, 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: I made a turn. In the mid-2000\u2019s I made an album called Shapes<\/i>, in which I started using less harmonic stuff, as it was more hypnotic beats… \u2018Cause I was listening to a lot of club music, electronic music, and this reflects on that album. Then I did an album called Acoustic Shapes <\/i>wich wasn\u2019t \u201cclub\u201d at all. We got touring with the Shapes <\/i>album all around the world, like crazy, and I came home end of July 2007, and I needed a break. And then Nils Landgren called me, because I had played in his Funk Unit band, and there was a big tour in October, and he had booked an opening act, and the lady couldn\u2019t do it because she got pregnant. So Nils said: \u201cYou are playing with me anyway, so you will do the first half of the concert.\u201d I said: \u201cYeah, of course,\u201d and then I said: \u201cShit, what am I gonna do?\u201d [laughs] And I don\u2019t know why I didn\u2019t think for more than 5 minutes: \u201cacoustic Shapes.<\/i>\u201d I left all the electronics away, I rearranged the songs a little bit and it was my most successful album, not in terms of sales, but of greetings from the audience. Everybody was telling me before: \u201cYou are doing an acoustic piano trio, you must be super crazy, because there are so many piano trios.\u201d I said: \u201cWell, it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d I told my record company and my booking agency: \u201cTrust me, it will do great.\u201d If you do something from your heart you will always have people.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: There is a very big contrast from your Acoustic Shapes<\/i> to Nils Landgren\u2019s Funk Unit.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: It was a big contrast, we played very soft actually and then the Funk Unit was really hard. But then the next album was Round Silence<\/i>. So Shapes <\/i>was electronic, Acoustic Shapes<\/i> was completely acoustic and Round Silence<\/i> is basically acoustic with some flavour of electronic textures. I didn\u2019t think about it as like a trilogy, but now in retrospective it was basically like a trilogy. Electronic, acoustic and a combination of both. And so the new one is a continuation, but with new textures, because I have acoustic guitar, and it still sounds like Wolfgang Haffner, I think, because my music is defined through my way of playing; I\u2019m not a drummer\u2019s drummer, I\u2019m not playing a lot, sometimes I\u2019m playing very little, and everything sounds supereasy, but it\u2019s not, that\u2019s the hard part of it. I don\u2019t like people having a calculator while they\u2019re listening to music.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Amalgams, weird chord sequences…<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: I don\u2019t need it. And this goes back to my history, to Johann Sebastian Bach, his beautiful melodies and beautiful harmonies, moving, swinging… That\u2019s where I come from.<\/p>\n

I never write a song just to show the harmonies I can do; they have to make sense.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The new album is a little different, of course, because I always try to go in a different direction. A question a lot of journalists ask me is: \u201cWolfgang, you have some of the most famous German or European jazz guys on the album: Till Br\u00f6nner, Thomas Quasthoff…\u201d To begin with, they are all close friends of mine, we are buddies. So nobody is there just because I want his name, I don\u2019t care, I don\u2019t need it. This is another privilege: I don\u2019t need any name to sell more albums, because I don\u2019t believe in that. The new album still sounds life Wolfie because it has my easy melodies, some of them are like children\u2019s… For me a criteria is that if I get out of a concert and I can whistle the songs, or if I hear people out of my concert whistling a song… To me it\u2019s a good criteria when you can remember melodies.<\/p>\n

\"wolf3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: In that regard, there is an outstanding song from the album, \u201cLeo\u201d [Wolfgang laughs], with its Pat Metheny tinge.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Yeah, this is a tribute to Pat Metheny, who is probably my main influence. I needed to do that [laughs]. I had the chance to play with him, 10 years ago. I have had some remarkable experiences with my heros, but with Pat it was still one level up. We\u2019re still in contact until today, he\u2019s a great guy. He is like a buddy; I mean, he\u2019s Pat Metheny, I know where he is [Wolfgang sets his hand above his head] and where I am [Wolfgang lowers his hand], but when we see each other it\u2019s like: \u201cHey, that was great!,\u201d and he\u2019s telling great things about me. Chuck Loeb just told me that Pat told him: \u201cWolfgang is such a great drummer.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is not why I did \u201cLeo.\u201d I always loved this kind of [he sings a lyric melody] which transposes, which goes through the harmony like crazy, neverending, going on and on… That\u2019s Pat Metheny, of course, and I wanted to do a song like this, and it took me two months to write this song, every day. I had probably 20 different versions of where to go in the end. It was always like: \u201cOk, this is great; ah, no!\u201d For Pat it is never like: \u201cYou could have done it like this.\u201d It IS like this. For me it\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeo\u201d is also a tribute to Lyle Mays. We always say \u201cPat Metheny,\u201d \u2018cause it\u2019s the Pat Metheny Group, but the guy in the back is Lyle Mays<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: What about your current live band?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: By now we\u2019ve just played for one week and, after six shows, last night at Budapest was something different, already. So in one or two years it will sound really different. I don\u2019t know how, but it happens. Music has to develop, and I have strong musicians in the band, like guitar player Kosho, who is not known in Spain so far. He\u2019s beautiful, really, he\u2019s such a character, he\u2019s like David Gilmore [Pink Floyd] meets Pat Metheny meets Chuck Loeb meets George Benson, but in the end he\u2019s himself. Really. Take your five guitar heroes, put them in one and that\u2019s him.<\/p>\n

Every note somebody plays in this band fits my philosophy of sound. It\u2019s all about a vibe, which is present in my new album more than in the previous ones. Every album reflects a moment in life, I couldn\u2019t have written Heart Of The Matter<\/i> two years ago.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: How long did it take from the moment you decided to do the record until the time it was finally produced?<\/p>\n

\"wolfgang_haffner_8773_cabanijazz\"<\/a>WOLFGANG HAFFNER: As I have a record contract I knew when the record had to come out. Round Silence <\/i>came out in September 2009, and they said: \u201cCould a new album come out in early 2012?,\u201d but then I was touring. So the record company had the idea of doing a Signature Edition <\/i>album, and I liked the idea very much, to pick up songs from old stuff I had done, and I think it\u2019s a very good mixture which shows a lot of things to people who know Shapes<\/i>, who know Round Silence<\/i> but didn\u2019t know other stuff. The album came out in 2012, or in the Fall of 2011. It was good for me because I didn\u2019t have any clue about what to do. For Round Silence <\/i>we were touring for two and a half years like crazy, and I needed to breath, to walk on beaches… I took a month off. I finished what I had to finish, I didn\u2019t do any more concerts, I was just in Ibiza.<\/p>\n

Then the record company told me: \u201cHow about doing some Spanish music combined with Wolfgang Haffner?\u201d I said: \u201cOk,\u201d and after half an hour I said: \u201cBullshit\u201d [laughs]. I love Spanish music but, just because I live in Spain… What\u2019s the purpose? That would be not honest. There are many concept albums. Some of them are good, but I don\u2019t have to do something just to stick out, because I\u2019m sticking out anyway, like basically everybody who has a strong voice in music sticks out. It\u2019s me, no matter what I do… Korean music combined with German or Spanish… I was never a fan of these albums. There\u2019s a lot of business involved, I\u2019m not putting any names down now, but someone playing the music of Burt Bacharach for the ten thousandth time… Why? I mean, there\u2019s so much calculation, that you put this blonde singer in a very little cloth… It\u2019s the music of the Beatles, it\u2019s the music of Burt Bacharach. You may like my music or not, but I do everything myself, I know what it takes, and you know it. Not that somebody has to like it, but I\u2019m very proud that I make a good living with stuff that is created by myself. Ok, I did a cover version of \u201cHello, \u201d but not because I don\u2019t have enough songs.<\/p>\n

So I finally took a nice rest and started thinking about the album. In less than one day I had the line up. It was pretty clear then. And then I was writing for… [he takes a moment to think] five months. Writing is not only sitting there with the computer all the time, but it also means taking long walks, sitting in a coffee place, going around and vibing with it, you know? I had the music inside me, I just had to take it off. Actually two songs of the album I wrote them like in five minutes. I sat down at the piano and I played the song. One is called \u201cDom\u201d, which is for Dominic Miller, and the other one is \u201cIsland Life.\u201d They are very easy songs. I wrote both of them the day before the recording.<\/p>\n

\"wolf4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: That\u2019s jazz!<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: That\u2019s it, yeah. But I\u2019m not spending any more time in my life categorising whether my music is jazz or not. There\u2019s a lot of jazz in it because many parts are improvised, but… Jimi Hendrix, was it rock, was it jazz? I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not categorising my music. Some people categorise my music like chill-out.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: …As it is relaxing and it sometimes has a disco background.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Yeah, but then comes the whole thing like: Haffner, Ibiza. Ibiza is chill-out. It doesn\u2019t matter. But of course you have to find the record somewhere in the record store and you find my records in jazz and not in rock, but it has many influences. It has rock influences, you can clearly hear Pink Floyd in my music, in the ambient; and Pat Metheny also, not only on \u201cLeo\u201d.<\/p>\n

This ambient is coming out more than it did when I lived in Germany, in the city. Now you play one note and the sea is there.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: The environment is part of the music.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Definitely. I think I couldn\u2019t have written Heart Of The Matter <\/i>in Tokyo or in L.A. It would sound different. But in the island, in Ibiza, I can play outside, I can even record outside and there\u2019s nobody. This reflecs me as a person, and my life reflects on the music.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re busy, in noisy places, and not resting… How can you write beautiful music? It doesn\u2019t have to do with Ibiza, or with and island. It has to start in you. I was never as relaxed in my life as I\u2019m now, for many reasons. And one of them is I don\u2019t have to prove anything to anyone but myself. I\u2019m still playing the biggest festivals in the world with some of the greatest musicians, I\u2019m super thankful. My heart tells me it is the right thing to do. I don\u2019t need to be in New York ten times a year. I\u2019ve done this for many many years, going to America, but this phase is over. I still love to go to America sometimes, but it\u2019s not like \u201cI have to go to America.\u201d I\u2019ve played in successful records, like the smooth jazz records, with Bob James and Chuck Loeb, Michael Franks. I\u2019ve already done this, so where is me now? What I wanna do? Not \u201cwhat other people want from me.\u201d Now I\u2019m not as a crazy person as I was, when I did four concerts in nine days in four continents. The most busy schedule was in 2000. I was out for eight months and I had five tours, one after the other. Normally some agency asks you: \u201cCan you do September 1 to 20?,\u201d then another one asks you maybe \u201cCan you do 18 of September to October 20?,\u201d so you have to cancel either one because it doesn\u2019t fit. But in 2000 I started like in February, then I went home for one day, then I had like two weeks free between America and South Africa, then I got a call from a great band that went to Japan, and it was always my dream to be in Japan, it was the very first time, so I said: \u201cOk.\u201d I had a crazy transfer from Rio de Janeiro home, I arrived in the morning at eight o\u2019clock in N\u00fcrenberg and in the evening at seven I flew to Frankfurt and took a plane to Tokyo. That explains how crazy I was.<\/p>\n

So everything you do, whether in your private life or in music, reflects in your lifestyle and in your music.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"wolf5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: What part have your record company, ACT, and its owner Siggi Loch played in the development of your musical product?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: They let me do what I want, except for the idea of the Spanish music, but that\u2019s fine, Siggi never told me \u201cyou have to do this,\u201d never. I wanted to go to ACT because I loved ACT. I love the philosophy, I love the guys, they are super dedicated and organised. Siggi loves the music, that\u2019s why he lets us do what we do, and there\u2019s something I really really love not only from Siggi Loch but from everyone. If I could have a wish it would be that everybody really told me what they think, not only about the music, but in general. If somebody thinks I\u2019m stupid, tell me. Don\u2019t tell me \u201coh, yeah, you\u2019re such a good guy\u201d and then in the back: \u201cThis guy sucks,\u201d or whatever. And the music industry is like that. I\u2019m not hanging around in many clubs and jam sessions, I\u2019ve already done that, but not now. \u201cYeah, this sounds so great, you know that Miles record with Philly Joe…,\u201d and then I say \u201cfuck you, leave me alone.\u201d [laughs] I\u2019d rather put on a James Taylor record and a nice glass of green tea and have my peace. I hate that bullshit: \u201cHe plays with these sticks and those heads…\u201d Music is life, that\u2019s my motto. And so, coming back to Siggi Loch, he has a very clear vision of what he wants, he wants to have music which moves him, and it doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s funk or whatever, but he always tells me. He told me, for example, about the piano trio: \u201cYou must be crazy, putting out a piano trio.\u201d I recorded two shows and told him: \u201cThis is gonna be in my next album,\u201d and he told me: \u201cI highly recommend not to do it.\u201d He has a key point and he tells you, he\u2019s fighting for his honor, standing for his ideals, but he never ever deprives you, he\u2019s very clever, he knows he has to support the musician, that\u2019s why bands like e.s.t. [Esbj\u00f6rn Svensson Trio] made it in the label. That\u2019s the greatest thing, ACT supports musicians.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: I was precisely going to ask you about the influence of e.s.t. in your music, especially in your way of composing.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: I was listening to a lot of e.s.t., of course, I mean, there are some influences, because I love Magnus [\u00d6str\u00f6m], I love Esbj\u00f6rn, I played on an album with him, the one by Viktoria Tolstoy [Shining On You. The Music Of Esbj\u00f6rn Svensson<\/i>]. There\u2019s a good story about that. It doesn\u2019t say it\u2019s Esbj\u00f6rn on the album, it says that the piano player is Bror Falk, but it is Esbj\u00f6rn Svensson. Bror Falk is his mother\u2019s name or something. It\u2019s clearly him, if you listen that\u2019s clearly Esbj\u00f6rn Svensson, from the very first note. Trust me, I was there [laughs]. They couldn\u2019t use his name. In the biggest German jazz magazine a guy wrote it was great, but too bad Esbj\u00f6rn wasn\u2019t there because that would have been really good [laughs].<\/p>\n

So Esbj\u00f6rn was a great influence, but I never got into the electronics he used, because I don\u2019t believe in copying, I believe in inspiration. My trio sound is different from them, but still there are some similar song structures. The more I get to play with the trio the more I get away. Hubert Nuss, the piano player, plays completely different from Esbj\u00f6rn.<\/p>\n

Siggi Loch didn\u2019t think we\u2019d make it, but it\u2019s been the most success I\u2019ve had so far.<\/p>\n

\"wolf6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: What\u2019s your point on the existence of an European jazz?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: For me the most interesting music has come from Europe, and not America, in the last ten years. A lot of Scandinavians, but you Spanish guys are doing great things, also in France. I still listen to a lot of American music, but… I really lost it when there was this stupid discussion about the Downbeat cover magazine when e.s.t. was on the cover and Branford Marsalis and other guys said: \u201cThey are stealing our music.\u201d<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: It\u2019s a nonsense discussion.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Completely. He plays classical music, and his brother [Wynton] plays classical music. Who invented classical music, by the way? [laughs] That kind of things, I\u2019m not following them. It\u2019s a senseless discussion and it shows a lack of respect from this guy. For me a really serious musician doesn\u2019t come out with something like that, because music shouldn\u2019t have borders. I think my life is so good because I don\u2019t care about that. I\u2019d rather have a cerveza<\/i> [beer] with some friends instead of sitting there analysing what Miles Davis might have done fifty years ago. It just takes energy.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Are there any plans to record with Metro again?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: We\u2019re doing a big band production in Metro which is coming off end of the year. It\u2019s with the WDR Big Band of Cologne. We\u2019re doing this in September with Joachim Becker [producer]. It\u2019s exciting, we\u2019ve already picked out the songs, there will be no new songs, we\u2019ve picked like our highlights from our six or seven albums. They\u2019ll be arranged by Michael Abene. We\u2019ll have the bass player from Heart Of The Matter<\/i>, Nicolas Fiszman.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Are you ever going to use the same bassist for two consecutive albums?<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: [laughs] No, it never happened that. Wait, Victor Bailey was for two albums I think.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Tree People <\/i>and Metrocaf\u00e9<\/i>.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Yeah, but it\u2019s become kind of a habit to have a new bass player.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Just to finish, which other future plans do you have?<\/p>\n

\"Wolfgang<\/a>
Wolfgang Haffner. Fotograf\u00eda \u00a9 Sergio Cabanillas, 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Touring, touring, touring, summer festivals in Europe, then going to Asia in mid-October, Japan, Hong-Kong, then back to Europe, Spain. I know the situation is difficult here, but we\u2019re gonna do it anyway. I want to present my music and I always have a strong following in Spain, so I\u2019m very excited about that. Doing the Metro thing, playing with Till Br\u00f6nner, the trumpet player, Asia again. Recording here and there…<\/p>\n

I just did something for Chuck Loeb lately. I got home from the airport and it was like two in the morning and I just saw Chuck was on Skype, so I Skyped Chuck and he was like: \u201cI just wanted to call you.\u201d I saw daylight and I said: \u201cThis sofa I know, you are in hotel Okura in Tokyo,\u201d because it\u2019s where we always stay when we play the Blue Note. He was there. He wanted to record a song but he couldn\u2019t put the whole band together \u2013it was the band which played last year with Andy Snitzer and Pat Bianchi\u2013, so we had to record on different sessions. We kept talking for another ten minutes and, to make a long story short, ten minutes later I hung up, I played the song and fifteen or twenty minutes later I sent the file to Tokyo. Chuck and I always play a duet in concert.<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: Yes, you play on a stool.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: Yeah, exactly. We were still on Skype, Tokyo-Ibiza. He set a tempo, I played it with brushes, \u201clet\u2019s do it a little faster.\u201d And I said: \u201cI\u2019ll just do it now.\u201d By then it was three in the morning. I just played, imagining the theme, in sixteen bars, like \u201cStompin\u2019 At The Savoy\u201d, AABA form…<\/p>\n

ARTURO MORA: D flat.<\/p>\n

WOLFGANG HAFFNER: [laughs] So I did like a solo break, I turned to sticks, I did like trading, just imagining what lines Chuck would take, because I know him very well. I repeated three times the last four bars, how we do in standards. I sent the files and done! It\u2019s gonna be on his next album.<\/p>\n

Text: \u00a9 2013 Arturo Mora Rioja
\n<\/a>Photographs: \u00a9 2013\u00a0Sergio Cabanillas<\/a>\u00a0y\u00a0\u00a0Arturo Mora Rioja<\/a>
\nAcknowledgements: Juan Miguel Ram\u00edrez de Cartagena (Indigo Records<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most important figures of European jazz, drummer Wolfgang Haffner is now a resident of Ibiza, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea. Right after publishing his new work, Heart Of The Matter, on the German ACT label, and on the first stages of an European tour, HaffnerContin\u00faa leyendo<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17861,78,15537,9,15517,1038],"tags":[1376,260,1487,293,1504,7168,294,7166,5626,1660,12790,6752,5044,7162,731,7156,7165,7158,12791,13,7169,7172,4777,7160,1956,6675,1998,1999,7171,7159,2004,5627,7161,2080,2097,5041,7164,7157,7163,7167,5631,737,16099,77,16100,5027,7170,7173,5625],"class_list":["entry","author-arturo-mora","post-7800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arturo-mora-rioja","category-afondo","category-entrevistas","category-perfiles","category-textos","category-contenidos","tag-act","tag-arturo-mora-rioja","tag-blue-note","tag-bob-james","tag-branford-marsalis","tag-burt-bacharach","tag-chuck-loeb","tag-david-gilmore","tag-dominic-miller","tag-e-s-t","tag-entrevista","tag-esbjorn-svensson","tag-eythor-gunnarsson","tag-funk-unit","tag-george-benson","tag-heart-of-the-matter","tag-hubert-nuss","tag-ibiza","tag-interview","tag-jazz","tag-jimi-hendrix","tag-joachim-becker","tag-johann-sebastian-bach","tag-kosho","tag-lyle-mays","tag-magnus-ostrom","tag-metro","tag-mezzoforte","tag-michael-abene","tag-michael-franks","tag-miles-davis","tag-nicolas-fiszman","tag-nils-landgren","tag-pat-metheny","tag-philly-joe-jones","tag-sebastian-studnitzky","tag-shirley-horn","tag-siggi-loch","tag-sting","tag-the-beatles","tag-thomas-quasthoff","tag-till-bronner","tag-toma-jazz","tag-tomajazz","tag-tomajazz-toma-jazz","tag-victor-bailey","tag-viktoria-tolstoy","tag-wdr-big-band","tag-wolfgang-haffner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tomajazz.com\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/wolfgang_haffner_8751_cabanijazz.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5184,"url":"https:\/\/tomajazz.com\/web\/wolfgang-haffner-heart-of-the-matter-act-2013\/","url_meta":{"origin":7800,"position":0},"title":"Wolfgang Haffner: Heart Of The Matter (ACT, 2013)","author":"Arturo Mora","date":"28 febrero, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Comentario:\u00a0Jazz fusion, smooth jazz, chill out\u2026 Todas estas etiquetas podr\u00edan quitar a muchos las ganas de escuchar un CD, pero no es este el caso. 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Una vez publicado su nuevo trabajo Heart Of The Matter en el sello alem\u00e1n ACT, y en los albores de una gira europea, Arturo Mora entrevist\u00f3 a Haffner en una cafeter\u00eda de\u2026","rel":"","context":"En \u00ab*_Arturo Mora Rioja\u00bb","block_context":{"text":"*_Arturo Mora Rioja","link":"https:\/\/tomajazz.com\/web\/category\/arturo-mora-rioja\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Arturo Mora con Wolfgang Haffner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomajazz.com\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/wolf1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomajazz.com\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/wolf1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomajazz.com\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/wolf1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":36814,"url":"https:\/\/tomajazz.com\/web\/razones-para-el-jazz-un-disco-music-wolfgang-haffner-426\/","url_meta":{"origin":7800,"position":2},"title":"Razones para el jazz: un disco. 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