Berklee today is the official alumni publication of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a forum for contemporary music and musicians.
Issue link: http://berkleetoday.epubxp.com/i/827757
28 Berklee today EXPERT Given by arranger, composer, and former faculty member Mike Gibbs to Mark Small Born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, (now known as Zimbabwe), Michael Gibbs '63 has enjoyed a long and distin- guished career as a composer, arranger, and bandleader. After graduating from Berklee, he began working in London. An early highpoint was writing the orchestrations for John McLaughlin's 1974 Apocalypse album (produced by George Martin, featur- ing the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas). After that, Gibbs received offers to write orchestrations for Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, John Scofield, Gary Burton, and more. Producer Narada Michael Walden hired Gibbs to pen charts for records by Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, Stacy Lattisaw, Sister Sledge, Elton John, and others. Gibbs also released many albums under his own name and with Germany's NDR Bigband. His work included scoring some 50 movies and TV productions before he left London a few years ago to live in Spain. Between 1974 and 1983, Gibbs was a much sought-after faculty member at Berklee. His courses on arranging and composing had a deep impact on numerous young compos- ers who went on to busy writing careers of their own. Gibbs will return to Boston for a celebration of his work to mark his 80th birthday. On Thursday October 19, he will direct the Only Chrome-Waterfall Orchestra at the Berklee Performance Center in a redux of his famed concerts during the seventies. Can you describe your beginnings in music? My mother used to play pop music of the day on piano, and encouraged me to start piano at age seven. I studied classi- cal music until I was 13. One night when I was about 17, I heard two pieces on the radio that just spoke to me. One of them was a Billie Holiday song, and after that, I just knew that my life was going to be in jazz. It was in me but I didn't know until this music revealed it to me. Prior to that I was good at chemistry and it looked like I'd work in a laboratory somewhere. Then this music said, "No, this is what you're going to do." Since the first gigs I did with Gary Burton when I was a student, this has been my way to make a living. [In Rhodesia] I had a teacher who was a jazz fan and turned me on to Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden. Through him I discovered Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, and Dave Brubeck. It was modern music and very exciting to me. That teacher also taught me to write a little bit. He had a band that was playing Glenn Miller's music, and I started writing for the band. I started playing trombone at 17. My father enrolled me in the university in South Africa to study chemistry, but in my second year, I failed my courses. From hanging out with local jazz musicians, I discovered DownBeat and Metronome magazines where I saw ads for schools teach- ing jazz. There was an ad for Berklee and I told my father that I wanted to study jazz. He agreed to that and I started sav- ing money and getting the visas needed to come to Berklee. I arrived in 1959 at age 21. Were you primarily interested in learning about writing music at Berklee? Yes. I already knew a bit about arranging, but was very inter- ested in learning the rules Berklee was teaching for writing. Who were among the students you met at Berklee? In the dorm, [saxophonist] Steve Marcus ['61] was one of my roommates. [Guitarist] Gábor Szabó ['59] and [arranger and vibraphonist] Gary McFarland ['60] were also students then. I met Gary Burton in my second year and we became friends immediately. Gary formed a band that had himself, Marcus, and me as the frontline. I was a good section trombonist but I couldn't improvise very well. Gary replaced me quite quickly, but encouraged me to write tunes. Around that time, he did a record date in New York for his Who Is Gary Burton album and asked me to write and arrange a tune for the album. What sorts of things influenced your writing style? I found all of my Berklee classes exciting. Herb Pomeroy had told me about the Lenox School of Jazz, a three-week summer program, and I got a scholarship to attend. George Russell was there teaching his Lydian Chromatic Concept. I didn't do a lot with his system, but my goal became to write more chromati- cally in a tonal situation. I still love tonal music but feel that I have the chromatic scale available. That was in contradiction to what I was learning at school, but it was a positive contradic- tion. The rules gave me structure, but I had my own goal within the structure. Although I was always a jazz musician at heart, the differ- ences between jazz and classical music have always blurred for me. Some of my most favorite music is by Wagner. I discovered the Debussy trio for flute, viola, and harp as a student. I heard it the other day and it still affects me just as it did back then. Describe your early work in London where you went after you finished at Berklee. I was in London for a week and then decided to go back to Africa because I had been gone for four years. While in Rhodesia, I met the girl who became my wife and we returned to England where she was from. I had met Graham Collier ['63] at Berklee and within my first week in London, I started working in his band with [trumpeter] Kenny Wheeler and [drummer] John Marshall. That introduced Michael Gibbs '63 TESTIMONY A look back at a life in music Courtesy of Cuneiform Records