Arno Bornkamp – Acclaimed Dutch Saxophonist – 15

Please enjoy the transcript of this podcast episode. With thousands of words in each episode it might contain a few typos and may also have been edited for clarity. Barry Cockcroft: 00:00 Arno, thank you for coming today, very much. Arno Bornkamp: 00:03 Welcome. Welcome. Cheers! Barry Cockcroft: 00:06 Arno, I’d love to know how you got started on the saxophone?. Arno Bornkamp: 00:12 That’s a nice story. I was 18 years old, and I played already the clarinet for some years, but it had not been very successful. I started to listen to jazz when I was 15 or 16, maybe Dixieland and the clarinet it is logical. But then I began to hear saxophones and in that same music of course. I felt that that was a good instrument. Then I was playing in a jazz band at the high school with some classmates. One guy came into that group who was younger than me. He was a clarinet player, and he got a tenor saxophone for his 16th birthday or something. And in one week he could play decently on that instrument because he had a very good pre-education. And then I thought, it’s so easy. If you can play the clarinet more or less than you can just very easily go to this great tenor saxophone. Arno Bornkamp: 01:17 I was 17 years old, and then I asked my father and my mother, maybe my father, can I please have a tenor saxophone for my birthday, 18th birthday. Maybe also as a final exam, high school as a present. They had to swallow a few times because it’s very expensive. I think that the official price was 2,700 guilders. That is the equivalent of maybe 1300 euro. It was already in 1978, and it’s a lot of money. And the guy in the band had a Selmer, and he said you should buy a Selmer. So my father went to Paris for his job, and he went to the music shop. Maybe you remember that shop in Paris? Near to the rue de Madrid. And he just asked for a tenor saxophone, and he just bought that instrument and you he had to bring it through customs on the border with a car. To do, to make sure that he could keep the price low because the cost in France was 1,900 guilders. So we got to cheap tenor saxophone, which I still play. Barry Cockcroft: So you still play the same instrument? Arno Bornkamp: 02:33 Yep. Just the neck has changed because the neck has been damaged. So that was the tenor that I always played in a quartet. And that’s how it started, and I wanted to be to become a jazz player, but amateur. I wasn’t thinking about anything professional because I was kind of bad in music school. And then I went to study for social geography in Amsterdam. I lived in the Hague before, and friend of mine was a flautist, an amateur flautist and studied psychology. He did the pre-education year of the conservatory to have lessons. And because I didn’t have any lessons anymore, I thought maybe it is the perfect way to get lessons, but I didn’t know how to approach the music school in Amsterdam. This looked like something that I could maybe try. Arno Bornkamp: 03:30 So after one year of geography I applied and for clarinet and saxophone. Clarinet I didn’t get accepted, but for saxophone, I got admitted. I played on a Berg Larson 115. I played Autumn Leaves and Sunny Moon for Two and maybe a Vocalise because that was on the list and a few Klosé studies. With that kind of a sound but they still heard something musical. I never had lessons on saxophone. Barry Cockcroft: 04:04 So you were accepted for your potential? Arno Bornkamp: 04:08 We had Ed Bogaard as a teacher in Amsterdam, and he was very good at thinking out of the box. There was no culture of saxophone at all, so he just took anyone that sounded sort of decent and maybe totally rough, but you never know. And then in a very short time, I got to know people in the class. I learned about the classical saxophone. I didn’t know that that existed. So I started to hear those pieces, and I began to like it. And then I made very, very big leaps and bought an alto and got fascinated and obsessed. And then something opened up – some windows, you know, in my music or perception. In two years I had played Ibert with orchestra and things like that. That was kind of weird to be a witness of myself in me. Barry Cockcroft: 05:05 So like your friend, you proved one of two things. Either the saxophone is very easy, or you’re very talented. Arno Bornkamp: 05:11 I always say that I’m not talented but that I wanted some much. I don’t know. I could feel that suddenly and I didn’t have to deal anymore with what I had to do before like accidentals. I could never remember on the clarinet F sharps, and you know, it’s a very complicated instrument. On saxophone, because it’s in octaves, it is more natural to imagine. Arno Bornkamp: 05:46 And I did all this jazz. I was the was the first thing I did. So I would like in these chord changes and doing something entirely on my own. But then I understood music works and how accidentals work on how a chord progression works and then actually the whole thing opened up. Because I liked the voice of this instrument, it was my voice. I could immediately, effectuate that in classical music, but very roughly. It took a long time to polish. Barry Cockcroft: 06:22 So when did the refinement come? Arno Bornkamp: 06:24 Maybe after two, three years. Doing this Ibert was great because I, I loved that piece and I learned it, and I listened to Deffayet. Deffayet was my hero. It’s like you’ll learn a language and then there, there’s a very good example. You don’t have to think about what or how to do it. You do it with imitation. That was funny. And then I had problems with breathing, I had issues with the fingerings, but because of doing it, it just went away. And that helped a lot for other things. But my progress was bumpy and rocky. Barry Cockcroft: 07:13 What helped you decide to study abroad with teachers outside away from home? Arno Bornkamp: 07:19 Well I was doing the usual path in Amersterdam. We didn’t call it a bachelor or masters, and it was different but kind of similar grades. Then it seems that education stopped and I felt that there was a hole in front of me. What now? I think I have to learn more. So I applied for a grant with Deffayet for one year. I never lived in Paris with our went and can come back allez-retour every month, a few days and then one or two lessons, mostly one. The lessons were really short, like one hour and 15 minutes. And if we did three pieces, at least. I wanted to study with him because of his sound because of his musicality and of his musical mentality that I heard in his playing. Also because Paris of course, that is the magic city and even to feel the adventure of doing that. You’re going outside the country not just because of that, but the adventure and the other culture and who knows who you meet there, all these kind of things. But living, I have never considered doing like what you did in Bordeaux. I had already a quartet, and I had a girlfriend, a job. I was already teaching in a conservatory, so I didn’t want to give that up. Barry Cockcroft: 09:00 You have a lot of international students who come to this study with you. How important do you think it is for students to travel away from home? Arno Bornkamp: 09:10 A good question. There are many aspects to it. I can see that if they do that if they take that decision, they are very motivated. They have to organise funding, and they have to make a choice where to go. Hopefully, they go for a musical and artistic choice and not for a calculation, which also sometimes happens. I think that the other positive things are that they learn to take care of themselves and do not rely on the Pasta of Mamma or Papa for instance. I don’t know about you have in Australia if there’s a local of food, I don’t know, but yeah, I had to do that on their own. They have to create a new network. They have to work in another system. Maybe they would have to learn a language. And find a unique cultural atmosphere and take advantage of it. And that’s important, especially in a city like Amsterdam. There is so much to discover and if they can, if they can find an agreement with what they do in school and with what’s happening on the street, architecture, museums, Concertgebouw orchestra. The red light district. You know, it’s all a kind of a holistic thing. And that’s why I think we have a certain atmosphere in Amsterdam, in Paris, in Berlin. They are all different because the cities are different. But when they stay in their way, and they don’t take this city thing, then it’s not working so well. Barry Cockcroft: 11:07 So they have to get out of the practice room and also live. Arno Bornkamp: 11:09 Yes. Well certainly if sometimes I do at the beginning of the year, I do an architectural walk through Amsterdam. I have a friend of mine who is a project initiator for new areas, and he knows a lot about that. He brings us through the city and showing us new projects or old ones so that they already kind of feel the air of the city and maybe sometimes they also have a bit of fear, or they want to be in school because they have to do so many things and they just don’t go for other stuff. But I think it’s vital to take that element of the environment with the playing and the lessons that they have. And then you get a particular style or way of thinking, and I think that is very good. Barry Cockcroft: 12:05 So you’re saying the experiences we have in life are reflected in the performance? Arno Bornkamp: 12:10 Yup. Yup. Yup. Barry Cockcroft: 12:12 So more experiences you have then, I guess the richer your playing could be. Arno Bornkamp: 12:17 Yes, of course, they have also to focus. There are a few things that they have to do to effectuate their experiences, but I think it’s a significant thing. For international students, it is a must. Why would you do it otherwise? Also for the Dutch people. I don’t have a lot of Dutch, but it’s also good to be in Amsterdam because it’s entirely different than where they come from. It is indeed a different kind of atmosphere. I think there could be a negative aspect and they create groups, they create multinational quartets and then after some time and they may or may be successful, but then what? If people want to go back to their own countries because they have to start another kind of life connected with saxophone. That jeopardises the quartet. We had that in Amsterdam with a saxophone quartet, which was incredibly successful in winning everything, playing almost every day. They knew how to get concerts. But now two people have left because of a different life path, and now the group doesn’t know what to do anymore. I’ve never had such a successful group of students, and that’s a negative aspect. Maybe it’s not so easy to stay as a multinational quartet, to stay in one place and to try to find a living and maybe teaching or gigging and then doing the quartet as the main thing almost never happens. Barry Cockcroft: 14:20 Was it difficult to stop your quartet after so many years? Was that a big decision? Arno Bornkamp: 14:25 Yeah, it was a big decision. But when I speak about a quartet, there is not one quartet, of course, it has always had the same name [Aurelia], but when we were starting we were starting, we were rookies – young, wild animals with saxophones. Doing things out of almost out of a sense of humour. Hey, what’s happening now – we won a competition, now we are playing a transcription of Gershwin. We were always kind of excusing ourselves for doing good things in a way. That became more serious, and then we got this kind of career and CDs and tours and everything. After the first person left in 2000 – Andre Arends. You know him. Barry Cockcroft: 15:17 He came to Australia. Arno Bornkamp: 15:19 I know. He was speaking highly about what you did for him and what happened. Then, I would call that an adventure book closed because it was not the same people anymore. We had to survive in another way. Later it became more like a business model where we have to keep the thing going, and Niels came – you know Niels of course. And he’s an incredibly good guy, a loyal person and he immediately found his place in the book, but it was different. Our quartet has changed also. We could keep the same musical and artistic approach. But maybe the things that we did before, like playing all these pieces from memory without any condition going for the holy grail, that was perhaps a little less. Also, he lives kind of far so we couldn’t rehearse so much anymore. It’s still a very good project Bach with the Art of the Fugue and the new fugues. We got a nomination for a sort of a ‘grand disc’. But then the momentum disappeared. I think we still played a good, but we couldn’t make people believe that it Aurelia was still young and fresh. I think they thought it is an old name and that’s fine. It’s like a Rolls Royce. You like to see them, you don’t want to drive them, and especially you don’t want to buy them. But it’s nice to see them, right? Finally, Willem and Johann left and then Femke and Juan Manuel, they came in – two of my former students. So then it was three of my former students and myself, and the blood is the same. Everything works musically, but maybe the momentum too much was gone. So then we had to decide last year to stop. Arno Bornkamp: 17:51 And for me, I felt it was tough because I had to, to close that book like 35 years of the quartet. But there are more strong memories of the beginning because it is what you discover. We didn’t play very good maybe. Maybe we played great at the end with the last group of people, and we had excellent communication in everything. But it was just that we discovered and the surprise of everything that happened to us that was not there anymore. And that was the thing that I remembered more – this creation of things. With Johan starting to do all these transcriptions and it worked. I think that we opened something new for saxophone quartets around the world. Like doing a Debussy and Ravel, the thing that you dream of, but that nobody dared to do – we just started to do that. We didn’t have the fear because we just wanted to do incredibly good. I think you can still hear that it’s is done without any condition and doing like hundreds of changes of arrangements until it is good. Every time. Barry Cockcroft: 19:12 You never seem afraid of tradition. You are always willing to try something new. Arno Bornkamp: 19:18 Yes. I think that was what we did, especially in this first 15 years, what we did. Then at some point is also really difficult to find new things to do because you have your bucket list. This and then that and then new pieces. Of course, a lot of composers were writing for us. Louis Andriessen ‘Facing Death’ that he described that is the piece for the Cardinals Quartet, the string quartet. All these kinds of things are also connected to that. The things that you want to do because you think that they have to be done – you get a bit out of that connection – and you are going to do things that can be done but maybe don’t want so badly as the other things before. Then starts to be a little problem of repertoire. Barry Cockcroft: 20:13 I am in regular contact with Perry Goldstein. I stayed with him in New York for, and he helped me out, and we had a good exchange. I asked him while I was writing a piece if he could have a look at it each day and give me some feedback because I’ve never studied composition. So I was a bit nervous about getting some notes, and he was excellent at that. And the exchange was I would help him make a website. So an amusing exchange and we had a great time. He talked a lot about your quartet and of course some of the social times that go along with touring. That seemed to be an essential part of the group as well – the social bond that allowed you to stay together. Arno Bornkamp: 21:06 Yeah, yeah. Yes. We all had our roles, you know. Willem was the funny guy, always telling stories and a bit crazy. Andre what was Andre. I don’t know. Describing that is difficult. Johan was our leader. Maybe I was, and I don’t know. I was perhaps not so much as a leader in the quartet, maybe on stage, yes. I could give drive, but in our social things, maybe not too much. Barry Cockcroft: 21:50 Was working with composers a big part – not just in your chamber music but as a soloist as well – has that been a huge part of your life? Arno Bornkamp: 21:59 Yes, but not, it’s not that I, I find myself being a specialist on that. I do it as you maybe you heard with Willem now and again and with the composer that I played today before yesterday, Piet Swerts. I’m just starting to do it more and more again. At the beginning of my career, it was more the case. But then at some point, I began to do other projects like the Adolphe Sax with the old saxophones and other historical things and teaching a lot and then maybe not always possible to create a situation to play the new pieces because you can ask someone to write something but where to play that? And I think that was also maybe some a sign in our quartet that we didn’t do that so much anymore. That may be the energy was floating away a little bit. Barry Cockcroft: 22:56 Do you think there’s something that makes a composition last and endures so that it gets played again and again and again? Is there a quality in a piece or some reason that some music sticks and some music gets played once? Arno Bornkamp: 23:15 That is a very difficult question. There is, of course, our reason, but I’m not sure if it’s a reason. Maybe there are 100 million reasons. I think the other composer has to have a good idea. He needs to have the skill to know how to write for the instrument. Of course for you is kind of simple, although can also be tricky and for Willem the same thing. You know, he knows maybe sometimes too well what is possible. Feeling for shape, for form, I think that’s very important. And writing the write notes in the right place. You know Louis Andriessen, the composer from Holland? He is a Stravinsky adept but then a lot of other influences of minimal music and a lot of stuff. And he made kind of the new style like The Haig school, and it’s really about writing the right notes, and that’s a skill, you know. You have to write the right notes at the right moment. I’m not sure if you can explain that what it is. Beethoven could do it. Mozart and the like, they knew the form, they know phrasing, harmony, rhythm. If you don’t control that stuff, then why would you compose? You should be able to do that I think. It’s not a condition, but there are also composers like Jacob TV who’s maybe not controlling all these elements, but he has such an imagination, and such a feeling for what’s the society wants and how he can make his music connect to society that he also writes very good music. Arno Bornkamp: 25:07 But maybe sometimes we can say little things about the rhythm or harmony or whatever. So it is not only one way that leads to Rome. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s also sometimes I’ll look, you have to be lucky that the piece is heard or the piece is chosen, or sometimes we find old pieces and hey, why not? Nobody was playing that, you know. The Hot Sonate for instance, that’s a piece that may be a lot of time that it has not been performed. A lot of people are starting to play it more and more. I already played a piece from the beginning of my study. At some point, suddenly it’ there. Albright. I don’t like to piece, but the piece is played all over the place, you know. In the eighties and nineties where were snoring. Decruck Sonata. Mule, Londeix. You know Londeix, right? Decruck is like too sweet, and everybody’s playing that now. I don’t find that very good music. It’s sweet, but it’s not good, but it seems to work, and it lasts apparently. She wrote like these French pieces, Pieces Françaises and there are much better, but nobody’s playing it. It’s also taste. Barry Cockcroft: 26:30 Now I’ve got some just short little questions. You may give a short answer. Is there something that you believe that other people disagree with? Arno Bornkamp: 26:45 Wow, that’s a good one. Yes, but maybe there is a short answer, but I have to think long about it. Barry Cockcroft: 26:52 Think long answer short. Arno Bornkamp: 26:54 Yeah, now well maybe there’s something that bothers me a little bit sometimes and also during this Congress. I’m not sure if everybody agrees with putting intonation as the priority. I’m not sure if everybody agrees with me about that. I think, yeah, we should. Our instrument is too easy, and that’s why it’s very easy to play out of tune. It’s a bit shocking sometimes to hear the people. That’s maybe their last worry. I hope that people disagree with me and they’re starting to work on it. Barry Cockcroft: 27:44 If you just had one piece that you could play now forever. Nothing else, what piece would that be? Arno Bornkamp: 27:54 Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy in the transcription with piano. Barry Cockcroft: 27:59 What is it about that piece? Arno Bornkamp: 28:04 This piece is maybe one of the top five best pieces for me at least in the whole literature and I know it very well. I heard it in many situations. I got that one moment. I was flying to the United States. I was going to Boston for a while or to Bloomington. It doesn’t matter for a masterclass. I was listening to the radio on the headphones, and it was James Galway presenting his own choice of music. We were going up, and he was performing his version of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune with the piano that he was playing. I thought, Jesus Christ, I have to play this. I felt listening to this, and this is soprano range. There’s maybe a high A flat as the highest note. I didn’t hear it. I don’t have a perfect hearing, but I could hear was not going to high because it’s shrill, I don’t like that. For that music especially not. I was coming home, bought the music as transcription, and I wrote it down. I wrote with a pen on old paper. I’m very bad with computers, so I just wrote it down, and I was reading the piece, and because I heard it so many times, I could play it from memory immediately. We went to Ivo my pianist at the time, and we started to play it in programs and yeah, but that is maybe the most beautiful music I’ve ever played. And the other is the Quartet by Ravel, the string quartet. If I can choose two, the string quartet by Ravel. Barry Cockcroft: 30:04 A backup piece. Arno Bornkamp: 30:04 A backup and then, of course, our Aurelia version. Barry Cockcroft: 30:06 If you just had one hour to practice, how would you spend your time? Arno Bornkamp: 30:11 Oh, you have good questions. There are a few things I would maybe do a little bit of overblowing. This kind of an F, low B flat fingering. The F stays F, and you find your intonation. Then I think I would… It depends on if I have a program prepare. Yeah. I would maybe practice two or three pages of that program. I would take the alto saxophone. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It’s not very spectacular, but that’s what I would do. And then I would not have any hour anymore in my whole life? Barry Cockcroft: 31:06 You know, sometimes an hour is for me sometimes with little kids an hour is what you get, you know, you try to fill it as well as you can. Choose wisely. Arno Bornkamp: 31:19 Then, of course, it is better to do maybe two or three pages really with authority than playing the whole piece through. Actually, that also doesn’t work. Arno Bornkamp: 31:27 Who would you consider to be one of the greatest contributors to the saxophone? Arno Bornkamp: 31:36 Sigurd Rascher. I don’t like his playing very much. I like the style of his playing, but without him, I think we would maybe not even sit here because our position in classical music would be way less important. We wouldn’t have Ibert, Glazounov, Martin. We would not have like maybe 80 percent of the standard repertoire we would not have. We would have all the French pieces of course, but I’m not sure if people want to listen to that all the time. I think the other pieces there are still played. Glazounov I still play that. Ibert maybe not. It’s a pity because it’s great. Martin, I still play. He is a significant 20th-century composer. He got the piece from this guy. No, it’s fantastic. So in this respect, yes. Is this Rascher and classical saxophone right? Barry Cockcroft: 32:34 If it was jazz, who would you say? Arno Bornkamp: 32:34 Charlie Parker, yeh, Charlie Parker. Of course, Mule has given us like just a great easy going way of playing the instrument. Just blowing and finding these kinds of voicings very easily, very beautiful and natural. I’m always kind of in tune, you know, great. Yeah. I’m don’t always agree with what he’s doing musically. Of course, it is really… the style playing from another period. But just that. Barry Cockcroft: 33:17 If we learn from mistakes, is it okay to make mistakes? Arno Bornkamp: 33:20 Oh yeah. I do it all the time. There was one person, I didn’t mention, because maybe he’s combining what Rascher and Mule had separated – this is Londeix. He played fantastically, and he also did a lot for our repertoire. Perhaps he did the most quantity, but maybe not always the quality, even in the playing but not always the quality. I would say those three people for classical saxophone, for jazz. Charlie Parker. Yeah. Barry Cockcroft: 34:02 So with the mistakes, if you do make a mistake, how do you cope with that mistake when it happens? Arno Bornkamp: 34:09 Uh, thank you, lord. I’m a human being. Animals don’t make mistakes. Only human beings. I’m a human being, it is great. Yeah. I don’t want it, but when it happens, it’s also okay because you have got that. And then it’s maybe time to, to start to enjoy. Yeah. Barry Cockcroft: 34:34 I heard you play a concerto the other night. You’ve performed probably hundreds of times with orchestra. Arno Bornkamp: 34:40 200 maybe. Yeah. Barry Cockcroft: 34:43 What do you do before you walk on stage to make sure you’re in the best state of mind? Arno Bornkamp: 34:52 Ah, that’s a good question because I had to deal with that this time. I tried to listen to the live stream of Belgium, France football game, but when I was doing that I got very nervous… I should not do that. I need silence. I don’t play a lot, and I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting and building up and building up. I feel my pulse is maybe 80 or 90 or maybe 100. If I played the Martin Ballade, it is 120 at a minimum. It’s just such a tricky beast to start. This time I was a bit sick. My ears were closed like today, a little nervous, only a little. I was waiting, and I saw people, you know, in the, in the, in the break from the orchestra and okay. It’s still not my time. I’ve tried to control my biological clock. But then when I went on the stage, I felt an incredible amount of positive energy and I knew who’s piece I was playing. I saw the people, and I felt it’s okay, let’s do it. And if I make a mistake, they know what kind of error it is, and I don’t like it. It was was a more positive experience than I expected. Barry Cockcroft: 36:27 Could you give your younger self a piece of advice that you would have liked to have heard? Arno Bornkamp: 36:34 You know what? I think I don’t believe that I wanted at advice then. Maybe I wanted advice, but not the kind of advice that I would be able to give myself now. That’s tricky because then perhaps I don’t teach in the right way. Barry Cockcroft: 36:57 You talked before about experiencing life while you’re a student. Did you do that or did you lock yourself in your practice room too much? Arno Bornkamp: 37:06 No, not locked, but I was kind of obsessed. Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of obsessing. So maybe that’s a good point. Yeah. But you know, you can do what you can do. I was not on an adventure in another way. I would like to see my thing, and there was an adventure. Well, there’s one thing, don’t worry, be happy. No guts, no glory. But that already happened, but sometimes it had to be done in a little bit of a forced way, and I would like to be more relaxed. So yeah, my advice to my younger self would be relaxed and maybe work on that instead of just neglecting it. Barry Cockcroft: 37:55 Now finally, you have made such a huge contribution to the saxophone, and it continues to this day. What do you see for yourself in the next 10, 20 years? Arno Bornkamp: 38:07 Good question. This is kind of a developing at the moment in a way that I didn’t expect it some time ago. So you never know what’s going to happen. But finding new music. I have a new pianist a Belgium guy that I like very much, and we have excellent communication about what kind of project we want to do. We do the music and architecture project at the moment. We are working on that. I want to play more with the orchestra because I think that’s something that I can do and that I didn’t do a lot lately and maybe something that if I have still, I don’t know many years. I am 58. Maybe I have still kind of 10 years. I want to take the gamble and see if I can get into that circuit again. Although it’s a circuit which is closed and managers and Blah Blah Blah. And yeah, you need someone to bring you somewhere, and I don’t really like lobbying and networking and things like that. But I could feel when was it, Tuesday that when I’m well prepared that I can do something within this medium, like being a soloist with an orchestra and you know, embracing them and embracing the audience. I think that’s precious and under maybe not so many people who do that in the same way. And I should do that. Perhaps I should. And perhaps I can play Willem’s piece more often. Maybe I can do old stuff that I did before or maybe find new compositions because it was rewarding to do that and I felt good. Barry Cockcroft: 39:57 Great, Arno. Thank you for your time today, and it’s been a pleasure again to hear you play. Arno Bornkamp: 40:04 And, likewise. Barry Cockcroft: 40:04 Thank you. Arno Bornkamp: 40:05 It was a great piece, I liked it. Barry Cockcroft: 40:06 Thanks very much.