Matt Kendrick - By Sheridan Hill

The Sound of Matt Kendrick

(c) 1997 Sheridan HIll. Reprinted from Triad Style, June 14, 1995

Bassman-composer Matt Kendrick is lost in a strange dance with his double bass in the corner of Leon’s Cafe in Winston-Salem. Masses of dark shoulder-length curls partially hide his face as he pulls its heavy torso in a counter-rhythm to his own. Neither Kendrick nor Fred Pivetta, the keyboard artist, look up during the song: they are playing each other’s edges, listening, improvising.

Only Jason Brashear, the drummer, watches the appreciative crowd, smiling as he accentuates a beat in sync. Saxophonist Steve Blake comes in a little late, gets a beer, takes his sax out of the case and joins the trio.

There’s an off-center feel to Kendrick’s jazz: the heart of it keeps moving. The drummer slows his pace, the keyboard player softens his notes, and Kendrick goes off on dramatic plucked riff.

"His eyes glaze over," says Karen, the waitress who occasionally sings with the band. "He’s gone when he’s playing. It’s impossible to get his attention."

With pin-prick precision, the fingers of his left hand cover every inch of the bass’ squat neck. His right hand plucks and strokes with a deliberation and tenderness that causes one attentive woman to sigh and whisper to her dining partner, "Oh, God."

Kendrick’s fifth CD, "Art/Jazz," is a collaboration with several southeastern art museums which invited him to write music based on works he chose from their collections. A Jazz Composers Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council financed the recording, which is filled with exploratory jazz and focused, atonal compositions. The accompanying four-color booklet includes eight pages of mostly abstract paintings and drawings by Frank Stella, Hans Hofmann, Alfred Maurer, Leonard Baskin, Stuart Davis, Franz Kline, Romare Bearden and Winston-Salem sculptor Rachel Ziesk, with whom Kendrick has lived for the past 16 years.

"Synesthesia is a state when your senses are mixed up," he said. "You don’t hear but you see; you don’t see but you hear. If I had that clinically, it would be a serious disorder," he laughed. "But I think I have that to some extent. My senses are all inter-related and nothing’s cut and dry. I hear art. There’s a visual element to it. All light has frequency, all sound has light. They both operate on the same principle. They go in waves."

Suddenly he looks bashful, the way he does the instant he ends a song, as he has abruptly realized he’s not alone in the room. He revives when asked about "The Old Artist," a particularly imaginative and skewed jazz composition on "Art/Jazz."

"Life is really an unresolved situation," he said. "In its first incarnation, that song had a dirge-like beat, me and the drums, dong-dong-dong. It was so dark. I thought the band would want to kill themselves. We played it like that for several years. Then we started playing it with Hugh Peterson, and we just pulled it from the sky. Stream-of-consciousness. When we are done, the drummer and I are exhausted. We just play it as hard as we can, straight from ‘out there,’ straight from our hearts. I’m particularly thrilled with that piece. We recorded it one time. That was it."

Kendrick studied double bass and music theory from Lynn Peters at the North Carolina School of the Arts. During the 70s he studied under Mahavishnu Orchestra bassist Rick Laird, supporting himself by playing with several dozen bands at once. He has studied under jazz artist Jerry Coker and played with the Knoxville Symphony.

He is the first person to win the North Carolina Jazz Composers Fellowship twice: in 1988 and 1994.

The easy-going composer has recorded nearly 50 original songs, with almost as many written and unrecorded.

"I’m never at a loss for ideas," he said. Kendrick checks his watch, adjusts the trademark cap anchoring his colossal curls, rises to his full six feet.

"Thanks a lot for the interview. I gotta go set up."

For the next hour until the band takes a break, he’s gone again.

Article on Matt Kendrick by Sheridan Hill