I was conceived by Carla
Bley and Michael Mantler at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1965. Born in 1966, I
was immediately swept into the musician's life on the road. After having
checked me at the coatroom of the Berlin Jazz Festival, to the horror of the
press, my parents realized that I was going to have to learn to play an
instrument in order to be useful. But since I was still just a baby and they
couldn't leave me alone, they had to bring me on stage with them and keep me
under the piano. This is probably why I feel most at home on the stage.
In 1971, when I was four, my
mother let me have a part in Escalator Over The Hill and the next year I
sang on another of her records, Tropic Appetites. By 1977 I had learned
to play the glockenspiel, and I joined the Carla Bley Band. I toured Europe and
the States with her several times and played on her Musique Mecanique
album. After playing at Carnegie Hall in 1980, where I tried to steal the show
by pretending to be Carla Bley, my mother fired me, telling me "get your
own band".
I realized that I was going
to have to learn a more complicated instrument. After trying drums, bass, and
flute, which I always lost interest in, I settled on the clarinet. I joined my
elementary school band and quickly rose to the head of the clarinet section.
The band director let me take the first improvised solo in the history of the
Phoenicia (a small town near Woodstock, NY) elementary school. After graduating
to high school I continued to play the clarinet in the band, but didn't like
the music we were made to play. This was when I realized that playing other
people's music was not enough, and I was going to have to write my own. The
music department agreed to give me school credit for studying composition with
my mother and making a tape of the music I had written to play for them, but
they hated the tape so much that I was banned from any future musical
activities. For the remainder of my high school years, my major musical
activity was getting kicked off the music room stairs for practicing the
harmonica.
Luckily I soon got a
scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. By this time I
had given up clarinet and had been playing organ in a band with Jonathan
Sanborn (another musician's kid). Of course organ isn't a very practical
instrument, so I played piano at Berklee. I was determined to learn more about
music and they tried to teach me, but in three years I learned virtually
nothing. I had my own weird style, which I probably inherited from my father. I
remember being interrupted during a solo in an ensemble class by an instructor
yelling, "it's your solo Karen, solo!"
"I am!” I screamed
back. Still, I did meet a lot of nice people who would humor me when I played
the piano and liked the music I wrote. My senior recital, called “A Little
Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing” had a lot of teachers in the audience and was a
great success.
While in Boston I had made
friends with other young composers and in 1986 we put together a concert of our
music to play at the Mass. College of Art. Later, a group of older writers
called The Jazz Composers Alliance asked me to be the guest for one of their
concerts, and they performed my piece at a local jazz club. In 1987 I moved to
New York City. By this time I had written enough music to make a record, so I
put together a band featuring Eric Mingus, Jonathan Sanborn, Steve Weisberg,
Ethan Winogrand, Marc Muller, Steven Bernstein and Pablo Calogero. We played
together for about 6 months, then went into the studio and recorded My Cat
Arnold, which was released in Europe and Japan in May on the XtraWatt
label, and in the United States in the fall of 1989.
After noticing what a good
harmonica player I was becoming, my mother asked me to be in her band for
a European tour in October 1988. I enjoyed it very much, but I was eager to
return to New York and start working on my own music. During July 1989
Once again, I had written
enough music to make another album for XtraWatt. No one in my band had quit or
been fired, so in the summer of 1990 we went into the studio and recorded Karen
Mantler And Her Cat Arnold Get The Flu. It was released in Europe in
October, and in the United States in November.
We didn't play at The
Montreal Jazz Festival in 1990. They asked us to, and we even went there, but
it rained the whole time, and our stage was the only one without a cover. The festival
felt so bad about it, they offered to let us come back the next year.
In October we toured Europe
on a double bill with The Very Big Carla Bley Band. My mother agreed to let us
come on the condition that she could borrow me and my two horn players for her
band. The band was so big that a double-decker tour bus was too small for us,
but somehow we managed to squeeze ourselves in, and the tour was a gigantic
success.
Meanwhile, my father had
been considering either giving up music or committing suicide, but instead
chose to quit working for Watt and move to Europe. I had been innocently
training to be his assistant for two years, so the promotion to general manager
of the whole operation was quite a shock. I had no business experience, but
somehow managed to learn as I went along.
The best part of my new job
was that Arnold and I could be together again. But Carla and Steve were always
on the road, so we were all alone. The winter of 1991 was long and hard. By
spring, we were both very depressed. The ten pounds I had gained Arnold had
lost, and on April 25 (my birthday) he died.
I spent the next three
months composing a requiem for him called “Arnold's Dead”, which we premiered
at The Montreal Jazz Festival in July 1991. Just as it had the previous year,
it rained the whole time we were there, but luckily the promoters had the
foresight to give us a stage with a roof this time. I was still very depressed
about Arnold's death, and I guess the audience could tell because by the end of
the concert the whole audience was howling "Arnold" in despair.
I returned home with not much
hope of performing again, but luckily Steve Swallow hired me to play synthesizer
on his record Swallow, which we recorded in September 1991. It was
great playing with such advanced musicians, but I missed my band and
My second record had gone
without much notice from the media, so there was very little interest from
promoters. With nowhere else to turn, I convinced my father to become my
booking agent, and he got us a weeklong tour of Germany in October. I was
distressed to learn that my baritone player was busy playing with Mario Bauza,
but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I ended up hiring Gary
Valente.
Later that month I was hired
to play organ on a recording by drummer Motohiko Hino. Sailing Stone was
released in January 1992 and also featured Mike Stern, Steve Swallow and Dave
Liebman.
Not much happened during the
following six months. Most of my time was spent running the business. I also
wrote a lot of depressing songs.
It was starting to seem like
I would never get another gig. So I called my father in Copenhagen to see how
he was doing. He had been writing music, and asked if I would like to play
piano on a recording he was planning to make in June with The Balanescu String
Quartet. I also got to sing a duet with Jack Bruce, and the resulting compact
disc, Folly Seeing All This, was released on ECM in March 1993.
In July 1992 I returned to
Europe as the organ player in The Very Big Carla Bley Band. We spent a week at
the Glasgow Jazz Festival, and another week at The Umbria Jazz Festival in
Italy.
By this time it was becoming
apparent that I was better suited to music than business, and Carla suggested I
start training somebody to take over my responsibilities at Watt. We were lucky
to find Ilene Mark, and by January 1993 I was able to move back to New York
City.
There didn't seem to be much
work for me in the city, so I was about to look for a job as a waitress when
Motohiko Hino called me to play with him again. We recorded an album in March
called It’s There, and also played a gig at The Knitting Factory.
A few months later I got a
call from Terry Adams, the leader of NRBQ, who asked me to sing one of his
songs at The Bottom Line in New York. I considered it a great honor, because
I'd always admired Terry, and I even got paid!
Once again, in July 1993, I
went to Europe as my mother's organ player. We toured for a month and recorded Big
Band Theory.
In February 1994 I got
another call from Terry Adams, who wanted me to play glockenspiel and harmonica
in a band he was putting together to accompany David Greenberger's Duplex
Planet Radio Hour. We performed it at St. Ann's church in Brooklyn, and it was
broadcast on public radio.
After doing another European
tour with The Carla Bley Big Band later that month, I returned to New York City
and once again found I had no way to support myself. I began playing solo piano
at a restaurant in exchange for free meals. Occasionally I got a call for a
paying gig. I played with guitar player Dan Rose, and also made a few guest
appearances with a band called Lazy Boy. Times were hard. The Internal Revenue
Service was after me for not paying taxes, and Con Edison (the local power
company) had turned off my electricity. Three years had passed since my last
record, and there was no way I could afford to hire a band.
Luckily, in 1995 I ran into
Michael Evans, a drummer I had met while living in Boston. He expressed
interest in playing with me, and we began sorting through the pile of music I
had written since Arnold's death. Since we both play a variety of instruments,
we realized that we could work as a duo. During this time we also realized that
we had fallen in love and moved in together. After playing a few gigs on the
east coast, we went into the studio and recorded Farewell in December
1995. It was released in Europe in the spring, and in the United States in the
fall of 1996.
I spent most of the summer
of 1996 in Europe. First, I did another tour with The Carla Bley Big Band in
July. During that tour we recorded a live album in Italy called The Carla Bley
Big Band Goes To Church. After that I went to Copenhagen to work with my
father, who hired me to sing in an opera he had written called The School Of
Understanding. This also concluded with a recording, which was released on
ECM records in 1997.
In September, Michael Evans
joined me in Europe for a tour to promote our newly released cd. It was just
the two of us and about 400 pounds of musical equipment. We traveled everywhere
by train, and just barely made it to each gig. Our hard work paid off though;
the music was well received, and we went home with money in our pockets.
Back in New York City, the
new cd had just been released and we needed to promote it. Unlike in Europe,
this meant spending money, not earning it, so we could only afford to play a
few clubs before we were broke again. By chance, a friend of mine who worked at
a local Starbuck's coffee house was setting up a new music series to take place
there every Friday. Although there was no real stage or sound system, they were
offering a guaranteed salary, so we started playing there once a month. This
went on for most of the winter and spring of 1997.
At this stage in my life, I
finally resigned myself to the fact that my time was best spent working on my
own music, since I rarely received calls to play with other bands. However,
there were a few notable gigs during that winter: my mother was asked to write
an arrangement for David Byrne, and she hired me as the organ player. Another
dubious honor was being asked to play in “The Most Unwanted Orchestra”, a band
put together by David Soldier based on a survey of what people's least favorite
instruments were (the band included tuba, bagpipes, banjo and harmonica). We
played one gig at the knitting factory, but then I never heard from him again.
In May 1997 The Carla Bley
Big Band did a tour of England. Carla had also been commissioned to put
together another band called Fancy Chamber Music featuring classical musicians
along with herself and Steve Swallow. My responsibility as organ player in the
big band was expanded to include being the page-turner for Carla during the
chamber music portion of the show.
About one year earlier,
Carla had been approached by a promoter in Cologne, Germany to organize a
performance of Escalator Over The Hill for June 1997. When Escalator was
originally recorded I was only 4 years old and had a very small part. Now she
was asking me to sing all of her parts and play synthesizer! I also did a lot
of the copying for the band and helped coach the singers.
My exposure to “opera” continued
that winter when I returned to Europe for a performance of The School Of
Understanding at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin.
In the summer of 1998 Escalator
Over The Hill toured Europe. When we played in Paris I was introduced to a
man who worked at EMI France. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but a few
days later this same man, Jean-Philippe Rolland, contacted me and expressed
great interest in my future recording plans! It sounded too good to be true,
but when I told him about my pet project he loved the idea and said he would
like to release it on Virgin Classics.
For the next six months all
my time was spent writing music and thinking about who would be in the band.
Although I intended to write
an opera, I realized that I didn’t know many good singers, so I hired Eric
Mingus and decided the rest of the roles would have to be sung by the band. I
was lucky to have met a great bass player the previous year, Kato Hideki, who
had been playing with my drummer extensively and seemed like the perfect
choice. Finding a keyboard player was easy too. Arturo O’Farrill and I had both
been in my mother’s band when we were just teenagers, and when I called him he
agreed that it would be great to play together again.
I started playing gigs with
this band, and although I now had a great rhythm section, it was missing
something. I needed a guitar player. I decided to go straight to the top, and
called Hiram Bullock. I was so happy when he said yes!
Now all I needed were some
horns. Steven Bernstein had played trumpet in my original band, and although he
was now very busy playing with The Lounge Lizards and his own band Sex Mob, he agreed
to squeeze me into his schedule. It seemed obvious to me that I should also
hire the baritone player Pablo Calogero, another member of my original band.
Finally, I called Gary Valente. I’ve always loved the way he plays trombone,
and was lucky to get him.
In august 1999 we went into
the studio and recorded Karen Mantler’s Pet Project, which was released
in 2000 by Virgin Classics.
One of the advantages of
recording for a big label is that it has lots of money. It was no problem to
convince them that the studio sessions should be filmed. In September I spent 2
days in an editing studio creating videos for 2 of the songs. The company liked
the result so much that they decided to include this footage on the cd.
I was very happy with the
way the cd turned out and I figured that with such a great product all I had to
do was sit back and wait for the offers to come flooding in. it didn’t quite
work out that way. Plagued by a relentless series of mergers and takeovers,
Virgin Classics no longer wanted to have anything to do with interesting,
original music. Jean-Philippe Rolland was forbidden to sign any new artists and
kept busy producing a 200th version of Mozart’s Mass in C.
Attempts to book a European
tour for my band failed. It took a few months for me to realize that nothing
was going to happen unless I took matters into my own hands.
If I wanted to continue
working with my decidedly unprofitable band I knew I was going to have to find
a source of money. I took a full time job serving coffee and sandwiches at a
place called Olive’s, which was very popular with the fashion and advertising
people in soho. After I had saved enough money, I booked a gig at The Knitting
Factory in July 2000 to celebrate the US release of Pet Project. I had a
lot of fun playing with my new eight piece band, but nobody from the record
label came and, as expected, I lost all of my money doing it.
Instead of booking another
local gig, I returned to trying to figure out how to make a living. I didn’t
want to spend the rest of my life serving coffee, but having an eight
In October 2000 I got one of
those rare calls from someone who wanted to hire me as a singer. I sang the
title track on bass player and bandleader Joe Gallant’s cd Shadowhead.
Although it went against my
better judgment, in December I booked another gig for my band at The Knitting
Factory. This time I cut two of the horns and just used Gary Valente on
trombone. I still lost money, but one good thing came of it: I shared the bill
with David Garland, who besides being a musician had several shows on radio
station WNYC. He invited me to be his guest on his weekly program called
“Spinning On Air.” Thinking that this might help bring in more customers, I
booked another gig to coincide with the broadcast. This time I played at a club
called Tonic and decided to use the full band. As usual, I lost money and swore
that I would never perform in public again.
My vow didn’t last long. In
May I got another call from someone wanting me to sing. The booking agent for
The Knitting Factory, Glenn Max, had moved to London to run The Royal Festival
Hall and he had convinced Robert Wyatt to host the annual “Meltdown” festival.
Robert suggested that I be asked to participate and Glenn decided that I should
be one of the guest vocalists appearing with trombone player Annie Whitehead’s
band, which was doing a tribute to Robert.
Based on the strength of
getting this high-profile gig, I convinced Virgin Classics to finally release
my cd in France and bring me to Paris before the concert to do two days of
press. Then I flew to London and sang three of Robert’s songs to a packed
house.
I have never considered
myself a singer, so I felt quite out of place sharing the stage with people
like Julie Tippetts and Elvis Costello. I was even more puzzled when I got paid
at the end of the night. It would seem that I should give up writing music and
having my own band in order to become a singer or full-time harmonica player.
Unable to accept this, I returned to New York and went straight back to work at
Olive’s, where I plan to continue serving coffee with a smile until I can save
enough money to play another gig with my band.
as a leader:
My Cat Arnold (XtraWatt/3)
Karen Mantler And Her Cat Arnold Get The Flu (XtraWatt/5)
Farewell
(XtraWatt/8)
Karen Mantler’s Pet Project (Virgin Classics)
with others:
Escalator Over The Hill (Carla Bley - JCOA/EOTH)
Tropic Appetites
(Carla Bley - Watt/1)
Musique Mecanique
(Carla Bley - Watt/9)
I Can't Stand Another Night... (Steve Weisberg - XtraWatt/1)
Fleur Carnivore
(Carla Bley - Watt/21)
The Watt Works Family Album (Watt/22)
The Very Big Carla Bley Band (Carla Bley - Watt/23)
Carried Away
(Robbie Dupree - Village Green/Gold Castle)
Swallow (Steve
Swallow - XtraWatt/6)
Sailing Stone
(Motohiko Hino - Fun House/Gramavision)
Folly Seeing All This
(Michael Mantler - ECM)
It's There
(Motohiko Hino - Fun House/Gramavision)
Big Band Theory
(Carla Bley - Watt/25)
The Carla Bley Big Band Goes To Church (Carla Bley -
Watt/27)
The School Of Understanding (Michael Mantler - ECM)
Shadowhead (Joe Gallant & Illuminati – Black Mirror)