Coming up, cellist Jacob Szekely had wonderful classical cello teachers, but jazz was practically a curse word in their studios, he said.
"There would be no way I would have ever told them that I wa playing jazz gigs on the side," he said.
By now, his secret's out. Szekely is an in-demand sideman and session player in Los Angeles and one of the few to play cello in front of a jazz band. In 2018, Szekely brought his trio with Matt Lesser on drums and Mahesh Balasooriya on piano to the KNKX Studios.
Like all young cellists, he was trained to play classical music, but Szekely was secretly being influenced by the world's greatest jazz trumpeter.
"Around the age of 10 or 12, you sneak out and you do crazy things. And for me, that was checking out Miles Davis for the first time," he said.
Szekely was frustrated with the limitations of playing in the classical world and was drawn to the individual freedom of jazz improvisation that gave him permission to be himself as an artist.
"Even the basic scale fingerings cellists learn don't really lend themselves to changing the order of the notes. It really took a few more years for it to occur to me that maybe I could just sing, through this instrument, whatever kind of song I wanted to," he said.
After his epiphany, Szekely began encouraging other cellists to think outside the box. He's been teaching alternative cello technique for years. In 2012, Szekely published the Improvisers Guide to the Cello, which he says "lays out my life's work in deprogramming my classical brain and reprogramming it as an improvisers brain."
Szekely uses amplifiers and effects pedals on his cello, usually the tools of electric guitar players. He's also invented his own pedals and developed a media player for cellists to test amplifiers and effects.
"I've got a lot of delays and reverbs and a little bit of wah-wah, and, you know, whatever comes to mind. But, it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy using effects, and I think a lot of string players do," he said.
Szekely has been a force in the progression of cello in a jazz setting and he's also pushing the evolution of jazz.
"Trying to get past the 1950s, as I like to say. So, yeah, that's definitely something that that we like doing. There's a lot of mixed meters, and there's a lot of a lot of funky fun stuff," he said.
These days, Szekely keeps busy teaching classically-trained string players how to improvise and use the right technology. He's also been touring with his trio and Quarteto Nuevo to push the possibilities of the cello in every genre.
"Our instruments haven't changed much in the last 300+ years," he said. "So whenever we get the chance to do something even slightly different, it's very exciting for us."
Songs heard in this episode:
- "Corner Song"
- "Dig"
- "Antidote"
