Trumpet Evolution: Riley Mulherkar Previews his 2024 Newport Jazz Festival Leader Debut

In his speech to the Royal Academy on April 30, 1953, Winston Churchill remarked, “Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.” The key is to find ways to let history lead you without being haunted by the ghosts of the past. This concept is frequently overlooked in discussions on the shape of modern jazz music. Far too often, arbitrary battle lines are drawn, with the neo-traditionalists on one side and experimental firebrands on the other. In reality, they are not mutually exclusive camps. That understanding of the malleable relationship between the past and present makes Riley Mulherkar’s leader debut, Riley (Westerlies, 2024), a compelling listen.

Viewed at a high level, Riley is a collection of inspired originals and standards. But even the longstanding compositions are personalized to reflect the trumpeter’s own thoughts as much as those of his predecessors. In breaking down these tunes to their essence – what first drew people to them so many years ago – he provides something that expresses both admiration of the past and a desire to be contemporary. Key to extracting this essence lies in Mulherkar’s focus on making each track humanized and highly intimate. Things that many studio recordings would cut out or avoid – the sound of a tapping foot or of a horn player taking a breath, are not only captured but given a central role on Riley. It will be fascinating to see how this beating musical heart will present itself live during Mulherkar’s set at Newport on Saturday, August 3, 2024.

PostGenre: Do you remember the first time you ever learned of Newport? 

Riley Mulherkar: The first time I ever learned about Newport was when I was very young. It was probably before I started playing trumpet or right around when I started. So, it would have been when I was between six and eight years old. I remember watching the Ken Burns Jazz [documentary] series. There’s a whole feature in it about the famous Duke Ellington performance at Newport [in 1956] with Paul Gonsalves’ [twenty-seven chorus] solo that made people dance like crazy. Seeing that in the Ken Burns documentary was when I first heard of the Festival. Ever since, I’ve always regarded Newport as one of the most sacred events we have in jazz history and on the current scene, as well. 

PG: This summer will not be your first time performing at Newport. In 2016, you were there with the Westerlies, the fascinating brass quartet that gives equal footing to jazz, classical, and folk music.

RM: Yes, that 2016 performance was the first time I ever went to Newport. It was a dream come true just to go to the grounds and take part in the Festival. We also met George [Wein], who was so kind and generous. He even sent us a thoughtful note afterward. Connecting with him and the Festival in that way felt very special. 

PG: And you were back at Newport the following year when the Westerlies joined the Fleet Foxes at the Folk Festival. 

RM: That’s right. You’re on it. Yeah, we [in the band] were joking around because we were there for the Jazz Festival, then the Folk Festival, and also for the Newport Music Festival, which is a classical music festival held in town. How many musicians who have done all three of those? But they were all such great experiences, especially the festivals at the Fort. Folk has a totally different scene than Jazz but a great community nonetheless. 

PG: What did you enjoy most about working with Fleet Foxes? 

RM: We have worked with them quite a bit over the past few years, but that was at the very beginning of our collaboration. We had just recorded their album Crack-Up (Nonesuch, 2017), and the Newport Folk Festival was the first show we ever did with them live. We played on only a few songs, but it was the start of a beautiful collaboration. From then on, they started inviting us to more and more shows because we all had such a good time together. Each time we would do a new show, we would write an arrangement to a new song, so what started as three songs became four, then became five, and before we knew it, we were on stage with them for the entirety of their sets.  In everything we have done with them, whether in the studio or live, they gave us full freedom to write our own parts and bring our own voices to the music. We brought improvisation, extended techniques, and all sorts of things that feel unique to us. It’s been a wonderful collaboration in that way because we feel like we’re bringing so much of ourselves to it. 

PG: That is very cool. They easily could have forced you to follow their vision instead of letting you form your own.

RM: Totally. I think none of us were interested in what could have been a pop gig, for lack of a better word. What was so great about that whole family of musicians, the Fleet Foxes, was that they were looking for us to be ourselves and bring something new. 

PG: And this summer, you will present your first project as a leader at Newport. What does it mean to you to be a leader at the Jazz Festival compared to a member of an ensemble? 

RM: It definitely feels different. It definitely feels like a first. I would say everything with this album, Riley. The process of creating it has felt like a first for me. Because it was my first album as a leader, it was also my first time putting music together with that mentality. And right now, we are at the very beginning of figuring out the live experience of the music for both the musicians and the audience. It feels very special that we get to find it and experience it in such a sacred place. I am also very honored to be asked to play there. I worked on the album for five years. When it finally came out, I had no idea what would come of it. For Newport to call was an absolute dream come true. 

PG: Has it been difficult figuring out how to move the music from Riley to a live setting? One of the things that most stands out on the record – from hearing your breaths to your foot tapping- is how intimate it all is. It seems like that might be difficult to replicate live.

RM: By my own devices, it would be extremely difficult. But I’ve been very lucky to work with Chris Pattishall, one of my producers for the record and also the pianist and keyboardist in the band. He is helping me with all of our live shows. We are bringing our own front-of-house sound engineer so that sonic hyper-intimacy, as you describe, is carefully considered along with all the normal things that we think about in terms of arrangements and forms and soloing and all those things. Obviously, the live experience will not feel like you’re putting on headphones and listening to a record, but we are trying to capture that same spirit that is the through line of the record. 

PG: At what point did you decide that intimacy would be the throughline for the record? 

RM: You know, I give a lot of credit to Chris and our other producer, Rafiq Bhatia, for helping me find what I think has always been the way I’ve played to some extent. Also, many of my heroes and mentors on the trumpet have that side to them too, whether Ron Miles or Wynton Marsalis. Hearing them play very softly and very intimately is what made me love the trumpet so much. However, that is often the opposite of what people think of when they think of a trumpet. But, having that principle, I would say we developed early enough that we were able to build the arrangements and structure the recording process around that idea of fostering intimacy. This focus, because it was determined before we even played a note in the studio, strongly gave us a direction for everything. 

PG: Since you mentioned Wynton, he is a mentor of yours and has long emphasized following tradition. On Riley, you play a few standards but approach them in a very contemporary way. What are your thoughts on the relationship between tradition and modernity?

RM: I think less about the line between the two as much as I think about my own love for the tradition. I have a very true, and genuine love and passion for jazz music and its history. It literally came from me being a kid and watching the Ken Burns series, listening to records by Duke Ellington and  Count Basie, and falling in love with the music.  So, songs on the album like “ King Porter Stomp” or “Stardust” have old versions by people, whether Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, or Louis Armstrong, that greatly speak to me. 

It felt like the most natural thing in the world to play those songs and investigate that repertoire. But the question becomes how to play it. Anything I do will be very different from how Louis Armstrong played, because I’m not Louis Armstrong, as much as I wish I was. I try to think more about what’s the most honest way for me to play these songs than what’s the modern way to play it. Although I will say that In the process of making the album, we did think about a song like “King Porter Stomp” and tried to figure out what we loved about that song. If we go to Jelly Roll [Morton]’s original version, what do we love so much about it? And then you hear King Oliver play it and need to figure out what you love about what he does with it. And ultimately, with that song, it is the groove. How hard it feels. How much swagger and feeling there is in it. Those are the things that we tried to accentuate in our arrangements and our recording more than trying to make the performance as similar as possible to versions that came before. 

PG: In terms of those older songs, what was your process for selecting them? So, for instance, why “Stardust” instead of another standard?

RM: Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is just personal taste. It also comes from my mentors. Wynton has played “Stardust” often, and his version always made an impression on me growing up. When I got a little older, I heard Louis Armstrong’s version of “Stardust,” and that became one of my north stars for all American music. 

Both “King Porter Stomp” and “Stardust” were vehicles for improvising musicians to express themselves throughout the Twentieth Century; throughout the evolution of this music that I love. I feel honored to get to be a part of that. As a trumpet player, there are a handful of songs- “I Can’t Get Started” is another, where you think of Bunny Berrigan and Dizzy Gillespie- that have a tradition of trumpet players playing them. “King Porter Stomp” has been done by both King Oliver and Ron Miles. So, these songs were in my brain in that way, and it felt very true to my own life to include them. 

PG: In Riley, you also include a version of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess song, “Honey Man,” for which you used Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ version of “Here Come de Honey Man” on Porgy and Bess (Columbia, 1959).

RM: Yes, the lens really came from my personal attachment to the Porgy and Bess album. Including that song was a decision I made very early on just because I was making my first record, and my favorite record of all time is that version of Porgy and Bess. I wanted to find a way to nod to that record, in some way. Gil’s music holds a special place in my heart. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years playing his music and getting to know some of his family through the Gil Evans Project. 

It was also a way to honor a late mentor of mine, the pianist Frank Kimbrough. Frank used to play the song “Honey Man.” Miles and Gil’s version was maybe a minute long – essentially an interlude- and Frank extended it well beyond that short time. I always loved how he played it. So, including the song was a nod to Frank, a nod to my favorite album, and it just felt like it made sense to have it on my first album. 

PG: And on “No More,” you sample an Alan Lomax field holler recording. How did that become a part of the album?

RM: Oh, I fell in love with the original song. I think it was Chris who first introduced me to it. At the time, I was also working with Anna Deavere Smith, who has a deep knowledge of Parchman Farm and the history of Mississippi State Prison, where it was recorded. So, from the get-go, I wanted to investigate that music. And I knew that [vocalist] Vuyo [Sotashe] would be the perfect messenger for this song. Hearing him sing anything is a gift, but hearing him sing that particular song was unlike anything else I had heard before. So we got permission from the Lomax Estate to sample the beat from the original, and then we built the rest of the arrangement around it. 

PG: We’ve discussed your covers on Riley, but your original compositions stand out, too. How much has working with the Westerlies influence your compositional language?

RM: Whenever I’m teaching, I tell students that the only way to get better at composing is to just do it and do it and do it. That is how you figure things out. The Westerlies has been the most constant musical project in my life for the past fifteen years now. There’s barely a day or a week that goes by where I’m not working on some piece of music for that ensemble. So, it’s definitely taught me pretty much everything I know in terms of writing for individuals, in terms of finding my own harmonic voice, finding my own melodic voice, and all that. So, it’s helped a great deal in that regard.

That being said, the type of compositions I was bringing to this record felt like a very exciting departure from the Westerlies where everything is more or less SATB choral, pretty standard, set writing. This record has all kinds of X factors, whether the improvisation of musicians or the studio techniques that we know we wanted to build into the composition. It felt like all of a sudden, I was being thrown into a sandbox that I’d never been in before. It was great fun to try things I’d never done before. 

PG: So, do you think your second album will be a development upon your first or, like Riley, another radical departure from your earlier work?

RM: Great question. I have a couple of different projects floating around for the next record. So, I can’t say for sure where a second album would go. But I will say that we just scratched the surface of this type of exploration of sound. Working with Chris and Rafiq, we’ve got a long way to go. Some of that is evident in Chris’s projects and in Rafiq’s projects. I’ve recorded an album with Rafiq that will be coming out in the future. I can’t say when yet. Chris and Rafiq also have a beautiful new project together that they’ll release soon. We’re all working on these things together, and it’s the various shapes that they come in that will be a surprise to all of us over the years to come.

Catch Riley Mulherkar at the Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 3, 2024. More information on the Festival can be found here. We will be providing live coverage of the event. You can read more about Riley Mulherkar on his website. ‘Riley’ is available on Westerlies Records and can be purchased on Bandcamp.

Photo credit: Zenith Richards