Jacob Garchik: Too Olde To Die Young

Jacob Garchik: Too Olde To Die Young

by Troy Collins

Born in San Francisco, multi-instrumentalist and composer Jacob Garchik relocated to New York in 1994. Working in an array of styles, Garchik is an active member of the Downtown and Brooklyn scene, playing trombone in various groups ranging from jazz to contemporary classical to Balkan brass bands. He has released a half dozen albums as a leader and co-leads Brooklyn’s premiere Mexican brass band, Banda de los Muertos.

As a sideman, Garchik has worked with numerous jazz and avant-garde luminaries, including Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton, and Henry Threadgill, among many others. He has likewise played in ensembles led by upcoming artists like Mary Halvorson, Darcy James Argue, and Dan Weiss. In 2018 he won the Rising Star – Trombone category in the Downbeat Jazz Critic’s Poll. In addition to trombone, he also plays accordion, tenor horn, and tuba.

Since 2006 Garchik has contributed over 115 arrangements and transcriptions for Kronos Quartet of music from all over the world. His arrangements were featured on Floodplain (2009), Rainbow (2010), A Thousand Thoughts (2014), Folk Songs (2017), Ladilikan (2017), Landfall (2018), Placeless (2019) and Long Time Passing (2020). He composed the score for the documentary The Campaign for Kronos in 2013. In 2017 he composed the score for The Green Fog, a found-footage remake of Vertigo, directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, which was performed live by Kronos at its San Francisco Film Festival premiere.

In 2019 Garchik composed Storyteller using the talking, singing, playing, and compositions of Pete Seeger. He has created arrangements for a diverse list of artists, including Anne Sofie von Otter, Rhiannon Giddens, and k.d. lang. Garchik currently teaches Arranging Ensemble at Mannes College in NYC. I interviewed Garchick in the summer of 2025, just after the release of Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time.

* * *

Troy Collins: Some early biographical information might be of interest to readers unfamiliar with your background. How did you get your start playing music?

Jacob Garchik: I grew up in San Francisco. I started piano lessons at age five. My mom is an amateur piano player and plays Joplin, Bach, and Chopin. My parents had a lot of instruments around the house.

I took piano lessons for a few years until my teacher went to nursing school. Then I continued to mess around on the piano, along with harmonica, recorder, and accordion. At age ten I started middle school and picked trombone in middle school band. I was in school band every morning, every day from when I was 10 to 17. I also took private trombone lessons with a classical teacher named Doug Thorley during those seven years. At 13 I joined the San Francisco Youth Orchestra (a very high level Youth Orchestra). Around 11 or 12 I started playing jazz in middle school jazz band with a teacher named Ron Madden, who exposed us 7th-8th graders to free and thematic improvisation, ‘70s Miles Davis, Weather Report, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Steely Dan, and Jimi Hendrix.

In high school, starting at about 14 or so, I took composition classes at the San Francisco Conservatory with Dan Becker, who introduced me to Philip Glass, John Zorn, Ligeti, and Penderecki.

I also began going to summer jazz camps at Stanford and Santa Cruz Jazz Camp, where I worked with teachers like Jimmy Heath, John Clayton, and Wayne Wallace. They introduced me to recordings and tunes by Clifford Brown, Blakey, J.J. Johnson, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and early Miles Davis. I worked on playing small group jazz, standards, 2/5/1s, etc.

When I was 17, I went to Tanglewood for a summer and took a composition course for high school students with Richard Cornell from Boston University. We worked on writing for solo instruments, chamber music, studying scores, and working with performers.

When I was 16 I started playing with a San Francisco-based funk/metal band called Oomamaboomba. The other members were about 10 years older than me. We played at clubs in and around the Bay Area and made a demo tape. We were a minor part of the ‘90s Bay Area scene that included Psychefunkapus, the Limbomaniacs, and then bands that became more famous like Mr Bungle, Primus, and Faith No More.

I also played in a band with some guys from my high school. We played a high school spring festival and covered Anthrax, Stevie Wonder, Sting, and Weather Report.

After high school, in 1994, I moved to NYC to go to Manhattan School of Music and study jazz trombone.

TC: That is an exceptionally well-rounded and all-inclusive music education! I’m only a few years older than you, but do not remember school-age friends being quite so appreciative of so many different styles and genres of music – not even musician friends. Did this make you an outlier among fellow musicians, or were they all of the same mind as you?

JG: In terms of my fellow musicians in high school, we were all sharing a lot of records (tape dubs, mostly) back in those days. So yeah, a lot of us had eclectic tastes. Back in the days before the internet, going to used record stores, and listening to records for hours a day was a good use of your time.

When I got to college, I met a lot of great young musicians who didn’t necessarily know the same stuff I knew, but they were much more knowledgeable about a lot of things I knew very little about, like hip-hop, Sonny Clark, Grant Green, or Phineas Newborn.

TC: Beyond schooling, you’ve been the Kronos Quartet’s principal transcriptionist and arranger since 2006, contributing over a hundred works to their already extensive catalog. How did this long-term association first come about?

JG: I grew up with the daughter of David Harrington, 1st violinist. I met him a few times as a kid. He even said to me once at a school party, “I hear you write music. Got any string quartets?” I was 12.

Much later, when I was 29, I did a double bill playing with Slavic Soul Party opposite Kronos in Prospect Park. I talked to David after the soundcheck about Balkan music and the arrangements I had done for S.S.P. A few weeks later he asked if I wanted to do a transcription of Iranian music for Kronos and that was the beginning.

TC: Since you’ve done an enormous number of transcriptions of folk songs from around the globe for Kronos, I’m wondering about similarities versus differences in various arrangements. A fair amount of folk music can be considered pentatonic in nature and there are obviously a lot of microtonal music cultures, especially in the East, but I was wondering if you can give some concrete examples of surprising commonalities you may have found between seemingly disparate folk musics over the years?

JG: I’ve done a lot of transcriptions of vocalists, especially female vocalists with low voices. Often with a transcription for Kronos I try and give them a lot of information on the page with the pitch contour, so they can really imitate a voice with a distinct singing style on the violin or the viola in an uncanny way. The voice, regardless of country of origin, really does a lot of slipping and sliding, what we would call portamentos. Glissing from note to note. One thing that I’ve encountered again and again is an almost inaudible beginning on a very low note, glissing up to a central pitch. Think Billy Holliday, or Mahalia Jackson, or Tanya Tagaq. It’s very unusual to have that sort of contour written for strings, so when you hear it “translated” it makes your senses tingle a bit.

TC: While we’re on the topic of transposing and arranging, can you talk about your most recent album, Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time? I’m always curious about instrumental music that is based on a narrative and how that story is conveyed without lyrics. And also, the guitars – so many guitars! Care to elaborate on why you chose six guitarists for this particular project?

JG: In both Ye Olde and Ye Olde 2 I wanted to create music that was evocative of a mood but didn’t necessarily closely follow a story. The stories themselves are absurd and make no sense. The music somewhat matches the story being presented but there’s a sort of haze over the fine details.

For Ye Olde 2 the story is in the sci-fi wheelhouse but is pretty light on specifics. Imagine one of these frugally made ‘80s-‘90s TV shows about time travel like Voyagers! or Quantum Leap. The plots are pretty thin to begin with. Then perhaps you are reading the Wikipedia synopsis of the plot. But instead of being written in a matter of fact way, it’s written as a bad poem. That’s sort of what the “plot” of Ye Olde 2 resembles. The listener has to use their imagination to fill in the gaps.

Ye Olde had three guitars because I loved the musical styles of those three people, who all happened to play guitar. Guitar and trombone have a lot of overlap, both in terms of register and in terms of playing the blues. For Ye Olde 2, once I realized it was going to be based on the Omega Point Theory, the resurrection of everyone who ever lived, I knew we had to meet our doppelgängers. This itself struck me as a very Scooby Doo type of plot line. Thus the six guitars.

TC: Other than wanting to evoke an overall mood, are there any specific musical considerations given to your compositions for a project like Ye Olde that connect them to their implied narratives? Are any of the melodies, harmonies, or rhythms transposed from non-musical details of the storylines that can be quantified to a layperson? For example, you mentioned the Omega Point Theory in Ye Olde 2 – other than doubling the number of musicians in the group, are there any other aspects from that theory present in the written (or improvised) music?

JG: Yes, a very obvious one, which is that the first piece, “One Can Only Go Up,” is based on a rising scale and chord progression in the guitars, and the piece that features Simulacrus, “Omega Point,” is based on a falling scale and chord progression in the guitars. Both are sort of in 6/8, although different tempos. They have different moods and forms and musical details. Sort of looking at an AI rendering of a photo of yourself – some broad gestures might be accurate but most of it is different.

TC: You mentioned AI, which is a common topic as of late, and while I’m sure there are more that I’m not aware of, I can only think of a few jazz and/or creative improvising musicians who have written music based on AI at this point: you; Jon Irabagon; and Steve Lehman. That said, what are your thoughts on AI and maybe more specifically, the use of AI in improvised music?

JG: To be clear, I didn’t use AI to make any of my music. I guess you could say the story riffs on the possibility of AI. Although, interestingly, the concept of the Omega Point Theory was created by a Jesuit priest, who saw the super intelligence at the singularity as a manifestation of God, not an artificial intelligence.

As to AI in improv, people will be messing around with the technology that we have, like they always have, and that’s fine with me. But going to hear live improv, and listening to a recording of it, is really an archaic act already, even before we had the possibility to augment with AI. People go or listen because they want to hear or see that human element. Most of the time in music with improvisation the humanity, emotionality, or sloppiness is accentuated compared to, say, pop music. I don’t think anybody wants to go sit in a room and hear a computer improvise at this point. It’s the same problem with watching someone sit in front of a laptop – which might be interesting, but often is a little boring – but magnified. You take the person out of the equation and it’s just a musical self-generating device that someone started long ago. The programmers have made the creative decisions.

If you have a choice between going to a concert hall to see a player piano play flawless Chopin, or seeing Horowitz play Chopin where he makes mistakes, which would you choose? Not only do we choose the flawed human, we pay more for that. It’s deliberately archaic and that’s what we want.

TC: Personally, I wouldn’t describe people wanting to see other people perform music live as archaic – it is, after all a continuum of human existence that connects us to our forebearers. Going to see a “live” performance of pre-recorded music played by a machine is the opposite of that experience. But I digress. Speaking of such topics, in reference to performing live, how do you feel about studio recording compared to live performance and how does that affect your playing in each situation?

JG: I tend to let things get a little more raw during live performance, while in the studio I’m more controlled. I’m pretty comfy in the studio; I like to take advantage of all the bells and whistles if I can. But I definitely feel more inspired at the gigs.

TC: Following a similar line of inquiry, what are your thoughts on the state of the recording industry at large, especially in regard to archival copies (CDs, LPs) versus more ephemeral formats (downloads, streaming)?

JG: I have a big vinyl and CD collection. I also grew up in the age of trading copies of albums on tape, and later, burned CDs. I understand both the desire to collect and to get stuff for free or very little money. The cost of a monthly streaming service is roughly the same as we used to spend on blank tapes or blank CDs to get our monthly jones of new music.

The era when artists made money from CDs or LPs was already pretty much over by the time I started making my own records in the mid-2000s.

So now we have this sad state of affairs ... I guess I am resigned to it. I’m glad some people are still enthusiastic about collecting CDs and LPs. If I had more of a budget for it I would make LPs. Today I listened to three LPs and it is still a glorious experience (akin to what we were talking about with performance – archaic!). I also bought a CD this week of something I couldn’t find on the streaming services. It was used, so in theory the artist got nothing, and would have gotten more if it was streaming. I guess I saved it from a landfill.

All this is to say, I’m not a purist. It’s hard to make money doing this these days, but I’m going to still make physical media out of my love for the medium.

TC: As an old school collector who only listens to CDs and LPs on a stereo system (I don’t stream music at home), but also has no choice but to listen to streaming and downloads through laptop headphones while in the office, I am familiar with both options. Based on how little money artists get from streaming (if any at all), I’d say your used CD purchase was the right choice.

That said, historically, unless you’re a superstar signed to a major label, remuneration from physical media sales has always been difficult at best, with most musicians making the majority of their income from playing live, or teaching, or some other such pursuit. I assume it’s the same for you. How does one get by in today’s economy as an independent musician?

JG: My income is pretty much equal parts performing as a sideman, teaching, and arranging/composing for hire. There’s a wide variety of types of music in each of these. I sub in Broadway’s Hadestown, do arrangements for singer songwriters and cabaret singers, still do arranging for Kronos Quartet, teach arranging at the New School, and then a great variety of creative music performing.

TC: Do you ever feel the need to keep your musical worlds separate? Or is there enough cross-over between your various engagements and skill set that you can do most anything in each setting?

JG: It can be fun to be a little bit of an actor sometimes. So, I might do a Hadestown gig and sort of pretend I’m a bluesy 1950s trombone player for a second. But I might also do a polytonal cadenza at the end that maybe owes more to Stravinsky or something. In my own projects, there is little separation. Ye Olde 2 definitely reflects a lot of influences, including 1950s blues (it’s got a bunch of plunger on “Transcending Time.”) I like to play Mexican banda music with my band Banda de los Muertos, and that crept into some of the writing with my big band project, Clear Line.

TC: I’ve thought about this before, but never had an interviewed musician compare genre-hopping to being an actor – an apt comparison, to be sure. Do you ever perform with musicians that are not comfortable blurring genres or styles the same way you are?

JG: Sure, I guess, sometimes I play with someone who is mostly comfortable in one style ... but most, especially in NYC, are versatile by necessity. Different people have different interests. I always think that musicians were always versatile, whether it was Louis Armstrong playing waltzes and marches on a Mississippi riverboat gig, or Bach writing French and Italian dance suites. That was their version of eclecticism.

TC: What about “inside” versus “outside” playing? I expect most musicians are comfortable playing across multiple genres, but not every musician is willing to play “out.” Do you ever encounter that, or is that not an issue with the circle of artists you find yourself in?

JG: Most people in NYC are willing to get their hands dirty, so to speak. Even if it’s not their bag they will go there on occasion as the music demands.

TC: Going back to the difference between live performance and studio recording, what about a project like Assembly, a Covid-era studio recording that was heavily edited and augmented in the studio afterwards? Did you play any of that material live, and if so, how?

JG: We did do a very successful live version of Assembly, at Barbes back in 2022. We basically had to rearrange some things and rethink others. There were some things that were impossible. The first track, “Collage,” for instance, featured a recording of the entire quintet overlaid with another recording of the same people, for a total of 10 players. In the live version we split the band into 2 + 3 players, and then alternated the roles of each grouping. So, the effect was not quite the same, but similar.

I think of it as similar to a pop group making a record with lots of overdubs of the lead singer and then at a live show having the backup musicians sing some of those parts, even if they can’t cover every single part.

Ye Olde 2 also has some overdubs and studio effects, although not as many or as extreme as Assembly, and we will have to do some judicious rethinking for our upcoming live show on August 29th.

TC: What will the live line-up for Ye Olde 2 be like, and how will you divvy up the overdubbed parts in a live setting?

JG: For our August 29th show, the same line up as the record will be on the gig except for Ava Mendoza who will be replaced by Wendy Eisenberg. The only changes from the record that we will make is “Floating Brain,” which was recorded with three overdubbed versions of “Ye Olde” (nine guitars), will be played live by Ye Olde + Simulacrus (six guitars).

TC: What other musical projects do you have planned for the immediate future?

JG: I’m working on a long stalled solo trombone project. I’ve never done anything completely unaccompanied, and I think it’s a great challenge. Hoping to breathe some new life into that format. I’m also going to busy this fall being a sideman on the road and in NYC with Ethan Iverson, Mary Halvorson, and Miles Okazaki.

> back to contents