Benjamin Koppel plays jazz with a novelist's narrative

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Benjamin Koppel: Hello there!

LP: Benjamin, hello! We did it! We did it!

Benjamin Koppel: I'm sorry about that mess last time. I was so ready, but you would think that now, by now, almost 50 years old, I was able to navigate in different time zones, but apparently not.

LP: Nobody said there'd be math in podcasting.

Benjamin Koppel: Not exactly. I'm really sorry, but I'm here. I'm ready for it.

LP: Great. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for making time twice.

Benjamin Koppel: Of course. Thank you for your patience. And thank you for not just erasing me off your friends list.

LP: Well, you know, I was going to, but then I listened to the album, and I said, I have to make an exception here. It's such a great album.

Benjamin Koppel: Fantastic. Thanks. I really appreciate it.

LP: Yeah, unfortunately, I'm probably going to kiss up to you a little bit as we talk here because there are some things about the record that are just so phenomenal. But one of the things that really stood out for me was there was a video online that you guys had of a live performance from, I think, May of a little snippet of "Precipice." Something that struck me was how happy the three of you looked. You could see the movement in your body. And just the sort of surrender to the music.

Benjamin Koppel: we definitely do. We love playing with each other, but more than that, we are very close friends, all three of us. And that emerges in the music. I know it does. Music is about love and sharing, and we have a lot of love for one another. Our families know each other, and there's a lot of love between our families. It's a family situation much more than a professional situation. So we enjoy being together, and we enjoy making music, and we have this very profound idea of it's a collective, any which way we look at it, it's a collective, and no one is ever taking the lead.

We are much about just giving space and letting the music lead us, which is why sometimes it's also difficult for us to actually make decisions because who's supposed to take charge? We're all open and flexible towards each other. The solution often lies within the music itself. If we just let it lead the way, then we have the solution. So it's a real democracy. It's a real collective, both on and off stage.

LP: It's very interesting that that's immediately where you go because I've spoken to many artists actually in the last year or so on both sides of the Atlantic who have been very much involved, either explicitly using the term collective in their ensemble name or describing what they do as a collective. And I haven't analyzed it enough to say there's a trend, except to say anecdotally, it stands out for me as something that seems to be recurring lately amongst instrumental music ensembles. What is that from your perspective of the leaderless collective as opposed to the Koppel Trio?

Benjamin Koppel: First of all, we, we began playing with this collective 11 or 12 years ago or something; it's not a new thing or idea. It's just something that we do and want to do. And even if we have breaks or we have a year that we're not going to tour because of our busy schedules, this will always be an entity, a unit that we know we will come back to.

The reason for that is both within the fact that we are so good friends and we have this close connectedness, we have a very deep friendship, but also in, in terms of music, because we really love all three of us to explore what this leaderless music can evolve into. I've made a lot of albums where I've come up with the idea and the concept, and I've written all the music and arranged and curated the band, the group or whatever, I'm producing it, I'm mixing it, all that.

And that's a whole other approach. That could come from an idea I'm in the midst of finishing an album that I've been recording with Randy Brecker and Ferenc Nemeth and which comes from an idea of depicting the similarities between World War I and the war in Ukraine, which is on so many levels the same shit. War is, regardless of age or time, the suffering is the same. I saw a picture of trenches from World War I, which was so horrifying and terrible and heartbreaking. And then another picture from trenches in Ukraine. They were almost alike, and it was super scary and terrible and made me think of what war is and what it does to us and how it's the same and was the same even a thousand years ago.

It's all about making other people suffer. I put that into music. I wrote music, I found lyrics, and a Danish poet and wrote them. So I had a total concept, a fixed concept that I got excellent musicians to help me explore. So that was like really me taking leadership or charge within a project.

I do that a lot of times, but with this trio, it's the opposite. It's all about what we don't play. It's all about in our trio, giving space to the best idea or the best ideas. and doing as little as possible because, in that way, the three of us can create something that is probably, hopefully, bigger than just the sum of the three of us, if that makes sense.

LP: Yeah, of course. Could you give me a little bit of context or background on your relationship history with each of your partners in the collective?

Benjamin Koppel: I got to know pianist Kenny Werner in probably 2005 or six, almost 20 years ago now. Instantly, we became very good friends off and on stage both musically and Personally, and in 2009, I began having my own jazz festival annually in Denmark in Copenhagen. And by 2010, it was two times a year. At this festival, I always brought in Kenny, and we thought up a lot of different music collaborations and situations, brought in different people, and put them together.

We've been curating more than a hundred different setups, settings, and concepts we've been playing with. Everyone from Julian Lage to Lee Konitz, a lot of different people. Randy Brecker, Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Bobby Watson, and a lot of different wonderful guys. Ron Miles, Ian Lee, Daniel Lemire, Miroslav Vitouš. We brought in different of our collaborators and friends and musical liaisons, and we put them together from almost. In the first or the second festival program, Kenny brought in Scott. He was, he kept saying, "You got to meet Scott. You will love him. He will love you. You will have a very special connection. We're going to bring in Scott." And so we brought in Scott probably in 2009, and we did become instant friends, and we did bond musically right away. And it was just like we had been playing for ages.

The first gig we played was actually Quintet with me and Kenny and Scott, and John Abercrombie, and Al Foster, which was a great setting, and we had, I don't know, four or five nights or something. It was amazing, and we had great fun, but what really came out of it, besides us having fun and making great music, there might even be a recording somewhere. It was a friendship that Scott and I developed right away.

After the last concert, we were like, almost simultaneously saying to the other, we need to play some more. And so we did, and maybe it was in 2011, we played a quintet with me, Scott, Kenny, and Randy and Brian. We had, again, four or five nights or something like that. And out of that quintet situation, it was actually Scott who suggested that we should explore the trio sound because we had such a good connection.

Actually, we had a sound check. Kenny and Randy Breger were late. So we just began playing trio on the soundcheck, and we had so much fun. And then Scott suggested, Hey, we need to do this some more. And we did. And we recorded our first album in New York in Sears Sound Studio, probably in, I don't know, 2012, 2013, something like that.

LP: One of the things that you brought up that I wanted to get into was that lineage and the interest in the pianoless trio, the saxophone trio. You have a track on the album that references Sy Johnson, and then the addition of Brian as the drummer, like the freedom that must come from not only The saxophone trio but the feel of a drummer like that, it's really stunning, the platform that provides.

Benjamin Koppel: Brian is an amazing musician, as is Scott. I feel very privileged, honored, and humble about the fact that I get to make music with these guys, but even more, I get to call them my very dear friends because it is so important that we have this connection outside of the music. We stay at each other's houses once in a while. With my whole family, we stayed at both Brian's place in Louisiana and Scott's place a few times in New York as well, and the family knows each other. It's a deep thing that goes beyond the music, but for the pianoless trio, regarding that, it gives so much freedom, so much space.

We play in the realm of jazz. Definitely, the great trio recordings, of course, Sonny Rollins, Village Vanguard, or Joe Henderson's trio — there are a lot of amazing trios in the history of jazz, which we all love. But when we play, we draw evenly as much on other musical references or musical loves.

I've been playing once with Brian in the church where he was brought up. And he was brought up on gospel music and religious music, which is a great part of my upbringing as well, was Black American religious music, gospel. I was singing all the time when I was a kid. Golden Gate Quartet was my favorite. Also, there was Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, and Blind Willie Johnson.

We have a lot of different references that go much beyond jazz, which we use instantly and instinctively when we play together, which makes it so much fun and so easy to develop new threads, really, because We don't have to be limited to some perception of what jazz is or what jazz can be, or we don't feel restricted in any way. We just play music together.

LP: With Brian in particular, it's very interesting that the first time I saw him perform live was actually not in a jazz setting. I saw him with Emmylou Harris in Nashville. In that context, you get the same perspective on him, but just from a slightly different point of view, which is he brings that same feel and the way he moves the music. I was going to use the word propels, but that's not really what he does. It's more like martial arts and the shifting of the energy. (laughter)

Benjamin Koppel: The thing about Brian and Scott is that they are never pretending. They never pretend to do something that they don't mean. They're always in my perception of what they're doing and bring to a musical setting, and they always come with the most sincere and beautiful honesty, which makes everything possible.

The honesty is very central to what they do because the honesty of their musical spirits, so to speak, is prevalent all the time. It's right there. My father's a musician as well, and he has a friend from when they were teenagers. And he, when I was a kid, this friend, Jens, is a very good electric bass player. He always told me when I was a kid that if you hear a musician or a singer that really touches you, look for his soul. And if you can see his soul or her soul when they are playing, then it's there. And with Brian and Scott, you can see their souls when they're playing. It's all about honesty and love for the music and for the setting. And a lot of it's represented or manifest in the physicality. You can tell that there's no restraint. There's a full commitment.

And also they have a lot of courage. They don't get restricted by things that might not be successful when we aim at a tone, a phrase, a comment, or an idea. They always dive into it with utmost sincerity and a really strong presence of courage. That is rare because a lot of people are afraid in all circumstances of life to show their weaknesses or get their ass on the line, basically. And these guys, they do it with every note counts, and they aim for it. And if it doesn't go there, you go somewhere else because they have this courage, and I admire them deeply both.

It's such a joy making music with these guys because we have so much in common, and we have so much respect for each other and so much love that we can do anything with this trio. And at the same time, it's never about any of us. When we play, it's never about me. It's never about Brian. It's never about Scott. Never, ever. There's this lack of ego and lack of self-consciousness, which is something that I really enjoy. It's quite special. But this trio for us, a lot of other settings have it, and people discover it and experience it in a lot of different environments, but it's never about us. And that makes it so special and valid and lasting. And I know this will be a lasting friendship. No one will ever try to push it in the direction that the others would feel uncomfortable with.

LP: In a setting like that, how do you align around repertoire? Like, how does decision-making in general happen?

Benjamin Koppel: We all bring music to the trio when we get together for a new tour or a new recording. We all bring music; some of it is thoroughly composed, some of it is half-baked, and we develop it together. Some of it we even develop on the spot. When we do an album, we have a new track that we always invent in the studio.

So we all bring ideas and music for it, for the trio. For the first album, Brian, for instance, brought in a traditional "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," which was inspired by Nina Simone's version of that particular song, which is not jazz. It's not, but we don't have to label it. It was just a beautiful melody, and it suited the trio perfectly. We also at some time, at some point, played a Jim Morrison/Doors song that Brian brought to the group. I brought a Prince song at some point. So we bring in different things. I wrote a fugue inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's fugues, which is on the first album, which is weird for the setting but suited perfectly.

So everyone brings ideas and songs. The indecision of a true democracy comes for us when we play live because we have to make a setlist before we go on stage, and it was all like, "Does anyone have any ideas?" And I was like, "I'll defer to you guys." And then, at the end, somebody picks one. "How about starting with this? And yesterday, we did this, so let's do this tonight."

LP: Is there more recorded than you use, or is the program of music determined once you start rolling tape?

Benjamin Koppel: We do have a few things that we didn't use. We probably discarded one or two songs when we did the sequence. Because we felt that the sequence we chose was the right one and we didn't need more music than that.

It was what we wanted to say in this particular release. There were a few more tracks that we didn't use. But when we get into the studio, we usually have a good time for it because We can make a different version, but not necessarily a better than the first one. And sometimes we do a second version, and sometimes we go with that, with the first one, and have lunch, and then we take another song. This trio is a lot about the spur of the moment. If we had recorded the album two days later, it would have sounded different. It's very much about creating in the moment. Spontaneous combustion.

LP: Is the challenge of coordinating your availability the biggest limiter on exploring this trio?

Benjamin Koppel: Totally. (laughter) Totally, because it's terrible. And we're working on it. We've had at least one yearly gig together — one tour since probably 2011 or 2012 or something. We try to aim at that, but that's a difficult thing. Also, because I'm in Europe, they're in America, and they're not even in the same part of America. All three of us are really busy with a lot of things. So that's definitely the biggest restriction factor.

LP: Something that really stands out also is how while it might be different types of music, the three of you are all involved not only in a quantity of projects, but you really do seem to put a lot of intentionality into exploring settings, configurations, stylistic approaches, that appears to be another intangible element that the three of you share, is it, maybe it's a curiosity or a wanderlust for exploration?

Benjamin Koppel: It totally is. We're curious about music. For us, there's no goal. It's all about the process. The more that we are within the process, the more we thrive as musicians as persons, and the more we can get together in settings with one another or with other good friends. That's where we really thrive artistically and where we can develop all the ideas that each one of us has because we do have a lot of musical lust and interest and eagerness to explore where music could take us. And hopefully, we can take the music as well.

LP: Do you create in any other forms outside of music? Do you paint? Do you do film? Do you have any other avenues for expression?

Benjamin Koppel: I released my first novel last year in Danish, which actually has become like a big bestseller in Denmark. It's great. I just actually got a message tonight that they are putting the 10th printing. So it's the best-selling debut novel of Danish literature ever. So yes, I have this other outlet as well, which took everyone, especially me, by surprise.

I wrote it because I felt I had to write it. I had this idea, this urge to do it. I always wrote a lot when I was a kid. Actually, before I began playing saxophone, I wanted to be a writer, but then music took over for real when I was about 13, and I released my debut album when I was 18. That put my writing career on hold for three years.

LP: Does narrative make its way into your music?

Benjamin Koppel: Definitely. I think there are different ways, but for instance, with the project, I told you about earlier, which is really about war and suffering and what war does to humanity and the traumas that become intergenerational traumas and all that. That kind of a story. It's a fixed narrative that tells a story, which I feel is important. Hopefully, someone else will feel it's important as well.

With our trio, the narrative is much more abstract in the sense there's no storyline. But there is much more a concept of providing, of giving, of offering—with the fear of sounding new age-like—our love for music to whoever wants to listen to it in the hope that it might resonate with somebody. It's a much more abstract narrative, and I really love both ways because wherever the music takes us, that's where it makes sense.

With my novel, I also released an album. I composed nine songs that depict another side of the story that I wrote, which is a story that is based on my grandfather's kid sister's life, which was quite extraordinary. It's a fictionalized version of her life. But I wrote nine songs, which were released in connection with the novel, the songs that the Danish singer Cæcilie Norby sang, and actually Kenny Werner and Peter Erskine were on this album as well. But there was a strict narrative about grandfather's little sister's life. There was a storyline. It was a life explored artistically but with a very strong narrative. So that's, again, a whole other way. It's a true life, lived life, which came into music and then came into a novel. So, I do love different ways of doing it. Almost every project has its own narrative, its own way of being framed and setting a setting for the music.

LP: It sounds not quite analogous but a bit adjacent to the concept of program music. I've been preoccupied with the notion lately because I've been reading a lot about Liszt.

Benjamin Koppel: Oh! Beautiful.

LP: So that's top of mind as you talk about that.

Benjamin Koppel: Totally, but sometimes it, it has to be like program music because the music demands it, or the story demands it. And sometimes, we'd go completely other ways. So, I never restricted myself to enjoying one or two or three kinds of music. My grandfather was a classical pianist. He told me there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. You have to decide for yourself what has resonance in you, what tells you a story, what makes you feel good, what makes you cry, or what makes you feel numb, discouraged, or uninterested. Find your own way, find out what are the two kinds of music for you. I'm eternally grateful for that advice, and, as I mentioned, I listened to a lot of soul music, gospel music when I was a kid and a lot of classical music. My grandfather was a pen-friend of Bartok, speaking of classical composers.

I've always been listening to a lot of music, and jazz was one of the kinds of music that came into my life. I only really listened to jazz when I was 12 or 13. When I began playing saxophone, I suddenly became super interested in saxophonists, and I found the LPs with Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Charlie Parker, and Earl Bostic. Those were the first four heroes, and then it just blew from there.

LP: You like very muscular saxophonists.

Benjamin Koppel: Yeah, is Hodges muscular? Probably. But in the most beautiful … (pauses)

LP: Elegant. An elegance.

Benjamin Koppel: Elegant, yeah, exactly. And then after that, Rollins became my big hero, and then was Coltrane, Ornette, and then I discovered Paquito D'Rivera.

When I was 17 years old, I went to a concert featuring Paquito D'Rivera, and actually, I knew his name because my father had all the LPs with Irakere, the Cuban group he was in with Arturo Sandoval, and all that. I went to a concert with Paquito, and I was blown away by his expression and his joy, the way that he almost catapulted music joy out of his horns. And I approached him, my, my girlfriend said, you got to go up there, talk to him. I was scared to speak to him. I was a redheaded, four-eyed, Copenhagen teenage musician wannabe. And he was such a nice man. And he gave me his number and said, "If you're in New York, look me up. I would be happy to help you."

And so I went to New York when I was 19 years old. And I stayed there for eight months or something. I took private lessons with Paquito, except he told me he couldn't even teach me anything, but he wanted to play duets with me. So that was the lesson, which was the best lesson ever, playing Bach duets and all kinds of duets with Paquito.

So, there's so much good music. It would be such a shame to be limited to only some of the music due to a misunderstood snobbery of which etiquette, label, or genre is more valuable than another. I love all kinds of music. If speaking of Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton is one of my biggest heroes. I love country music. I love Elton John and Rod Stewart, Prince, and Michael Jackson. There's so much good music out there. And I'm just thankful that I get to enjoy and discover so much of the music as a music lover.

LP: That mode of thinking about the music that's good for you and the music that you don't, the good and bad music or the two types. It does such a great job of obliterating that arbitrary nature of genre because we often talk to people who say, Oh yeah, I like all kinds of music, but I don't like opera.

Benjamin Koppel: Exactly!

LP: They don't know if they like opera. They don't like the idea of the genre, but they might like one opera a lot, and that's enough.

Benjamin Koppel: It's the same with food. "I don't like vegetables." And you can't say that you know what I mean?

LP: Every vegetable? (laughter)

Benjamin Koppel: Yeah, exactly. You have to open your heart and your mind. Otherwise, you steal something from yourself, a great potential for growing as a person, because that's what good art does to us. We grow every time we experience art that talks and speaks to us. And the more, the merrier, so to speak. So, for that reason, I've always been super curious about all kinds of music: Arabian music, classical, modern music, ancient music, whatever. And I've been fortunate enough to play with a lot of different musicians, like the State Ensemble from Java. I made albums with Jewish Klezmer musicians, Arab musicians, Cuban musicians, African musicians, and a lot of different vibes, tonalities, and musical languages that have invited me in. I had to hang on the best I could, which is a great privilege because I've been fortunate enough to learn from so many different people, so many different approaches, and actually also getting to know it from the inside.

LP: It's also fun when you can embark on that exploration, and you start to find the similarities. It's like, oh, you find this melodic similarity or this rhythm that repeats itself. It's in African music. And then all of a sudden, you find it in Indigenous Australia, or It's just that's so exciting and fun.

Benjamin Koppel: That's super interesting. As human beings, sometimes we forget, both as individuals and as a society, that there is so much more that unites us than divides us. And that goes for music as well. If we dare to open our hearts and our minds to music that we don't understand when first listening to or experiencing it, we will most certainly be rewarded. So again, if somebody claims they don't like opera, Then see another opera or a third opera and open your heart and your mind to it, and you will be richly rewarded.

LP: You've alluded to something hard not to bring up when speaking with you, which is your family context and the various, not just musicians, but artists in your family tree. And a lot of the biographical information about you basically refers back to your grandfather as the more modern first person of your family who's noted as a musician. But do you have a family history or knowledge of your family's involvement in the arts predating that?

Benjamin Koppel: No. (laughs) That would be the short answer. There might have been. I know that the grandmother of my grandfather was illiterate. She didn't read. She was a Polish Jew, part of Poland. I was there the other day to see if there was anything left in that little village where my great-grandfather fled from in 1906. And there was, which was super interesting. But I know that the grandmother of my grandfather sang a lot, and she was out of an old Jewish folk singing tradition where the stories or the legends were sung to the next generation.

So I know she sang a lot, but we only had a little knowledge of art being a branch of work before my grandfather and, actually, his mother, who is my great-grandmother, and his father as well. They had been tailors for centuries, for generations. My great-grandmother, in 1906, knew about the great Jewish musicians Heifetz & Rubinstein, people like that, and she knew they were making a lot of money, traveling the world, being famous, and being able to send money back to their moms. So she wanted her yet unborn child to be a pianist. She took the savings that they had. They had very little savings in 1907 when she became pregnant. They were living with apparently three other families in a one-room apartment. And she didn't use the savings to move to another place with more space. She used the money to buy a little piano for the unborn child, who became my grandfather, who became a pianist.

LP: That's incredible.

Benjamin Koppel: That's a family legend anyway, and it's probably true, or it's exaggerated, but it's a good story.

LP: It's a great story. Let's not debunk it. (laughter)

Benjamin Koppel: No. And my grandfather's memoir is called From a Home with Piano. And he tells that story in his memoirs. So it's probably true.

LP: How does coming from a multi-generation line of musicians... how does it manifest things like drive or ambition or even competition for you? Is there any of that in your makeup or your psyche?

Benjamin Koppel: I don't know. First and foremost, what we have been blessed with is the love for music and the curiosity about music. I started playing drums when I was five or six years old, and I took piano lessons with my grandfather when I was nine, and he told me, "Benjamin, music is the funniest thing in the world, so take it seriously." And that was a really good piece of advice. So, if you want to do something, take it seriously, practice, become better, and go into new corners of what your capability is. I knew music, I knew sounds, I knew to explore what the instrument can take seriously, then it'll become even more fun. And he was so right. So I never felt anything besides support in choosing a line of work, which is financially insecure, but never any pressure of becoming a musician.

I have an older sister who's not a musician, but she's an illustrator and makes animated movies and art movies by hand. She's really fantastic, Sarah, but she's not a musician, and there was never like a pressure that everyone was supposed to be a musician at all. But from very early on, we got to know what music was able to give, and we got to know the joys and wonders of music. And those keys to those doors, we were handed from very early on.

I was on tour with my father, and also, actually, my mother was an actor and a touring actress, but I was touring with my father with his band when I was two years old. I slept on the stage and the carpets that his Hammond organ was wrapped in during transport. So I slept on the stage while he was playing. I never saw my parents work. I always saw them having fun. They were playing, and there's this dual sense of the verb to play. You can play music, but you can always also play a game. It's fun. And that's what I saw my parents do. They were playing all the time.

They never 'worked.' For that reason, from very early on, we all became super interested in music and being part of that playfulness and that space of love and joy, which music really can be. And for the same reason, none of us have formal education. We all did something else.

LP: I'm curious about some of the other side of that, which is being involved with the business part of your life. Having a record label and having Koppel as a 21st-century working artist, there's the necessity of understanding your business and participating. But what does the business side, like, how do you think about it? Is it something you do begrudgingly, or are you an excited participant?

Benjamin Koppel: I initiated my record company (Cowbell Music) as a record company in 1999. So, before the millennium, I released six, seven, or eight albums by the time I was 25. But I had so many more ideas of projects that I wanted to do, and I recorded a lot of projects. And then this label of awesome, they said, you are allowed to release one album a year. And I was like, "Dude, I have ten ideas every year." So, if I had all these ideas, I would be constipated. The label thought the business line would be one album a year. That's it. And I felt like this is not right for me because I thrive on productivity. I get all these ideas musically or also with other kinds of projects, but mainly musical. And if I don't fulfill them or get them released, they'll take up space in my mind or my creativity, and they will become a well of frustration. If it didn't come out, I had to have more freedom to do what I wanted and when I wanted to do it. So, I initiated my own record label when I was 25. Suddenly, I could do whatever I wanted artistically and release whatever I wanted when I wanted.

I've had a few years in my lifetime where I released six albums in one year. I did that three times, and I have very different albums that I'm super proud of. One year was, I made an album with Charlie Mariano, and I made another album, completely other music with Miroslav Vitouš, and that freedom was given to me due to the fact that I suddenly had a label that was my own, where I could actually make the decisions and be able to continue having that freedom of doing, make my projects, my ideas come true.

I had to have an understanding of the finances of the business, as you call it because otherwise, everything would run dry pretty fast. And in the beginning, there wasn't money for a layout. So, I had to learn how to sit with InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator programs. And I made the first like 10, 15 releases we did. I made the covers myself because we didn't have money for a real layout. So I learned all those different aspects of it. And it was super fun. And then, when things improved, I focused my time and my concentration on what seemed to me to be the most important parts of all this: namely, the music and the artistic content. I've had employees ever since 1999. I started with a part-time employee and developed from there. Now we have a small group of four and a half people beside me who are doing all the stuff, which is great. We have very nice offices in the basement of our house here in Copenhagen.

So that's where they are. So we have a lot of interaction because I'm in the house, I'm composing or walking dogs, talking on the phone or playing saxophone or whatever, having rehearsals in this living room, but they're downstairs working on the projects. So they come up, I go down, we have really a good dynamic in that respect.

But also, I got to know all of the different business aspects of what a label is, how to get your things into distribution, how to keep a budget, all those kinds of. Low practical stuff that needs to be done if you want to have that freedom to do whatever you want to do whenever. And that's what I really was aimed at because I have always had all these ideas.

And now I've released Perspective if you count that as me co-leading it. I probably released 60 albums as a leader or co-leader. That could only happen because I have had my own company, my own productivity space, where I could call the shots, throw the ideas on the table, and then get somebody to run with it.

I've been very fortunate in that respect. And it's always a challenge financially and in all kinds of different ways. But it's been an amazing ride journey because it gave me so much freedom to pursue all these different music collaborations that are now on the shelf and have been forming my musical life for the last 45 years.

LP: Are you on every Cowbell release?

Benjamin Koppel: Probably almost. (laughter) We did. We have released around a hundred albums now, and I'm probably on 50 of them or something.

LP: So you will put out other artists projects?

Benjamin Koppel: Yeah, we have done that, but always people in the vicinity of my family or our family, either by blood or by music. For instance, my uncle—I call him my uncle—Danish drum legend Alex Riehl, who is now 83 years old, played with all the great American stars in the 50s, like Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Ben Webster, Bill Evans, and Dizzy. He was the house drummer of the legendary Danish jazz club Jazzhus Montmartre. So he played with everybody, recorded with everybody. And he's my uncle because he was in my father's very successful beat rock band in the 60s, The Savage Rose. Alex played the drums; it wasn't jazz again, another vibe of music. So he's known me ever since I was born, as he's a very close friend of my father, and I've been playing with him ever since I began playing professionally. And we put out a number of his records without me, for instance, a couple of albums with him and Jerry Bergonzi and a trio album with him and Kenny Werner and Pierre Boussaguet.

So we do all this stuff as well. We like it to be in the vicinity of the family or the broader family, not owned by blood but by music.

LP: It's really fascinating, Benjamin, the space that you occupy, not only creatively, but in the context of the music lineage. You talked earlier about the Joe Henderson Trio, but you also played with Al Foster. So there's all these connections in your musical universe, in your musical family, as you refer to it. It's an amazing place to sit and to look out, look backward and forward, and think about where the music's going.

Benjamin Koppel: I'm super privileged. I'm the luckiest man alive. By the fact of geographical coincidence, being born in this part of the world makes me 1 percent of the most fortunate people in the world. And then being able to explore and make a living of what you love and your hobby, that makes me 1 percent of 1 percent or even more. So I'm the luckiest person alive, the most fortunate person alive. And with that comes also, For me, an obligation to both take it seriously and do something with it, but also an obligation to take notice of and take part in helping less fortunate people have decent lives.

I've been taking quite a lot of part in the whole political debate around refugees in Denmark because I believe we are so fortunate and rich that, from my point of view, we need to do as much as we can and even more, for instance, to help refugees. And because people are trying to save their lives by fleeing from their countries without anything from wars put on them by dreadful dictators or despots like Putin, Assad, and what have you. For that reason, I feel so privileged, and I have to be aware that all my privileges don't mean I only have to be concerned with myself and my own well-being or my nearest family's well-being. That attitude disgusts me. I feel that I'm obliged to do something to try to help people who are much less fortunate than I am.

LP: It was something that you're saying is touching on something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and all this discussion of how technology and AI and etcetera are going to start to impact the creative fields and the industries around creativity. And I'm slowly developing a thesis that the role of the artist is actually going to become only more important as all these things happen because there will be one more need for authenticity and human connection, but also that empathetic point of view that you're talking about, that even if a machine can create aesthetically pleasing things, and the algorithm gets very good, that it will miss that spark of empathy, that extra piece that the artist does to contribute to our culture and our society.

Benjamin Koppel: I Totally agree. Also, there's a quote from Baudelaire, which I probably won't quote correctly, and not especially not in English, but "The perfect seems cold and excluding." What we look for as human beings is imperfections, small holes, and small cuts or fragments that don't really knit together. And within the imperfection, there lies the beauty. It's the essence of the quote. It's much more poetic in his words, but I think AI will never be able to take those musical chances; they won't be able to display that musical courage that we talked about earlier, which also gives us, as artists, opportunities to fail once in a while. And within those failures, that's where we become human. That's where we can relate with other humans. You're totally right. We will become even more dependent on the prism of artists, the way they look at the world, and get into their optics. Also, we face quite a lot of big challenges as humanity does.

We have more and more dreadful, power-seeking, horrifying despots around the world, but we also face climate change, which is super real and right here, and it's much more powerful and has much larger consequences than we have ever thought of. Still, we need to grasp the seriousness of it, and we still have governance delaying restrictions on this and that, such as on gasoline or clothing companies that pollute or new buildings. We throw a lot of good resources away by tearing all buildings down to build new ones—all those things. And we need to get much closer to the fear, which, again, is what artists can tell us. We can know about our fear, we can learn that we're not alone with that fear, and maybe, that's my hope, get a sense of togetherness, unity, that might overcome some of those really big challenges that we face.

LP: Benjamin, thank you. It's been so wonderful talking with you.

Benjamin Koppel: Oh, likewise.