Noah Preminger: A Veteran Saxophonist Tackles the Ballad
Boston-based saxophonist Noah Preminger discusses his surprising compositional preferences, his challenging education under Dave Liebman, and why his latest album, ‘Ballads,' might be his most accessible work yet.
Today, the Spotlight shines On renowned saxophonist Noah Preminger.
Boston-based saxophonist Noah Preminger has spent years pushing jazz into new territories before focusing on one of the art form’s most enduring traditions. He’s just released Ballads, a collection that finds this restless musical explorer settling into the quiet power of beautiful melodies.
Noah’s built his reputation on bold musical choices—from stark Delta blues interpretations to intricate duo sessions with bassist Kim Cass. But with this new record, he’s aiming for something different—capturing that feeling when a saxophonist plays “as if it’s their last day on earth,” as he puts it.
Recorded with pristine clarity for the new Chill Tone label, Ballads features Noah alongside pianist Julian Shore, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Allan Mednard, creating music that feels both timeless and deeply personal.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Noah Preminger’s album Ballads)
Dig Deeper
• Purchase Noah Preminger's Ballads from Bandcamp or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice
• Follow Noah Preminger on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
• Dave Liebman
• Godwin Louis
• Noah Preminger & Kim Cass - Thunda + The Dank
• Ches Smith & Shara Lunon: dismantling musical conventions (Spotlight On)
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Lawrence Peryer: I was going to get to it a little later, but you've definitely had your share of great drummers, man, I mean, all great players.
Noah Preminger: Yeah.
Lawrence: Rob Garcia, Matt Wilson early on, like really tastefully assembled ensembles.
Noah: I find that drums are the one instrument that really—I mean, it is the backbone of the group. It can supply the most energy for an ensemble and really boost everybody in the band. So I value the drummer probably the most, and I've been fortunate to play with, either been hired or hired, unbelievable drummers. I mean, I really wish I could have played with Roy Haynes—that was sort of like my number one that I missed out on. Obviously Elvin too, but the older I get, the more I think I love Roy as my number one. I wish I could have played with him. Would obviously love to play with Jack DeJohnette, but those are like the two guys that I really missed out on or haven't played with yet that I would love to, but there's time.
Lawrence: You'll get there.
Noah: Yeah. Time to get there.
Lawrence: Tell me a little bit about studying with Dave Liebman. That's super intriguing. How did that come about? I'd have to imagine like he dropped incredible knowledge on you as a young man. Can you give me the pithy summary of the Dave Liebman impact?
Noah: I have a really fascinating relationship with Dave. He was my teacher between the ages of about 12 and 16—12 and 17, something like that. So I grew up in Connecticut and he was out in Pennsylvania. Well, let me back up for a second. I was introduced to him by my high school band director who was a saxophonist named John Mastroianni, who—I think Obama named him one of the hundred best teachers of the year, one year. He's an incredible teacher and a ridiculous saxophone player, alto player. He does a lot of Broadway show stuff too, but great arranger. I mean, it's stupid that he was teaching at a public high school, although the public high school I went to also birthed Joel Frahm and Brad Mehldau, and a lot of other great players too. For a public high school, it had something in the water. But I think a large part of that was the teachers in the middle school program. I just went there for high school.
Anyway, John Mastroianni was the one who was running that program and introduced me to Liebman. He told me that I should apply for Liebman's summer workshop, where he works with about a dozen sax players of all ages at his house, which used to be in Pennsylvania. And so I met him when I was 12. I went out to do that workshop. He said some unbelievably demoralizing things to me. Very embarrassing in front of everybody. There's been a lot of highs and lows working with him or just having a relationship with him. He's like a kind of a musical father, but like an abusive musical father. (laughter)
Lawrence: Tough love?
Noah: Tough love. Yes, for sure. Also, there's another component there that I'm very confused by. And I don't know what it is, and I haven't gotten to that topic yet in my therapy, but maybe it'll come up at some point when I get past all the other things I need therapy for.
Lawrence: You're working through the list? (laughter)
Noah: Exactly.
Lawrence: I hear you, man.
Noah: It's a dense list. Liebman would have me—he's big on the transcription thing, which is obviously the most important part of being an improviser, how you take other people's information, understand it, and then work through it in a way that you can create your own vocabulary from it. That's something in education that I feel like is really lacking. You get a lot of clones, and there's this final step of the transcription process, which is where you take the information that you've studied, analyzed, really learned, and then you create variations of it to create your own vocabulary. People stop right before that step for whatever reason. Either they're not taught that or whatever it is, or they just really love the person that they're transcribing and they become a clone of that person, which is really common in the history of jazz. You get a ton of clones in any art form, I guess. It's a drag, but some people want to be that, and you can't really judge them for that.
Anyway, so Liebman was instrumental in helping me understand that process of transcription, becoming my own identity on my instrument. A little bit of sound production, but not really. And so what he would have me do is he would say, "Okay, you're going to transcribe this solo—Trane improvising on 'Blues to You.'" So why don't you call me in six weeks when you have some of this done and we'll talk about it. So I would call him in a month and a half and we would have a conversation about it. I would play a little bit over the phone for him of what I had learned. He would have me sing it, he would have me play it by memory. And then after I had gotten through that process on a solo, I would snail mail him my transcription with a paper that I would write on it—like an analysis paper.
So he would have, like if I was doing "Blues to You," which is a blues, he would say, "Okay, I want you to analyze every two chord on the blues and write a paper about it, or write a few paragraphs on what you learned that Trane played on the two chord, and then how he got to the five and how he would resolve to the one, or what do you notice that he does in bar five of the four with the four chord? I want you to analyze that and describe it to me, in a paragraph format, what you learned. Write a paper about it." So he would have me send him these notes or these papers that I would write on transcriptions, and then he would call me when he received it and we would talk about it. And that would be our lesson. And then a number of times I went out to his house and we would hang all day and he would play drums and we would talk and all that. And so that was sort of my education with Liebman, which was really great.
Lawrence: That's heavy. Wow.
Noah: Yeah, it was really great and I had the opportunity to take some lessons with some others too. There's a tenor player named Rick Margitza that I took a lesson with. He lives in Paris now, but he's an unbelievable tenor player. He played with Miles a little bit. I was fortunate to have taken some lessons and checked out a lot of amazing people. And so all of those things have kind of helped me become who I am now.
Lawrence: The more I think about it and the more I sit with it and the more I listen—when I think about people like Liebman or Gary Bartz or Azar Lawrence, like all the post-Coltrane guys, like that initial generation of post-Coltrane guys, you really have to credit the audacity and the strength to pick up that tradition and still find your own voice in the immediate aftermath of Coltrane. Right? I've really come to appreciate, even when there's moments in some of the music that feels Coltrane-esque to me, it's like, well, how could it not? You know, it's kind of like criticizing a mid-sixties rock band for sounding like the Beatles. (laughter)
Like, what are you going to do?
Noah: Right. I mean they were next generation. Brecker. Liebman. These guys were like next generation. It's hard to think about it like that because you see Trane and you put him on a pedestal, which he deserves, because he is the one. And then it's like, these guys were born just like right after that. They were coming up right after that. They were around during that time.
Lawrence: Yeah. It's not baseball where they like retire the instrument. They're not going to be like "no more sax players." (laughter)
Noah: Right. And so it makes sense that they would follow sort of in his footsteps because of how unbelievable he was. And just the level of musicianship then is jaw-dropping to listen to recordings, and then it can take you down a dark path thinking about where we are now musically and what happened back then, 60, 70 years ago, even 50, 40 years ago, and it's like, well, what is happening right now? It's a transition period. I guess it's always a transition period, but it's just interesting to kind of take a step back.
I check out a lot of music. I listen to everything that those end of the year lists recommend. Sometimes I give too much weight to critics, I think, because I don't agree with a lot of this stuff and everybody has their own opinion and whatever, but it's a way—I love those lists because it's a way to just—it's like a dating website. You get the most options.
Lawrence: Yeah. That's right.
Noah: You really get to see what people are recommending and for what reason. And based on the critic's own taste, you get to see like, "Oh, I know this critic. They like some really out stuff. So if I want to get a taste of what's happening this year, I can see what they're checking out," or "This person's real straight, so maybe I'll see what kind of straight-ahead stuff they're doing." I like those lists for that reason and that reason only. I hate competitions and anything like that with arts, but it is a nice way to see what's out there.
Lawrence: Yeah, it's really interesting you go there because, as you might imagine, I get asked to do them. I struggle with whether or not to do them, but ultimately—and I find it incredibly hard because I don't keep notes all year on what I'm listening to, really, because I listen to so much because of this and because of other writing that it goes by so fast, and I metabolize so much and I really struggle with that year-end trope. But similar to you, I enjoy flipping through them because there is such an onslaught of material, and it's like, all right, well at least it's a way in. And I can make some connections, like you said, based on personalities or individuals. Right? But I also get a kick out of being able to shine a light on stuff. So I try to take out the competition part. Like I'll give you a list, but please don't ask me to rank it—that's just insane. But if you want 10 albums that I love this year, okay. That's okay, I suppose. Still, I always struggle with, you know, 11, 12, and 13. But yeah, it's an interesting trope. I get why people like it. I get why it's especially consumable in this day and age. But anything that smells of "let's put artists on the hamster wheel and get them to run fast and see who comes out first," yeah.
Noah: I don't think you could ask a single jazz musician what their top 10 of the year were. Not because they haven't checked them out, but because musicians will tell you, "Well, there aren't 10 that I thought were great." Why do you think that is? Why do you think that critics are able to find 10 or more, each style too, but musicians can't? I bet if you asked every musician you interviewed or that you talked to, what are their five top jazz records of the year, they couldn't name you three. Why do you think that is?
Lawrence: Well, that's a great question. I have a few theories. One, it depends on the artist, but I would say one theory is that I talk to a lot of artists who don't listen as much because they try to be careful about what they take in and don't want to crib or anything like that. I would say I've been surprised that that's been an increasingly minority though. I don't even have a theory as to why that's changed. Maybe because it's easier to listen now.
I would think the bar's higher. You can hear things differently. Right? I would also flip it and say when the critics are asked to do it, there's an element of peacocking. "Look, I know everything about everything." I skip whole categories. Like I just did the Jazz Journalism Association nominations for this year. If I don't have anything to say, I don't say anything. (laughter) Right? I don't go for like, the names I recognize or the ones I'm friendly with. I really try to say, "Well, I don't know anything about vocal jazz. It's just not my bailiwick. So why am I going to pretend to have an opinion?" That's not going to help anybody, right? I don't know how many writers and critics are as well-read and listened as they are in their presentation. I have no doubt that I'm not that diverse. I like more out music. I like weird stuff. I like tradition as well, but I'm in a lane a little bit, and I try to stress test that and push those boundaries, but I also listen to other music. Totally. And so it's like, I don't want to be identified as the guy that knows everything about that. So I'm not really answering your question, but was it loaded? Do you have an answer?
Noah: I don't have an answer. I think you nailed it. But the first thing you said, which is that I think jazz musicians have a high bar and are super critical of everything they're checking out. I can only think of a couple records from the past 20 years that I would put on that super high level that I would recommend to people. Like maybe three or four.
Lawrence: I think it's exciting when one really stands out. That's the other thing, I listen to so much music that I'm like, "Wow, this is really good. I like this music. I'm enjoying this music." But then I hear one that I'm like, "Oh, this is profound."
Noah: Well, let me tell you and your audience what I think, if anybody cares. The records that I think have been unbelievable over the past few years, off the top of my head—which is really, I guess, the way to do it because I shouldn't have to think too much about it.
Steve Lehman has done a couple of records that have him working with a rapper that I think are really awesome. Just really forward-thinking, amazing compositions. The playing is killing on it. Really love those albums. Can't remember what they're called. They have not super memorable names. Or ones that I could pronounce maybe, but...
Lawrence: We'll dig them out and link in the show notes.
Noah: Those are really great. I think he just did a second one that he released in the past couple years. And I'm also working on a rap record right now with an awesome rapper from Connecticut also, and I've been working on it for almost five years now. Hopefully I'll have it done next year. So it's just been fun to listen to what he did with a rapper.
Another one is an alto player named Godwin Louis. He's got a record called Global that he released a couple years ago. And Godwin is—he also is a Connecticut person, actually. He's from, I think, the New Haven area. Godwin is Haitian. I think Godwin's been to every single country in Africa, just on an unbelievable exploration of world music. And you hear it in his writing and in his playing, and it's really—his new record, I think his music has a little bit of a religious component to it, which is not my cup of tea. If that's not your cup of tea either, you can kind of easily separate it. Just don't listen to the words or look at the titles. But musically speaking, it is just really soulful. As an improviser, Godwin is unbelievable. He's a great, unbelievable saxophone player too. Just really—it'll lift your spirits listening to his music.
Another one I'll recommend—I guess this is a third alto player on it, so maybe there's a trend here—is Ches Smith, drummer. He had a record—man, I want to say maybe it's three or four years old now—called, is it We All Break? Is that the name of it? I might be screwing that up. It's got Miguel Zenón on it. Matt Mitchell's on it. Great band. And it's got, I think, actually it might have Haitian percussionists and singers, if I'm getting that correct. Unbelievable playing. Unbelievable compositions. I'm a big Miguel Zenón fan. Actually, I'm going to see him—he's in Boston this Friday playing a concert with one of his groups. I'm going to see him.
Lawrence: Hmm.
Noah: I love his playing and he sounds tremendous on this. So there's three records to check out that are all probably from the last five years.
Lawrence: That's great. Thank you. I love Ches—he's one of those figures that moves between worlds or brings worlds together, and I love that. What you just articulated really speaks to something I wanted to ask you about, which is you move through worlds as well, musical territories, and I think that's relevant to everything we've been talking about because there's this spectrum, right, of orthodoxy, tradition, innovation, how all those things are considered and regarded, how, practically speaking, maybe they impact a player's ability—I don't know if this is the right way to say it, but to focus. How do you think about these journeys? Are they necessary for you as a developing artist? And do you ever feel that they keep you from excelling in one area? I don't know if I'm asking the question well, but I'm curious about that restless nature.
Noah: For me, I need to be really excited about a project to actually pursue it because it's not like we're doing it for the money or fame or even the inkling that our career is going to take off. That's for your twenties to have those dreams and aspirations. You know, when you hit your thirties, it's like, okay, just put your head down and do your work and be excited about the stuff you're doing. Try to wake up every day and look forward to creating something new, or doing something else with your life.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Noah: So for me, the projects that I've pursued, I've done them because I'm stoked to do them. So I got really into some blues musicians, maybe like 15 years ago, and I did a couple records that sort of celebrated blues musicians, especially from Mississippi. One was called Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground. That was a lot of fun for me and I had a great time researching those players, learning about them. I even teach a course about them at the college I teach at.
Another record I did—I did these two records with a bassist named Kim Cass. One is called Thunda and the other one's called The Dank. For those projects, Kim and I, during the pandemic, decided we were both getting into the digital recording sphere of things. And I never knew how to plug in two cables to each other. I never learned any of this stuff that every student learns now. And it always freaked me out. I've always written all my music by hand. It took me years to really even start doing anything in notation software, and I still suck at it. I usually just default to writing by hand too.
For me, learning how to set up a home recording studio was terrifying during the pandemic. It was like, well, what else am I going to really do here? I've watched all the TV shows that I can watch that are out, and it's like, I guess I'm going to do this. Kim was a little bit in the same boat. He was a little more advanced than I was, but we decided that we were going to collaborate on a recording where I would start by sending him a recorded idea and he would take it and do something so jaw-droppingly ridiculous to it that we would be in tears laughing. It was so awesome.
Lawrence: Wow.
Noah: And the goal was to do that back and forth until we finished the piece. And so he would send it back to me. I would just be hysterical laughing in bed, listening to it—he would text me like, "Okay man, it's on its way." And I would gear up for it and listen to it a million times and then get really excited to record my next part for it. And so these pieces just expanded that way. And then we would eventually say, "Okay, this one's done. Let's do the next song." And that was how we did our record called Thunda.
And then we got a grant through New Music USA, which for me—I don't know, I never really get excited anymore about much in music, but that for me was really validating to get that grant after sending them our record in our application for Thunda, because New Music USA, they don't really mess around. It's a lot of newer classical, modern classical music that they fund and some certain jazz stuff. And that's not really been my thing, but it felt good to get that funding. And so that helped us make our next record, called The Dank, which is primarily Kim starting the pieces and sending them to me.
Anyway, it doesn't actually make that big of a difference who started them when, but we switched up the process for that record. And so those records, every day I worked on that and we spent hundreds of hours on them because everything was done at home. We edited them ourselves. I mean, it was a huge labor of love, but it was thrilling to work on it. And almost every project that I've done has been like that, where I've been pretty pumped—unless it's like, "Okay, I'm getting paid. This is a payday to make this record. This is kind of what the label's expecting." That sort of thing. But the records that I've either self-released or whatever, most of the records I've made have been a passion project.
Lawrence: So how does that relate to turning to a ballads album now?
Noah: I made a ballads record years ago, maybe, I guess almost probably eight years now, for a record label that only releases on vinyl. And the band was amazing. It was like my dream ballads band. It was Billy Hart on drums and John Patitucci on bass, and Ben Monder on guitar and myself on tenor. And I was really excited about it until I heard the final version of it and I was like, "There's no way I can let this see the light of day." I hated it that much. I hated my playing. I felt like I really just didn't play my stuff on it. I wasn't happy with the others in particular, the way that they interpreted my music. I wasn't happy with the actual sound quality of it. There wasn't any component that I actually enjoyed. And so I realized, "Okay, this is only going to be out on vinyl. It's a very niche audience. After two years, we get the master and I'll just stick it on the shelf. This is never going to see the light of day." I actually think it has resurfaced on streaming websites, which is a drag, but I wanted to do a ballads record and do it better, basically.
And so I had been introduced to this very new record label called Chill Tone Records. One of the three owners is an unbelievable engineer, like world-renowned engineer, and I had heard some other things that he had recorded, jazz stuff that he had recorded, and I fell in love with the way that he engineers. He does something that I don't hear on a lot of recordings, the quality that they have, which is like, everything is super present, especially the drum set.
And for me, like again, like we were talking about before, drums are one of the more important parts of the ensemble and can really drive the group. And to have this presence of the cymbals and the brush strokes and everything just very present in your ears is really important to me. And there's a lushness that he gets out of the group. And so I thought that it would be perfect to do a ballads record. I pitched it and they were into it.
Their label is a little more on the straight-ahead side of things, the improvisation. I mean, there's not a single bass solo either. There might be one bass solo on the whole record. It's very straight-ahead, which I was cool with. You know, it's funny, I've gotten more compliments for this ballads record than I think any other project that I've ever done, because I think it's just so unbelievably accessible.
Lawrence: Yeah, but it's okay. That's fair. It's certainly not dumbed down in any way—accessible, in this context, is good. I think the engineering actually does add a lot to that. Like you can really hear the—and ballads lend themselves to that, right? You can hear the delicacy, the interplay.
Noah: Oh, it wouldn't work on something that was fast and burning, like one of those kinds of energetic records. It works for this, and I think it works—it's very wet and it has a very reverberant lushness to the sound. People have said that it has an ECM quality, which is not how you hear any other jazz records, really. So it's very different in that regard, and I think it fits the vibe really nicely. And it creates a great ambiance for the record. I'm happy with it. It's definitely a very specific thing, and I'm happy that so many people seem to like it. I mean, I'm happy for the record label if they sell a few more than they normally would.
Lawrence: Tell me a little bit about your original compositions on the record. The titles are pretty evocative, specifically "Unfair World" and "Democracy." I'm curious about how, and if, the titles relate to the music at all, how this sort of threads back to the Meditations on Freedom Project. Clearly as an artist, as a citizen, as somebody moving through the world, you're present in all this, but I'd love to hear you speak to that a little bit.
Noah: I'm careful these days about—and maybe it's because I have a kid or maybe because I had a scare—I had some psychopaths mess with me on the internet. There was a period of time where actually I shut everything down.
Lawrence: Oh, okay.
Noah: Because it was over the pandemic. I had a tour, I think it was 2021, in Europe, and I got really angry and I voiced my anger online. We had a couple concerts in the Netherlands, I think, and the Netherlands said, "We're not going to allow Americans in for this amount of time" because our numbers were really bad. And I said something about COVID and how certain people were making this, were screwing this up for us. Anyway, somebody stalked me and did some really creepy stuff. So I am more careful now, and it probably has to do again with the fact that I have a kid now and I'm protective of my family.
But I think that, yeah, it goes without saying where I'm sort of heading with those topics. I think that that Meditations on Freedom record that I made in 2017 was important for me because it was a conversation starter. It wasn't like a protest record. It was a conversation starter where I could take these topics and I toured around in red states as a way to have conversations about freedoms that I felt like we were in jeopardy of losing. And I thought that was valuable at the time. And maybe it's still valuable. In hindsight, it probably didn't do anything, but it made me feel like I was doing my little part as a musician, which is often hard to feel like we have any purpose in what we're doing in life. I felt like that was valuable for my own sanity, I guess, and if I could help start a conversation somehow, that would be really cool.
So for me, compositionally, I write at the piano, and if I feel like something's not just coming automatically, but I don't have an idea, I'll think about a topic. And I learned that from Fred Hersch. My first gig per se, like in New York City, was Fred hired me to play with his trio plus two band. I think I was subbing for Tony Malaby or something like that at the Jazz Standard in New York City. Fred and I became friendly, and I remember I was playing over at his house one time, his apartment—we were playing duo and he asked me about my writing and if I had written anything lately that I wanted to play with him in this duo format. And I said I was really struggling with some writer's block. Did he have any suggestions? He was telling me about some pieces that he had written and how really kind of lame the topics were, but they really helped just get emotion out of him, so the feeling out of him, and helped with his writing. And I've always used that method to help myself write.
So these pieces, "Democracy" and "Unfair World," there's one called "Pnu" P-N-U—I had pneumonia while I wrote that. It's a stupid title, but it's a great track though. I sat at the piano and I was thinking about how absolutely unfair this world is, every part of it. Relationships, politics, the music industry, all of it. And so that just helped bring out something—a vibe and a melody or an idea. It really helps as a creative person to get things flowing when you are able to bring emotion out in some way. We learn different intervals and chords and progressions and so on can emit these different feelings. And so we try to work with those, and thinking about a particular topic can really help.
Lawrence: Yeah. So almost like a prompt or...
Noah: Exactly.
Lawrence: So it's just something to serve, to open the channel to the creativity when it's a little constricted.
Noah: Yeah. I mean, I have to create a lot and want to create a lot. For me, I would much prefer—I would give up the saxophone any day of the week for the piano. Just the ability to write, like I would be fine not playing the
saxophone ever again if I had to give up writing. Wow. For me, it's just far more rewarding to write music. It's something that you get to live with forever. It's something that I—I mean, I can—I have one song here on my keyboard, on my piano here that I wrote at the end of December that I leave up there because for me it's actually relaxing for me to play through this song that I wrote.
Lawrence: That's a fascinating perspective for somebody who is so committed to improvisational music. You are contributing to the ephemeral nature of the music while being so passionate about the eternal nature of the composition. That's a really fascinating contrast to hear you articulate.
Noah: And what's also really fascinating is I've had a couple students lately—so I teach at a college and they're all graduate students, and then I get randomly, I give musicians that contact me and want like either a one-off lesson or a couple lessons here or there. And the past month I've had two unbelievably talented saxophone players. Actually one sax, sorry, one sax player and one pianist come to me for like a one-off lesson. And for my one-off lessons, we usually hang for like a few hours. Usually when somebody comes to me, I say, "Okay, can you send me some recordings that you've made recently and can you also send me some of your compositions so I can check out how you write? So we can maybe talk about that if you want."
I asked both of them to send me their compositions and I got very just weird texts back from both of them saying like, "Well, I haven't really written anything recently that I really want to show to you." And, "Okay, whatever. We don't have to talk about it."
So on both of these calls, they both admitted that they don't really write like ever and that they're not comfortable with it. And one of them even went as far as to say, "I don't know if it's really important to me to write." So we had a long conversation about it.
Also, I got a review on the ballads record and I got an email from one of the critics. I thanked the critic and in a response he sent me a long message saying, "This is some unsolicited advice or just a comment, but actually, my one gripe with your ballads record is that you recorded too many originals on it. Like in the sort of lineage of players playing ballads, they tend to be all covers of standards."
He actually wrote an article about improvising musicians playing original music and the debate on whether or not they should play less original music and just cover more songs so we can hear what their interpretations are. I thought it was fascinating actually, because things change. Just because I believe that composition is an integral part to an artist's work doesn't mean that that's what everybody thinks, or that it could change entirely in the next few decades, and maybe it is changing actually right now. You still don't get a lot of people, like new organizations—you don't get a lot of them that are recording. It's more like an online presence thing, YouTube videos and that kind of stuff.
And so it's like, "Okay, well is that where we're heading still?" It's been like that since the early 2000s. A lot of the younger players—I think of one—what's that kid's name? Immanuel Wilkins? I think he's on Blue Note. I think he's only made two records, maybe, I don't know, one or two records. I've only, there's only one that I've been able to check out. Maybe there's a second, I'm not sure. But he's like a Blue Note artist, tours with—he works with everybody, highly regarded as like the next coming of Jesus or something, you know? It's like, well, he hasn't really made that many statements on record of his own, so maybe it's not that important for people anymore. And there's a number of players like him that I feel like don't have a lot of recorded material. And so maybe it is just a—the times are changing, which is fine too. It is what it is.
Lawrence: Yeah. There's so much that you've said there that is triggering me.
Noah: Sorry.
Lawrence: No, no, no. I mean, I hope that I get to speak with you again over time, but if I ever send you notes on one of your releases, unsolicited, I beg you to firmly tell me to go fuck myself. (laughter)
Noah: Yeah, actually for some reason it didn't totally bother me and maybe I'm just getting—maybe, I don't know. I think it—that probably would've bothered me at one point. I don't know. For some reason it didn't bother me.
Lawrence: It's age, right? Maybe, and maybe it's the spirit within which it was offered, but yeah, it's very funny that, you know, there is a bit of a trope that every critic is a frustrated producer. I could definitely see that reflected there. The other thing too is like to talk to you about standing on tradition doesn't seem like that's that productive. (laughter)
Noah: Funny you say that. So I used to have a friend, his name was Jimmy Katz. He is a jazz photographer. It's probably how he is most well known. In his previous life, he was an extreme skier and I used to be way into skiing, growing up. And so we bonded on a number of different topics. Jimmy engineered like five of my records. Excellent engineer and I think he even has a record label now and he got funding to put out records. We don't talk anymore, but when we used to be really close, he one day said to me like, "You are sort of in this one category, Noah. Like just being a super kind of straight-ahead player. I don't really see that for you. Like I think that you have a lot more to offer in various styles of jazz. Like you have a lot of modern stuff that you can play. How come nobody sees you as that? They see you as more of a straight player?"
Lawrence: Wow.
Noah: I never really considered that. So he actually challenged me to make a record that sounded more modern. And it was this record called, I think it was this record called Contentment that I made for SteepleChase, which ironically is a straight-ahead label. I wonder—it was either SteepleChase or Genuinity, the label.
Now, I can't remember—one of those two records. He challenged me to basically make a modern-sounding record. And I don't know if I actually succeeded in that, but it is funny, how people are perceived. And also if somebody hears you in New York City—like I don't live in New York anymore, but just as a New York player. If somebody hears you one time, they may not hear you for another decade, but they will always think of you as whatever they heard you as that night. And so you're screwed if they hear you play straight ahead, like play a bunch of tunes or some stuff kind of in a straight-ahead way. And then for the next decade, 20 years, whatever it is, that might be who you are to that person. And then they tell somebody else. Somebody says, "Well, hey, have you heard Noah?" And the guy goes, "Oh yeah, he's a straight player. I don't think you'd be right for your gig," or, "I don't think you would like it," or, "That's not really my thing." I don't know, whatever. So it's sort of like a weird sort of game that we have to play. Which also helps putting a lot of music out. And I don't know if anybody hears it, but it's a way for people to see where you are. And that's what we love about the history of jazz—most of it's recorded and so we get to hear where Miles was every year, or where Trane was, or Freddie Hubbard, or where these people were every single year of their lives.
Lawrence: I think about that a lot. I talk to a lot of artists about that, those Coltrane European tours, especially that Autumn '61 tour with Dolphy after the Village Vanguard, and they went over to Europe and so many of those shows survive as radio recordings. And to have that music is such—you know, even though it's all these little weird labels that are putting it out and it's, I'm sure it drives the estates insane, I don't think you can underestimate the good it's done for the esteem of that era of music. In my mind as a listener, there's music before November 1961 and after, and that music—I cherish it so much.
Something else that strikes me about what you were saying is you do create so much music. I mean, your discography just sort of is—it's an explosion of music. And as somebody who's so committed to composition, I struggled to even conjure an image of what your days must be like. Do you write constantly?
Noah: So I actually don't. I like to spend as much time away from music as possible. And I've always sort of been like that. I have a hard time living in my career all the time. Obviously, like anybody in a creative field has to be obsessive about what they do to get it to a certain level—and at the top of any field, but really with the creatives, you have to be a certain kind of psycho, you know, a certain kind of nuts and just really think about what you're doing all the time.
My fingers are always moving because I'm always playing lines through my head and fingering through whatever ideas there are—totally subconscious. And so I think that helps me stay away from the saxophone. I haven't touched my saxophone at home probably in almost 20 years. And so for me, when I play, I've been really fortunate. In Boston—I live between Providence, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts, and I've had a gig—I've lived in Boston now for about 12 years. Again, I lived here for college years ago, but I've had, for almost 12 years now, a steady gig every Friday and Saturday night at a jazz club called Wally's.
I did the first seven years with a trumpet player named Jason Palmer, and he left town and I kind of took over and have done about the last five-ish, four or five years as the leader. And that has given me the ability to play twice a week in front of a really amazing, energetic audience and play original music. And so that allows me to not have to play at home all the time because I'm already practicing by being on the bandstand.
I like to work on deadline, so I was saying before I'm working on a rap record. That's the only—and those two records I did with Kim, Thunda and The Dank—those are the only projects I've done where I've done it sort of leisurely, which is also a very nice way to do it because you're not pressuring yourself to get it done. Every other project I've done for record labels and so on, I usually have a strict deadline and I make sure that I am really organized and have a plan for the compositions.
Actually, I don't have a record that I'm working on right now other than the rap record. Just thinking like—well, the ballads record, since we're talking about the ballads record, I actually had to come up with that material really quickly because there was a short turnaround for the release. So I think there was like a three-month compositional period where I needed to come up with all the music in a three-month span. And so I really sat down with my calendar and I wrote in the certain days that I was going to write and made sure that I had at least two or three hours on those specific days to sit at the piano and create. That sort of pressure and deadline making really helps me. It just helps me with my process.
Lawrence: Do you record all those Friday and Saturday sessions? Like are they training material for you?
Noah: Not only do I have them recorded, but I have video of every single Wally's gig I've ever done. Wow. I live almost an hour away from the gig, about 45, 50 minutes. So every night after the gig, I listen back immediately. Like I get in the car and I listen to the gig, and I actually do that with every gig I do. I listen back immediately after—like I'll go back to my hotel room or I'll go back home or whatever, and I'll listen either that night or the next day to the gig.
And I encourage all my students to record and listen. I think it's—the tape don't lie. And so for the past five, 10 years, I've been focused almost exclusively on articulation and time feel. That's been my primary focus, and so I listen really almost exclusively to those components of my playing and how my articulation lines up with the drummer's ride cymbal and the beat of the bass player. There's something specific I'm kind of looking for, and I want to see if I'm doing it on the gig. And I also want to see how that makes me feel when it is right and when it's not right in my head and what sort of tension or release that creates for me as the listener. So yeah, it's a learning experience every time I listen to myself, which I do every week, every time I play.
Lawrence: Yeah, that's interesting. I really relate to that. I was always that person when I was playing—I always endeavored to record everything. Always enjoyed going back and listening to it. That resonates deeply for me.
Something that doesn't resonate, which is really—I want to go back before I let you go. When you were saying that you would trade the saxophone for piano, I played piano and I've always had the opposite feeling. When people have said, "Oh, what other instruments do you wish you could play?" I'd say, "Well, the saxophone, of course." And I was really inspired not only because I love the saxophone and I love—some of my favorite musicians are sax players. But I remember a quote once from Sonny Sharrock, and he talked about how much he hated playing the guitar and that he only played guitar because he had asthma and couldn't play the saxophone.
Noah: Yeah.
Lawrence: And couldn't play the saxophone. And he would talk about how the intimate—like the saxophone is the breath and it's the life force. And that always—the profundity of that really pulled me over whether he meant it or not, and I suspect he did. But whether he meant it or not, I never cared. Like it's such a great—it's a great pithy statement, but it's such a powerful instrument.
Noah: Every instrumentalist, I think, has an opinion about the instrument they play and what else they wish they would have played. I would've loved to have played guitar. In hindsight now, I mean, I've tried—I have an acoustic guitar right here, and as I—
Lawrence: Same with me. (laughter) Like five chords, and I've always had one and I've never gotten anywhere with it.
Noah: I took a couple lessons and I'm like, "Fuck this." My hands just—I have arthritis in my hands. I just can't do it. And I wish—
Lawrence: I hate the learning curve with it. Fucking hate the learning curve.
Noah: It's brutal. You know, it's just so foreign to piano and saxophone. But I love playing piano. I'm not a great piano player, but I can get through it and I can write on it just well enough. And so for me, yeah, I just love—it's just so relaxing for me to sit at the piano. It's just—there's something I get that I don't get out of saxophone.
Lawrence: Before I let you go, let me ask, and I'm sorry, I'm not familiar enough with all 20-plus records plus all your sessions to know.
Noah: It's okay.
Lawrence: Have you played piano on recording or live?
Noah: No. No, and I wouldn't. No. Oh, actually, well, on the rap record, I play everything. I do play piano on this rap record, but it's not a live recording. It's—I'm playing through a bunch of synthesizers and—
Lawrence: It's not your interpretations of Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner? (laughter)
Noah: Not close. So, no, I mean, I do play, I guess I play it on that, but that doesn't really count. No. Just saxophone and flute and clarinet on the recordings.
Noah Preminger
Musician / Composer / Educator / Dad
Of Boston-based saxophonist Noah Preminger, The New York Times declares: “Mr. Preminger designs
a different kind of sound for each note, an individual destiny and story.” Preminger, 39 years old and
two-time winner of Downbeat Magazine’s Rising Star Best Tenor Saxophonist, has recorded over
twenty critically acclaimed albums as a band-leader. Preminger has released multiple new
recordings, including Meditations On Freedom (Dry Bridge), released on Inauguration Day, 2017, as a
musical protest at ominous political developments in America. In addition, a duo album recorded in
Jordan Hall with pianist, Frank Carlberg, and a Preminger Plays Preminger album – the music of Otto
Preminger’s films – on French, vinyl-only label, Newvelle Records. In 2018, Preminger and co-leader,
Rob Garcia, created the Dead Composers Club and released The Chopin Project (BJU), the first of the
quartet’s planned examinations of deceased composer’s oeuvre. Their second recording, Hildegard
Project (BJU). featuring music of the prolific 11th century composer, Hildegard von Bingen, was
released in 2024. In 2019, Preminger released two new recordings: After Life (Criss Cross), a
collaboration with poet Ruth Lepson, and Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert (Dry Bridge), an exciting,
new avenue for Preminger that features electrifying electronic/acoustic music. In 2020, Preminger
released a Quartet recording, Contemptment (SteepleChase), and in 2021 he released THUNDA (Dry
Bridge) with bassist, Kim Cass. In 2022, Preminger released his 3rd album for Criss Cross Re…
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