The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and pianist Andy Milne, who’s known as a solo artist as well as leader of the ensemble Dapp Theory. His new album Time Will Tell, which features his Unison trio, including bassist John Hébert and drummer Clarence Penn, will be released 26 April. Links to purchase the album, and to Milne’s website, can be found at the bottom of this article.

Andy Milne is the kind of artist who spins upheavals – good or ill – into gold. A life-changing cancer diagnosis didn’t drag Milne into the doldrums for good; he made an inspired album in 2020’s The reMISSION, and ended up beating the bastard.

Now, with the same trio comprised of John Hébert and Clarence Penn, Milne has once again responded to a mind-bending circumstance with his creative guns blazing.

This circumstance, however, wasn’t the negative kind; far from it. Rather, the adopted Milne finally learned who his biological mother is, and met her. It was a watershed life event of profound and bittersweet joy. (Plus, he got two heretofore-unknown cousins out of the deal, and he’s also very close with them.)

“I felt an extreme sense of good fortune that this happened at the time of my life when it did, because I was prepared for it,” Milne tells UK Jazz News. “And then, for it to have this sort of outcome.”

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There’s good fortune aplenty for us, too. Milne and co. have transmuted this once-in-a-lifetime event into sparkling, bubbly art, with his searching, iridescent piano at the forefront. Milne talks about the making of Time Will Tell below.

UK Jazz News: In the press bio, you stress that Time Will Tell “shouldn’t be taken as a pound-for-pound account of these experiences,” as “the journey inspired and informed [your] process.” That being established, how did said journey seep into the raw musical components?

Andy Milne: I’ve been doing a lot of writing for films over the last few years. Whether a piece of music is designed to be contrarian to the drama or narrative, or to amplify it, there’s this frame-for-frame type of relationship that can sometimes happen. And other times, it’s like a summary of something.

That’s what I mean by ‘pound for pound,’ because [this album] doesn’t necessarily chronicle in such a neat or linear way. If I write a piece of music, it’s really drawing on a feeling that I didn’t have words for.

This experience that I had is taking me back to being an infant. As an infant, you don’t have language in the same adult sense that you have now. So, music, for me, is actually far more conversant in the methodology of expressing an emotion.

When you’re writing for a film, the composer’s not talking to the audience with language. They’re talking with an emotional sensation; they’re talking with this sort of emotional trajectory. For me, that’s kind of the way it played out.

UKJN: Tell me about your musical chemistry with John Hébert and Clarence Penn.

AM: It started with John, because I played in his band for a number of years before I started this group. And then, we tried out a few different things with different people.

But Clarence is just somebody whose playing I always really dug, listening to him with other artists, and seeing how he always elevated those playing situations. So, it was a real treat to be able to say, “Hey, do you want to do this?” Because we’ve known each other for a long time.

The first gig we played had quite a special chemistry, without really tinkering with it. It was based upon the common language we share: both of them are hyper in tune with texture and sound, as am I. So, it became an easy place to connect.

UKJN: Where are you at with that mind-blowing family discovery? How do you feel it might affect your artistry from here on out?

AM: Well, it’ll affect me as a person for the rest of my life. It answers questions that I didn’t necessarily even have.

I had stopped thinking about it for a long time, because it was something I looked into when I was a younger man. I reached a point where I was like, I don’t really think I can let this have a certain power over me. So I had moved on.

When I did meet my birth mother – and, of course, now I have a very close relationship with two birth cousins that are very close to my age – it was cathartic. It completed a circle for me. It definitely still has a lot of questions around it – a “Where do we go from here?” kind of thing.

But I got very lucky, and I feel a huge sense of gratitude around having this kind of bonus family. Because things like this can be very problematic, and just disruptive, because there’s a lot of secrecy around things like that.

Families can have apprehension around things that involve picking holes in the past. So, I just lucked out in terms of the people that I made contact with, and have been building relationships with over the last couple of years.

LINKS:

Purchase Time Will Tell

Andy Milne’s website