The New York based pianist Craig Taborn is playing at De Doelen (Rotterdam) this friday. We at Jazz International Rotterdam had the chance to quickly ask this great musician some questions while on tour. ‘My biggest dream is to participate in a truly universal creative music community.’

1. What projects are you working on at the moment?

‘At the present I have an ongoing quartet with Dave King, Chris Speed, and Chris Lightcap that is influenced by Sub Ra, The Zombies, Duke Ellington and ambient music. I also have an all synth band with Matt Mitchell bad Ches Smith and am also working on solo electronic pieces for live performance. And I continue to develop music for piano solo and trio.’

2. We are looking forward to your solo-concert at the Doelen. If you compose a solo piece, is the writing much different than composing for trio? In what way?

‘For solo piano the question becomes more of how to achieve orchestral complexity with only one instrument so the challenge for me is equally one of conception (keeping many parts in mind) and technique (trying to render them in a performance). Also the question of the actual instrument (the piano in which I am playing) weighs heavily in the compositions. Some things just do not work on certain pianos.’

3. What’s your biggest dream in music?

‘I would say my biggest dream is to participate in a truly universal creative music community in the world so there is a wealth and diversity of approaches to making art with sound. Things have already been moving in this direction and very much hope they continue but also hope that local and regional approaches are able to keep their unique identity in the face of the uniformity that can come with Internet globalization which is a mixed blessing.’