Thumbscrew: First Decade

Thumbscrew: First Decade

by Troy Collins

The collective trio Thumbscrew is comprised of bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and guitarist Mary Halvorson, who are marking their 10th year working together. Thumbscrew’s first gig was on March 11, 2012; since then, the all-star trio has performed at jazz and new music festivals around the world, while taking up residencies at a variety of high-profile venues. Celebrating this anniversary is Multicolored Midnight, the group’s seventh album for Cuneiform Records since 2014. These efforts have consistently received notable acclaim, as have the individual members themselves, who have been cited in numerous Best of the Year lists for Musicians, Rising Star Artists, and Rising Star Ensembles.

At age 10, Thumbscrew has attained an impressive legacy supported by an intricate web of interrelationships, since each player also leads other bands using Thumbscrew as a rhythm section. The trio is the foundation for Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, the large ensemble documented on 2016’s The Distance (ECM) and Formanek joined Halvorson on Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up’s third release, the 2015 album After All Is Said (482 Music). Halvorson’s song-based band Code Girl also features Thumbscrew in a supporting role.

Spotlighting the trio’s skillful, near-clairvoyant interplay, Multicolored Midnight features 11 distinctive originals that veer from intricate compositions to unfettered improvisations, exploring every nuanced variation in between. Breaking new ground, the date features Formanek’s first us of electronic effects with contrabass and now fully incorporates Fujiwara’s burgeoning vibraphone stylings, a luminous addition to the band’s color palette the was briefly included as part of 2020’s celebration of Anthony Braxton’s 75th birthday, The Anthony Braxton Project.

Like all of Thumbscrew’s albums (except for its debut), Multicolored Midnight grew out of a residency at City of Asylum, a Pittsburgh program founded as a refuge for writers in exile. Since expanding its reach to include musicians, City of Asylum has become a key part of Thumbscrew’s working process, allowing the bandmembers greater time to focus on creating new music undisturbed by the distractions of everyday life. In tandem with the release of Multicolored Midnight, I interviewed Thumbscrew during the fall of 2022.

City of Asylum:

Troy Collins: Thumbscrew’s residencies at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum have been pivotal in the creation of all but the first of the trio’s seven albums. Since City of Asylum has historically been considered a writer’s retreat (founded to host exiled writers), how did you find out about it and discover that it could also be used by musicians?

Mary Halvorson: Until 2014 I had never heard of City of Asylum. I knew nothing about the organization, and had barely spent any time in Pittsburgh, aside from the occasional gig. Then I met the City of Asylum co-founders Henry Reese and Diane Samuels when they came to a performance I did at Le Poisson Rouge in New York and introduced themselves. Henry told me about the organization and floated the idea of doing a residency there. Although City of Asylum’s mission is centered around providing asylum to exiled writers, there is also a musical component, stemming from their love of music, creativity and free expression of all kinds. For example, Oliver Lake has a longstanding relationship with City of Asylum, and has been a regular visitor over the years, collaborating with poets and doing his own projects. City of Asylum also has a Jazz Poetry Month each year which features musicians and poets from around the world, and they host a regular concert series year-round, with both local and out of town bands.

Henry and I discussed what a musical residency at CoA would look like. I told him that it is not uncommon for musicians to do solitary artist residencies, but there seem to be very few opportunities for entire bands to do residencies. That was a concept I was interested in, as daily life in NYC makes it difficult to have uninterrupted and regular time to workshop music as a group. I suggested we do the residency with Thumbscrew, so that Michael, Tomas, and I could spend time living in Pittsburgh and developing our new music without the distractions of our daily lives.

It was a fairly new idea for all involved, and we didn’t really know what to expect. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we pretty much instantaneously fell in love with City of Asylum and all the people involved, their mission, and the Northside of Pittsburgh (the community as a whole). We ended up enjoying the first residency (in 2015) so much that we’ve gone back once every two years since then. And I do believe that Thumbscrew would not be where we are as a group without the opportunities we’ve had to focus and develop our music there over the past seven years.

TC: Since City of Asylum was originally founded as a writer’s retreat, how does the setting affect the collaborative nature of a band working together, as opposed to individuals working in isolation, as a writer might?

Michael Formanek: City of Asylum is, in a sense, a writer’s retreat, but it’s much more than that. It is a place that promotes, respects, and supports artistic freedom and freedom of expression in all forms. We have interacted with many of the writers, as Thumbscrew and individually, during our residencies but also when we come to play at Alphabet City with other groups. Even though many of the writers come from very difficult circumstances and often don’t speak English as their primary language, they seem to want to be part of the community of other people in the City of Asylum orbit. So, during our residencies we keep a very regular rehearsal schedule, and the rest of our time is spent doing a lot of different things, sometimes together, some separately and some with other people in and around that community.

TC: Have any of you done residencies before, and if so, did you have any expectations going into City of Asylum? In the same line of thought, was there anything surprising about working in that environment that you didn’t expect?

MF: We’ve never done a residency as a group, and of the artists I know that have done them this seems like a very different situation. There are generally not other musicians there doing residencies, except in some cases where one of the artists is a musician in addition to whatever other disciplines they practice. My only previous experience with artist residencies was more like, here’s a mix of writers, composers, and visual artists who are together in one place for a relatively short time. There may or may not be a central “meeting place” which could be the dining hall, or drinks in the living room in the evening. Here the writers are usually long-term residents, and we are the much shorter-term transients who have to make the effort to connect with the others that are essentially living there. Oftentimes they will reach out to us, or we attend readings and performances of theirs while we’re there. All of this was a bit foreign to us when we did our first residency there in 2015 but now seems completely normal. We’ve always been included and made to feel welcome there so whatever adjustments we needed to make were easy for us.

TC: How long have the residencies at City of Asylum lasted and has their duration influenced the sort of work the trio typically produces?

Tomas Fujiwara: The residencies are always around a month, give or take. We’ve realized how much we can get done during that time, and so we often think ambitiously in terms of: (1) working on music for multiple albums – Ours and Theirs were developed during one residency, as were The Anthony Braxton Project and Never Is Enough; (2) adding and incorporating new elements to the group sound such as vibraphone, electric bass, and effects/loops for both electric and double bass; (3) workshopping more material than we end up using or recording; and (4) working on multiple arrangements/approaches to compositions.

TC: Now that you’ve had a number of residencies at City of Asylum, do you typically go in with a plan ahead of time, or do you workshop ideas while you’re all there together?

TF: Both. We all bring new compositions that we begin rehearsing immediately. We’ve had a lot of discussions in advance of the residency, so we know what material we’ll be working on and what kind of album(s) we’ll be making at the end of the residency. We also bring in stuff that might be a little less fully developed, and work on the final versions/arrangements while there. With The Anthony Braxton Project and Theirs material, we went through a lot of different compositions before deciding on the ones we’d focus on and, in the case of Anthony Braxton’s music, we spent a lot of time with the composition and performance notes as well.

Multicolored Midnight:

TC: The new album features an increased use of additional tone colors, primarily Tomas’ use of vibraphone. Interestingly, the vibraphone is not overdubbed alongside trap set, thus providing a realistic representation of what the band would sound like playing this material live. Assuming this was a conscious decision, what led to the greater inclusion of vibraphone?

MF: I’m sure Tomas will want to talk about this, but I’ll put in my two cents as well. When Tomas started using the vibes with Thumbscrew on the Braxton project it was clearly an either/or situation that would be performable live, in the right situations. From what I can remember we never really even considered having them there using overdubs. When we decided to use them in the 2021-2022 music, we all discussed it and decided that we would each compose a piece for the guitar/bass/vibes instrumentation. It really opens a very different pallet of sonic colors and possibilities. We look forward to being able to incorporate them into live performances as well whenever that option is made available to us.

TC: Speaking of new tone colors, although Michael used electric bass on the prior Thumbscrew album, Never Is Enough, the new album features the first use of electronic effects on the acoustic double bass on a Thumbscrew session, in the song “Fidgety.” What precipitated that change?

MF: Over the past several years I’ve been experimenting more with electronics in general, and have been particularly interested in finding ways to use effects on the acoustic bass that achieve certain goals: (1) to have high enough fidelity so as to allow both the unprocessed and processed sounds come through clearly and with as full a sound as possible; (2) to have the ability to be controlled with a control voltage or expression foot pedal; (3) find effects that work with the frequencies of the bass and that have parameters that can be altered after the original note has been attacked, or while being sustained with the bow. I’ve been using some of these live with Thumbscrew, as well as in solo performances, and also used them extensively on electric bass and acoustic double bass in a cooperative new project I’m in called Location, Location, Location with guitarist Anthony Pirog and drummer/percussionist, Mike Pride. “Fidgety” was composed with that particular reverse delay effect in mind.

TC: As with prior Thumbscrew albums, Multicolored Midnight features a fairly equal balance of tunes written by each member of the trio. Since the trio is a collaborative effort, are there any “ground rules” you follow to ensure that each member of the group is represented equally, both in terms of writing and performing?

MH: I think that’s happened pretty naturally, and I can’t recall us ever talking about it, beyond initially saying “let’s all bring compositions to this band.” We aren’t concerned with exactly how many compositions there are per band member per album. Sometimes one of us might bring three, somebody else four, someone else five. But in general, it’s been pretty balanced, and we are all aware of making sure everyone in the group is represented in terms of compositional and improvisational voices. It’s always felt to me like the three of us are on the same page in general and are equally invested in developing the band and making things happen. So there hasn’t been a need to discuss it much. Plus, I don’t think any of us like rules!

TC: In a similar line of thought, Mary’s “Swirling Lives,” from Multicolored Midnight, features a melodic motif that each player improvises on at one point or another. How often is equally featuring all of you as soloists in a particular piece a compositional concern?

MH: I do think about featuring all three musicians, but I think about it more in terms of variety in an overall set of music in performance, or within an entire album, and less in terms of what’s happening during each specific composition. In other words, a meta-balance as opposed to a balance within each tune. Some compositions may feature one of us improvising more than others. Some tunes may be more heavily composed and have less “solos.” And some are left up to chance or might have more collective sections. When I’m composing, I often think about what feels missing in terms of the entire set of music. Maybe we have a lot of up-tempo tunes and I want to create a ballad, or maybe something rubato. Or maybe I feel there’s a bunch of freer stuff and I’d like to include something that has us improvising on a form. Things like that.

With the specific piece you mentioned, “Swirling Lives,” there is a fixed solo section for all three of us at different points in the tune. And each solo section happens in a different way. Mine starts out over a form with changes. Tomas’ starts out over a repeated vamp. And Michael’s solo happens over a new chord sequence with chords split between vibes and guitar. All the sections are related, but different types of improvisation are used in order to give a feeling of a gradual morphing or development.

TC: Beyond its evocative title and incorporation of moody ballads, how do you feel Multicolored Midnight compares to Thumbscrew’s other releases? Do you feel there are specific qualities to each of your albums that distinguishes them from one another?

TF: It’s tough to compare. They all feel very connected and part of the process of experiencing things both as individuals and as a band, and of having a chemistry and trust that grows over time. Since each of us is composing on our own before the rehearsal process begins, the compositions reflect how we were expressing ourselves creatively and our individual headspace and thought process at that particular moment. How that translates to the recorded music is about the rehearsal and performance time we’ve shared beforehand and the balance of spontaneity and arrangement in the recording session. I think each album has taken a step further in terms of developing a personal band sound, a language that we share within the band, our trust in one another to take more and more risks and push ourselves within the music, and our ability as a unit to take any particular piece and go anywhere with it. I think all of that applies to our 5 albums of originals, as well as Theirs (music by other composers) and The Anthony Braxton Project (all music by Anthony Braxton).

Collaboration:

TC: Since Thumbscrew is a collaborative, and assuming you’ve all worked in other collective ensembles, have you brought along any lessons learned from those communal experiences to Thumbscrew?

MH: Collective bands, when they work well, can be a really beautiful thing. In my experience, they can also be tricky. Occasionally you’ll get into a situation where it’s sort of a collective band, but there is also sort of a bandleader. Those situations can get very murky, and don’t tend to last. In my opinion it’s always important to be very clear about what exactly the band is, and it should be one or the other. There’s no template for any of this stuff, so clarity becomes all the more important.

Another tricky situation is when a band is clearly presented as a collective, but one person gets stuck doing all the “work” (and there’s always plenty of work to be done). Finding a collective where there’s a reasonably equal balance of investment in the music and all of the stuff that goes along with it isn’t easy. But when people work well together and strike a balance it can be great, and when a collective takes on a life of its own, as I believe Thumbscrew has, there’s something very special in that.

TC: Outside of Thumbscrew, you all work with other bandleaders as sidemen in different ensembles – sometimes together in varied configurations. For example, Mary and Tomas have worked together in Taylor Ho Bynum’s Sextet, Tomeka Reid’s Quartet, The Out Louds, Illegal Crowns, and Living By Lanterns, among others. Mary and Michael have performed with Susan Alcorn’s Quintet, while Michael and Tomas are the rhythm section for Marty Ehrlich’s Trio, and all three of you have been members of Ben Goldberg’s Quintet. With so many different permutations, do you find there are any particular challenges with working in so many unique settings? Do you ever find that one approach or technique works with one ensemble that might not in another?

TF: I think we’re all pretty good at having a balance between seeing what each band and book of music needs from us, while also staying true to a personal approach to and voice within the music. We’re also fortunate that all of the bands you listed have musicians that want to play with us because of who we are and what we do, and not simply fill a role as “drummer,” for example. There are definitely approaches that work better for some music or musicians than others, but I would say that’s not even a conscious decision. It’s just something your ears tell you as you go along and as you take a step back from the ensemble and the sound and see what you can add. I think having an overlap with Mary and/or Michael in another playing situation is always a positive for me, because we have a lot of trust and comfort playing together, and also flexibility in approach and directions we can take the music.

TC: In addition to working together in various line-ups, each member has used Thumbscrew as a rhythm section in one of your larger ensembles (Halvorson’s Code Girl; Fujiwara’s The Hook Up; and Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus). Are there any unique challenges using this specific line-up as a rhythm section in such varied settings?

MH: I can’t think of any way in which I find it a challenge, but I do see it as an advantage. In Code Girl, part of the reason I chose to have a rhythm section of Tomas and Michael is that I was exploring new territory (writing for a singer for the first time) and I wanted a really solid foundation. Having the rhythm section be made up of people I already know well and trust, both musically and personally, allowed me to take more risks. Also, when initially conceiving of the band I was already hearing their voices in the music (all the easier to envision since we’ve worked together so much). And because we know each other so well, they understand what I’m trying to do without much explanation.

TC: When writing for Thumbscrew, do any of you ever adapt compositions written for your other ensembles, or do you each only write specific pieces for Thumbscrew?

TF: We’re writing music specifically for Thumbscrew. I’m sure there are times for all three of us when we have sketches or ideas floating around in our head, and we start to hear them as something for us to play, but none of us are looking through our old tunes and arranging one for the trio – at least as far as I know! Early on, I wanted to play a composition of Michael’s that I had heard him play with his quartet, so he brought it into a Thumbscrew rehearsal. We played it on a gig or two, but it was clear that our focus from the beginning was to play Thumbscrew-specific compositions, so I wrote “Cheap Knock Off” and we started playing that instead. It’s been nice to add music from Theirs and The Anthony Braxton Project to our repertoire, because that music allows us to put on a different arranger/interpreter hat both individually and as a band.

TC: Thumbscrew definitely falls under Ellington’s “beyond category,” although in practice, with its reliance on improvisation, the trio has more in common with a jazz combo than say a rock band or classical ensemble. That said, and assuming one’s interpretation of “jazz” is fairly open, are there any aspects of the jazz tradition that Thumbscrew embraces, or finds constraining and actively avoids?

MF: I feel that Thumbscrew has embraced just about every musical zone that an improvisation centered group can without ever sounding like any other group. I’m very proud of that, and I think we all feel the same way. All of those labels are meaningless to me beyond their convenience in helping to describe different ways of creating and performing music. I think we’re all jazz musicians, because that is where our ways of doing things are most rooted. We may play music that sounds very different from a lot of jazz, but when we compose, rehearse, record, and perform our music we go about it all more like a jazz group than any other type of ensemble. We listen and react to things and adjust what we play based on what we hear. We listen very closely to all of our time feels, dynamics, intensities, control, or chaos. None of these elements are set in stone, even after rehearsing a piece multiple times as we do during our residencies. I don’t think that we actively avoid anything as long as we can keep pushing ourselves to keep the music growing.

Recording and Touring:

TC: All of Thumbscrew’s releases have been studio recordings. Has there ever been any discussion about recording a live album?

MH: Actually, for our album Never is Enough, we needed a fourth “side” to complete the double vinyl, and so we added a few live tracks from a set we did at The Carousel in Austin, Texas back in 2019. Those tracks are only available on the vinyl version of the album – a bonus for those who purchase the vinyl. However, we haven’t discussed doing a full live album yet. It doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility, and in general I think we’re open to just about anything. When you release multiple albums with the same band, it’s always a creative challenge to find new ways to make each album unique.

TC: What about collaborating with guest artists on an album? Plenty of well-established bands have recorded sessions where each cut features a different guest artist, like say, What We Live’s Fo(u)r, for example.

MF: We’ve discussed this possibility and it might happen at some point. I think we’d all agree that it would have to be for the right reasons. I’ve seen that as a pattern with some groups that sometimes makes perfect sense and others not so much. When I had a residency at the Stone in New York in 2018 we did a Thumbscrew and Reeds night with Time Berne, Oscar Noriega, and Peter Formanek as guests. I rearranged a few Thumbscrew tunes and we had a really great gig. We also did a Thumbscrew with guest improvisers at Duende in Oakland a few years earlier that was a lot of fun. James Fei joined us for a set, again my son Peter Formanek, and Ben Goldberg. I can’t remember exactly, as it was quite a while ago. As a group Thumbscrew has a very particular way of working and developing music as we’ve all discussed here. Either we do it with someone who would be on board with that, or just do something really different since we’re all generally pretty flexible and adaptable. I guess we have to be to play in as many different groups as we do, together and separately. Having said all that, there are a number of musicians I could see us collaborating with that could be really exciting. We’ll have to see where we decide to focus our energies going forward.

TC: With ten years under your belt, it seems inevitable there must be some highs and lows from touring. Have you had any particularly memorable shows, played at any unique venues, or had any unusual touring experiences that stand out?

MF: Fortunately, most of our touring has gone pretty well. We’ve played in a lot of different types of venues and for different audiences, which is pretty normal. Last year’s European tour, our first after things started to open up after the worst of the Covid pandemic, was challenging in a lot of ways, though. The event that sticks out in my mind was the time last July when we played in Castelo Branco, Portugal and were supposed to be driven back to Porto to fly to Tel Aviv the next day. The cheapo airline we were booked on for that flight canceled it less than a day before, offering us no decent alternative. After a lot of wrangling, we decided to be driven to Madrid after the concert by the same driver that had picked us up earlier in the day and already seemed tired. We went back to our hotel rooms, that we had never slept in, to get our things and get in the car for the 4 or 5 hour drive through the night. The driver had his Son-in-Law with him to help keep him awake but the drive was stressful, and when we got to the airport in Madrid of course everything was closed and unclear what was happening. Eventually the flight boarded, of course after some INTENSE security screening by the El Al team we flew to Israel, took several Covid tests and had two great nights there. Most of the hoops we had to jump through on that tour were related to Covid testing, and the number of different documents we had to fill out and have with us to go into each country we were supposed to play in. All in all, it went well, but it was certainly no vacation!

TC: What kind of tour is planned for Thumbscrew’s ten-year anniversary?

TF: We’ll be in Europe for a good part of October, touring the music from Multicolored Midnight. This year we’ve played at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, Blues Alley, Constellation, Duck Creek Arts Center, and the Stone. After Europe we’ll do a concert at Arts and Literature Lab in Madison, and have our NYC CD release at the Jazz Gallery on November 11 and 12. We’re working on some things for 2023 including our 5th residency at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh – Thumbscrew’s home away from home.

TC: Why Thumbscrew? Who came up with the name, and what does it mean to you now, compared to ten years ago?

MF: I guess I’ll have to cop to that! I just thought it was kind of funny, and I have to say I still think it fits us in some weird kind of way. Mostly because we’ve done a lot of good work under that name so everything we do is Thumbscrew music now. Doesn’t bother me at all but some people take it seriously since it is also the name of a medieval torture device. Go figure!

> back to contents