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Take Five with violinist and ETHEL member Kip Jones
Meet Kip Jones
Kip Jones (violin) is known for his ebullient and innovative solo performances in a style he describes as "experimental folk." Kip is a member of the acclaimed
ETHEL
band / ensemble / orchestra
Ron Carter
bassb.1937
A modern musical troubadour, he's performed at scores of eclectic venues such as Ecuador's Ministry of Economic Inclusion, Tirana's Liceu Artistik "Jordan Misja," two miles inside Chom Ong Tai cave in Laos, the summer homes of nomadic Mongolian herders, and platforms of most subway systems in North America. As a composer, his work has been commissioned by ensembles that include the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry. A native of Minnesota, Kip earned his degree in Violin Performance from the Berklee College of Music.
Teachers and/or influences
At Berklee around Y2K, I studied with " data-original-title="" title="">Matt Glaser,Eugene Friesen
cello
Tiger Okoshi
trumpetb.1950
George Garzone
saxophone, tenorb.1950
Hal Crook
tromboneb.1950
Joe Lovano
drumsb.1952
My influences now, I look up to anyone able to communicate something beautiful, something specific. José Maceda,
Esperanza Spalding
bassb.1984
Edgar Meyer
bassb.1960
Your sound and approach to music.
About seven years ago I had a real "come to Jesus" moment. I started thinking about sound in chunks, structures, interrelated, always flowing around us. Not things but relationships. I started getting into non-linear composition, bifurcations/choices in forms, not under a baton like COBRA, but connected areas of density around notes, chords, and cycles, flowing by choice and probability into each other. How does one communicate something like this? We designed software to keep all the musicians' charts connected. If any musician touches a link, just like on a webpage, to another phrase in the music, everyone's chart goes to that chord, ostinato, whatever that particular density is. There's no getting lost, even if the music doesn't make sense. Honestly it's been tough to wrap my head (and my work ethic) around this because it demands learning new skills that are not typically music tools or composer tools. But I can see and hear this thing coming, and I hope it's worth more than what's been sacrificed to make it. I dream of a music that's not separate from other life, doesn't depend solely on the skillful, and provides us an opportunity to jettison our psychic garbage.Your dream band
Shai Maestro
pianob.1987
Brian Blade
drumsb.1970
Road story: Your best or worst experience
Our violist Ralph got hit with the stomach flu as we were walking on stage, he held it together for a full 75 minutes, then walked immediately offstage and barfed into a bucket. Before I joined ETHEL, there [was] a famous story where two members of the band snuck into the sound engineer's hotel room, rearranged the furniture, short-sheeted the bed, unplugged the phone, and requested an absurdly early wake-up call. Last summer, recording out at Taos Pueblo with Robert Mirabal, I took a small jug of Patron Silver out of its box, replaced it with a can of beans, and waited through the week of rehearsal for someone to ceremoniously present it to Robert, which they did, resulting in a lovely, mildly dissociative moment for the group. I feigned ignorance, of course. That same week, we played a house concert for Robert's family, and in the middle of the show asked his mother a question about the White Buffalo Man, the subject of a song we were working on.The elder woman began speaking in Tiwa about the White Buffalo Man (which half the room could understand, but not us), holding forth for easily twenty-five solid minutes. After she finished her story, she motioned back to us to carry on with the concert.
Favorite venue
For the kind of thing that ETHEL does: I love the Willem Twee Toonzaal, Den Bosch, Netherlands and the Shaolin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, MADid you know...
I am gaga for sailing. My current retirement plan is a small, well-apportioned bluewater sailboat.The first jazz album I bought was:
The first CD I ever bought was a compilation disc called Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown (GRP, 1989). I was 11. That album still sounds great.
Chick Corea
piano1941 - 2021
B.B. King
guitar, electric1925 - 2015
Music you are listening to now:
Milton Nascimento
guitar and vocalsb.1942
Hermeto Pascoal
multi-instrumentalist1936 - 2025
New York Polyphony: Tudor City (Avie Records, 2010))
Northern Cree Singers: Dance Hard (Canyon Records, 2006)
Ron Carter: Patr?o (Milestone, 1980)
Desert Island picks:
Steve Reich
composer / conductorb.1936
Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia (Thirsty Ear, 2013
Louis Sarno (field recordist): Music of the Bayaka (Wild Sanctuary, 1995)
Paula Morelenbaum: Casa (Sony Classical, 2000)
Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande: The Best Hindustani Vocal, Vol. 1 (Thirty Tigers, 2007)
How would you describe the state of jazz today
Almost no violinist is qualified to answer that question, and certainly not me. Let me embarrass myself instead by jumping one exponent larger, the state of music today? On the output side, I think people are hungry for any discipline that rewards its practitioners with a deeper intuition for the nature of reality. But we struggle to let pressure build up in ourselves, we obey the smallest urge, and we risk not having enough of the right character when it's time to act. On the input side, almost every expression of musical value is at our fingertips. But when we hear the work, we lack patience to hear what it leads to, the horizon those musicians could see clearly at the time. Instead we often hear it within the context of a dominant culture, which properly speaking has no musical values at all, as it is divided equally between the mechanics of commodification and an almost bestial pursuit of emotional resonance. We are adrift in subjectivity. Thank God for jazz, its legacy and living form, to show us (as a gift to the world) that musical values are not just individual but among us, between us, memories, stories, negotiations, anticipations, shared experiences.What are some of the essential requirements to keep jazz alive and growing
I used to put a premium on new patterns. I still think new patterns are important, especially as I am personally invested in the development of a particular new pattern, whose ultimate value is unknown. And again, this is coming from outside, but I might say that one unique aspect of jazz, as it lives and grows, is that we study and play with musicians we respect, and they teach us to hear. Music literally sounds different, we hear it more, it makes more sense, because we spend time together. The growth in knowledge is personal. I don't think there needs to be a premium on novelty, but when we get down to it, the best music has a telos, an ultimate point to which it reaches, or a view of eternity from which the music speaks out.What is in the near future
ETHEL and Maestro Ron Carter at Carnegie Hall, NYC, on March 13, 2025! Come on out! Other people are flying in to see us, so you can, too.What song would you like played at your funeral
The second movement of Steve Reich's "Tehillim." That's why it's my desert island pick, in case I die out there.What is your favorite song to whistle or sing in the shower
Wouldn't "Lush Life" be a great answer? "Those come-what-may places"—soap between your toes—"Then you came along"—point to the shampoo—"with your siren song and drove me to madness..."Tags
Take Five With...
Kip Jones
AAJ Staff
AMT Public Relations
ETHEL
Ron Carter
Matt Glaser
Eugene Friesen
Tiger Okoshi
George Garzone
Hal Crook
joe lovano
José Maceda
Esperanza Spalding
Edgar Meyer
Andy Akiho
Shai Maestro
Brian Blade
Chick Corea
B.B. King
Hermeto Pascoal
Steve Reich
Milton Nascimento
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