As I recall, our last conversation was in 1971 when I was with the Thad Jones–Mel Lewis band. We came back again in 1972, to go to Russia, and I left the band in ‘73.

A lot has happened in my career since then—although much had happened before that also. When you have a lot to do, you just continue to keep changing, moulding and remaking things. In 1971, I was just finishing the recording I did with MPS—a thing called “Child Of Gemini”; since then I guess I’ve done around fifteen to twenty albums, but they’ve been spread around the world. I did several albums for Japanese companies, a couple for German companies, and even one or two for Swedish companies. My first album in America for many years was released in 1978; it’s called “The Gift From The Magi”, and it was for a new company, West Fifty–Fourth Street. The latest album of mine that’s been put out is “Impressions”, that I did last July at the Nice Festival—it’s on the Ahead label of the French recording company, Black And Blue. It’s my plan to make some more albums this summer, either in July or August, I’ve been approached by various companies, including one in Kansas City—they want to record the group that I used there last year. I certainly intend to make a couple of albums at home in the States: I hope that something will happen from them.

My approach, though, has changed in all those years. I’ve been concentrating more and more on my own individual piano playing, and less on larger organisations—big bands, groups, quartets and all that. I feel that the piano deserves the right to be heard: it has its own unique sound.

I spent a lot of time listening to other people, and my sound is individual—it takes a long time to find that out. When you’re young, certainly, you hear the instrument more than you hear the individual person: later on, you learn to distinguish between the two and that’s what’s happened to me. Now I hear what I have to say, or what I’ve been saying.

That development has come about as a result of being involved with different kinds of musicians over the years—both those who are appreciative of music, and those who are in the business just for the glamour, or for the amount of money that they can make. When you’ve all these relationships with people, then you begin to hone in on your own values and your own ideas about what you’re doing—whether or not it’s important to make money, or to make music.

It doesn’t really matter what other people want to do; what’s important is what you want to do. Do you want to make a lot of money, or do you want to play the best kind of music that you can possibly play? And my decision was to keep on after that musical thing. I don’t have to be successful, but if I can arrive somewhere near that during this lifetime, I will feel that it’s a well–spent life.

I had been writing for years, and always thinking about other instruments, but the main reason for doing the solo albums: I’ve just found that to work alone, without the problems that other people present, is the easiest area and yet the one that offers the most challenge to me. When you can allow the music to come out—–if it’s there—without being hampered by any foreign ideas, then I think you get some worth–while thing happening. It’s not touched at all by anything else.

Then lately I’ve gotten even more particular about recording solo. I’m finding that special pianos offer the least resistance to my inner feelings. If I use just any piano that’s been tuned, often times you don’t get the full impact of what the music has to say. But if you use a good piano like a Bosendorfer, it’s quite another story. Not to say that the others are not great pianos—it’s just that it seems to me that I’ve had a lot more success with Bosendorfers than I’ve had with Steinways, Baldwins, Bechsteins and all the rest of the very good ones. They’re fine, just for performance—but for recording, it seems that the Bosendorfer has a spirit all its own.

The only other time I’ve achieved on another piano what happens with the Bosendorfer was in Japan, when I recorded my first “Preludes” album—I have two albums there, called “The 24 Preludes Of Roland Hanna”.

During the time of making the first one, I had to do a lot of practising, in order to be able to play those preludes; they were not just improvised pieces—they were very difficult to play. And I used a big Yamaha D piano—this particular one was fantastically in tune with me: I can’t say that every Yamaha I’ve played has been that way, but this was perfect for what I had to do. After practising on that piano, then I was able to play it on the Bosendorfer piano—the perfect interpreter of the music.

So you begin to direct your musical ambition towards being as close to the real thing as you can get. That’s what’s happening to me now: I’m aiming at a sort of a chiselling of the music—getting my thoughts so that they are exactly what I mean when I express them. That’s difficult; many times, when I’m playing in nightclubs, it’s impossible to do that. But there are rare moments . . . sometimes the music comes out as if I’m not even there, or as if I’m there but just as a spectator. There’s someone there, the piano is playing, and I’m enjoying it just as if I was in the audience. It’s great—well, great doesn’t describe what it is, you know.

It’s a supernatural, other–worldly kind of thing. You’re at a point where you are able to get outside of your body; you actually can see yourself there playing, and just exactly what should be coming out of the piano at that moment is happening.

Of course, when we put it on a tape–recorder, or an electronically mechanical instrument, something that was there does not get transposed. That’s always happened—no matter how long you make records, there’s always been that one element of life missing from the record or the tape. If we could find a way to record that, then I imagine we would have taken a picture of our souls, rather than just our physical appearance. As we pick up the sounds bouncing through the air, we don’t get the very beginning of each sound, that comes from some other source than just our body. I think there are three things going on: first, there’s that inception of the idea, a millisecond before the nerves are sent to the fingers–the whole thing is in the brain: you’re hearing it before you’re playing it. Your inner ear is hearing what’s being produced, but that’s still a fraction of a second later. And I don’t know how to describe to people what happens when it’s really happening—not when you’re just pounding on the piano, but when you’re really making some spiritual music, that is coming from the inner depths of your body. It’s just such a beautiful feeling—that’s what I mean, when you’re really outside of yourself. Then you can hear this triple sound that’s going on. We talk about stereo—it’s more than stereo: maybe it’s really quadraphonic! That is the height that I would like to attain, and to continue to be there each time I play.

In the last few years, the thing that’s bothered me most is that I compose less and I play more. In earlier years, I spent more time composing; in the last ten years, although I have been writing some music, it hasn’t been nearly as much as I did. Yes, to a certain extent, improvising is a form of composition, but, then again, composition takes in as many areas or realms as the word jazz does.

To say that you’re composing, you could mean many things, just as when you say you’re playing jazz it has many meanings. What I mean by composition, I guess, is that when I’m writing I get a completion, a fullness of the musical ideas, so that there’s no embellishments needed by other minds. Whereas, when you’re improvising, you seem to always need something else to make the improvisation complete. Now, it doesn’t mean that improvisation is any less because of that. It may be beautiful; you can say: “I like that; there’s no point in changing that.” For instance, on the recording at Nice, there was an improvisation of “Body And Soul”—I hadn’t made that in several years, but I wouldn’t add anything to that version of it. I might do another version altogether, but that, in itself, was complete.

But improvisation can leave you with that feeling of not being quite complete. What composition really means: it gives you the time to follow through the whole thought, so that whatever ends might be open, you can close them with some musical idea. You can make a logical statement, reach a conclusion with your music. Often, when you’re improvising, you don’t have enough time or space to come to a conclusion; you’re left up in the air, wanting it to complete itself. With a composition, that should not be the case; one should feel that this is an entity by itself.

Sure. that’s why Duke Ellington preferred to compose—because–he knew that each piece was a representative of some particular part of himself, that was complete, Whereas we can put all the solos of Bud Powell together, and I don’t know whether we could come up with one real composition. Again, I’m not saying there’s any bad connotation about it; it’s simply that it’s not as fulfilling, that’s all.

For instance, when young people begin to want to improvise and play, they find great enjoyment, just making up little ideas. And their growth should culminate in wanting to compose. As far as I can understand, this was one of the many reasons that Bach spent all of his years composing, and writing “The Well–Tempered Clavichord”—so that other people could recognise that they could learn to improvise, or make up things, in this way. You have to grow towards developing an attitude about music, so that you make a complete statement when you improvise. Of course, I have always tried to attain this, and certainly, the “Body And Soul” recording was satisfying to me.

My intention was to just do an improvisation, and not do the melody—but the music would not allow me to leave it out. It needed that to make it a complete composition. Many times, I’ve heard people ending their harmonic structure on the dominant, or on some area of the mode that did not leave the satisfying harmonic sound.

How many times have I heard Cecil Taylor—who I love as a pianist, when he’s improvising—end in a way that would leave one wanting much more? And then I’ve heard him end in a way that means there’s no more that could be added to this particular piece. Cecil recorded an album, “Silent Tongues” about the same time as I made “Perugia” for the same label, Freedom, and it’s one of those albums that expresses his musical thoughts completely; almost every idea is complete. Of course, he goes on and on and on—it seems that the piece is unending—but he has many, many pieces put together to make one complete piece. I know a lot of people are not able to comprehend what’s happening there, but it’s never meaningless—not by any stretch of the imagination. Cecil is always after a certain effect; you have to extend yourself into another area.

Let me put it this way—we live in the Western world, and, to ourselves, everything we do is logical and works out fine. Yet, when we travel to the Eastern world, they arrive at the same things that we do in a completely different way altogether. It’s astonishing to us that someone would do this this way or do that that way—but to them it’s as logical as our own way is to us. And that’s the way it is with Cecil Taylor—he’s arriving at the same emotional kind of musical life as someone else who is a romantic or an impressionist musician, but he’s doing it with his own language.

I can identify with him, because I know that he is involved with a structure, and is doing what he does with a formula. It’s not as free as one may think it is. Yet the freedom comes out of being able to do what you wish to do, and arriving at some emotional satisfaction. If the ultimate aim of playing is to stimulate some intelligence that has never been stimulated before, then Cecil is successful; if the aim is merely to entertain, then he’s not successful. Yes, this is a dilemma—but I don’t believe the entertainment end of it is nearly as important as the intellectual stimulation might be. Music is more than just something for people who have money, and who want to be amused, to go and listen to. To me, music is a sort of a help–mate for human beings to get through life with; it’s a valve for us to release some of the pressure that builds up. We need it—not as sheer entertainment, but because we may not exist if it weren’t here. I don’t ever recall a time in my life when I haven’t had music around me. All of these points are important when we try to evaluate any musician’s ability.