Jeff Coffin

Jeff Coffin, well-traveled saxophonist, composer, and member of the Grammy-winning Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, rejects all labels and categories other than "music" and "musician." In the face of his epic new album Bloom, even those once-broad tags fall short of defining the close coiling of sound, philosophy, and humanity that is the core of his art.

Since 1997, Coffin has traveled the world with the Flecktones, performing with musicians of all walks. Those with whom he has shared the stage and the recording studio include such diverse artists as The Dave Matthews Band, Branford Marsalis, Garth Brooks, Van Morrison, and the Wailers. Along the way, Coffin has absorbed an astounding range of influences. "Whether it be New Orleans 'Second Line', African music, Indian Ragas, folk songs, Alan Lomax field recordings, Jazz, or funk," he says, "the spirit and breath of the music is what I take away from listening. It's what decides for me whether I like it or not."

When the Flecktones announced a year-long hiatus beginning in January of 2005, Coffin got the chance to channel these varied manifestations of musical spirit into his most ambitious, wide-ranging solo project yet. Set for release in February of 2005, Bloom is an astonishing, genre-smashing extension of all Coffin has accomplished both as a solo artist and a Flecktone. His creative stamp on the CD doesn't stop with the music: Coffin also took all the photos for the package artwork. "It's an incredibly personal record," he says. "This is the first time I've taken this kind of time to develop an album. It's more me than any record I've ever done."

Paradoxically, Coffin's most personal effort involves the largest group of collaborators yet assembled for one of his solo projects. Bloom is officially credited to the Jeff Coffin Mu'tet, a word he created to describe his ever-shifting cadre of co-conspirators. "The group name comes from the word "mutation," Coffin explains. "It implies a continual possibility of growth: music changes and is influenced by the things around us." With personnel varying enormously from track to track, Coffin's multiple woodwinds are matched by everything from seasoned Nashville session veterans to electro-mavericks, from all of the Flecktones to a community music school children's choir. While Coffin's technical facility on his instruments leads him to tackle the most imposing of situations and structures, his vision of music as a continuously fluid, organic medium allows him to weave the most disparate strands together into performances of indescribable singularity and transcendence.

With Bloom, Coffin explores the concept of universal musical spirit that is at the heart of his musical journey. "I'm finding common ground between a wide range of music," he reflects. "It has to do with the connected nature of everything around me, which becomes clearer to me everyday." In recent years, Coffin has become particularly interested in indigenous music as a rich source of this intangible common ground. "Whether it's field hollers, prison work songs, New Orleans parade music, or tribal music from Africa they are all a big inspiration to me," he explains. "These people aren't singing for money. They are out on a chain gang or in a field. They are hot, miserable, and oppressed. And they are singing. That's very profound to me. Style is irrelevant. It's the spirit behind the music that makes it appealing to me."

With each track of Bloom, Coffin tests his own premise, seeking to unify elements of indigenous, popular, and art music on the sole common ground that they "groove on several levels." It all filters through in a lot of interesting ways, he explains. "Like the track "The Mad Hatter Rides Again." It is in 8 and 1/2 time, which is very much an Indian concept of rhythm. But it's equally inspired by James Brown and Maceo Parker." The result is a dizzyingly off-kilter cut, whose tricky rhythmic cycle frees its performers from funk cliché. Among the musicians are Flecktones Victor Wooten (bass) and Futureman (percussion) alongside longtime Coffin collaborator and Nashville session mainstay Pat Bergeson on guitar, the acclaimed Jeff Sipe on percussion, and turntable master DJ Logic providing atmospheric textures.

"Circle of Wills," Coffin continues, "is strongly influenced by Bill Frisell, but also has this spacious, mantra feel to it that is very Eastern. Its verses deceptively lead into one another, and don't resolve until the third time around. It's cyclical, very flowing and natural like the tides or the sunset. Like the connection between the beats in the 6/8 rhythm of African music."

Coffin is equally open to non-musical concepts influencing his compositions. "As Light Through Leaves" came to me after talking to someone about the idea of the middle way: the idea that you should live your life like light through the leaves. It's not the brightest or the darkest light, but a radiant glow that brings color to the leaves, makes them translucent. It's a light that makes all around it shine." The delicacy of the performance perfectly echoes his sentiments, with poignant solos from Coffin (on alto flute), mandolinist Chris Thile (Nickel Creek), and Victor Wooten on acoustic upright bass.

However, the emotional and musical centerpiece of Bloom is its title track. A tender, lilting piece in 5/4 time, "Bloom/Shine It Up" features a gently searching solo from Bela Fleck. But the stars of the track are the students of the W.O. Smith Community Music School Children's Choir. "That's a school in Nashville where kids, mostly from the inner city, can come to study music for only fifty cents per week," says Coffin. "It was the idea of W.O. Smith, who played bass on the original Coleman Hawkins recording of "Body & Soul."

"I chose "bloom" for the title of the record for a lot of different reasons. The word implies potential, and these kids on this track are that potential, that bloom. When you see a kid from the inner city with nothing, no opportunities given to him, smiling because they have made something, made a sound, that's what it's all about. That's the difference between potential and reality. That potential is everywhere, in every living thing: caterpillar/butterfly. Seed/tree. When you look at something, what do you see? What do you choose to see? I ask myself that all the time. We all have a chance to bloom, but we've got to decide to."

The title also refers to Coffin's hobby of photographing flowers with high-resolution digital cameras. The cover photo is actually an enlarged image from a dandelion he photographed. "There are all these hidden curves of sacred geometry as you go deeper in," Coffin marvels. "I didn't know these spirals existed inside a dandelion, until I zoomed in. After starring at it for a while, I began to realize that in that spiral you can see reflections of so much in nature: tornados, conch shells, fiddlehead ferns, sound waves, ocean waves. You get into these microcosms, and yet as you zoom in and get close, it still represents the same things. Just smaller. At the same time, it represents all things. And it's not only the dandelion or within nature. I find similar repeating patterns within humanity, music, architecture, anatomy, and pretty much anything else I can think of."

"I think we've all had epiphanies," he continues, "moments where everything feels connected to us and to everything else; moments where everything is right, whether it's with music or running or painting. When you're in that zone, these moments are always there. Music connects me to everything, because, on a subatomic level, everything is vibrating. The space between atoms leaves room for vibration. Sound is vibration, and music is sound. Everything is music. That idea continues to blow me away, every day."

Whether it's the bluesy slide work on "Old Jack Craw," the raucous second line groove of the opening "Move Your Rug," or jittering electronica of "Hatim," Coffin's music is never far removed from its roots in his organic vision. Despite his appetite for exploration and discovery, Coffin says there is no singular message to Bloom. "People will have to hear it," he says, "and decide for themselves. All I can do is put the spirit of the music out there."

Bloom Musicians: Jeff Sipe - drums, Victor Wooten - electric & acoustic bass, Bela Fleck - banjo, DJ Logic - turntables, Chris Thile - mandolin, Futureman - percussion, Kirk Whalum - soprano sax, Johnny Neel - B-3 organ/lead vocals, Derek Philip Jones - electric & acoustic bass, Tyler Wood - piano/B-3 organ/percussion/vocals, Pat Bergeson - guitar, officerfishdumplings - arrangement, sequencing, programming, Derico Watson - drums/percussion, Tom Giampietro - drums/percussion, Noa Ben-Amotz - percussion, Rod McGaha - trumpet, Joe Murphy - tuba, Rahsaan Barber - tenor sax, Roy Agee - trombone, Roland Barber - trombone, Paul Brantley - cello, W.O. Smith Community Music School Choir - vocals.

Other musicians with whom Coffin has collaborated: Dave Matthews Band, Medeski/Martin & Wood, Phish, Branford Marsalis, Charlie Hunter, Derek Trucks Band, The Wailers, Bruce Hornsby, Van Morrison, Karl Denson & Tiny Universe, Galactic, Chris Thile, Widespread Panic, String Cheese Incident, Vasser Clements, John Scofield, Chick Corea, Jerry Douglas, Brooks & Dunn, Don Henley, The Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks