Noam Pikelny

"There’s a certain kind of instrumental bluegrass album," reflects innovative young banjo player Noam Pikelny, "where everything connects back to the tradition, and yet the players put their own spin on things– both in terms of the material and the way they play. The View From Here by Matt Flinner is one, Lone Soldier by David Grier is another. I was deeply inspired by these records, and see In the Maze as my contribution to that lineage." Featuring said heroes – guitarist Grier and mandolinist Flinner – along with bassist Todd Phillips and fiddler Gabe Wicher, Pikelny’s solo debut is indeed a subtle, nimble extension of bluegrass boundaries. The compositions range from relatively straight-forward vehicles to more winding, intricate forms, while the performances are marked by a unique blend of tasteful restraint, precision, subtle empathy, and an astonishingly wide dynamic range.

Chicago native Pikelny, now 23, was first thrust onto the international stage with polyethnic Cajun slamgrass titans Leftover Salmon, enlivening their freewheeling roots fusion with an ingenious blend of classic Scruggs-style picking and more modern, chromatic explorations. These days he divides his time between solo engagements and John Cowan’s new acoustic group. Pikelny’s versatility lies in his unique experience in learning the instrument – beginning not with the three-finger bluegrass style that has drawn so many to the banjo, but with earlier pre-bluegrass techniques.

"When I was seven," Pikelny relates, "my older brother started taking mandolin lessons through school. Being the kid brother, I wanted to join in. My mother suggested the banjo as something that would sound good with my brother’s mandolin. Growing up in Chicago, I’d never heard of a banjo before then." He was soon enrolled at Chicago’s venerable Old Town School of Folk Music, studying clawhammer and Seeger style folk banjo. "I practiced twenty or thirty minutes a day," he says, smiling, "but I can’t say I was obsessed with it."

Obsession came a few years later, when he heard the first CD from Bela Fleck’s new group the Flecktones. "I saw them in Chicago in ’90 or ’91, and from then everything changed. I had to know how he was making those sounds, how he was able to interact with everything so fluidly. At that point, I didn’t even play three-finger style. So in order to get familiar with what Bela did, I started studying bluegrass. By junior high and high school, I was completely swept up in it." Those years became a blur of festivals, contests, teachers, and earnest local bands (complete with over-embroidered uniforms). "Discovering bluegrass was like landing on another planet," he says. "It had its own language, its own culture."

In the pages of a bluegrass magazine, Pikelny discovered that the great banjoist Greg Cahill (leader of the still-thriving group Special Consensus) lived only three blocks away in the Chicago suburbs. "Greg remains my most influential teacher," Noam says. "I would ride my bike up there as a kid and study on his spare banjo. He was more of a classic bluegrass player, and was the first person I met who talked about music conceptually. While what he does and what I do are pretty different, he taught me how to approach music, and how to teach myself new things. He taught me to learn."

The young pupil’s appetite for musical knowledge was ravenous. "I did the banjo camps – it’s amazing what you can learn from someone without even having an instrument in front of you. You learn a lot from having breakfast with people like Tony Trischka every day. And of course, whenever Tony or Bela would come to town, I’d try to steal a few minutes of their time. Maybe ask them about a lick or a tune, and just take as much in as I could." While this was a productive time for Pikelny, it was his college experience at University of Illinois in Champaign that cemented his future as a professional musician.

"The Champaign-Urbana area is a very interesting one, musically," Pikelny observes. "It’s like a musical clearing house: a lot of important people have spent periods of time there. Alison Krauss and Andrea Zonn were there for a while, Greg Garrison from Salmon was there, John Pennell started there, and Paul Zonn headed up the music department at U of I with a very open mind. The Bray Brothers were still local legends. For the first time, I saw young people turning on to bluegrass, going to see it in bars and clubs. This was a very different vibe compared to the bluegrass festival audience."

Still, finding a band outside of the tight-knit bluegrass scene was tough at first. Finally, Pikelny fell in with Waffle Hoss, a broad-minded group that played with as much enthusiasm as ability. Through them, Pikelny established ties with the thriving Colorado jamgrass scene. "I started to get to know the Yonder Mountain guys," he says, "and through them, Leftover Salmon." Noam sat in with Salmon in 2001, a year before their founding banjo player Mark Van passed away from a sudden, tragic onset of cancer. "It was an amazing moment – I bonded with Mark, and the rest of the band. It just clicked."

Prior to Van’s untimely passing, Pikelny was deeply involved in the music of Czech composer and guitarist Slavek Hanzlik. "He was based in Chicago, and became a huge influence on me. His music is very tight and focused: with parts and specific dynamic passages – and entirely acoustic. I did a five week tour of the Czech Republic with him in 2002 and it was the best music I had made up until that point. I thought I’d continue off and on with him, but a week after we got back, I got the call from Salmon. It was just too good to pass up: steady work, fun, and very challenging."

His two years with Salmon was also a learning experience for Pikelny. "I didn’t know about rock music – I was such a bluegrass head. To be thrown into the intensity of that music really pushed me as a player. Yet, all the while, I missed the acoustic side of things. I missed being in a room with other players and just letting the natural sounds come together. I missed the space and warmth of acoustic music. In late 2003, I learned we had January off. So I started work on In the Maze."

While not necessarily a reaction to the Salmon experience, Pikelny clearly revels in the pure acoustic textures of In the Maze’s ten tracks. The spaciousness and deep calm embodied by the music was directly influenced by the music of mandolinist Matt Flinner, who helped Noam line up the sessions. "I knew Matt from when he would sit in with Salmon," says Pikelny, "and Matt became the connection to David Grier, Todd Phillips, and Gabe Wicher. I had this fantasy of doing something with a similar vibe to Matt’s projects, and he just said ‘Well, let me check with the guys I play with.’ Before too long, we were making a record at Todd’s studio in Redwood, California."

"I wrote the tunes on this record over the past year, with an entirely acoustic setting in mind," he elaborates. "There was no variety for variety’s sake: I didn’t say ‘Now I’ll write a bluegrass tune, now I’ll write a jazz tune.’ This is simply what I wrote. A lot of the variety and different approaches comes from the players. They helped refine the arrangements, and really introduced some things I wouldn’t have thought of. They fleshed it out. For instance, ‘Speedbump’ started as a very technical piece, and yet Todd approached the bass part with a very funky, old-timey feel. Little things like that elevate the record and make it so much more unique. And each tune got something – a little character that is somehow different from how I originally envisioned it."

While amply featuring the illustrious band, In the Maze is clearly Pikelny’s showcase. His playing, from rapid-fire melodic lines to perfectly set bluegrass arpeggios to more expansive, ringing passages is a refreshing reassessment of both banjo techniques and the instrument’s role in acoustic ensembles. Compositionally, Pikelny is equally sophisticated: each tune is marked by surprising twists both melodic and harmonic, and leads the players to make some very intriguing statements – particularly on the title cut. "I know it’s weird to name a banjo record after the slowest piece on it," he laughs, "but the title track is my favorite. It’s a slow, twisted, almost classically-arranged melody where the end of one phrase becomes the beginning of the next. As the title song, I feel it best reflects where I’m at."

"While it was very intimidating to stand there with a group of my personal heroes and play my music," a relieved but genuinely proud Pikelny summarizes, "the occasional frustration was more than rewarded by the excitement I felt when listening to the music we made." By focusing strictly on original instrumental sounds and eschewing such needless compromises as guest vocalists, multi-instrumental noodling, and pointless cover tunes, In the Maze succeeds brilliantly as both a pure showcase for a powerful new banjo stylist and as a beautifully self-contained album of new acoustic music.