FRED BOUCHARD: Ken Pullig in the hot seat at last. Ken has been the chairman of the Jazz Composition Department since 1985 and we figured it was about time we got him to open up a little bit, tell all the secrets from beyond the closed doors of the recording studio and the administrative department. 

KEN PULLIG: 1985. Interesting year for sure. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Why was that? 

KEN PULLIG: Well, that was when Berklee reorganized under Dr. Carter's point of view and became more departmentalized. That year is when what was the study of jazz and writing up to that point got subdivided into Jazz Composition and Commercial Arranging. Bob Freedman, who was teaching here at the time, great writer, he became chair of the Commercial Arranging Department it was called, and I became chair of the Jazz Composition Department. That was the initial fragmentation of the curriculum here in jazz. 

FRED BOUCHARD: What were the pedagogical implications of that split? 

KEN PULLIG: I think it probably related to Jazz Comp being more involved with personal development of the voice as a composer with no concerns about what the economic factors might be involved with that as opposed to Commercial Arranging which really reflected Bob's vast professional experience in the business: At the time a lot of jingles writing for major television networks and all the various commissions that Bob had gotten. So direction was more towards the students that were coming here that wanted to write more commercial oriented, economically feasible ideas and, putting it in a nice way, the jazz composers continued writing jazz which could have economic significance but maybe not. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So it's kind of like artistry versus business? 

KEN PULLIG: In a way. But certainly there were a lot of great writers that chose the Commercial Arranging track also. And that's now morphed reflecting the music business of today in the Contemporary Writing and Production and that curriculum now has fragmented further into all the production and technology aspects of it, along with still the professional type of pieces that need to be written in the business. That's gone through major changes while the Jazz Composition Department still goes forward as sort of the remaining cornerstone of the original Berklee, really. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Has it flourished on its own in that role? 

KEN PULLIG: It's been very stable. I don't think we've ever had more than 150 or 160 majors maybe in the eighties and it usually stays around now anywhere between 130 to 100. Sometimes it dips a little bit below 100 but then it'll come back up so we've been very stable and because of that the department hasn't grown and hasn't gotten any smaller. It's been the same fundamental group of people since 1985. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Who are they? Just for the record. 

KEN PULLIG: The original Jazz Composition Department was: myself as chair. We had Greg Hopkins of course, great Greg Hopkins. Herb Pomeroy which was a kind of ironic twist, Herb having been my teacher and now suddenly he was in my department. We had lots of fun about that, believe me. Jackson Schultz, Scott Free, Jeff Freedman, Bill Scism and Bob Pilkington. So originally it was the eight of us. Ultimately when Ted Pease stepped down from being the division chairman and continued on as a teacher, he came into the department also. So, a second one of my bosses became one of the faculty members in the group. And then, Herb retired in the mid-nineties and in the early 2000s, it was not too long ago; 2003 I think it was or '04 maybe, Ted retired. So now we're back to that group. And one further change was early on probably, I forget, '86 to '87, I hired Hal Crook back into Berklee. Hal had been of course here many years before and had left Berklee. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Gone out on the road with Phil Woods and a lot of other people. 

KEN PULLIG: And Hal of course was one of Berklee's most famous students, studied with Herb of course. And so I brought Hal back into Berklee and he was in the Jazz Composition Department. But after a year of doing all the correcting of the projects and everything he said, "Argh, Ken, I can't do this anymore. I gotta get out, I can't do all of this correcting." So I did sort of a swap with the Performance Division where I gave them Hal Crook and I got Dick Lowell in exchange. So Dick has been in the department since that switch and it's been that way all the way through till right now, 2010 at which point we're running a search right now for an additional person. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So, let's talk about defining whether there was and what is the Berklee sound for jazz composition. For quintet on through twenty-piece big band. 

KEN PULLIG: It's a great question and it's funny, I have an anecdote to tell about that because when I was in college from 1963 to 1967 at the University of Connecticut there was no jazz there whatsoever but a tenor saxophone, Preston Trombly, I believe was his name. He was a student there and he started a jazz band. I was sort of a high note trumpet player in the marching band, didn't really know anything about jazz, but they got me into the band to play and we would play mainly stocks. But then he knew some people from Boston and I guess probably Berklee, I don't really remember the details, but he brought in a chart one night that we read and it was really hard and very different than anything we'd ever played and he said, "Oh yeah, this is written by my friend up in B he's going to school at Berklee." It might have been Pete Panaloke who was a great lead trumpet player here, he may have been the one that wrote it but I just thought at that moment, "Wow, what's going on at Berklee?" But that was the end of it and so I knew there was something about it. I met somebody when I was in the army that had gone to Berklee. Jerry Cohen who became a dear friend. I can tell you that story about meeting Jerry in Vietnam but maybe another date. Anyway, Jerry and I became very good friends over there and when we both got out of the army he lived in Boston and that's when I moved to Boston to go to Berklee because by that time I had made the decision that I wanted to pursue writing music more deeply. I had a degree in Music Education from the University of Connecticut so that's what happened. So the Berklee sound, what is the Berklee sound? [Pauses] Well, probably the generations from the mid-sixties on probably have to reflect the teaching of Herb and the ideas he picked up from the people here, not the least of whom was Bob Freedman I think had a big influence on Herb. 

FRED BOUCHARD: He wrote some charts for the original Life Is A Many Splendored Gig band? That wasn't the original one, but it was the first one that got recorded. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, it's my understanding that Bob was sort of the one that originated the linewriting concept that Herb picked up on and of course, Herb with his very meticulous nature, turned it into the great course that it became and influenced so many people that came to Berklee. But any case, whatever that was and the kind of people that surrounded Herb, they were all forward thinking people and very innovative and risk takers so the music was striking in its uniqueness and I think that has continued. I think our students today still are that way. We graduate a number of Jazz Comp majors every semester that are very unique and make an impact immediately. I mean most recently Mina Cho, this pianist from Korea. She's got her album out, it's so unique. There's just such a long line of them that continue this tradition so great. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Maybe we should drop back a little bit and start with your early ed. Get into a little more of a chronological mode, growing up in Connecticut and 

KEN PULLIG: Growing up in Torrington, Connecticut which is a little bit West of Hartford. Sort of a sleepy town back then. As a kid I heard, we were talking about this earlier in the day, I had a neighbor up several houses. Of course, in those days, picture sort of a suburban town in Connecticut. 

FRED BOUCHARD: It was Norman Fischer you said. 

KEN PULLIG: Norman Fischer. I think his name was Norman. I know his son was Norman and his son Norman was a lead player for a while, I've lost track of what happened to him. But his father, the older Norman - if that indeed was his name - was a little old man, he played cornet and I used to walk up through the woods that we have and I would come to the edge of the woods on the property behind the Fischers' house and I would hear him playing these cornet etudes and it was just intriguing to me for some reasons, I don't know what. And he had a little dog. The dog's name I think was Skeeter. When he went up in the high register the dog would howl and would create this wild dialog between the two of them. Anyway, one day he spotted me out there in the edge of the woods, "Hey kid, come here, come here." So I came and he said, "You like the sound of this?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah." "Here, you try it!" He gave it to me and I played the cornet and a sound came out. He said, "That's very unusual, not too many people can play it on the first try." 

FRED BOUCHARD: Magical moment! 

KEN PULLIG: That somehow started me going and of course back then, typically third or fourth grade they would come around on musical instrument day and they would have all the instruments on the table and you picked an instrument and you studied the instrument. Of course I went right to the trumpet and started taking lessons from the local guy. His name was Perkins. Art Perkins. I could play it right away in the classes so his friend who was the high school band director, David Wheeler, found out about me and so I started playing with the high school kids when I was, I guess, in the fifth or sixth grade. And Dave Wheeler's passion was brass music. And so, I started playing the brass quintet in a larger repertoire probably in the sixth grade and ended up then playing with his friends who were grown ups. So my early musical experience was primarily renaissance brass music. In fact, Dave, great teacher, was sort of my role model I suppose in high school. By the time I got to high school then I was in the high school band and was the president of the band council and took lessons with Dave the whole time. But he was a non jazz person and I remember hearing Miles Davis and bringing the record and saying, "Mr. Wheeler, I just listened to this. This seems really interesting." He said, "Oh no, don't listen to that. He plays out of tune and he doesn't really know how to play the trumpet." 

FRED BOUCHARD: What was it, the stuff with Gil Evans? 

KEN PULLIG: I don't know what it was, I don't even remember. But so I was a kid and I said, "Oh, okay." [Minimcs throwing] 

FRED BOUCHARD: Back to Gabrieli. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, back to Gabrieli, exactly. [Laughs.] So then I went to University of Connecticut, Music Education, was in the marching band and met Allan Gillespie who was this great guy who had played trumpet in the dance bands in the thirties and forties and was this very innovative band director in the marching band field which was just starting to blossom at that point, you know, the drum court influence and all of that. So I started with him. Sam Goldfarb from Hartford was a teacher. He was more of a studio kind of player. And then Preston Trombly, this guy that was a student, started playing in the dance band and that's how I got involved with something beyond Gabrieli I guess. And played orchestrally too in college. 

FRED BOUCHARD: I think a lot of us whose lives have been directed by our ears have had these pied piper moments like you did with Fischer's cornet. I've had them myself and that quickly translates into becoming a pied piper yourself and leading others with the lure of marching bands. What were your experiences like playing in high school playing in the bands musically and socially? 

KEN PULLIG: I think probably when I was in high school playing in the band was a way of me escaping feeling awkward in social situations. And I was very competitive scholastically, you know, I was smart. I loved playing music and I wasn't in the in-group socially and I felt awkward about dating and all that. Didn't date girls and I hung with my sort of geeky friends that all had averages in the mid and high-nineties and they also were in the band. And that's sort of what we did through high school but I was the class musician. We just had our, jeez what was it? Fiftieth, I guess, '63 was our class, so yeah. So we had our fiftieth and when they found out what had become of me they said, "Well, that makes total sense." All they remembered about me was me and my trumpet. That's how everybody remembered me from high school. 

FRED BOUCHARD: I think the profile of the shy teenager who's trying to relate through the music rather than being a social butterfly is fairly familiar to a lot of the students that I encountered here at Berklee. 

KEN PULLIG: Real cliche probably. Oh yeah, I know, it's true. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Music is an escape in more ways than one. It's something that directs one's career. 

KEN PULLIG: Plus, when I finally ended up coming to Boston after being in the army, my first real musical experience was getting involved with the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble. And the guys who ran that were scientists, geeks again. And of course there's a great parallel. A lot of people that are in the sciences play instruments. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Uh huh. Is this an MIT Polaroid? Harvard connection or? 

KEN PULLIG: John Hildebrand was a bass trombone player and he was at Harvard and MIT and the horn player Brian Holmes was at BU. They were scientists and the rest of us were musicians. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Was Tom Everett involved? 

KEN PULLIG: No, Tom never was in that group. It's funny, that group just had a reunion at my house this summer and no one could remember how I got into the group, what the first gig was. It's funny we just don't remember but suddenly there I was on all the tapes. 

FRED BOUCHARD: This is a musical, social group? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah. But we played a lot of serious gigs. All the museums, we played Carnegie Hall, we did a lot of things. 

FRED BOUCHARD: How big an ensemble was this? 

KEN PULLIG: Quintet. And then we sometimes would enlarge to double quartet to play all the antiphonal Gabrieli stuff in various Boston First Night and things like that. We were always part of that when that first started. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Did you ever dabble with tuba, euphonium, trombone? Or were you always a trumpet man? 

KEN PULLIG: In the group? Me? Did I ever? No, I always just played trumpet. I tried playing trombone but I couldn't do it. I didn't have the right embouchure flexibility, so yeah, that's what was happening. I forgot what the question was. [Laughs]. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Oh I don't know, we've been backing up gradually here! Talk about the army a little bit. How was? 

KEN PULLIG: The army. Okay. Of course, so when I graduated from UCONN in '67 I had applied for graduate school and probably would have gone on to University of Connecticut and become probably a high school band director. But back then where I was from, Torrington, all these mill towns along the Naugatuck River as soon as you got out of that 4-H or whatever it was. Not 4-F. Anyway, classification in the draft, your number came up and two days after the last day of classes I got my draft notice. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Oops. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, oops. Which in '67 was a bad time to get your draft notice. Vietnam was raging of course at that point. And so I thought, well this is not good. I can either take my chances and try to audition as part of being drafted and get out of that or maybe what I'll do is I'll see if I can get into an army band. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Either that or Ward 8! Lipstick and a lisp! 

KEN PULLIG: Or go to Canada! Yeah, and believe there were lots I was pretty naive. I was a typically naive kid from Connecticut who didn't know all of the darker options of avoiding such a situation. So I went out to the Fort Devens and did an audition. Was accepted into the army band system and I thought that would at least keep me out of Vietnam. And so, I went to basic training, had to do all of that stuff. Part of this deal of joining the army, which was a three-year deal not a two-year deal, was that your first duty station was guaranteed. And your MS in this case Method of Service, I was a trumpet player. So I did all of the basic training and ended up in Fort Belvoir in Virginia. And probably my plan would have worked very well except, I've always had sort of a problem with keeping my mouth closed in certain situations when something stupid is happening. I usually don't like to deal with that silently. And of course, anyone who's ever been in the military out there knows that it's pretty stupid. So I let my opinions out probably ones too often so the band director had me shipped to Vietnam. So I got my levy notice where all my friends were going to Germany and Panama, "Pullig! Vietnam!" So I ended up in an army band in Vietnam which was actually an ironic twist of fate. It was probably a lucky situation. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Well it certainly wasn't just Reveille and Taps! 

KEN PULLIG: That's when I met Jerry Cohen. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Tell us about that. 

KEN PULLIG: Oh that was good. So, you know, everybody would come into Vietnam and you'd do this week of orientation, being there in Saigon and then you'd be shipped out to wherever you were gonna go. In this case I was in the 101st Airborne Division Band which was just ten miles South of the DMC. That's where they sent me to this base. So I got in this deuce and a half, this big truck and there were a bunch of other people in it, I didn't know who they were, and we drove the two and a half hours to Camp Eagle, that's where this was. And as we were getting out of the truck the sirens started going on and a rain of rockets came into the camp. So there was explosions all around us, the shrapnel falling everywhere, we all jump into this hole where there had previously been a rocket, there was a big crater. After about, it seemed like a long time, it was probably about 2 minutes at the most, but the rockets stopped coming in and the sergeant crawled around and looked down into this hole where we were all sitting down there. Me sitting there thinking; "Holy crap, I'm not gonna make this am I? This is just the first 5 minutes, this is not good!" And he said, "Everybody okay in there?" And this guy next to me said, "Yeah, we're okay, but my morale is really down!" So I looked at him and I said, "I don't know who you are but I have a feeling we're gonna be friends." And that was Jerry Cohen and we became great friends. He was a great trumpet player. But a person that I met in Vietnam, Charles Ellison, a great trumpeter and vocal teacher now in McGill in Canada, he was the really first black musician I ever knew. He was a trumpet player and he and I became friends. He's the one late at night, we would sit and listen to records together and he told me what was happening. That's when I really started to study deeper about jazz. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Where were the records coming from? 

KEN PULLIG: He had cassettes. People would send cassettes. And at that time, not even cassettes, they were reel to reel basically, I don't think we had cassettes then it was reel to reel. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Where were Charles from? 

KEN PULLIG: I don't know where Chaz was from originally. I know he ended up in Canada. 

FRED BOUCHARD: But he came out of some kind of jazz tradition? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, he was a great he was the first real jazz soloist I had ever really known personally and he played in the combo that I was in there as part of one of the things I had to do. In between going out on night ambushes and stuff like that. And I was immediately attracted to his sound and what he was doing so we talked about the traditions late at night, that's the kind of conversations that we would have. And that's when I really became convinced that then I was gonna come to Boston and study at Berklee. If I were to be still on the planet by the time that year was over, that's where I was gonna go. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Were you talking classical with him too? 

KEN PULLIG: He could do classical, oh yeah. And he would say, "Oh man, but you have such a great sound" and all that, "But Charlie." You know, there was sort of a mutual admiration society I guess. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Were there some good bands to play in? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, we had actually a really good band. When I first got there it was a big band but then it changed to a combo. Like more than 10 pieces. It was probably a thirteen- or fourteen-piece kind of show band and at that time what was really popular was the music of Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Ten Wheel Drive, groups like that. And so, my wife and other people's wives would send us these tapes of the records and we would transcribe the records and play them. They would send us out to a fire base or 

FRED BOUCHARD: Spinning Wheel and stuff like that. 

KEN PULLIG: All that stuff, and we would play for the grunts that were out in the field and it gave them a little touch of what was happening back home. That's what we did, that's when I got interested more about that. Without really even knowing what it was but I had had good training so I could transcribe that stuff. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So this was a good outlet. You kept your lip up, you didn't have any more raids, nobody Gillespie'd your axe? 

KEN PULLIG: Actually, I lost a lot of my chops when I was in the army. But it was okay, I got it back together when I got back home. It was a strange environment. 

FRED BOUCHARD: I just came back from the Berlin Jazz Festival and they opened it up with a movie of John Hendrix in Normandy who got court martialed for defecting because the racism was so bad. He couldn't keep his mouth shut. Did you learn your lesson and not piss off the brass? 

KEN PULLIG: No, I was even worse because I knew there was no place worse they could send me. So I was really terrible. At one point I had written over fifty letters to the congress and at one point written every senator a letter about some of the bad things that were going on. How horribly organized it was and how ridiculous it was. What was being said in the papers was not the truth, it wasn't what was going on. 

FRED BOUCHARD: I'm sure that's the case today. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, well the case today now everybody is there by choice more or less. Although, certainly economically, how much choice do a lot of these kids that join the service have? 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yeah, true 

KEN PULLIG: But they are there, they haven't been drafted. When I was in the army most of it was draft so there were a lot of incorrigible type people that were stuck in that situation. And we thought it was our job to keep them all honest so we gave them great grief. We did, we continued to do that, I continued to do that. Not everyone did but that was me with my big mouth. But we had also an interesting group of guys that would meet, 'cause you know, there was very strong racial turmoil that probably nobody realizes even in Vietnam. Even with everybody being out in the field together and everybody bleeding red there was still a lot of racism that went on. So I was with a group that met regularly. A black-white group that was trying to diffuse all of that and trying to go forward in a more logical way on the planet. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Cool! It steps in the society of the music. The music is gonna be bi-colored. 

KEN PULLIG: Imagine the people, John Hendrix's generation, who served in World War Two and then came home and couldn't sit down at a lunch counter and have dinner. I mean what kind of logic is that? That's not logical. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Brutal. I mean, a lot of the guys that are coming back now aren't getting any services. 

KEN PULLIG: They're reduced. It seems like this particular culture sort of uses up its military people. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yeah, I mean there is no treatment for post-war trauma, etcetera, etcetera. Anyway 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, anyway. That's a chapter that's over for me anyway. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Anyway, your jazz interest started perking up with 

KEN PULLIG: With jazz! 

FRED BOUCHARD: And there were jazz charts to be played, music to be listened to, you had little combos.. 

KEN PULLIG: Yup! 

FRED BOUCHARD: Doing some jamming? 

KEN PULLIG: Got all that done all there and when I got home we moved up to Boston and went to Berklee. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Who's we? 

KEN PULLIG: My wife and I. 

FRED BOUCHARD: You were already married? 

KEN PULLIG: I was married '67, yeah. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Who were your influences on your horn and for composition early on? 

KEN PULLIG: You know, pretty non-sophisticated. Classical was probably Bud Herseth of the Chicago Symphony was always someone that was held up in high esteem for methe records to listen to from Dave Wheeler, and so I always sort of had a great desire to have that sound. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Those Fritz Reiner years? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, the Fritz Reiner years. Of course some of the guys I met in Fort Belvoir, who are Chicago Symphony freaks[?], we used to listen to that music all the time and it featured that tremendous brass section. So I mean that was an influence, but I didn't really strive--I didn't have one person that I went to. I had an interesting experience in high school where, you know, Al Hirt was one of my favorite trumpet players--I'll admit that. One of the few dates I did go on in high school, I had this big date to go to Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut, one of these old amusement park places. They had a little band stand there and Al Hirt was coming to Lake Compounce. I'm sure it was on the circuit where all those guys played. So I got tickets, you know, big date. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Was Pete Fountaine with 'em? 

KEN PULLIG: Well, let the story go on. So I drive down to Lake Compounce with this girl, totally nervous, I'm totally freaked out, you know. Oh this is gonna be good, Al Hirt's great. I get there and Al Hirt canceled! And I'm thinking, "Oh God!" "But by special engagement tonight the Maynard Ferguson band!" Didn't know who Maynard Ferguson was. So I said, "Wow, it looks like it's gonna be a band, so let's check it out." So we went in there and you know this has to be 1961, '62? 

FRED BOUCHARD: Slide Hampton 

KEN PULLIG: Oh yeah, Slide Hampton, Kenny Cooper, all thosebasically half the band were junkies probably at that point. Maynard showed up with his horn in a brown paper bag. He didn't even have a case yet. His horn in a brown paper bag. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Sounds like Parker. 

KEN PULLIG: He came down, the band was on stage in rumply crumpled jackets. They'd probably just gotten out of the bus. "Oh, what the hell is Lake Compounce," you know, that kind of thing. And the first chart they played was "Airegin." 

FRED BOUCHARD: Jesus. 

KEN PULLIG: And I sort of thought, wow, what's this? You know I didn't really pursue it but I'm sure that it got deeply embedded as an experience because I just remembered that those first four or five seconds. Holy Cow! What is this? [Vocalizing] The way that chart starts. One of Slide's great charts. We stayed there the whole time and I guess they did two sets. Maybe it was one long set, I forget. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Did you dump your date and run backstage? 

KEN PULLIG: No, no, you know I stood there and it was a completely unique and new experience like holy cow! 

FRED BOUCHARD: And you were already a high note specialist from college days. 

KEN PULLIG: I wasn't in college, this was in high school. I was a junior you know, had just gotten my license actually not so long before then. This was like the first big date. Probably the only date actually if I think about it that I had in high school. But anyway that Maynard but then when I got to UCONN, this guy I met at UCONN that was in the marching band he was a Maynard Ferguson freak. So then I would listen to all these records. So I was my initial entry of being interested in Jazz was because of Maynard Ferguson high notes and so you know I would try to play those notes and I could play 'em up to a lot but then when he went really in the stratosphere, it was always just a mystery to me how he could do that. Then come to find out, a lot of other people too. But anyway, that made a big impression. Maynard's band for sure. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Anyway, you started to talk about Berklee and we backed up again. What was it like coming to Boston? 

KEN PULLIG: It was great. We got this great old Victorian house, first floor in Dorchester, lived there. Came to school and the first class I had was with Tony Teixeira. So that was the same kind of experience, first Jazz experience having with Maynard Ferguson. But Tony was great. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Did he already have the octet going? 

KEN PULLIG: Oh yeah, I am sure he did but all of his outrageous behavior in class when he always had things played in class and when he found out I could play the trumpet I was always one of the people that were playing the homework assignments and he got to like me because I was helping him out in class like that, that was that experience. So I learned a lot from him and Berklee finally after having a degree in Music Ed and having all this knowledge in music but never really being able to use it to create anything within a couple of months of being at Berklee suddenly I was creating stuff and writing and thinking, "Yeah, this is definitely it." Of course at that time at Berklee it was three degrees you got. You either got a degree in Composition, which was classical composition, a degree in Performance or a degree in Music Ed. Those were the two, so I was in Composition. So primarily I was taking "traditional composition" but of course all of these electives, the jazz area, were offered also. So I took all the composition courses and had great teachers as we were talking before, the most influential which was probably John Bavicchi who's become my great friend through all of these years. At the same time I was taking all the courses with Herb, running into teachers that were just graduated from Berklee like Jaxon Stock who had a really big emphasis on me. Jaxon was an amazing musician. Actually played in my band when I first started putting it together. I think was a real mentor for me. He encouraged me a couple of times to go on with what I was trying to do so he was a great help. Within a matter of a couple of semesters I was writing music which is what I wanted to do and it was fantastic. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So you're writing what, Bach style chorales and stuff for Bavicchi? 

KEN PULLIG: No, with John, John was contemporary music which was perfect because all through my life, both my father and brother played piano so I had heard them play piano, we always had a piano in the living room. But I never took piano lessons. I didn't know anything about the piano, but I would sit at the piano and play the piano for three or four hours without stopping, just inventing all this stuff in my own little naive sonic world so when I came to Berklee and met John it was very contemporary. He would show us some techniques and say, "Go home and write!" And I would, I would go home and write. We'd come in and play it and that went on and on and on. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So what were you writing? 

KEN PULLIG: Everything and anything. Whoever was in the class, whatever the instrumentation was in the class, that's what we would write for. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Like mixed chamber group. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano, there were no strings. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Percussion? 

KEN PULLIG: Once there was a percussionist that we did like a little hand percussion thing - made up some sounds. But primarily wind instruments and piano and bass. No string instruments back then at Berklee, when I was here. Very few anyway. So, that's what we would do and I sort of blossomed and I took Herb's courses and that was a very structured curriculum. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Was that Ellington, linewriting or what? 

KEN PULLIG: Started with linewriting which was sort of at the time Arranging 5 and then it went from the linewriting course to his immersion in the techniques of Duke Ellington and then if you survived the cut from linewriting to get into the Duke class, and then the next cut was to get into the seminar class where he would get in deeper more with various techniques that he had worked out: Composite scale structure and things like that. Back then that class was really like a master's or even a doctoral type level class. It was very sophisticated and the music that came out of it was extremely sophisticated, along with what we were talking about before: That Berklee sound. That's what would be happening because in those courses you would write for, at the time it was called, The Recording Band. That was Herb's band and the best players in school were in that band and so you got your music played by the best players which you got encouragement from that and you went on and it was just a great experience. At the same time, Phil was doing The Rainbow Band which was a similar kind of experience. So there was more than one opportunity for this kind of evolution to occur and that's what everybody who went to Berklee at that time, that's the experience they were getting. Then meanwhile, subsidiary teachers like Jaxon Stock and Michael Rendish tremendous musicians that were teaching us all of the time. It was fantastic. Not to mention Ted Pease who was very influential in sort of modernizing Berklee in a way at that time and of course John LaPorta. I have to mention John. I took courses with John and he was very influential for me also when I first started teaching. John was the first one to ask me, "Would you like to teach some of my curriculum?" And I said, "Yeah, of course." So I was actually still a student, but teaching at the same time cause I had a degree already. That was the time period, in the early seventies. I was here from '71, I took a year off and came back. '74 and '75 was when I was finishing up, but that was when Berklee was blossoming exponentially in terms of how the place was growing so they needed as many teachers as they could get. So, frankly, at that time period going here was sort of a training ground to become a teacher, and a lot of us that are here now after twenty-five, thirty years have the same story behind us: that we went to school here and we got a job here and this is where we have been all this time. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yep, Jon Damian. 

KEN PULLIG: It's a very unique story--a very unique institution, I mean, to find a situation like this that people have been here for so long. People from outside when they come here, they just sort of shake their heads and can't understand the familial nature of what Berklee is. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Well, it's partly to do with the way Larry Berk and Alma Berk and Lee and Bob Share ran the place. 

KEN PULLIG: It was a family business no doubt about it, certainly. Not all of the history is gloriful, certainly. But it was that: it was a family business. The Berks would let some of the people into the inner circles a little bit closer than others. I mean, stories that I am sure that you have heard from Jon-- they would lend people money, they'd get a mortgage to buy a house and stuff like that. So it was a familial situation and people stayed here even though they complained about the money and the hours, they still stayed here because it was the Wild West frontier atmosphere which allowed for innovation and development. 

FRED BOUCHARD: On the spot. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, on the spot. No stoic committees to go through or anything like that. You wanna do something? Yeah, we know you--go do it, you can do it. That's how I developed all of these courses. I had two undergraduate degrees, but I would say the first four years I taught at Berklee from '75 through '79, the experience I had teaching and all the writing I was doing, the stuff I was writing that I was using in class, that was probably like the most intense doctoral experience you could have possibly had. Although I don't have a doctorate and a high paper, I always feel like the experience I had far surpassed what any of those programs would have been. 

FRED BOUCHARD: It's kind of like that [inaudible]]... that kind of like quick generational blossoming where you would go to Bob Share with some ideas for a course, sketch it out on the back of a napkin and he'd say, "You teach that starting in January." And boom it would go and you would fill it up. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, you know, all of those people, they were musicians and writers too. Jerry Sittens[?], you probably know that name, Jerry Sittens[?]. I just got to know him better through the last couple of years and know all his music. But Jerry was the guy who did all the scheduling. He did it on a big bulletin board with needles and sticking names into slots. But come to find out, Jerry is this very competent writer and composer. He just finally sent some music and stuff that he has that did back in that So I mean, that was the atmosphere: everybody was a serious, competent musician. 

FRED BOUCHARD: And when you approached him, an idea to Bob Share, who was a trumpet player himself, he would get it. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, and they would also recognize the talent. They would encourage people to stay on it. Ted, wen I was finishing up in '75, he just came to me one day, he said, "We need some teachers, would you consider teaching formally? Now, I know you've been teaching for Jon, would you come and teach in the curriculum?" At that time, '75, my wife was pregnant and I said--because I thought I was gonna go on the road, but I said--"You know, maybe I'll do that. I kind of like the idea of teaching" My first degree is in Music Education. I always thought that that was what I was gonna do, but I didn't really knowSo I started teaching, and it was in this atmosphere where I was teaching--but I was also studying and evolving and developing all this stuff I had learned at Berklee, so it ended up being a great time. Of course, at that time I also was running my band. My band Decahedron started up kind of as a vehicle to play the music I was writing at Berklee initially, and we would have Sunday sessions at my house. I took the room in the basement of this Victorian house that we had, 'cause I worked for the landlord. 

FRED BOUCHARD: This was in Dorchester? Where were you by the way in Dorchester? I used to live there myself. 

KEN PULLIG: On Mill Street, which is sort of off Freeport on the other side of Morrissey Boulevard. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Near the Baker Chocolate? 

KEN PULLIG: No, it's called Clam Point now that it's become gentrified. But it was a great little street and anyway, the landlord Al Macunas was this young guy. He was a contractor so when I moved into the house I had some experience with carpentry and knew how to use tools so I actually worked for him in construction building houses and I was his tenant. So he sort of gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. There were six units in this house so I said, "Hey Al, I'm putting this band together, I would really like to use some of the basement for a rehearsal studio." He said, "Yeah, go ahead, do whatever you want!" So I did, I just changed one of the rooms down there into a little sound stage. And so, Sundays I would invite people over, my wife would cook breakfast, we would have breakfast and coffee and talk and we would go down to play for a few hours. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Who are some of the cats in the band? 

KEN PULLIG: Billy Drews, Jaxon Stock would come over, my friend Jerry Cohen played trumpet, John Cattalinic would play piano, I forget, maybe Greg Sack was one of those guys, the killer baritone player. Tony Noterfonzo was the drummer that played with us initially was in the band. It was just homework assignments really, but charts that were starting to get a little bit more extended and risk-taking type things. And then we'd rehearse and have fun and everybody said, "Man, why don't go play some of these? Let's put a gig together!", "Yeah, let's do that!" So we got a gig and the first gig we played in a church and it became a band then, and I started writing more and more for it. So we were playing around. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Where were some of the clubs and venues that you would show up? 

KEN PULLIG: We had a residency for the longest time in the 1369 Club which is sort of across the street from where Ryles is now. But that was kind of a sleazy little bar, they got a small little stage but it was great. What was their name, the Maheagan brothers? I forget their names. They ran this place but we played Monday nights there off and on for two years. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yeah, I know I saw you there. But they drew a lot of good people: Kenny Werner, Joe Lovano 

KEN PULLIG: Lot of people played at the 1369 Club. It was great. So we would do that gig, that was our most recurrent gig and then of course we're teaching also. All the players in the band were teachers at Berklee. We did that and the band sort of played those years, say '73 probably to about '82. It was about nine years I guess we played. Then as I got more and more involved with Berklee, played less and less gigs and then when I became chair in '85, that job sort of took most of my time so then the gigs became more sporadic for the band. People left the band. My bass player Seville Salvarella he quit playing and as the people left the band sort of the enthusiasm for keeping the band together as a gigging unit became less appealing to me, 'cause all the music I had written that was in the repertoire had all these people's personalities in it. Although the music can be played by anybody and it sounds good, it wasn't the same for me. And with the responsibilities I had that were constantly growing here at Berklee just sort of one thing went down and the other thing came up just kind of naturally. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Before you get into your responsibilities as chair, would you back up a little bit and talk about some of the pedagogical chunks that you got from say John LaPorta that you worked into your own program and curriculum? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah. John's most lasting impression probably for anyone who ever studied with him would be the class he taught called melody and improvisation. John would sit on a chair in the middle of the class and we would do these exercises every week and he would play the examples on the saxophone about how to write through a series of changes. And I think that that concept, that chord-scale concept, which was later extended by Ted, Ted Pease, became the basis pedagogically of how composition in the jazz style was taught - closely aligned with the whole concept of improvisation. The vocabulary is the same in improvisation as it would be in writing it down into some kind of a tune form. So I think that as the curriculum was developed for Jazz Comp it definitely came from that experience. And it became then motivic thinking which was not so blatantly taught as such when I was in school here. That became a more refined development of that as the curriculum and the way of teaching, and the pedagogy, was developed in the Jazz Comp Department through all of these years. I had the benefit of having Herb in these meetings all of the time, basically surrounded by all of his students and his cohort Greg who never studied at Berklee but Greg came off Buddy's band he thought for a minute in '74 to teach here for one semester to take a break from the road and he stayed since '74. So between Greg and Herb and all of us who had studied with Herb, you can imagine what the conversations were at these Tuesday meetings about, "What are we gonna do and how should we do it and dadada?" Everybody had a very strong opinion about everything 

FRED BOUCHARD: And everybody was listening to stuff that was being done out in the big bad world out there: The recordings, the bands passing through town. 

KEN PULLIG: I mean, Herb was a virtual history book that we had there to pick his brains at any moment and Greg was and remains the genius that he is and everybody else is no slouch either. The pedagogy evolved through a natural series of conversations about what's best for the students and about the concept of playing music in the class and having the students hear what they write and what's good about it, what's bad about it. And the concept of everybody staying active as both performer and writer. That's been the basis of the department all of these years. The concerts that we do, Fall Together in the fall and The Write of Spring in the spring semester, everybody who teaches in the Jazz Composition Department has a piece played in one of those two concerts every year and has since that series started twenty-five years ago. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Plus I know Herb and Greg were out playing around town in various kinds of combinations. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah and Greg playing for Herb and Herb would have some of his favorite students write charts for the band. I was lucky enough to be asked to write a couple of different charts for the band and they played them So that was the family. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yeah, LaPorta played in the Shiah album. 

KEN PULLIG: Oh yeah and Phil too. Pramlatta's Hips had those great examples of Phil's writings, John's writing. They were the writing stalwarts, really, of Herb's sound. 

FRED BOUCHARD: What was going on outside the pail of Berklee? Was there any cross pollination with the [Boston] Conservatory at this point? Not much yet? 

KEN PULLIG: In fact it was opposite that. It was great competition when I was at Berklee. It was sort of those guys down the street versus us up the street. 

FRED BOUCHARD: "Nothing Conservatory About It" and all of that stuff. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, Gary's thing, "Nothing Conservatory About It," right. [Laughs] 

FRED BOUCHARD: What were you hearing out at the Jazz Workshop or anywhere else in town? Were you getting any fresh? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, my most wonderful experience at Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop that was right down the street here was hearing Mingus' band with Jaki Byard one night. 

FRED BOUCHARD: The quintet? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah it was a quintet with, probably catch me off guard here 

FRED BOUCHARD: Richard Williams? 

KEN PULLIG: Who was playing trumpet, no it wasn't Richard, it was the guy 

FRED BOUCHARD: Jack Walrath. 

KEN PULLIG: No, it was way before Jack, who's become a good friend by the way too. I forget who it was. But anyways, I listened to that music. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Lonnie Hillyer? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, Lonnie Hillyer, that's who was playing, thank you. That was a spark. I sort of got involved listening, who is this guy Mingus? I bought a couple of his albums, I bought a couple Eric Dolphy albums when I was a student. So there was an interest. When I saw him then live, I thought, "Wow, yeah." I started listening more and more and probably if there has been, like you asked before, what really influenced me the most, probably I would have to say the music of Mingus has been a very main instigator for my interest and passion in music. There was something about that music that just vibrated inside with me. Sometimes I hear Mingus' voice in my head, that energy is existing in another frequency. But every once in a while I'll do something when I'm teaching this class: I've been teaching about his music since '76 is when I started the course. So often I'll just say, "Charles, that's right, isn't it?" and I'll make up the sound of his voice, "Yeah yeah yeah, get out there, come on! What are you doing white boy, stop that shit!" But anyway, I don't try to replicate Mingus' music but I think it's had a great influence and people hear that in my music, "Oh, that's a Mingus kind of thing." "Oh, it is?" I'll often say, "Oh, you think so?" 

FRED BOUCHARD: So you would incorporate accelerandos 

KEN PULLIG: I do have accelerandos. 

FRED BOUCHARD: And some big 

KEN PULLIG: Long forms. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Diminuendo and 

KEN PULLIG: Collective improvisation, heavy blues influences here and there. 

FRED BOUCHARD: A little gospel shout? 

KEN PULLIG: I never got into the gospel thing. [Laughter] Didn't have that experience. Maybe if I, when I was two years old, would have been dragged to the Black gospel meeting or His Holiness Church maybe I would have done some gospel. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Incorporating strings now? Maybe some cello or violin or any of that stuff? 

KEN PULLIG: I never have done strings. 

FRED BOUCHARD: No? How about voice? 

KEN PULLIG: I have done some things with voice and with poetry. Decahedron got into these moments of duets with words and music, which is something of course Mingus always did too. But I never really preached from the bandstand as a bully pulpit about what was wrong with society the way Mingus did but I would do that sort of indirectly with some of the unusual poems that I would often speak words. That was part of our thing. There's a piece, it's funny since I've been the chair, in 1988 I wrote a piece about the presidential election. A big long piece about thirty minutes like a jazz oratorio for not a big band, but a kind of small big band, and that has a vocalist, and it also has narrations throughout it as it goes from section to section and I wrote the text for all of that. We did it '88 and everybody had so much fun, you can imagine sort of with my sarcastic attitude about most things political that it was quite a hit at that time. If you remember that election was George Bush Sr. versus Dukakis who had been the governor of Massachusetts. It was a really nasty nasty election. The Willie Horton thing came out of that, the racism card and all of that it was just terrible. So I was really motivated to write some music about this and really just lambast it and the whole process. And it was a great success. The piece was wonderful. 

FRED BOUCHARD: What did you call it? 

KEN PULLIG: It was called Politickle Your Fancy. So Politickle was not spelled as political but was Politickle: T-I-C-K-L-E. Tickle your fancy, a little play on words. So then in '92 we did the piece again and then '96 we did it again, 2000 we did it again, 2004 we did it so 2008 we did it. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Tickling the text a little bit every time? 

KEN PULLIG: Change the text a little bit every time to suit the particular ridiculousness of that particular election cycle. Unless they invite me back after I retire next year, maybe it had its last performance. 

FRED BOUCHARD: But that's definitely in the Mingus tradition, poking fun at Faubus or whoever. 

KEN PULLIG: Yep I think so. That's my mild bully pulpit experience as a composer. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Which Mingus composition do you find to be signal or central to your core of the ones that you always go back on. 

KEN PULLIG: To me, the classic Mingus piece is Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Mariano at his finest. 

KEN PULLIG: Mariano beyond his finest I think. I don't think Mariano ever played that well in any other thing I ever heard him play! I mean, he's a great player but to be given that kind of responsibility and meet it with the degree of just beauty that he creates, it's unbelievable. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yeah, people just play it over their heads. Bill Triglia, where did he ever come from? 

KEN PULLIG: Bill Triglia, great pianist, yeah. 

FRED BOUCHARD: But I mean, I never heard him before or since! 

KEN PULLIG: I know, came and went. But that piece to me is the piece of all the musicians and composers that I've known both classical and jazz oriented at that time, if they were audio files when I would ask them, "Do you have anything by Mingus?", they'd say, "Oh yeah, I have Black Saint and the Sinner Lady." They would always say that and that was the piece that everybody would have. 

FRED BOUCHARD: You can thank Bob Thiele too for doing an amazing job in the studio. A lot of those Impulse Records were just 

KEN PULLIG: Well, the story behind that is, what's so weird because when I was in sabbatical last spring one of the projects I did, the main project that I did, I finally put together basically what it is is a small book about Black Saint and the Sinner Lady but I took the whole experience and wrote it down from beginning to end utilizing what was in Mingus' score. John Voigt the ex-librarian at Berklee when Mingus died in '79 and people went into his apartment to figure out what's there, people like Andrew Homzy when they found the remnants of Epitaph and all of that. John Voigt was in one of those initial groups and he got the microfilm copies of everything but also made a lot of hard copies and one of the things that he got for me 'cause he knew at the time I had the course on Mingus, he got me a photocopy of the score of Black Saint and the Sinner Lady in Mingus' hand. A total sloppy mess. And after about the first three or four minutes of the record not anything really to do with the record, the way it was made. So that whole record is a product of Mingus inserting areas into what is in the written score that's not there written and then virtually for the whole second side of that record copying and pasting various sections that happened in the first three tracks on the first side with some new stuff that must have been in some other track to create music that was never performed that way in the studio. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Spontaneous imagination. 

KEN PULLIG: He was actually previewing digital editing before there was digital editing. He did it with Bob and the other engineers with a razor blade. When they went into the post production part of that project there were well over fifty splices and cuts that had to be made to create that record. And then with all Mariano's overdubs, there are many times throughout where there actually are two altos playing in the record because Mariano was overdubbed and you have to have both 'cause if you took one away it wouldn't be the same. So Mariano was playing the alto part that was there to be played but then post recording Mingus said, "No, I need you to do this. When I point to you: play. When I wave you off: stop playing." That's the way a lot of that music was finally created. So when I was on sabbatical I transcribed all the things that weren't in the score, figured out what of the score was used and did it from measure one all the way through the end of the whole record and then wrote an analysis of everything that was going on and probably, my best guess anyway, what Mingus was probably thinking about; why he did this and why the piece was pieced together the way it was finally. 

FRED BOUCHARD: [Imitates Mingus] No, no, Ken, you fucked it, you got it all wrong! 

KEN PULLIG: No, I never heard that at all! I think he said, "Yeah, this is a good thing!" So, what I'm gonna do with it remains to be seen. 

FRED BOUCHARD: You gotta get it online somewhere. 

KEN PULLIG: The real scary part is I'm so motivated I could probably now write parts and actually perform it the way it was recorded or at least try to get to that level. There's so much improvisation in it. It would remain to be seen how close we would get, but it would certainly be an interesting project to attempt. That may be a future endeavor once I do retire. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Let's see, coming into the home stretch here, tell us about your tuba quartet. 

KEN PULLIG: My tuba quartet, for the Colonial Tuba Quartet. Good friend Greg Fritz who is chair of the Composition Department and is the tuba player now in the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble he asked. His group is the Colonial Tuba Quartet, he said, "We're doing this contest, would you like to write a piece?" I said, "Sure, I can write a piece." So I wrote, I had never written, what the heck would you write for four tubas, you know? But anyway, I wrote this piece. It actually came out pretty cool and it got an honorable mention in their contest and it's on their album. So it was kinda fun. Tuba quartet, pretty wild. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Why don't you mention some of your favorite students that have come through your class over the last twenty years? 

KEN PULLIG: I was afraid you were gonna ask that. I have the worst memory. One of the faculty in the department I always rely on is Bill Scism. He has this photographic memory about all of our students. When you just mentioned that one of the students, one of the names that pops out is Toru Dodo who is this Japanese piano player who is doing very well in New York City, he's a student that I had. I have forgotten most of them. 

FRED BOUCHARD: You mentioned Mina Cho. 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, Mina was recently. Hiromi was a student of mine. Hiromi Uehara. Actually I used to give her a lot of grief. Funny story about Hiromi, she was taking a course with Dick Lowell and had written a piano part in the score and Dick is sitting there with her going over it. I guess maybe it was directive study when she was getting ready to turn in her portfolio. And he looks at it and says, "Oh, Hiromi: This piano part!" He didn't really know who Hiromi was. She wasn't as well known as she is now. He looks at the piano part and he said, "This piano part you wrote, it's impossible, no one can play it!" She said, "Oh no, it is possible!" She goes over to the piano and she plays it and he said, "Well okay then!" So yeah, Hiromi is one of the students. There are so many great ones, I feel like it's a disservice to all of the people that I won't mention. Cyrus Chestnut was an early one a long time ago. And Joe Mardin who is just in town now. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Joe? 

KEN PULLIG: Joe Mardin. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Mardin? Arif's son? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Oh. I haven't run into him. What does he do? 

KEN PULLIG: He was just here a couple of days ago with the premier of the movie Best Years in Town about Arif and Joe has done a lot about keeping alive and extending the reputation of his dad. Rightfully so. But Joe has had his own life as a producer and musician too. Successful. I can't think of any more. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Have you had any favorite experiences during your Berklee career here? You've loved the Mingus class. What about your Serial Technique class? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, I've been teaching that one for a long time also. 

FRED BOUCHARD: How do you go about putting Schoenberg into something that swings? 

KEN PULLIG: One of the topics that I became involved with when I was a student here, basically one of John's writing technique classes, John Bavicchi, and then later with Tom McGah is also a great teacher at Berklee. Actually, I thought I had invented serialism before I found out about it. I came up with, "Ay, this would be a neat way of doing it!" I forget who it was, it might have been Tom who said, "Oh no Ken, they've been doing this for a long time now, you should find out about the music of Schoenberg!" Oh oh, okay. And then I said, "Damn, they've already figured this out before me." 

FRED BOUCHARD: That's like Stravinsky and Charles Ives doing whacked out stuff on both sides of the power without having heard each other. 

KEN PULLIG: But I adapted it to "jazz" in a way but usually most of my usages of it maintains the traditions rhythmically of jazz for the stability as the harmonic and melodic vocabulary just completely changes out of the world of traditional jazz. So, the key becomes how can you design a tone row that has in it the inherent ability to supply jazzy like melodic statements and also the stuff in it that can be verticalized that come up with sonorities that somehow don't violate jazz and are ambiguous enough so that maybe they can be heard as suggesting something that's relevant to jazz. So that's what I talk about in the course and now, over the past 20 years of doing this as the rhythmic ideas in jazz have changed so much. A lot of the kids right now will have more funky, even eighths kind of grooves that they use. But as soon as you get into that groove concept and you hear a rhythm section playing, people just automatically salivate and say, "Oh, this must be jazz!" And that's sort of the nature of the beast. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So is it more linear in construct rather than using major 7ths, minor 7th chords and that kind of stuff? 

KEN PULLIG: It's mostly contrapuntal. So yeah, you have to have some contrapuntal skill to really survive in the course. So yeah, a lot of it is linear but there is a vertical aspect too, a voicing aspect to it where much of the experimentation that is done as the student is creating this unique sonic world, you know, they've come up with a row. They've transposed to all the different levels and they've gone backwards through and they've inverted it and they have experimented with it and they have permutated it and while they're experimenting with it vertically and horizontally they're becoming more and more familiar with what the sound is and what's potentially possible to discover in it and eventually, within a fifteen-week semester, they have to come up with something. But it is a very time inclusive exercise. Initially a lot of it is experimentation and exploration really, of what's possible. Mostly everyone finishes the course and some of the pieces are much more successful than others but at the end probably the single most thing they accomplish is a tremendous ear training exercise. You really have to hear what it is you're trying to design. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So can the pieces be for solo piano or for string quartet or jazz sextet or what? 

KEN PULLIG: They could be but I require it to be more like for at least four front line instruments, melodic players and at least three. So septet is usually the minimal 'cause I want them to be able to orchestrate. To have enough texture that they can create and make use of the different sonorities. But you could do it for piano, certainly. You could write a much more involved piano part for a smaller group but it wouldn't give you the timbral variation that having the front line horns would. 

FRED BOUCHARD: So, after thirty-five years here Ken, have you developed any sort of an overweening or overview philosophy for teaching or for jazz education? 

KEN PULLIG: Yeah, the quote that's important is like, "When in doubt, leave it out." 

FRED BOUCHARD: Oh, okay, cool! Yeah, Dizzy said something like that at one point. I forget what it was but he says, "It ain't what you play, it's what you leave out." 

KEN PULLIG: If you're not totally convinced it needs to be there don't put it there. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Yeah, that's cool. I think self editing is a big issue with teenagers. Just blabbering, I can play this, watch me dad, how am I doing mom? Too many notes. 

KEN PULLIG: It's like language now too with all this blogospheres and all that. Everybody just pukes out undeveloped thoughts and they go everywhere on the planet. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Well I think that Dunkin' Donuts or somebody is offering a $20,000 college scholarship to the best "tweet." So now you've gotta get down to 140 characters and then you can put yourself through school on it. 

KEN PULLIG: It's a brave new world! 

FRED BOUCHARD: Maybe we'll be pulling out some little E. E. Cummings things or like Mark Twain aphorisms, who knows. 

KEN PULLIG: Who knows, that's right. 

FRED BOUCHARD: Anyway, thanks, it's been a ball talking to you. 

KEN PULLIG: Great. 

FRED BOUCHARD: And we'll be in the Berklee Library with this thing I guess within a few months. 

KEN PULLIG: Great, thanks Fred. 

FRED BOUCHARD: A real pleasure, thank you Ken.