| Sound, spirit, senses, surroundings. |
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| Master musician Bryan Rombalski exudes these four s-words as much in his daily life as he would on stage, as if he were permeating his consciousness upon the life that surrounds him 24 hours a day. A music spiritualist at heart, Rombalski has taken the time to educate himself in world music settings, as well as academically on the guitar. The concept is as much personal as it is otherworldly, quiet as it is loud, simple as it is dramatic. It is beyond desire. The Midland, Michigan based family man is an example for musicians. He is a guru of instrumentation, tone, soul and balance, often singing his notes as they are played. Lightning fast or staccato slow. Having honed his spirit around his instrument for more than four decades now, Rombalski is currently leading his newest quintet, Three Worlds, into the studio to follow the heels of his most personal CD to date, ‘The Awakened Heart.’ Proud to present Three Worlds to the world, the jazz-based quintet that feeds off Rombalski’s idealism is made up of Ed Carney on saxophone, Mitchell Atkinson on bass, Earl Tiffin III on percussion, Mike McHenry on drums, and Eddy Garcia on percussion. Rombalski refuses to surround himself with negativity or addiction and with his group’s personal attitude and love of music, they provide overall inspiration for Rombalski in their positions within Three Worlds. And then there is the fact that they can PLAY beyond imagination. “The synergy of working with like-minded people is the thing that really counts,” said Rombalski. “I feel comfortable with these guys. Listening to each other and you really care about how each other does. And I would rather not play out anymore, because I’m old enough and I teach, but I don’t need to go out and battle other musicians’ own substance abuse, drinking or whatever. That’s not a problem I have or need to deal with.” Surroundings inspire and purge Rombalski’s desire for creation. Little is left to the imagination and everything is game. He has also taken musical trips to learn the culture of his musical ideals. “The primary thing next to that is how I work on the songwriting. The song is everything to me. I grew up listening to my Mom play Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra—all these songs. I just remember hearing the beauty of Nat King Cole’s voice. Even when I went back later to hear his trio work, I was totally blown away at how wonderful of a piano player he was. It’s like fantastic. I love the Beatles, I love Middle-Eastern music, Peru, music from Asia, Africa. I spent a lot of time listening to polyrhythmic elements. I base a lot of my playing on that. I spent a lot of time on African music—tons of time on it. I try to incorporate those (rhythms) and try to make a flowing style. “I’ve been to New Orleans twice in a year, as a pilgrimage one of the times. I had to go to Congo Square and I had to learn more about the history of it and I started listening to a lot more gospel music too.” Coloring styles per his own astute taste has kept the songwriter busy since his initial release, ‘Nozomi,’ in 1987. Thirteen years later, his follow-up ‘Devotion’ covered another decade of musical philosophies. 2004’s ‘Awakened Heart’ served up yet another treasure chest of possibilities. And now in 2005-2006, there is a brand new band for him to work within with no limits. “What’s nice about Ed and Mitchell (is) they can read (music),” continued the guitarist. “So what I do is write the parts down and give it to the guys. (And) We’re playing the tunes live first. They get a chance to breathe for a while before we actually record them.” Rombalski likes to re-arrange classic pop and rock standards, along with jazz and blues in his own guitar tongue. There are no limits and often a popular song may pass by within an evening of music unnoticed. “I love the challenge of doing some standards because you learn a lot from the past. It’s continually challenging for me to take a piece of music, harmonize it, do whatever I need to try to play it in a solo part where you’re doing the bass notes and the highs, you know. But I played a lot of linear playing when I was younger. Rock (and) a lot of folk music and then I studied classical guitar for a little while and then jazz guitar for a while. So the linear element I was getting frustrated with. Normally I’m a fingerstyle guitar player and I would play my songs and sneak them in between (covers). I love to play with the congas or whatever drums because you have a lot of control over the harmonic element and you can make interplay, so you know I tend to look at it that way as a really big element.” Tonality keeps Rombalski firmly planted in his musical concepts, where each note has a meaning, both linear and figuratively. “Wayne Shorter is one of my favorite composers. Miles Davis was a great writer. Herbie Hancock is a great writer. So you have these compositionalists…how can that not influence their interplay? They think compositionally. They’ve got the chops too, but they’ve got this thing where they like to create stories. So you actually have a play there. There’s an architecture to music. It’s like a house and you can walk into the house…if you get sensitive enough, you can open the door and walk inside. You can look around thorough the rooms, you can go up the steps, you can walk around (and) do whatever. You can decorate that house any way you want, you can put pictures up, do whatever you want, but that architecture is there. “A lot of what’s going on I think now is more people are outside of the house. As (both) a player and as a musician. It’s like math too. As your math gets more advanced, then you’re going to hear things that somebody wouldn’t normally do or you’re gonna feel things, or there might be another floor to that house you didn’t think there was before.” The guitarist was surrounded by a lot of the musicians ‘outside of the house’ while making a living musically throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s where musicianship took a back door to marketing and noise shock. “It’s good to have chops, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t subscribe to where a lot have said there is a melody (while playing a fast lick). If you need that color, it’s nice to be able to do it, but I want to serve the song. So songwriting since the ‘70s, I’ve just written the music, put it aside, written the music, put it aside. It’s a centering thing for me. It’s a thing that’s keeping balance. It’s like the way I cope with the world.” The yin and yang of Rombalski’s musical existence is one of overall art. Both are sonically and visually adoring to the artist. “For balance I have to write music or I used to do art work a lot. And that’s what I love, but there came a period where the seclusion and working on it was fine, but there’s something about the immediacy and the in-the-moment element of playing live…interacting with musicians. That almost democracy element where I’m really, really loving it—feeding off of it. I really love the idea of working on something until it’s done and everything, but there’s something about—you got to be right there in the moment and you prepare for it and you just let her go then. We have sections of the songs that are all worked out and parts of the song where I’ll say, ‘you guys take it right here.’ But we’ll always have cues.” With his inane sense of melody, Rombalski not only can perform what he hears, but he can musically sing it as well. “I always sing what I play. To tell you the truth, it’s been a part of me since day one. But I do remember my jazz teacher Gene Parker, who is a wonderful musician; he told me you should be able to sing whatever you play. I’ve always enjoyed singing and I’ve always enjoyed like Ella Fitzgerald or people who sang.” In his musical’s relation to rock and roll, Rombalski’s first love was Jimi Hendrix. He even has studied with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp for a week. “‘Band Of Gypsies’ by Jimi Hendrix. I was in my teens and I’ll never forget. ‘Message of Love,’ ‘Power of Love,’ and then ‘Machine Gun.’ That’s spooky stuff. It scared me and it felt comfortable at the same time. Good songs, good tunes.” The goodness of all types of music is what Rombalski hopes to procure each time he begins a new song or musical piece. He hopes that the eventual tune will cross all of the musical borders. |
 Tonality keeps Rombalski firmly planted in his musical concepts, where each note has a meaning, both linear and figuratively. |