Article by Todd Matthews

When audiences think of jazz at the Hopvine Pub in Seattle, they think of Kareem Kandi. Kandi's days are spent at Cornish College of the Arts, where he earned a full scholarship to study music. Thursday evenings, however, audiences can find Kandi and his trio on the small stage at this popular neighborhood pub. I recently met up with the gifted young saxophonist to talk about studying and performing jazz in Seattle.

TODD MATTHEWS: How did you get started performing jazz?

KAREEM KANDI: The whole jazz thing started for me in middle school in Tacoma. Tacoma was like a jazz wasteland. There was nothing happening musically in Tacoma. I was very fortunate to have a teacher down there who had just gotten off the road with the Tommy Dorsey Big Band. His name was Tracy Knoop. He is like the driving force of the music scene in Tacoma pretty much. He teaches over seventy students per week. He is like the jazz teacher down in Tacoma. There are no trumpet teachers, trombone teachers –– that's it –– unless you go to Seattle or Olympia. So I studied with him, he got me turned onto different jazz recordings, and we started playing along with those and just studying jazz. I started working for him as a doorman at Drake's when I was junior in high school. As a doorman, I got to see jazz every week. I had heard a lot about Bill Ramsey, a saxophone player in Puyallup. He had played with everybody. I didn't know what he looked like. One night, this old guy showed up at the door, and he wanted to get in without paying. I told him, 'Look, you're going to pay to get in just like everyone else. You can't get in.' It caused a big ruckus, and he called Tracy over. Tracy introduced me. He said, 'This is Bill Ramsey.' So, Bill Ramsey said, 'Well, I want you to come be my doorman and make sure everyone gets paid.' I was hearing really top-notch stuff at an early age in high school. It was nice.

TODD MATTHEWS: Do any of your peers at Cornish have their own regular gigs?

KAREEM KANDI: Actually, many students at Cornish are out doing their own stuff. It is a great school. There are many great players. When I decided to go to Cornish, I thought, 'Do I want to go to the East Coast to really be in the environment with all the competitive students? Or do I want to hang out here.' I decided to stay here because my family is here. I'm teaching a lot of students here, back in Tacoma. Financially, it made more sense for me to stay here. Plus, Cornish has so many heavyweights on the faculty. I'm not that motivated by the student factor. I have all the knowledge from the faculty members. I can pick their brains in a small classroom setting. That's what is so cool about Cornish.

TODD MATTHEWS: How much of your time is spent between school, playing live gigs, and promoting your music.

KAREEM KANDI: Mostly school. Two hours of my day is spent commuting in traffic from Tacoma everyday. The majority of my time is spent on school stuff. If I have gigs coming up, I try and get prepared for my gigs –– learn my music and be prepared. And there is just maintenance work and practicing. That's why I think, I'm really not making a focus on going out and getting a lot of gigs right now. I'm just trying to finish up school and do well at that. I want to get as much out of school as I can while I am there. It's just a matter of time –– something I don't have right now being in school.

TODD MATTHEWS: How long have you been performing at the Hopvine?

KAREEM KANDI: Since January. We started for no pay. We just wanted to show them that we could get it happening and it would be pretty cool.

TODD MATTHEWS: When you perform here, how much of your original work are you performing and trying out? How much of the performance are standards?

KAREEM KANDI: I'm always trying to work on different tunes from school. I'm always trying to incorporate the music I'm learning. I'm usually trying to think about what I have been learning in school, how I can perform better. Right now I'm just working more as a band and a team. When I grew up, I was working on my playing and that was it. And now I'm trying to make the band sound better. That's the main thing I'm learning currently in school. The band is a whole team. It's always a group effort. Like a basketball team: if you have an all-star, that's great, but they're not going to win. Right now, I think that's what we're all working on being here. I am constantly working on new stuff. Everyone's doing that. If you are a musician, you are always trying to improve. I make a distinction between 'weekend warriors' who just play and don't really work on it; and then there are musicians who take it seriously and are always studying and constantly trying to improve and learn about music and make it better. As far as other musicians around town, I'm at the bottom of the heap. I understand that, and that's fine with me. But I'm trying to learn more and get better, and improve.

This article originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The Tablet.