THE WIND CRIES MARTY

Composer Sasha Matson talks to veteran reedist Marty Krystall about film music, studio work, recording, and working with musicians from Serkin to Zappa.

- Sasha Matson

MARTY KRYSTALL IS A MUSICIAN’S MUSICIAN, HIGHLY REGARDED AND KNOWN TO HIS PEERS IN THE LA MUSIC WORLD AS A TRIPLE-THREAT WIND PLAYER EQUALLY ADEPT AT JAZZ, CLASSICAL, AND IN THE STUDIO. HE IS ALSO AN AUDIOPHILE, A RECORDING ENGINEER, AND A RECORD COMPANY OWNER, HAVING CREATED THE K2B2 LABEL WITH BASSIST AND COLLEAGUE BUELL NEIDLINGER IN 1979.

Krystall is a veteran of hundreds of recording sessions, in all music genres and media types. You have heard his playing even if you don’t know it; in this respect, he’s typical of other world-class musicians you may not have heard of: remarkable, individual talents who have been making music for decades in the musical vineyards of La La Land.

A native son of Los Angeles who came of age in the 1960s, Krystall has musical roots that take eclecticism to the extreme. Early on, he was hooked on progressive jazz. He committed himself to performing the most challenging of that music. He became a ferociously adept player on his primary axes, tenor sax and the clarinets. As a leader, Krystall has chaired combos whose repertoire focuses on the compositions of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols. He has played and recorded classical music with some of the best musicians of recent decades.

Krystall is also a composer himself. The personnel in his bands have included a who’s who of Los Angeles– based jazz virtuosi.

I first met Marty in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, when he played for me on a number of film-scoring sessions. Some were done in actual studios, others in my garage, where he would come in and enrich the synthesizer scores I had generated on my 8-track Otari tape deck. We knew many of the same players and composers and even did similar music-proofreading work, looking for mistakes in the handwritten parts copyists prepared for sessions, back before computers took over that job.