April 12, 2005
Interview by Susan Johnson  

Chieli Minucci has just released his sixth solo CD and 23rd overall, including his recordings with the pioneer contemporary jazz ensemble Special EFX. One of the two founding members of Special EFX, he has also played on the recordings of such major R&B/pop stars as Celine Dion, Jewel, Mark Anthony, The Backstreet Boys and has recently composed & produced music for big stage productions like Nickelodeon's “Dora The Explorer-LIVE." On Got It Goin' On, Chieli takes his unique fusion of musical styles to new heights as he demonstrates that the possibilities of instrumental music are far from exhausted. SmoothViews caught up with Chieli as he was working in his studio.

SmoothViews (SV): Hi Chieli! I understand you're busy working in the studio.
Chieli Minucci (CM): Yeah. I'm working on a Hip Hop/R&B project. Nothing to do with the jazz stuff that I do! I've been working on it the last couple of days. I'm just creating the tracks and then I'll bring some singers in. It's for a TV program and needs to sound like it's right off the radio. I've been writing cues for “Guiding Light” for awhile. Sometimes the show requires real underscored, dark, tense music. Very different from what I've done before and it's still somewhat of a new area for me. Really cool. A lot of times they need music for clubs, because the show has restaurants and clubs on it. So it's a real varied kind of writing assignment. It's always different. Although, I have to tell you… I don't know how many ways I can write a piece of music three minutes long in a minor key!

SV: From the looks of the charts, Got It Goin' On is doing great! I know it's been in my CD player since I bought it! Has the success of this CD been any sweeter than your previous five solo CD's?
CM: Thank you. I just heard a couple of days ago… the record company said that this CD shipped more copies initially than any of the other ones they've done for me. So, we're off to a good start. But, you know… you have to understand the history of it all. When I started doing this kind of music, with Special EFX, it was 1984 and we had records that would sell 50-60,000 copies in one year. Now days, it's very difficult to do that. Only a small percentage of the artists do that. I'm one of these guys who's been around for two decades and I'm still selling kind of regular amounts. So for me to have a significantly different response for a new album, I would feel it. And the way I would feel it is by a lot of bookings. Right now the record is only three weeks old. I think its two weeks at the stores and three weeks out at radio, so it's really hard to judge that still. But it's moving along and a lot of people seem to like it and it's a good start!

It a nutshell, my dilemma as an artist has always been… how can I continue to write and arrange interesting music that interests me and my fans, that will also get new fans and will also please the record company? In other words, give them a few songs that are commercial so they can sell the record the way they need to which is usually through radio airplay. The songs on this record that are “commercial” really came out good. I'm really, really happy with the performance and the translation to “live on stage” is going to be great! Like the single, “Good Times Ahead,” it's the official single and we've done it at a couple of shows and it's really nice to play live. I'm very excited. It's kind of a higher energy record with only one ballad on it and one kind of spacey, kind of soundtrack-ish piece. The rest of the record is “up” and that's fun.

SV: You write such a variety of music… from stage productions like "Dora the Explorer" to the background music to CBS's "The Guiding Light" to the wonderful original music on your CDs. What inspires you when you write?
CM: Inspiration is a funny thing. It comes when it comes. It can come from good events, like a child being born, for instance. It can also come from bad events. It can come from excitement or depression. I think that the inspiration to be creative and write something, whether it's a piece of music or a piece of literature or any kind of expression, it's really more of an action. It's a fleeting moment at best. I was taught to just get to work. It doesn't matt er how you feel, just do it anyway. And inspiration sometimes comes as a result of taking those actions. In other words, if my record company says, “We'd like to have you get a new record together” it means it's time to write. And typically with me, I'll spend weeks just worrying about it and having absolutely no inspiration at all and getting angry and saying, “I've done it already! I mean, how many times can I keep doing this style of music?” But there does come a day where I'll sit down at the piano or with the guitar and start to write something. And it's like somebody turned the tap on and there I go! And I get excited again. Perhaps I fall into some familiar patterns and perhaps I'm going into some new directions, but the inspiration is… I don't really notice it too much. I mean I look back and think, “I recorded 11 new songs! There must have been some inspiration!” (laughs) There are a couple of new styles on this record. I'm the kind of person… I write a lot. I always feel like I'm not really writing anything important. I'm the last person to know if there's any significance. I just keep moving along, because that's just part of me. The funny thing is that people like all kinds of stuff. Something you may like, I may not like at all. There's no way to really know. The important thing is to do just as good a job as you can and keep going from there.

SV: Do you feel that there is a different vibe in your music from working in your Queens roots rather than following the masses of musicians to LA?
CM: I've always lived in New York. The LA sound sometimes is a little bit more… I don't know I can answer that anymore. I mean, there was a time when I thought there was an LA sound and a NY sound. You know, Los Angeles was always typified by guys who were more imitative writers and people who had great technical abilities but not as much soul and angst. New York was always marked by a little more edge and… let's say, a little more anger in the music or passion. I don't know that I hear that so much anymore because there's a lot of people out there playing jazz and jazz-related music. For instance, some of the New York sounds… when Miles Davis came back on the scene with his New York band, that's routed a whole bunch of other groups who had that sound. Now, all these years later that sounds been imitated in Los Angeles as well, so there are a lot of bands in LA that have New York sounds. I don't know if I'd be able to tell that well anymore. I just know that Los Angeles certainly has a ton of smooth jazz acts. New York … we don't have too many. I mean, I don't really consider my act to be a smooth jazz act, although they market a few of my songs that way. I've always thought mine was jazz fusion… a little more on the edge of rock and stuff like that. Same with Chuck Loeb. It's just a way of arranging your music and tailoring your sound. It's like… picture a woman with a red dress on. She's all dolled up for the night, right. But that same person is in sweat pants the next day working out. So the person inside the clothing is the same person, but how you dress it is… so it's like with music as well. The song is just melodies and rhythms combined and how it's doctored up is how define it with a style. But I've always been kind of anti-category! (laughs) But the record companies and radio stations, they thrive on that.

SV: Besides the funky music on Got It Goin' On that I'm sure has everyone moving to the beat, you have a beautiful ballad “Love Is Always Young” that you and your father co-wrote. The song can make a heart hurt! Tell me a little about this song.
CM: Actually, my father wrote that with Mark Roberts, in LA, not me.... It's one of his best songs ever! My father wrote many, many songs. He comes from Italy and he came over to the States during the grand time of everything from Cole Porter to George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. All of the classic American writing. He got in on the scene and wrote many, many tunes, as well as a couple of hit songs in the 50's. Later on he worked at ABC and CBS, as a professional songwriter/A&R man, while I was growing up with my sister. He ended up writing less and less as he got older. Now he's in his 80's. He wrote this song in his early 80's with a fellow named Mark Roberts and they both live in LA. This song was originally a lyrical song and I did a vocal version of it a few years ago and I just decided that it would be beautiful to do with a nylon string acoustical guitar and do my own rendition of it. To me, it's one of his best… certainly the best song he's written in the last 15 years. Nice melody. Very visual. Very romantic.

SV: So, you have some hidden vignettes in Got It Goin' On and a song of silence in Track 11. Are you testing your listeners to see if they jump tracks?
CM: I recorded 14 songs and there were four really short ones. I said to my mastering engineer, “I'd like these to be on the CD.” It was very simple, like the song, “The Juice” which is the funky tune that Marion Meadows guest-stars on. I said, “I'd like to have this song have an intro… this little vignette with my bass player noodling on his bass guitar, but I don't want people, when they go to that track, to be able to hear it. The only way they're going to hear it is if they play the track ahead of it and play it straight through.” I thought that was a cool idea. But the thing about having track 11 and all that silence… that didn't quite work out as well as I thought! There are a couple of records that I have that are pop records and you have to wait a lot longer than four minutes! If you just let it keep going, there's something like 20 minutes later. It depends on how long your CD is.

SV: With the variety of music you have written, are you writing any sound tracks to movies yet? I think a couple from the new CD could easily fit. (“Love is Always Young” for a love story or a melancholy moment or “Destiny”)
CM: Thank you. I've had music put into movies, but I've never written anything specifically as a soundtrack… except I did a couple of documentaries years ago. I would like to get into that. I have certainly been studying more orchestral writing and do orchestral writing for the TV shows, but I've had music in two movies that folks might know. “Bowfinger” which is an old Eddie Murphy movie and “Snake Eyes” with Nicolas Cage. I didn't solicit it, they just got a hold of it somehow and licensed it and used it in some of the scenes. It was kind of cool! A lot of movies just use songs. I really admire soundtrack writing, like for instances, “The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.” I just love those sweeping themes. I think it's great!

SV: I noticed that you were in Scottsdale last Friday to perform a choreography called “Sensory Memory.” That sounds like a total visual and sound experience. Can you tell me a little about it and how you got involved?
CM: It was a Special EFX concert, combined with the Desert Dance Theatre dancers, with eight dancers choreographed to the music. So, it was very unusual to see the music all timed out with the dancing. It was great! Lisa Chow is the head of the Desert Dance Theatre and she's an old friend of mine. We had done something like way in the beginning of our careers together. So, nineteen years passed and we did it again. This was a little more artsy-fartsy than Broadway. They really detailed the compositions. It was my job to make sure we played them exactly the way they were rehearsed. It was a little bit tricky. It was a very nice show. We're going to have it on DVD soon. Maybe put a few clips on the website. It could be edited down [and made into a PBS Special], who knows.

SV: In the rare instances that you have some down time, where would we find you?
CM: (laughs) Well, I'm a creature of habit. I'm really into swimming and water, so I'm going to have a couple of days of down time next week and I'm going to Florida for a couple of nights and just relax. For down time, if I'm home… like tonight… I'll probably watch “The Shield” on TV. I have a couple of shows I watch religiously, but nothing other than that. I like to bicycle and swim. I'm really into sports and being outside. When I'm in Florida , it's swimming, riding the waves, hanging out. I like talking to people.

SV: I notice you have some shows in April. Do you plan to have an extensive tour this summer?
CM: I would like to. Right now we have five shows in April. We have a ten-show run in New York in June. We'll be playing at Iridium's, which is a club on Broadway, right in the middle of Times Square . We'll be there from June 16 for four nights. That's great, because we haven't had a strong New York run in awhile. I think we're going to Detroit . Then after that I'm not sure… the gigs are just penciled in right now. We hope to do a little tour in California . It's a great place for us to play.

SV: Any final thoughts for your fans, Chieli?
CM: Not really. It was great talking to you! Thanks!

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