The flute is not often associated with smooth jazz, or any kind of jazz.  Most people think of it as a stodgy, classical only instrument.  Well, “Flute Guy” Alexander Zonjic is doing all he can to change that image.  Besides being an accomplished musician, this Canada native, and adopted son of Detroit, is also a savvy businessman, morning DJ, and concert promoter.  I was so pleased to be able to grab a little of this busy man’s time to get to know him better and talk about his latest CD, doin’ the d.

SmoothViews (SV):  Welcome to SmoothViews.  This is our first time talking to you!
Alexander Zonjic (AZ):  Well, thank you!

SV:  I’d love to let our readers get to know more about you before talking about your latest CD, doin’ the d.  You are from Windsor, Canada – just over the Canadian border from Detroit.  How did you get started on the flute?  I understand it was not the first instrument you played.
AZ:  By no stretch was it the first instrument I played.  I didn’t really start playing the flute until I was 21 years old.  It was a pretty late start.  I was a rock and roll guitar player and grew up in Windsor, Ontario, which for all purposes is like growing up in Detroit.   It’s just over the river and we are profoundly influenced by everything that’s great about Detroit.  So growing up in Windsor, you were influenced by everything coming out of Detroit, like Motown and the great rock scene.  

SV:  I’ve actually been to Windsor.
AZ:  Wow…you’re one of the few!

SV:  So, tell us about Windsor and how you got started on the flute.
AZ:  It was a great place to grow up.  We were very poor kids.  Both my parents came from Europe after the war.  We had no artists or musicians in the family, just a lot of people who loved God, food, carpeting and music! (laughing)  I really didn’t start very much playing rock and roll guitar playing, the garage bands, etc., but I did take some lessons early on and had some training in terms of reading.  The flute was very much, excuse the expression, a fluke, because I was going along my path thinking that I was going to be a rock guitarist for a living, for what ever degree that’s possible.  I was visiting my parents from Toronto, where I was based at the time, and a guy literally sold me a flute on the street for nine dollars.  That’s how it started.  It was like people trying to sell you watches on the street, he literally said “Hey, you want to buy a flute?”  Now he did recognize me as a guitar guy because I had a bit of a reputation in the city.  He wanted to sell me the flute for $50.00 and I only had nine, so he took it!  Of course it was a hot flute.  Ironically, it was from the high school I had attended!  I really fell in love with the idea of playing it.  I really had no aptitude for playing it; I don’t think anyone really does.  It’s an extremely difficult instrument that requires a huge commitment.  But I fell in love with learning how to play it and was obsessed with it.  About eight months after buying that flute, I had heard that the new music program at the University of Windsor was auditioning, and, well, sometimes it’s fun to be that naïve!  I just went down there with my flute, and needless to say the prerequisite for the University music program is not “I just bought a flute off a guy on the street!”  But they must have heard something and it was a new program, so they let me in on a probationary level.  I was just obsessed in learning it, and not necessarily as a jazz musician.

SV:  Were you trained as a classical flutist?
AZ:  Oh, very much so.  I started falling in love with the classical repertoire.  The classical world is very big for the flute and there has been a lot of music written for the flute.  It has a big tradition in the classical world, not as big in the pop jazz world, but certainly in the rock world with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.  And of course in jazz with Herbie Mann and Hubert Laws would be the big names.  So, I started listening to classical repertoire, but never studied jazz on any level because the ability to improvise really came purely from experimenting.  I started to really fall in love with listening to the early Bob James records and his ability to fuse the jazz and classical and pop elements together.  He did a lot of stuff early on with Hubert Laws and I was just so totally enamored by what he had done.  So, it just evolved.  Certainly, my first big break was buying that flute; my second big break being allowed into a university music program; continuing my studies with Irvin Monroe, who is the principal flute player with the Detroit Symphony, and then meeting one of my heroes while playing in a jazz club in Detroit, late 1981, and Bob James came in.  You know, nobody needs a flute player.  They all need drummers and bass players and guitarists.  It was very much a break for me that Bob had this kind of love for this music.  If you go back to his early records, he used the flute frequently.  He listened to one set of mine, said they were headed to Japan the next week and would be playing Carnegie Hall when they got back and would I like to join the band!

SV:  Wow…that’s an amazing story!
AZ:  Well, it was.  I would have been happy to work just one tour and been able to say I worked with Bob, and then go back to working hard at what I was doing.  He obviously liked what I was doing and we have become very, very dear friends.  He is truly one of my mentors and one of my best friends in the world even though I see him less these days than I used to.  But I toured in his band for close to ten years.  And Kirk Whalum came into that band.  Eric Gale, Harvey Mason, Dean Brown…you can’t even imagine the great musicians that I was lucky enough to play with.  All along being very, very appreciative that he had a guy in the band that just played the flute.  Nobody needs that.  It was a really lucky break.

SV:  So you have been doing this a long time.
AZ:  I made my first album in 1978.  I’ve been making records for a long time.

SV:  On the new CD, you collaborated with so many stellar artists.  How did you pull that all together?
AZ:  Well, I have been doing that on a lot of records.  If you follow my discography, I made records for Canadian record companies.  I made records for Inner City Records, Optimism Records, and signed on with Warner Bros. in 1990.  From very early on because I was able to meet so many great musicians, I always had special guests on my records.  I mean, Earl Klugh is a very dear friend of mine.  He played on my Elegant Evening album in 1982.  For My Romance With You record, I went to New York and Bob James and Earl Klugh and Gary King were all on there.  I always thought that making a record was a collaborative thing.  I think of it sort of like chamber music.  It’s really not about one guy and a band accompanying him.  Yes, you can be the lead voice, but I think the magic of this music is having all of those personalities on it.  I have just been very lucky.  My CD before this one, Seldom Blues, had a huge cast on it.  Bob James, Earl Klugh, Jeff Lorber, Kem, Kirk Whalum and the list goes on.  This time I will admit, I put a lot of calls out and e-mails out and was really surprised that so many people wanted to come to the party. 

SV:  I think one of my favorite tracks is Maysa on “Undun.”  It must have been terrific working with her.
AZ:  I did a lot of live dates with her.  I have always liked working with singers and had done a lot of work with Angela Bofill.  It’s fun to work with singers because the flue, on a lot of levels, is the closest instrument to the human voice.  If you think about it, it’s a singer without words.  We breathe the same, we articulate the same.  And working with Maysa was wonderful.  She scats and improvises a lot.  And I always loved the Guess Who, and thought that “Undun” was a very jazzy tune.  If you remember the original, Burton Cummings was one of the great voices of pop music at that time.  That song was written by Randy Bachman of Bachman Turner Overdrive, who was the original guitar player in The Guess Who.  He learned some jazz chords from a famous jazz guitarist, Lenny Brough, a legendary guitarist.  They wrote that song on that spot.  And it was very jazzy.  I loved the tune, and to put a real spin on it, I thought let’s get a female on it.  I think it’s subtle and a very cool arrangement of it.

SV:  Your music seems to still be somewhat under the radar and other than the Detroit/mid-west area, many people don’t know much about you.  Why do you think that is?
AZ:  Well, there are two very strong reasons.  One is a very calculated one.  I stopped touring with any regularity for many reasons, the least of which was the very changing music industry.  It’s not me that was under the radar.  It’s the powers that be not recognizing that the flute can be such a powerful and compelling instrument.  For some reason, this format, this smooth jazz format…I mean, I’ve been making music for a really long time and studied it and have no insecurities about what level I function on, but I am amazed that they would just totally ignore the instrument.  The instrument just fell from grace.  You cannot get smooth jazz programmers and the powers that be to recognize it as an instrument.  To me, it’s absurd.  The only decision for playing music is whether it’s good or it’s bad.  There should be no other criteria for it.  I think they have underserved the listeners.  With all do respect to the saxophone, they have rammed the saxophone down our throats to the point where we can’t tell a good one from a bad one.  Some of the other reasons about being under the radar is that Detroit just became to compelling and profound a market to me.  I have toured all over the world and I have no ego about being famous, but I found a market here where I can make a profound living.    This market for me is gigantic for me.  And there was never any reason for me to take a pay cut to go traveling around the world.  And then to not have the instrument itself embraced on any level, what’s my reason for doing it?  It was a combination of all of that.  I just developed a major career in Detroit.

SV:  So, you are not just a performer.  I understand that you are heavily involved in many other areas like DJing.  Can you tell us about your other endeavors?
AZ:  I have been doing CBS radio for eleven years.  I have a world class jazz supper club that I am a partner in.  I am the artistic director for seven or eight major jazz festivals and I bring about 500 acts to this city every year.  It’s amazing to me how much of me this city can take!  My supper club is five years old, called Seldom Blues.  It’s a stunning five star dining room with great music.  We just had Keiko Matsui.  It’s a magical place.

SV:  Well, I personally have only seen you perform live once, and that was at the Berks Jazz Fest a few years ago.  Can we expect to see you begin to branch out from Detroit?
AZ:  I love playing Berks and John Ernesto does such a great job.  But since I have made such a monster career here in Detroit and have all of these other fires going, I have no compelling reason to travel.  I may do the occasional date somewhere else, but this city has been good to me.  And again, I don’t need to take a pay cut.  I see a lot of musicians working hard out there, travelling all over and losing money.   

SV:  It seems as though someone like yourself would have a great opportunity to be a motivator for kids, showing them that a typically classical instrument can be channeled into different genres of music.  Do you ever work with kids or mentor them?
AZ:  Oh, yes…always.  If you ever hung around Detroit for a while, no one would ever believe that outside of Detroit there isn’t a flute player in every major city.  Here, the “Flute Guy” happens to be one of the biggest figures in this market.  With my years on the radio, festivals, and so on…that visibility is great.  Sometimes it take a new messenger to bring something to the table.  Rick Braun on a lot of levels, broke the barrier for the trumpet.  So did Chris Botti.  Let’s face it, the clarinet certainly gets a worse rap than the flute does.  But if I can help even one kid get motivated, very cool. 

SV:  Thanks for your time and best of luck with the new CD and all of your other projects.

AZ:  Thanks so much for including me.