By Brian Kidd

The Ballard neighborhood in Seattle has been described as the best of what Seattle used to be and the best of what Seattle could become. Old brick roads intermingle with paved streets and modern buildings face older ones reminiscent of the early 20th century. In the heart of this old fishing town is Ballard Avenue, lined with restaurants, bars, small businesses and old apartment buildings. It was from one of these apartments inside the historic Junction Building-built in the 1890s--that in 1997 a drum instructor and his former student decided to create an independent jazz label in order to promote their music along with other local jazz musicians. The instructor, John Bishop, has since married and moved away and his former student, Matt Jorgensen, moved into his apartment, helping manage the label from a small loft.

However, co-owning a record label- and doing web design and free lance photography as well--is not Jorgensen's prime passion. It's drumming-drumming, drumming and then more drumming. In fact, since studying with drum-great Kenny Washington in the early 90s at New School for Social Research in New York City (in the Jazz and Contemporary Music Program), Jorgensen, 31, has played drums in many bands. These include the heralded New York swing band The Delegates, playing as a sideman for innovative alto-saxophonist Vincent Herring and even sitting in with the legendary pianist, Joanne Brackeen.

Although Jorgensen has played with artists who have extraordinary talent and vision, he possesses these same attributes, which inspired him to move from New York back to his native Seattle and create his own band, Matt Jorgensen+451. This band has released two albums in two years with Matt at the helm as a composer, arranger and bandleader. Not bad for someone who until college wasn't sure he wanted to take drums seriously. What made him want to start playing drums in the first place? "I just kind of always wanted to do it. I just wanted to play drums, it seemed pretty cool," said Jorgensen.

I met Jorgensen at his Ballard apartment on a typical Seattle spring day, the weather not quite deciding if it wanted to be cloudy or sunny. Walking down Ballard Avenue, I nearly missed the narrow stairwell, ascending to black double-doors with old-style buzzers numbered for each apartment. I hesitantly rang number 11, which had an Origin Arts logo posted by it. No answer. Just when I was about to ring for a second time I heard the unmistakable thumping of someone approaching the entrance: It was Matt flailing down the stairs, looking halfway excited and halfway nonchalant. "Hey," he greeted me-opening the door, "come on up."

Although somewhat imposing at about 6-feet-3 inches tall and well-built, Jorgensen's easy-going mannerisms and friendly demeanor instantly put me at ease; I had spoken to him only once in person before but felt like an old acquaintance. However, make no mistake, this guy is intense; perhaps not an innate characteristic but one of necessity. The life of a jazz musician can be terribly unforgiving.

"I've probably sold about three or four hundred of those albums," said Jorgensen, pointing to a shelf containing his CDs in the corner of the loft where he works. "But I've played on obscure indie-rock bands that have sold like 20 or 30 thousand copies."

Jorgensen showed me around the building at bit and I got a quick lesson on the history of Bishop and him living right across the way from each other for over a year; a patio separated their kiddy corner rooms, on which Bishop had his wedding reception.

After the brief tour, Matt and I made our way down Ballard Avenue to a small restaurant called Bad Albert's. With incessant Beatles music blaring in the background I began to drill Jorgensen on his short but productive career hoping my humble jazz knowledge wouldn't be exposed. It was anyway.

Jorgensen started playing drums at 15, taking lessons at Bishop's home. With solid encouragement from his parents, he played throughout high school, influenced strongly by rock 'n' roll. After high school, his father enrolled him in a jazz workshop at Shoreline Community College in north Seattle. In the summer between high school and college, Matt learned to play jazz drums--a pivotal time in his life.

"If it wasn't for that summer and the director at the time, Jeff Sizer, teaching me to play big band-drums, I wouldn't have a career," said Jorgensen.

"Early on, Matt was more into baseball than drums so there wasn't much thought about him pursuing it that hard, but for some reason it just clicked for him one day," said the 44-year-old Bishop. "He started asking more questions and was obviously inspired about the drums. He was certainly on track to be a very good all around drummer and was definitely open to taking in information."

"All the stuff I learned from everyone I learned from John; I was just too young to know what it was," said Jorgensen. "Now we'll still talk about drum stuff but it will be more about music philosophy versus sitting and practicing drums. It's kind of cool now 'cause we're both professional musicians."

"I think going to New York and getting hit by some very strong personalities at such a young age pushed him much farther into jazz than he would have if he just stayed in Seattle," said Bishop. "Not that it wouldn't have gone into that direction for him anyway, but it would have been a less obvious route to go."

After studying drums in New York, Matt began to play around, developing his chops and creating his own unique voice. But he refuses to label his own style.

"Styles are…" Jorgensen hesitates, "everything is so morphed…I'm influenced from everyone from Philly Jo Jones to Elvin Jones to Tony Williams. My style, well there's certain times where I play very traditional and there's times where I play completely out. And that's just kinda the way it is. My style changes with whoever I play with.

"I like playing different styles," said Jorgensen whose band has done jazz arrangements of Radiohead, Coldplay, and Led Zeppelin songs. "I like to play modern tunes because you play for a younger audience and they actually get it. The history of jazz is like improvising over modern tunes of the day. All those standards were like modern Broadway hits. So we're kind of doing the same thing."

Seattle might seem like an unlikely place to find such a fresh talent, but Jorgensen is far from being a rare gem in an otherwise poor scene, and many critics believe that Matt is in the company of many great jazz musicians, including the players in his band.

"Matt Jorgensen is an unusual jazzman," wrote New York Post music critic, Dan Aquilante, in his Nov. 1, 2000 review of MJ+451's debut, The Road Begins Here. "He is young, he runs his band from the drum kit, he knows when to give and when to take within a song and he has a rock aesthetic that lends intensity to his improvisations for 'The Road Begins Here.' Sure, Jorgensen and company cover the expected numbers such as Miles Davis' 'Teo' and John Coltrane's 'Central Park West,' but where he and his bandmates are truly terrific is on their cover of Led Zeppelin's 'No Quarter.' It doesn't require a keen ear to extract the melody from the song, yet 451 twist it to the point where it might be mistaken for an original composition."

The members of MJ+451 include University of Washington music major, alto-sax player, Mark Taylor - an acclaimed bandleader himself - tenor sax Rob Davis, veteran bassist, Philip Sparks, and a man who has made it his passion to study the Fender Rhodes keyboard, Berkeley College of Music graduate, Ryan Burns."

"He plays with a lot of fire," said Sparks. "A lot of the music he has comes from like rock tunes we play, like Led Zeppelin, and I don't get to do that with other bands; he'll take those kind of tunes and puts his own touch to them."

"He's a phenomenal drummer," said Taylor. "He plays different styles: straight ahead jazz and also rock. He's unusually adept to being a band leader and musician. A lot of his playing is derivative of a ton of different people--Elvin Jones, definitely Zep. His style is just a little piece from here and there. In New York we were doing nothing but straight-ahead jazz stuff, be-bop, in the band Radio Action. Now he's gone from being narrow to all encompassing."

"I've been playing with Mark and Rob since I was a kid and Ryan has really studied the art of the Fender Rhodes," said Jorgensen.

Seattle is also the home of the award-winning band New Stories which Bishop drums in, accompanied by Marc Seales-piano chair of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra--and bassist Doug Miller. Although there are not nearly enough jazz clubs in town (Tula's and the upscale Jazz Alley are the most noted) there are plenty of jazz musicians--good ones.

"A lot of people are putting out records because making CDs is cheap," said Jorgensen. "It's kind of gone full circle from the 1990s when people weren't putting out that many records but there were plenty of places to play. And now we need to focus on getting more rooms to play."

On being a conductor, arranger, bandleader and pretty much a kickbutt drummer at an unusually young age, Jorgensen said, "It's weird to play your own music and have it go over pretty good. I kind of have my own way of writing tunes and writing stuff. It helps because having the same guys play music they know what I mean. When I write tunes, a lot of them are sketches and free to interpretation so when I play them with other guys it sounds totally different."

In order to write songs, Jorgensen fiddles around on piano, which he played for a short stint as a kid, and guitar although he says he is terrible at both instruments. During live performances, sometimes he adds delayed guitar parts that flow through pieces, playing a small part and running it through an effects processor so he can drum while the part repeats through a melodic cycle, like a loop.

"I don't really approach the music any differently than if I was playing someone else's music. I am a drummer so I write music that's more rhythmically oriented. A lot of drummers write more by ear than by theory."

Even though he has accomplished so much so soon in an often-grueling business, does Jorgensen ever feel like hanging it up? "Every single day…It's a weird business. I've been on tour when we've played a full show in Seattle for lots of people and then we went to San Francisco to play for two people. You know the club screwed up and didn't promote it. You've got to have a lot of will power and strength to keep forging on."

"The whole business of jazz right now is hurtin'," asserted Jorgensen. "Basically the scene everywhere is bad. I remember when jazz records sold 4 percent of total album sales (now it's less than 2 percent) and that was only five years ago. Guys now, they do gigs for the same money as they did 20 years ago. It was a lot easier to be a working musician 10 years ago, 20 years ago; now you either make a lot of money or you make no money. It's just about scraping out a living. It's almost now that I see myself as an artist. I don't even distinguish between photographing web-design and music."

Web design and photographing are primarily what Jorgensen does to allow him to play drums for a living; they provide additional income. However, on a day that will live in infamy, Matt had to unexpectantly trade his drumming for shooting pictures of ominous scenes of urban macabre and mourning.

While on a Jet Blue flight to New York City on Sept. 11. 2001, Jorgensen watched on live T.V. the horrific scenes of the World Trade Center. His plane was forced to land in Buffalo instead. After finally arriving in New York City on the fourteenth, he discovered that all the clubs were closed down and his gigs cancelled. Jorgensen decided to make money in the meantime by shooting pictures for local New York papers, a job he was familiar with since he had been a photo editor for the online New York Post when he lived in New York. It was not until Sept. 28th that he played his first New York show.

"It (the club) was below Canal Street which was shut down-you could still smell the air. It's like the fucking world had changed about six blocks away. But people were out and they wanted to get away and they wanted to get out and Mark Taylor had just flown in and he wanted to play with me. A week and a half later I got married in Brooklyn. It was a weird time-everyone was inside and the streets were bare. There's nothing I can do. What I do is respond by…you know, I play music."

Matt wants to keep incorporating different styles into his music; the thought of remaining static doing the same tunes is dangerous. He frowns upon artists who stay the same only to try and guess what the audience will buy.

"Look at the Beatles (The Beatles hit "Can't Buy Me Love" was blaring in the background) they went from this, to Sgt. Pepper's to the White Album," said Jorgensen. "That's takin' chances you know. And I think that's the kind of stuff I gravitate to. That's what you do as musicians…If you're an artist that's what you do. That's what bands do, they change. You have to evolve or else you'll die."

As Jorgensen and I wandered outside, we are both silent for a bit and I begin to take in Ballard Avenue: the historic buildings, friendly passerbys, all the bars and restaurants right in the same vicinity. Matt and I said our goodbyes and I wondered how many average Joes even know that Origin is here, and if they do, the significance of the label and the young man living in unit #11 of an old building. Perhaps to them jazz is the best of what used to be, to Jorgensen, it is the best of what could be.