Filipino-American guitarist/composer Karl Evangelista (b.1986) ranks among the vanguard of musicians pushing the traditions of jazz and experimental music into the future. Signal to Noise hails Evangelista as "one of the most original instrumentalists and composers of his generation," and as the creative force behind boundary-breaking group Grex, his music has been called "essential current-and-future listening" (Tiny Mix Tapes). Evangelista has explored new realms in sound and intercultural collaboration alongside Andrew Cyrille, Fred Frith, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Trevor Watts, Bobby Bradford, Alexander Hawkins, Tatsu Aoki, and Asian Improv aRts co-founder Francis Wong.

How would you describe music?

Poet Hanif Abdurraqib says that jazz is "actually a story about what can urgently be passed down to someone else before a person expires." Appropriately, I see music as a mode of communication - an abstract method of exchanging ideas, experiences, and traditions.

What is your relationship to music?

On a practical level, I see music as a job and a lifestyle. At the same time, my identity is so wrapped up in being a musician that I can't separate the practice of making music from the experience of living inside of it. Music is what I do. It inflects my understanding of the world, influences the way that I engage with others, and gives me purpose.

What draws you to the instrument(s) you play, and/or to composing?

I have a complicated relationship with the guitar. I've never been enamored of guitar culture, and I see the process of achieving technical perfection as a kind of spiritual discipline or logic puzzle rather than a source of pure enjoyment. I'm an obsessive practicer, but that may just be because I was taught to work hard by my parents and mentors. To me, the guitar is just a conduit through which I exercise what I perceive to be a sacred responsibility.

Composition and improvisation are different matters. Engaging with music as a series of embodied creative decisions is a real joy. I like seeing how ideas - motives, forms, shapes, etc. - bounce off of one another. The notion that music can be a dynamic exercise in personal and communal agency is really appealing to me. So one might say that I play the guitar in order to compose and improvise.

What groups or musical communities have you been part of, and how have they influenced your playing or composing today?

I have had the good fortune of participating in a number of different musical communities. I'd go as far as to say that my career has been defined by how I occupy liminal spaces in creative music.

My earliest association was with Asian Improv aRts, a San Francisco Bay Area-based performing arts organization co-founded in 1987 by Francis Wong and Jon Jang. I started working with AIR in college. Francis in particular encouraged me to nurture my understanding of my cultural heritage as a Filipino American, connecting my inherited traditions to practices in education and political activism.

I am also an alumnus of Mills College, studying under the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, and many others. Before the school merged with Northeastern in 2022, it was one of the world's leading institutions in the pedagogy of improvised and contemporary musics. My studies at Mills served as a launchpad for my career in the Bay Area, connecting me to many of my closest collaborators and friends. I met my wife and Grex bandmate, Rei Scampavia, there.

Both AIR and Mills helped me to connect to the continuum of improvised music in a meaningful way. My work with the likes of Andrew Cyrille, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Alexander Hawkins, Bobby Bradford, and other leading lights in the music owes everything to the experience I gained in the Bay.

What musician(s) most influenced your approach to music, and why?

My defining influence is John Coltrane. Coltrane set the bar for how a creative musician can (and probably should) conduct themselves. For Coltrane, music was a method of expressing deeply personal and profound feelings, and he arrived at his tremendous gifts with intensive discipline. Everything Coltrane did meant something, and his work is suffused with life.

The other musician who impacted my personal practice in a profound way was Louis Moholo-Moholo. I didn't know Louis very well, but I strongly relate to his desire to make music that combats injustice and advocates for freedom. His music was South African in the same way that I perceive my music to be Filipino American. He was also one of only a handful of musicians in the canon who really sounds like he's improvising. His decision-making process on records like Peter Brötzmann's Opened, But Hardly Touched should be studied.

Who or what influences you most outside of music, and why?

My love for my family is my biggest motivator.

My Aunt, Miriam Defensor Santiago, is widely heralded as the rightful winner of the 1992 Filipino Presidential Election. She was a progressive, populist candidate who devoted her career to fighting graft and corruption. One of the reasons I make music is to further her legacy in a realm outside of legislation and political carnage.

I also work very hard to set a good example for my son, Malcolm Louis. I wish to impart to him that you can follow your dreams and still be purposeful, compassionate, and stable.

What deceased performer(s), improviser(s), or composer(s) would you most like to have a conversation with, and why?

This is a really tough one. I would love to have met the other Blue Notes - Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Chris McGregor, Johnny Dyani, and Nik Moyake. The perspective of South African exiles in the midst of Apartheid is so singular and complex, and each one of these musicians made work that felt vivid, emotional, and nuanced. I'd just like to know a bit more about who they were as people - the stories are often intense.

I would also like to spend more time with the great Milford Graves, whom I studied under toward the end of his life. Professor Graves was tremendously generous, insightful, and kind, and I miss having the opportunity to speak with him.

What advice would you give to a young musician entering your field?

This is a big question. The most important piece of advice that I would like to share is that you must have a strong belief in your own work. Jazz and improvised music seem to incentivize originality, but the truth is that it's difficult to penetrate any market purely on the strength of talent or creativity. If you're doing something right, then you will seem "wrong" at least part of the time. You have to understand when and how you should stick to your convictions.

The other important thing to consider is that you can't wait for opportunities to come to you. You often have to generate your own work - write your own music, assemble your own bands, find your collaborators, finance your own projects, etc. You often have to reach out to bookers in a proactive way, and you have to apply for grants. Find the people you want to work with - they'll sometimes hire you. Sitting still and waiting for people to recognize your genius is a fool's errand.

What do you hope audiences take away from experiencing your music?

I want people to walk away from my music thinking that it was a good use of their time. I know that this sounds banal, but so many experiences in modern life are defined by their ephemerality. Institutions like Spotify and social media platforms like TikTok devalue musical works in a very tangible way. New media incentivizes the delivery of content and not the creation of meaning. If someone comes to one of my concerts, or listens to one of my records, I want them to recognize that the music was made with passion, sincerity, and purpose.

Where are you currently located or musically associated with?

I live in Richmond, California (part of the San Francisco Bay Area), though I tour regularly. My oldest and most important musical project is Grex, an experimental duo with my partner Rei Scampavia (and, often, drummer Robert Lopez). I also have ongoing associations with the great Andrew Cyrille, pianist Alexander Hawkins, Asian Improv aRts cofounder Francis Wong, the duo CuZns (Bobby Bradford and William Roper), drummer Jordan Glenn, and others.

What is your musical education or background?

I've been studying guitar since the age of 12. I have a BA from UC Berkeley in Interdisciplinary Studies and an MFA from Mills College in Music Performance & Literature (with a focus in Improvised Music).

What are some of your favorite recordings by other musicians or groups?

My list of favorite albums fluctuates rapidly, but the mainstays include John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Louis Moholo-Moholo's Spirits Rejoice!, Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, Jack Bruce's Songs for A Tailor, Cecil Taylor's Akisakila, Sonny Sharrock's Ask the Ages, Dudu Pukwana's In the Townships, Milford Graves's Babi Music, J Dilla's Donuts, Bennie Maupin's The Jewel in the Lotus, Madvillainy, John Carter's Castles of Ghana, Don Cherry's Brown Rice, Andrew Cyrille's The Declaration of Musical Independence, Death Grips's Exmilitary, Moor Mother's Fetish Bones, The Battered Ornaments's Mantle-Piece, Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda, Mitski's Puberty 2, etc.

What are some of your favorite recordings that you have made?

It's really hard to choose, but my favorite album of mine is Grex's Everything You Said Was Wrong. We figured something out in the process of making that record, and it's one of only a handful of my recordings that I can step outside of and listen to as an observer. Our followup to this record, which isn't releasing until next year, is even better.

Albums can also feel like experiences, and they can be difficult to separate from the process of recording. I have fond memories of making the album Apura! with Louis Moholo-Moholo, Alexander Hawkins, and Trevor Watts. What Else is There? was recorded in-between two red-eye flights, and it came together really well. A recent session with Andrew Cyrille, Bobby Bradford, William Roper, Luke Stewart, and Rei Scampavia was really special, but I'm still in the process of mixing it. And the albums I'm releasing this year, Solace Angles with Bobby and Bukas with Andrew, are very close to my heart.

What's something you rarely get asked in interviews that you wish people would ask - and how would you answer it?

Interviewers almost never ask about the nuts and bolts of improvising. I don't think people understand just how special Andrew Cyrille really is. We all know that he's great, but the mechanics of his playing are something else entirely. The way that he understands interactivity and motivic development is just on a completely different planet from anyone else I've ever met.

I could spend hours talking about this, because I've had the tremendous pleasure of playing and recording with him. I've listened to him a lot. And I still can't believe just how advanced and complete his playing is. A gifted drummer can anticipate impulses in a metered context and mirror a soloist's phrases. A great drummer can apply these skills to a free or unmetered environment. A legendary drummer like Andrew can think several steps ahead. He will hear a soloist's idea, identify the perfect sound to accompany it, and develop his own accompaniment in such a way that it somehow anticipates the soloist's next idea. And everything will sound fluid and personal. Playing with Andrew is like doing algebra with a quantum physicist.

Where do you see the music you're involved in heading in the coming years?

I have a tendency to set forces in motion that take a long time to develop. The music that I'm making now has its foundations in ideas that I could not execute even five years ago. So I'd like to think that I can't anticipate where my music is going, because I'm constantly in the process of finding what it will sound like next.

If you could shape the future of this music, what would it look like?

I've always hoped to expand the options for expressivity in jazz, creative music, and other idioms. I understand that good music is often, if not always, proficient in some way, but great art requires risk and some degree of individuality. I don't want to hear challenging music purely because it is confrontational, but because challenging music is often trying to reach something - an emotion, a feeling, a sound - that is new and worthy.

I've always tried to create contexts in which seemingly divergent ideas, sounds, cultures, and people can coexist. I want listeners to grow more accustomed to reevaluating their biases, and I wish to encourage more musicians to reexamine and undermine orthodoxies. Music is a big tent, and I think that we, as artists, grow ever-more capable of realizing its potential.

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