Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michael Eaton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Michael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

There are really any number of projects I have been involved with that have a special meaning, but I will highlight the release of my most recent jazz recording, The Phenomenal. This is my third album as a “leader” (i.e. featured solo artist) with my performing ensemble, Individuation. I applied for and received a New York Foundation for the Arts grant and decided to document work I had done with three singular and established jazz artists, Judi Silvano (voice), Dave Scott (trumpet), and Tim Hagans (trumpet).

The Phenomenal was released on Mother Brain Records, a Kansas City-based label I co-founded with guitarist/composer Seth Andrew Davis for mostly new and experimental music in improvised, composed, and electronic music with a focus on Midwestern voices. I’m happy to experience an artistic and social synergy of my own musical output on the label and see it continuing to grow as a cultivator and curator of creative music.

Michael, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a saxophonist and primarily an improviser in jazz and free improvised music. I also teach saxophone, flute, clarinet, and beginning piano.

I am originally from just outside the Kansas City area. I was fortunate to be part of a great public school band program and tradition. I decided on making my music my career path in ninth grade, and in my junior year of high school I came to feel a burning desire to be a great improviser.

I moved to Bloomington, Indiana to attend the world class Jacobs School of Music from 1999-2004. Bloomington became a second home town for me, and I enjoyed a rich and varied creative life in Bloomington and Indianapolis that was to serve as a foundation for the rest of the career. I worked as a professional saxophonist and began to teach privately upon graduating.

During high school and college, there was always a vague plan or inclination to move to New York City, because historically NYC has been the central city of jazz culture, so in 2008, I made the move. I integrated into the music scene fairly quickly, playing jazz, reggae, rock, soul, subway bucket music (a predecessor of “brasscore”), and free improvised music.

In 2012, I attended the weeklong masterclass of NEA Jazz Master saxophonist David Liebman (known for playing with Miles Davis, Elvin Jones, and many others), which was the fulfillment of a long time fascination and interest in his approach. In 2012 and 2013, I workshopped and finalized the personnel for my own quartet that I would call Individuation, taken both from psychologist Carl Jung and more broadly. Individuation is the process of discovering, developing, and integrating one’s own individuality and wholeness.

By 2014, I had an opportunity to record what was to be my debut album through Destiny Records, and Liebman recorded as a special guest on that session, “Individuation”. Playing with a hero and experiencing his sound and ideas firsthand and reverberating in a studio setting was a magical experience; perhaps a musical/cultural initiation, and it continues to resonate for me.

Through drummer George Melikishvili, I had an opportunity to meet the genius guitarist Lionel Loueke, who I been astonished by in a performance with Herbie Hancock in Indianapolis in 2006. Loueke agreed to guest on my second album for Destiny Records, “Dialogical” (based on the theme of dialogue and stylistic overlap and multiplicity). I wrote the title track hearing Lionel’s voice and approach, and when he sang vocals for the song in the studio and nailed it by memory in one take, it was thrilling. It was the first time to hear something “exactly” as I had conceived it.

By probably about 2017, I met then-composition student and guitarist Seth Davis, who would become the co-founder of Mother Brain Records. Seth and I had some similar but also pretty divergent musical tastes, as well as many similar philosophical interests, and moreover my perception then was that it was refreshing to find someone in Kansas City who had a vital interest in the type of contemporary music I did. We founded a new music ensemble called Second Nature, but we also played as a duo, Symbiotique.

Around 2019, we felt that we had a concept of what a record label focusing on Kansas City and Midwestern artists and composers might be. Seth would contribute the Kansas City element with a new music, improv, and electronics perspective, and I would contribute my sensibilities from New York City on winds with my jazz plus improv background. Not only have the times changed in the music industry, but I felt along with Seth that it was important for the artists to work cooperatively and design, control, and administer their own cultural output as much as possible. We similarly felt that there was great work being done in the Midwest that was not being given a hearing, and that there must be a lot more music that we simply haven’t yet encountered, and a label dedicated to that mission might serve a clear role in the musical ecosystem (the classical label Irritable Hedgehog had done something like this, albeit in a more focused, specific niche). We recorded our first duo album, the eponymous “Symbiotique,” and it figured as our inaugural release for the label in 2020.

Mother Brain specializes in free improvisation, electronic music, new music, and hybrid genres. We are positioned in terms of generation, experience, social network, and geography to deliver some singular and proprietary musical content from the Kansas City area and but also beyond. About five years in, we are proud to have released music from artists located in St. Louis, Chicago, Bloomington (Indiana), Las Vegas, Italy (by way of Brazil), the UK, and Japan. I have released two jazz-focused recordings on the label, one of which is The Phenomenal, and another duo album is coming from me and pianist Brad Whiteley later in 2024, featuring my twelve tone music inspired by painter Pien van der Beek’s works.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

This once more involves so many facets that I could not just pick one. However, if I were to chose a single answer or point, it probably comes down to the question of meaning and what to do with my temporary life on this planet.

Music has opened many doors for me, and it interfaces with many other fields of knowledge. It involves the making of a thing, which is to say, a performance (which involves cultivated skill, knowledge, embodiment, psychology, aesthetics), and it has a humanistic and interpersonal component, especially on the teaching side – which might be just as rewarding or moreso in certain respects than performing.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn expectations I had acquired from my university experience (which was excellent) that everyone would have the same training, acculturation, or background in music as me. I had subtle conditioning and assumptions from my training and environment that musicians I met would have similar backgrounds or goals for music and see it like I do. There are as many different types of musicians as there are persons, and many different motives. I have experienced that pretty directly in New York City and on work I did on cruise ships. I try to assess that in the musical situation presented to – what kind of task or job I’m being asked to do – and see what I can do as a professional to deliver that at the highest level of quality I can.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://michaeleatonmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaeleatonmusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michaeleatonmusic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-eaton-78017467/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mileatonmusic
• Other: Mother Brain Records Bandcamp page:
  https://motherbrainrecordskc.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits

Photo 1 by Nicki Adams
Photos 2 and 3 by Dani Gros
Photo 4 by Longyao Mei
Photo 5 by Nolan Thies
Photo 6 by Dani Gros