“We have a new vision for music,” says senior Danny Gorn, a member of the Fractal Quartet. “It’s jazz music, inclusive of multiple different genres and styles with an improv base.” Hoping to debunk the public perception of jazz as a traditional, unexciting gig, the Fractal Quartet, comprised of Gorn, junior Andrew Louden and sophomore Logan Williams, takes a progressive approach, using an electric combination of jazz, experimental, rock, funk, and hip hop to make the band’s sound more relevant to the audience. “It’s definitely designed to fit in the culture,” adds Gorn.
The Fractal Quartet formed more than a year ago, when Gorn and two other members, who are not part of the current Fractal Quartet, got together to make music. “We made some extremely weird music, and Michael Jin, who was the main force behind the music, graduated, so we were looking for a new guitar player to make extremely weird music with,” Gorn explains. Gorn discovered Louden at an Aragon Jazz Festival. He says, “We talked about modes for half an hour, a music concept, and we were like, ‘Yup, now we got to make a band now.’” Williams joined as the group’s saxophone player soon after.
The group practices once a week at a member’s home. “We start off, obviously, by setting up and make rangy jokes while setting up. Often, we’ll warm up by doing an improvised jam. One of us starts an idea, and we’ll all create a piece on the spot,” Louden says. As the group has a major emphasis on improvisation, the practice gets them to establish their style and warm up simultaneously. “Then we’ll go into doing more of the traditional rehearsal,” continues Louden.
“Danny and I just have this great link and chemistry,” Louden explains, “If I concentrated on the bass, I’d play like him, and if he concentrated on the guitar, he’d play like me.” The two laugh, as Gorn jokes, “Bass is still better, of course.”
Managing time between school and the quartet proved challenging. Louden, as a junior, faced much work from school, while Gorn became swamped with athletic responsibilities as the water polo captain and member of the wrestling team. “We managed, not sure how, but we did,” Louden laughs.
However, the most challenging aspect of being a student musical group was acquiring the exposure in the real world. “Our gigs are ‘you take what you can get.’ You have to convince people to give you the opportunity—that’s a lot of it. You have to be very assertive,” says Louden. The group obtained its first exposure at a dinner show at a private party. As fate would have it, an attendee at the party loved the group’s sound and was able to book them a second gig. From there, the group took off, playing at student festivals, restaurants, some private parties, and recently debuted in San Jose’s City Lights Theatre.
They have since gotten over the usual nerves that affect new performers. “Everyone’s going to get nervous, but what you do is feel yourself in the nervousness, kind of turn it into excitement and that adrenaline actually helps you,” says Gorn. “I don’t get nervous anymore, because I know how to do what I want to do. I just go up there and do it.”
“What we are, are academic musicians. We are really committed to the music. We don’t think of it as a hobby, but something that we do, like an occupation,” says Louden. Although they currently do earn money from their gigs, the group members hope to transform their passion into a consistently paying occupation in the future. Gorn says, “Best case scenario is that we end up with a following to create the music that we want to make. We end up with a group of people, not unlike the Deadheads or Phishfans [terms that refer to the fans of The Grateful Dead and Phish, bands famous for their cult followings], and we can be creative in the way we want to and turn that into a living. That’s best case scenario.”
The most exciting part, however, remains sharing music with others. As a unique group, the band is able to express their vision and sound to the audience. “I love it when audiences react to what you do—it’s like when somebody agrees with you in a conversation,” says Louden.
He concludes, “Music dissolves all barriers, and that is really beautiful. It doesn’t matter who you are, you can enjoy music.”
