Woodpecker Project

-All of you come from quite different musical backgrounds, and I’d like each of you to outline your path- how you started in music, your influences, and your professional activities.

Andris Dzenītis: I’m what you might call an academic by birth. From early childhood, I’ve been connected in some way to classical music. I studied and learned piano, following the traditional, classical path since I was a child. At the same time, I’ve always been a huge fan of popular music, which often took up more of my day-to-day life than classical music did. But I decided to devote my professional life to academic and contemporary music. As a composer, I’ve worked mainly in notated forms- symphonic, choral, and chamber music, and everything that comes with those genres. So, for me, working with electronic music is something quite different, it’s a new approach, a form of relaxation from my usual routine. But I’ve always been interested in it and have been experimenting with electronics since the early 2000s.

Arvydas Kazlauskas: I started my musical journey in Lithuania, where I was born. During school, alongside my academic studies, I also joined a jazz ensemble that we formed at the music school. One of the teachers involved was the legendary saxophonist Vladimir Chekasin, who had a strong vision for avant-garde and free jazz, and he tried to pass that on to his students. He created performances not as separate songs, but as a single, continuous dramaturgy. That left a big impression on me and gave me a broader perspective than what we were learning in our everyday lessons. I graduated from a music high school in Lithuania and went on to study classical saxophone at the academy. Then I entered the Latvian Academy of Music and continued my classical saxophone studies. Alongside this academic focus, I was always interested in improvisation, the contemporary world, electronics, and musical experimentation. I’ve always been on the lookout for ways to work in that field, and eventually I formed the ensemble Endless Roar, where I also work in a different direction. Over time, like-minded people started appearing, and that’s how I met Andris and got involved with this project.

Ritvars Garoza: My path was quite traditional - music school, I played accordion for many years, and even studied it at an advanced level. But I think the shift away from that began in high school, when I got into improvisational music, jazz, pop music, and all kinds of music where you can create something yourself. For a long time, I focused on jazz, and that led to arranging, composing original music for big band, some choir work, and so on. In my youth, I was exposed to loud rock music, which somehow stuck with me. That’s how the improvisational side of my music developed, first with one synthesizer, then another, and eventually all those influences and instruments came together. I studied at the academy, where I met everyone in this group, each from a different perspective. Those improvisational skills and explorations eventually got integrated- not in a linear playing style, but more in a way of tweaking and manipulating knobs and buttons.

Gatis Zaķis: For me, it all started at a music-focused school, and I also learned accordion. I always had a stronger interest in music outside of the academic world, at least back then. Now, maybe it’s not so clear-cut, but back then, anything that wasn’t academic was good. In my teenage years, I went through phases with hip-hop, grunge, heavy and electronic music, and trip-hop, a huge palette that I think ultimately leaves its mark. I’ve never had a problem relating to people from any genre. At the end of high school, I started a pop-rock band with guitars, which was active for a while, but then I got more into sound recording and music production, mostly in the indie music world. That led me to Edgars Rubenis, who opened a new curtain for me and showed me something I’d been missing. Working in one genre professionally can be exhausting- you start to crave something different. Like in my teens, when I was drawn to everything that wasn’t academic, now I look for those contrasts in other directions. Having worked in popular indie music for quite a long time, I felt the need for something that breaks down boundaries. Since then, it’s been a parallel pursuit, it never really goes away, and it’s what I listen to most, even more than the music I work with every day. That’s how I’ve been working as a music producer for about 20 years.

-How did the four of you meet and decide to start making music together?

Andris Dzenītis: The name “Woodpecker” first appeared in 2006 as a duo with Baiba Berķe on vocals and me. Coming from a completely different world, where everything is strictly written and scored, I’d always missed that feeling of being on stage and being able to influence the music in the moment. Composers can’t usually do that; you’re just sitting in the audience, stressing about whether everything you wrote will work out. But with this project, I finally had the chance to be on stage- something I’d actually always liked, even back in my failed piano career at music school. I loved that feeling of making a direct impact on listeners right then and there.

In the beginning, it was more about improvisation from the singer’s side; my material was mostly prepared. Later, I worked for a long time with Olafs Štāls, a guitarist - an unusual person who by day was a classical viola player in an orchestra, and in his free time, an improviser. Then I met Arvīds. We had already worked together; he had played some of my pieces. So we already knew each other and started collaborating. From the start, I’ve always seen the Woodpecker Project as an open group, people can come and go, we can play as a duo, trio, or bring someone new in. Recently, someone told me he thinks this is the best version of the Woodpecker Project we’ve ever had, and I think we all feel there’s something special about how we work together. I’ve known Ritvars since school times, we’re old friends, and I’d always thought it would be great to create something together. Ritvars came as a package with Gatis, and I’ve always respected Gatis for everything he’s done, even back when we didn’t know each other personally. I was actually surprised he agreed to join us! We first met as a four-piece in the summer of 2019. We tried playing together and realized it worked, it felt good from the start, and those first performances were truly inspiring.

-What’s your process like in the studio and on stage, since everything is based on free improvisation? And do you have a home base for your sessions, considering all the gear you use?

Gatis Zaķis: A studio isn’t really needed, because we only get together about once every two years. [laughing]

Andris Dzenītis: We meet up when there’s a reason- for example, preparing for a concert.

Ritvars Garoza: We’ve worked in Andris’ countryside house attic and in the TRU Music Studio, where I work. And we record absolutely everything, because you never know what will come out of an improvisation. For me, improvisation is like working from a prepared palette: when you start, you’re blending those colors, and new shades and little sparks start to appear - musical ideas, effects, snippets. It’s all driven by the feeling of playing together. That’s the real magic of it, we can push each other in different directions, spark ideas, and at some point it’s like a centrifuge, hard to step out of.

-How long do your rehearsals usually last?

Ritvars: Two or three sets, each about an hour long.

Arvydas Kazlauskas: After that, your energy starts to run out, it gets physically and mentally exhausting.

Andris Dzenītis: We’re not 20 anymore; we can’t just stay up all night recording.

-How do you choose the instruments you use, and what role do they play in your creative process?

Gatis Zaķis: In general, instruments play a huge role - sometimes they’re overestimated, sometimes underestimated. Some instruments, when you pick them up, open the floodgates and you can get on with them really well. Others, even if they’re expensive pieces of gear, you just can’t get a feel for, so they end up being unnecessary. What I mean is, an instrument is a crucial thing, you have to understand what kind of tool it is to achieve the effect you want. When you’re improvising, it’s not so much your brain that’s working, it’s your subconscious. So you need an instrument you can instinctively understand. You imagine what you want to do, and your hand automatically reaches for the instrument that can do it. If you have too many instruments, some sort of internal battle starts.

Arvydas Kazlauskas: My setup is simple and the most acoustic of all. I’ve got a few basic pedals, and my main thing is the saxophone. I work with three saxophones, a looper, and some effects - that’s it, and I see where it takes me.

-You have different saxophones for different timbres?

Arvydas Kazlauskas: Yeah, baritone, alto, and soprano.

Ritvars Garoza: I have a main setup and then some extra pieces that I bring along depending on what feels relevant at that moment, what’s caught my interest or what I’m currently exploring. Either they find their place in the music, or they don’t. Over time, it also becomes clearer which instruments will stay. But it’s really about instinct - the instruments whose buttons are familiar, whose functions you know because you’ve spent time with them, those are the ones you end up using. They let you unleash your reflexes and find your place in the sound through those reflexes. If you bring in some new device you’re not sure about, it can be hard to start anything at all.

Andris Dzenītis: For me, it’s a bit different, I sometimes deliberately take the risk of using something I don’t fully know. There’s an important point here: we’re working exclusively with real instruments. We don’t use a computer as an instrument- it’s never been on the table for us. Everything we have is hardware. That’s really important to me, because at some point I lost interest in working with sound purely on a computer, maybe it works for recording, but not for live music-making, at least not for me. So I became friends with Erica Synths, that’s how I first encountered modular synths. I get a lot of pleasure from patching cables: there’s an element of predictability, but the results aren’t always 100% predictable. You can’t always recreate exactly what you did before, which is different from other instruments where you can just save a preset. I try to mix modular synths with other synths that I’ve found work well for me. Of course, some instruments end up on the shelf, I know they’re for very specific needs. People who collect instruments know what I mean: some are ready to spend huge money for a device that does one specific sound! I have a few of those too - they just sit on the shelf making that one sound.

About your performance at Erica Synths Garage - did everything go as planned?

Andris Dzenītis: It was the first time we’d met up in a long time, we met for the first time right there on stage. And honestly, it felt great. It was like a concert and a rehearsal at the same time. But we don’t really call our rehearsals “rehearsals,” because we record everything. Some of the tracks on our first album actually came from our very first meeting.

Gatis Zaķis: Lately we’ve been trying to combine the flow of improvisation with some dramaturgy. We call ourselves “old-fashioned” because of that - we occasionally weave in these dramaturgical moments, and lately it’s actually been working well without us even having to discuss it. Sometimes I’ll remind the others that it’s needed, especially when it’s time for someone else to listen. We can reflect on it ourselves and enjoy any kind of form, without expecting ups and downs. But human nature is such that there still needs to be a story told.

Andris Dzenītis: Especially if we’re playing multiple sets - after the first one, we’ll step aside and, depending on how it went, decide how to shape the next one.