Gene Knific | Pianist & Composer

I was connected to Gene via Spektral Quartet in Chicago. As I continue to talk to people for this project, I am constantly struck by how small a world it is, but also how many phenomenal things are happening in the classical world of queer writers and performers. I am so grateful that I have the honour of talking with people literally around the world and with whom I would normally never have the opportunity to connect! Gene is one of these people. They are a composer, performer, arranger, and pianist who’s work I find absolutely fascinating and fun in addition to being a lovely and kind person. Between writing arrangements of Sufjan Stevens songs, full orchestral works at Abbey Road, and pop/synth music with an indie band in Chicago, Gene also humbly happens to be a jazz pianist and composer. I know you’ll enjoy what they have to say about their work and writing for so many different groups.

Pianist, composer, and arranger Gene Knific is the recipient of four ASCAP Young Jazz Composers awards and eight Down Beat Magazine Music Awards for their performances and compositions in jazz and contemporary categories.

Over the past two years, Gene has had 40 orchestral arrangements and compositions recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. They are currently helping to compose and orchestrate a large scale seven-album-length classical and progressive rock hybrid project by leader of the award winning band Syzygy, Carl Baldassarre. This project has led Knific to work directly with legendary conductor, composer, and arrangers Rick Wentworth (Roger Waters, Danny Elfman) and James Shearman (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Aladin, Beauty and the Beast), and Sweetwater Production’s director of music production Mark Hornsby (Peter Erskine, Beth Hart, Big Big Train). In 2019, Knific arranged the theme to the HBO smash-hit Game of Thrones and performed it along with the three-time Grammy nominated Spektral Quartet at Symphony Center in Chicago. The arrangement was performed for George R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones series. This February will see the premiere of an arrangement for Spektral Quartet as part of their season entitled “Totally Obsessed”.

An active composer in both jazz and chamber music settings, they recently had their work, SEPTET, performed at the Ravinia Festival in 2019 and 2018. The piece, written for a combined string quartet and jazz piano trio, was premiered by Billy Test (WDR Big Band) and the Avalon String Quartet, who are in residence at Northern Illinois Unviersity. In 2016, Knific had their piece, Relapse, performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2017, their Concerto for Violoncello and Chamber String Orchestra was premiered at the University of Oklahoma. Earlier in 2016, Knific was commissioned to write ten Great American Songbook arrangements for The Merling Trio, which will culminate in an album to be released in 2020.

In 2015, Gene was invited to participate in the American Composer’s Orchestra Jazz Composers Orchestra Intensive at UCLA directed by James Newton and Derek Bermel and was mentored by composer and University of Chicago professor, Anthony Cheung. While in university, Knific had their works rehearsed by Dave Douglas, Mark O'Connor, and Terrence Blanchard. Gene wrote a work for big band performed and recorded featuring classic rock icon Steve Miller and had three crossover works commissioned by the Stamps Foundation Distinguished Ensembles in Miami. In addition, they won a reading by members of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by James Feddeck at The Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami. In 2017, Knific released a self-produced documentary sponsored by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Gene has performed all over the world with an extensive and diverse repertoire. Highlights include performances with saxophone legend Joe Lovano in 2014, Macarthur Genius Grant recipient Miguel Zenón, and three performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. with the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program directed by Jason Moran.  Their talents have brought them on tours to Russia at The St. Petersburg Conservatory and Jazz Philharmonic, the Copenhagen Opera House and Montmartre Jazzhus in Denmark, the Xiquitsi International Music Festival in Mozambique, and The Schlern International Music Festival in Italy

They lead an adventurous group, The Gene Knific Trio, dedicated to original works while uniquely exploring classical and modern genres. The Gene Knific Trio kicked off the Fontana Chamber Arts Summer Series in 2014, and is a staple at the annual Elkhart Jazz Festival (2014-2020). Gene has also performed in trio/quartet settings with Kevin Mahogany, Roseanne Vitro, Kate Reid, Bobby Shew and is the pianist of the touring/recording ensemble, The Tom Knific Quartet.

Knific graduated with highest honors from the University of Miami Frost School of Music with degrees in jazz performance and composition, where they studied with Shelly Berg, Martin Bejerano, Lansing McLoskey, and Terence Blanchard.

Gene currently resides in Chicago, where they teach at The Voice Lab, Inc., a music and speech studio dedicated to serving queer and transgender communities internationally. They play synthesizers in and act as assistant to the regional manager of IVERSON, the official band of Planet Earth.

{Jacob} -So, you are Chicago based, are you also from Chicago? 

{Gene} - No, I’m from the Midwest, I'm originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I lived in Miami for a second, went to school there, and then back to Chicago. 

{Jacob} -You went to Frost, yes?

{Gene} - Yes. 

{Jacob} - How was that? 

{Gene} - It was great! Very kind of well-rounded experience. When I was there the Dean, Shelly Berg, kind of overhauled the school into the 21st century... having improvisation classes for all musicians, music technology classes. I trained as a jazz pianist, a little bit of classical piano, and then got really interested in writing and chamber music, and they made it really easy to take all of these classes and interact with teachers and guests artists that would come in to share all of the things I was interested in, so I really felt like it was the right choice to go there.

{Jacob} - So, you’ve been in Chicago for a while, I’m assuming? 

{Gene} - I’ve been here for 5 years. 

{Jacob} - Okay, that’s a fair while. How do you find the queer music scene?

{Gene} - It’s certainly vibrant. I don’t know that I would, you know, qualify myself as someone who is in the queer music scene specifically, so I’m probably not the best authority on Chicago queer music scene… but there’s a lot of queer music going on. 

{Jacob} - Which is great, that’s fantastic. 

{Gene} - Yeah. 

{Jacob} - I know you play in a group called IVERSON, and I will admit, I went down an IVERSON rabbit hole yesterday when I realized that I was going to talk to you, and I was very into it. Other than that group, what else are you up to? You’re a composer and arranger too.

{Gene} - Yeah, let’s see. There’s a couple things I do… I work as an arranger and for the past few years I’ve been working on a project that has led me to have about 40 orchestral arrangements recorded at Abbey Road with an orchestra there. The project is kind of loosely within a progressive rock realm. So, I’ve been doing quite a bit of that. I teach also at a voice studio called The Voice Lab, which directly serves the trans and gender-nonconforming community in Chicago, and kind of internationally too, with so many Skype lessons. So, I teach piano and run some programs there, but it’s a wonderful institution that specifically teaches trans people to sing and speak in the registers and timbres that they identify with.

{Jacob} -So, I was doing a little bit of reading on The Voice Lab, and I was fascinated and very intrigued about how to bring those talents and energies to communities that I work with here. Specifically, the section on the website that I was reading about people who are vocally trained in the past but mid-transition or finished transitioning, and how to safely navigate new spaces in your voice. Also, young people who are mid-transition and are finding new voices, but also dealing with puberty on top. Generic puberty but then transition puberty on top. There is a book written by the Voicel Lab Director Liz Jackson-Hearns, yes?

{Gene} - Yeah, there’s a couple books. I was actually just using it this morning; I’m actually taking speaking lessons with Liz. The book is called “One Weird Trick.”

{Jacob} - Very cool, I will look those up! So, you teach piano through the Voice Lab, yes?

{Gene} - I teach piano through them. So, I have little to do with the voice training, but I engage actively with the community they have there. I would say that the majority of my students are from the LGBTQ+ community, so yeah, it’s a good feeling to have people come in and feel safe and welcome and among their community and the people they know. 

{Jacob} - Yeah, phenomenal. So, tell me more about this Abbey Road project. What is this, how did it start? 

{Gene} - Yeah, so, I got approached by this composer/guitarist/songwriter named Carl Baldassarre and he started compiling a bunch of music he’s written over the last 20 years now. He worked in venture capital for his whole life but had a steady progressive rock project going, and later in life started setting composition and started writing these bigger projects. We connected through Sweetwater Productions - they have a wonderful production company. They’re producing this project that is now a series of 8 albums. It’s just kind of been spinning out and growing and growing and growing.... And so, I’ve just kind of been this artist’s right-hand person taking sketches and blowing them up for orchestra, helping him complete compositions, and dreaming up different projects. We’ve done 4 sessions at Abbey Road with a small chamber orchestra in studio 2. We recorded lots of different kinds of works and they’ve been everything from short orchestral suites to backing for rock tracks. What's been really interesting is that there’s been a lot of artistic freedom to kind of dig in and write in a way that I get to kind of show my own voice within that, which isn’t always the case with a studio orchestra. It’s been kind of a wild ride, in the last two years I’ve written more orchestral music than I thought I would in my entire life. Sometimes, that’s how it goes.

{Jacob} - Sometimes that’s how it goes. Do you have to go over often?

{Gene} - Oh, to London? Yeah, well, we’ve done four trips there, and each one has been about a week long. 

{Jacob} -That’s great. One of the next people that I’m interviewing is a friend of mine who is a musical composer. He’s also a classical pianist but does a lot of improvised work and theatre work. 

{Gene} - Oh, my goodness!

{Jacob} - But, if the next time you’re over you want to meet up with them, I’m happy to connect you. They’re lovely. 

{Gene} - Yeah, that would be wonderful. Yeah, there’s hopefully one more in the books within the next year, so I would love that. 

{Jacob} - So, you are also an active performer, yes?

{Gene} - Yeah. For a long time I’ve played with the Gene Knific jazz trio, playing mostly my own compositions. I also pretty actively perform with my parents, we’re all musicians, my dad is a jazz bassist and so we’ll play together a good half dozen times a year at different music society things, mostly in the Midwest. And then, playing with IVERSON. 

{Jacob} - So, tell me more about IVERSON. 

{Gene} - So, IVERSON basically centers around a good friend of mine named Charles Iverson. He’s a really wonderful songwriter. We met at high school jazz camp and lost touch for the better half of a decade, and then when I moved here, we connected, he’d just moved back from Nashville, after working down there, and put this band together with friends of his from high school. He’s from the Chicago suburbs area. So, he put this together, it was just kind of like a dream mixture of people and energies, and we ended up writing a ton of music, and it came together at a time where all of the people in the band had moved either to or back to Chicago, so we were all kind of like, scrambling for work and trying to figure that stuff out. It ended up being that we all had a lot of free time. We just built it from the ground up. The vibe has been very wacky and humorous. We talk about playing synthesizers probably more than we know how to play synthesizers. It’s kind of our gimmick. We recently purchased the url miditechnology.com which may become fruitful at some point, but it’s just kind of a gag to be like, “if you want to find out more about IVERSON, search miditechnology.com”. But it’s just been growing, we’ve been playing with a bunch of wonderful bands in Chicago, we just keep going and rolling the dice and seeing if we keep going we’ll get picked up by a label.

{Jacob} - Yeah. I’m always interested in people’s influences, and I’m always interested in where people are drawing things from. When I read your bio and I listened  to your music I found it interesting you have something like IVERSON, but then you have something like the orchestral arrangements that you’re doing, and we’ll talk about Spektral Quartet maybe more specifically later, but when you have all of those things, where are they connecting? What are you listening to that is bringing that together?

{Gene} - That’s a wonderful question. I think that one skill set will maybe tend opportunities towards part of another one, and I’ll pull the thread and see what’s there, and in the moment I kind of train myself how to do the thing. So, the basis would be being trained as a jazz pianist, so that has tendencies towards arranging, because whenever you’re playing something you’re on the spot arranging a standard and then that has connotations towards writing for a small jazz ensemble. Then, my interest in composition led to me being able to write for orchestral instruments. So, for IVERSON, it’s playing keyboards, being interested in pop music, but maybe at the beginning not knowing how it works, and having somebody to write and lead that music and learn from them, while knowing how to improvise, knowing how to play keys, and knowing how to learn about that instrumentation in those styles, and go from there. The Abbey Road stuff has been a mixture of having, you know, some experience with orchestral music, but knowing like, a little bit about the repertoire of progressive rock bands, Rush, Tears For Fears, King Crimson, that kind of thing. Seeing the project and being like “I think I can do this”, and then studying and smashing my head against the laptop and keyboard until, you know, it works. Essentially, it’s just a combination of having a baseline of creative problem solving skill sets, and then a willingness, desire, and passion to learn about the projects as they come, and then just grow the core and then build. Writing for a studio orchestra gives me the skill set to work in film scoring or that kind of thing. Playing with IVERSON allows me to have the skill set to play in different kinds of bands. So, it’s just… I keep pulling the thread, which I think is the best way to describe those connections. 

{Jacob} - Yeah, I often tell my undergrad students that the path to being an effective and active musician/performer/artist in general, is not only different from 40 years ago, it’s different from 5 years ago. 

{Gene} - Yeah, absolutely. 

{Jacob} - They should be playing every possible thing that they can get their hands on, every style, every opportunity, every ensemble, they should be in as many uncomfortable situations musically as they possibly can, because—well, you’re a perfect case in point. You have to be able to be able to do a billion things, but they all inform each other. They’re all connected. I see them sometimes really succeed at that, and sometimes I have students who have graduated and gone and they get it, and they have a career now and they’re not just a section violinist sitting in an orchestra now, now that’s their full time gig… that doesn’t exist, that’s not a thing.

{Gene} - That’s not a thing. Yeah, I think it’s the people I see that seem to be the most successful… they don’t have these biases about what they should be doing, and “this is the real music”. Also, they’re interested in lots of different things. That seems to be such a key to growing all of your things. You have to love music in a lot of different ways and be open minded. 

{Jacob} - Yeah, because I think there is—and this is a larger conversation about structures that need to be broken down and decolonized and reformatted in the classical world in general—but I think that there is a thought process among so many musicians that don’t necessarily see the benefit in, just using your stuff as an example, in playing in something like IVERSON and then also being a jazz pianist, and then like, how does that translate into writing for an orchestra? Like, how does it affect it? Because it does, it absolutely does. 

{Gene} - It absolutely does, yeah. I mean, there are specific connections of like, you know, while trying to write a synthesizer solo for this song, I thought of this one artist who played this one chord that I think would fit in this orchestral arrangement. You know, those kinds of little things. But then, I think you’re growing your ability to learn multiple things. You know what I mean? You just get quicker at learning. I think that has a lot to do with it. 

{Jacob} - So, now tell me about the Spektral show. It is interesting to me that they are purposefully programming so many queer, nonbinary, and trans composers, that a lot of their, from what I have gathered, membership would also be identified as queer. Or, is it correct to say that a portion of their membership identifies as queer?

{Gene} - Absolutely. 

{Jacob} - So, tell me everything. 

{Gene} - Yeah, I will tell you everything. I’ve loved that group for a very long time. As soon as I moved to Chicago, I found out about them through a Facebook ad about a show of theirs that was, I think, one of the more “hip” venues in Chicago, or at a craft brewery or somewhere fun where it was like, if you wear a Legend of Zelda outfit, you get in for free. Something that is just very nerdy or wacky like that… and I hadn’t seen any sort of branding like that for new music before. So, they were just really wonderful at engaging with their audiences. I went to the shows and they were just incredible people, so sweet, and just playing an extremely wide swath of music. Growing up with musicians as parents, I have a huge respect for things like the fact that they would go play music by composers in Chicago, and then they slay a Beethoven string quartet. It doesn’t happen very often that you can do both of those things so well, so I just always just kind of fangirl over them, and would just peek around their shows, like “hi, I’m Gene, I really like you!”... and then they became close friends. We found different ways to collaborate with each other. IVERSON and Spektral did a little show together, which was super fun. It was their season finale last year. Basically, Charles, the singer of IVERSON, MC’d for it and then IVERSON played a set at the end of it, and I arranged one of the songs for string quartet. Then, we also did a project together where they were contacted by the Chicago Humanity Society to play the Game of Thrones theme George R. R. Martin who wrote the Game of Thrones books.

So, I worked with them and a close colleague, Joey Meland, to arrange and play synthesizers and samples and choir samples and stuff, behind them for that event which was super fun. Then, they asked me to write something for them, to do something a little bit more personal, for the 2020 season. So, this brings us to this concert this weekend. So, they have a series of what I believe they are calling covers, and they are mostly songs by rock artists, singer/songwriters, etcetera, which are arranged for string quartet. The way that the composers have been approaching has been either pretty drastic transformations, putting these pieces for string quartet/the song is just such a different instrumentation, the recording is just so different that translating it for the string quartet brings a sort of whole new life. So, I arranged a song by singer/songwriter/composer/artist/love of my life Sufjan Stevens… called Arnika, which is a beautiful piece of his. It’s on an EP of his called “All Delighted People” and it’s one of the last tracks on it. So, it’s definitely not a track that is more well known. If you know about Sufjan Stevens, you know, people say “Chicago” or “Mystery of Love” the track that got played in…

{Jacob} - “Call Me By Your Name?”

{Gene} - Yes. Anyways, and so I like arranged/transformed this song for them, and I’m extremely excited for the premiere of it. 

{Jacob} - I am very, very jealous that I am not in Chicago or anywhere near Chicago for Sunday. As the Classical Queer project evolves, there have been strange connections. So, one of the first people that I interviewed was a pianist named Darren Creech, who is a Toronto based, and they just premiered a full show, a set of piano arrangements of Sufjan’s songs for the Toronto International Film Festival.

{Gene} - Yeah, my goodness. I would’ve loved to hear that project. 

{Jacob} - The mandate of Spektral sounds really phenomenal to me and I’m thrilled that they are working with such interesting composers who are not producing ho-hum quartet music. I think that that is important. And also, I think it’s important that they’re open to working with groups that draw from different musical backgrounds, that they are open to collaboration between pop-electronic type groups. I think that that is just so cool.  

{Gene} - Absolutely. Yeah, they just do so much, it just always blows my mind. 

{Jacob} - So, what is your next thing? What is your next project?

{Gene} - Let’s see. That’s a good question. Oh, I’m actually arranging a suite of my dad’s pieces for a small orchestra. It’s going to be a double bass feature for two basses, a double-double bass feature. The bassist who is putting it together is named Andrés Martín via the Orquesta de Baja California. It was originally a piece for a violin and bass for my mom and dad to play together, and I’m orchestrating it.

{Jacob} - Very cool. I am also very jealous of people who come from musical families, my family is not professionally musical. They’re lovely and they’re supportive, they’ve been great supporters of music. I have a few friends who play with their parents and who have written things for their parents, it’s so neat. 

{Gene} - Yeah, it’s wonderful. I love them dearly and I’m very indebted to them for everything. 

{Jacob} - Is there anything else I should know about the Spektral show and the Arnika arrangement?

{Gene} - I guess I would like to publicly state that I am very moved by the Spektral Quartet’s initiative to feature trans composers. I think it’s super important. For example, Alex Temple’s piece, I actually was at the premiere of it in 2015 in Chicago. It’s incredible, and it very personally expresses Alex’s own experiences being a trans person. Spektral is a group with such fire behind them and their dedication to amplifying marginalized voices is incredible.

{Jacob} - Do you and Alex know each other?

{Gene} - Actually, we don’t! I met her at the premiere super briefly, but I’m sure she wouldn’t remember. I’m looking forward to meeting her for real. 

{Jacob} - I’m always really interested to hear when groups are bringing in queer/trans/nonbinary/Indigenous… anyone who is not of a traditionally represented voice… and not just plunking them in front. That’s so important. Tokenization is such a dangerous thing.

{Gene} - Oh, absolutely. Specifically with Spektral, I thought they did such a great job this current season by programming who they programmed and not making a big deal out of it. They didn’t say something like “we’re programming all women composers” to incite a reaction of “oh, how forward thinking of you!”, which happens everywhere, it’s a huge thing. Programming these less-heard voices while being a group with some recognition just implicitly elevates in a powerful way, I think. That’s been wonderful, I’d like to see more of that everywhere, you know? Where it’s avoiding tokenization, or the branding thing… yeah, I think that can only help, if we have a way to present music that doesn’t center around whiteness and cisness and straightness. Removing those programming concepts where a group goes “here’s the concert night when we play music by marginalized voices… okay, now back to our normally scheduled cis/white/straight/male programs”. You have to erase that concept that everything orbits around that center in order to give true equality to other voices.

{Jacob} - Well, I hope the show on Sunday is magical and that I get to hear a recording at some point! Thanks so much for telling me about your work.