In Conversation #7

I recently released a podcast series consisting of five interviews I conducted during the 2026 Big Ears festival. Part 4 features Booker Stardrum.

This post includes my Mini-Review of his most recent record, some of what I wrote about SML’s six-show residency during Big Ears, and, below the paywall, the complete transcript of my conversation with Booker.

Booker Stardrum ~ Close-up On The Outside
Drummers are natural collaborators. We’ve been fans of Stardrum’s work with others (Wendy Eisenberg, Chris Williams, and especially the supergroup SML), and while Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu and others make appearances, Close-up On The Outside is a quiet meditation that showcases the drummer’s unique compositional voice.

If Big Ears had an MVP this year, it was the LA quintet SML—and the broader network of musicians of which they are a part, especially the International Anthem label. SML (Anna Butterss, Booker Stardrum, Jeremiah Chu, Josh Johnson, and Gregory Uhlmann) played six sets over four days: three as the core quintet, three as SML XL with special guests. I caught them four times total, including all the XL sets. The first night, they were joined by Rob Mazurek and John Dietrich, Mazurek restless on pocket trumpet and percussion, Dietrich adding a different texture of guitar than Uhlmann. The second night, Marquis Hill and Ben Lumsdaine brought additional percussion and electronics, increasing both the groove and the grit. The third night, Jeff Parker—Butterss and Johnson’s bandmates in Parker’s ETA IVtet—and Mikel Patrick Avery closed out the run on a high note.

What made SML remarkable was their refusal to dominate. Each member is a strong compositional personality—Uhlmann’s tight guitar patterns, Johnson’s saxophone figures, Chu’s remarkable synth manipulations, Butterss’ locked-in bass, Stardrum’s fluid drumming—but together, no one member overshadows the others. Live, the effect was pronounced: a groove-based improvisation ensemble that could pivot from dance party to delicate texture in the space of a fill. They’ve been called trance-jazz and that’s not wrong, but that’s also not the whole picture. During one SML XL set, Butterss’ bass, the dual percussion, the melodic and rhythmic interplay all combined for the rarest of things: an improvised music set that broke into a dance party.

The residency model allowed for opportunities to hear the same musicians in different configurations, and was the festival’s greatest gift. Gregory Uhlmann, in addition to his SML duties, appeared as a trio with Josh Johnson and Sam Wilkes at the Presbyterian Church, and later presented his own solo album Extra Stars at the Jackson Terminal, with Stardrum on drums and wind synth courtesy of Will Miller (Resavoir). Lumsdaine and Chu appeared as Parker’s Expansion Trio. Shahzad Ismaily seemed to be everywhere: backing Sam Amidon, improvising with Maria Chavez and Greg Saunier, joining the Joyful Noise showcase.

The Joyful Noise showcase at Pretentious Beer Company was a two-hour improvisation featuring nine musicians: Greg Saunier, Shahzad Ismaily, Wendy Eisenberg, Patrick Shiroishi, Kishi Bashi, Tall Tall Trees, Booker Stardrum, M.A Tiesenga, and others. It was the kind of thing that could only happen at a festival where musicians are encouraged to simply hang out and make noise together.

There, in the parking lot behind Pretentious Beer, I sat down with Booker Stardrum for an interview, discussing Close-up On the Outside, his deep new solo album for We Jazz in addition to the rise of SML. This is the opposite of the one-off, fly-in, fly-out festival model. It’s a gathering, a summer camp (as Mary Lattimore put it), where musicians listen to each other and adapt, where, as drummer Stardrum noted, “when we lock in, we lock in. It’s an honor to play with musicians of that talent.” Big Ears is a place where that’s not just the experience of the musicians, but where the rest of us run into friends old and new, on paths sometimes intersecting but often running completely parallel.

Big Ears 2026 felt like a love letter to the rise of Los Angeles as the center of contemporary music in the States. SML, Sam Wilkes, Sam Gendel, Jeff Parker, Mary Lattimore, Julianna Barwick, Patrick Shiroishi—all LA-based. The downtown NYC scene of John Zorn and his cohort was well represented, though I missed most of his twelve performances due to conflicts. Chicago’s cross-pollination—Rob Mazurek, Roscoe Mitchell—was also present. But LA dominated. As SML drummer Booker Stardrum, who lived in LA for several years, told me, “When I lived in LA, I felt like the scenes were kind of fractured…” But in the years since he returned to New York, things seem to have changed, at least evidenced by the cross-pollination on display at Big Ears. The city that gave us the 2010s beat scene and the 2020s “spiritual jazz” boom has become a gravitational center for music that refuses easy categorization.

Full interview transcript below paywall.