After completing the long drive from the Upper Peninsula back to the Twin Cities, trumpet player and composer Adam Meckler was happy to pop in the booth at Jazz88 and discuss his upcoming gigs at Berlin on Friday, August 15. Meckler also talked about his upcoming record “Sampled” which drops in November. Meckler also shared what he and the rest of the team from the Michigan Technological University do to support their jazz students in Michigan.
This interview originally aired on The Afternoon Cruise on 08/14/25
READ THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
It’s the Afternoon Cruise, and I’m joined by Adam Meckler, trumpet player, composer and an instructor who’s back in town. Meckler spends the majority of his year over in Houghton, Michigan at Michigan Technological University, where he is the Director of Jazz Studies, but Meckler’s roots and Rolodex are strong in Minnesota. Adam Meckler, welcome back to Minnesota.
Adam Meckler
Hey, Sean, thanks for having me.
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
Now. You’re in town because you got a show tomorrow at Berlin, but you also got a record coming out in November that we’ll talk about. But first the show. This sounds pretty spectacular. Kavyesh Kaviraj, Ben Ehrlich, Ethan Yeshaya and Christopher Rochester. Adam, great players. I assume that might be part of the refueling process. But what refuels you about getting back to Minnesota?
Adam Meckler
Yeah, definitely. You know, playing with amazing Minneapolis musicians is refueling. It’s it’s energizing, and it’s great to play my music and to really take it to that next level with these amazing artists. So there’s actually two shows at Berlin, both seven and nine. So it’s two separate shows in one night, because we, to quote, Berlin, we were extremely sold out last time, with lines out the door. So they split it to two shows this time.
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
Can we even use the term back by popular demand?
Adam Meckler
Back by popular demand!
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
All right, I’m chatting with Adam Meckler, who’s dedicating a lot of his life to being an instructor and a director of Jazz Studies, that’s not to say you still aren’t absurdly busy and absurdly entrepreneurial with everything you’re doing, but you are educating a lot of students about jazz in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is not, you know, it’s not in the first three bullet points about that part of the country, vibrant jazz scene, right? It’s and where you are when you’re ages, I’d say 16 to 22 is incredibly important for where you’ll be as a musician for many, many years. It’s where you build those networks in a way that like I’m just aged out of right? I was so ready to spend hours upon hours with people at that age. So being in the Upper Peninsula could be an uphill battle for some of these aspiring performers. How do you help students launch strongly from a spot that presents some difficulties?
Adam Meckler
Yeah, so our scene is small. Our students have to, you know, it’s somewhat insular, like we have to work with each other, and we have to find shows in town where the students can get out and perform. But a lot of our students end up starting their own bands with people that are sometimes outside of the jazz program, that that kind of span different genres. So a bunch of my jazz students are in this band called Willoughby, which is a really awesome, like, indie rock band that’s crushing it. And they’re doing a bunch of touring. One of my students, Ben, moved here to town and started his own brass band after graduating. But by and large, my students are engineering majors, so they’re all going there to study engineering. Some of them are doing sound design and audio production. So we have, like, music related degrees, but we don’t have music performance degrees. We don’t have a Jazz Studies major. But, you know, occasionally a student will go on and do a jazz studies master’s degree after getting a chemical engineering degree or something like that. So it’s really interesting. There’s a lot of a lot of passion, a lot of a lot of love for jazz music at at Michigan Tech, and we just try to get them as many performance opportunities in town as possible. They’re working together.
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
Got to be a tough call to Mom and Dad. Hey, Mom and Dad, I’m getting a masters. . . . . . . .in jazz. I’m chatting with Adam Meckler. He’s getting ready for a show tomorrow night at Berlin. Adam, we’re going to talk about a record you have coming out. But I also want to ask, what kind of music are you going to playing tomorrow at that those shows at seven and nine at Berlin. I know you have a really immense book, and you’re a really prolific composer. What are you planning on playing tomorrow?
Adam Meckler
Yeah, so it’s mostly my original music. It’s it’s modern sort of sensibilities, definitely jazz, a lot of improvisation, but harmonies are borrowed from RMB and soul music, and just a lot, there’s a lot that it draws from in in like gospel music and hip hop music as well. Though we don’t have any buddy rapping with us or anything like that. I’ll be there. Yeah, all right, let’s go. So yeah, you know, beautiful melodies, groovy grooves, you know you can really, I expect that people will kind of tap their toes and be, you know, singing the melodies when they leave.
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
And now, this fall, Adam, you’re releasing an album called “Sampled” because you aren’t busy enough already. This album involves celebrated producers and other collaborators sampling from the Adam Meckler orchestra and using that as a point of departure for new compositions. First, I want to play a little bit of This song. Do you feel good?
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
Okay, now I think I hear Toki Wright’s voice in the background, and also a woman vocalist who all collaborated on this song and tell me about how it came about. Yeah.
Speaker 1
So I sent the I sent all the Adam Meckler orchestra stuff to producers, and I just said, “Hey, pick something that you like and sample it and send it back”. And I want it to have multiple sections so that we can put some layers on top of it and create new songs. And so I sent this one to Matthew Mazurka, who also goes by Gigamesh, and he created this sample. And the sample is from a live record that the Adam Meckler orchestra did called Live in Minneapolis, which was at the Parkway theater, and and Toki was on that show. So I had flown Toki in from Boston, and he did a whole verse over that song that doesn’t exist on recording otherwise, and he just sampled the small part where Toki was like, Do you feel good? And the crowd was like, ah, you know. And so that’s in the track throughout. But then you actually hear my wife, Jana Nyberg, singing on that tune. She’s singing the chorus, you coming through to this party, that thing. And then Elyse Jones, the wonderful vocalist, who kind of toggles between here and New Orleans, she’s doing all the runs around jana’s Chorus vocals. And then I take, like, an epic flugelhorn solo, and Kavyesh Kaviraj has, like, this really beautiful outro on keyboard, and then you there, you hear some Lucia Sarmiento on on tenor sax woven in there as well, especially near the end. It’s much more exposed.
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
I’m so bad at talking about people in the third person when they’re in the room. Jana, you sound real good on the tune. So no microphone by Jana, but we support you, and you’re doing wonderful work. I’ve been chatting with Adam Meckler. He’s getting ready for two shows tomorrow at Berlin with Kavyesh Kaviraj, Ben Ehrlich, Ethan yeshay and Chris Rochester, got a good lineup of players with you, and you’re playing beautiful music, because that’s what you make. Very excited about it. Adam question for you, what percentage are you flugelhorn, and what percentage are you trumpet?
Adam Meckler
Ooh, that’s a good question. One of my favorite flugelhorn players, Kenny Wheeler, used to say that he practices Trump at 90% of the time, and he performs on Flugel 90% of the time. Okay, so he flips it when he’s when he’s performing versus when he’s practicing. I never, ever practice flugelhorn, but I play it a decent amount. I mean, I’m really only doing it on one or two tunes on the show. I think the show is about 75 minutes, and I’ll do it on on two tunes. So got you Yeah, maybe, maybe 15% 20%
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
Yeah. All right, yeah. Because I know I think there’s a new statute in Minneapolis where you have to label what percentage sure for different safety concerns and things like that. Adam, good luck at the show tomorrow, Berlin. I know you traveled very far, very quickly with your lovely family to be here to chat with jazz 88 and it is, no, I’ve driven to Holden. I’ve driven to hone for, I don’t know, like a $1,200 gig many, many years. So it is. It is a difficult thing to make it happen. Thank you for traveling here and getting here, and thank you for bringing your music back to the Twin Cities. We’re lucky to have you. And that records coming out sampled in November,
Adam Meckler
yeah, November 7, on rope a dope sur records, yeah.
Sean McPherson (Jazz88)
All right, the new record is coming in November. It’s called Sampled, but the show is tomorrow night at Berlin Adam. Welcome back to Minneapolis and thank you for visiting jazz88
Adam Meckler
thanks for having me.
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