After more than 30 years away — including nearly two decades on the road with the world-renowned jazz fusion collective Snarky Puppy — Zach Brock has returned home.
The Lexington-born violinist moved back to his hometown during the summer of 2023, bringing full circle a musical journey that first began here in the mid 1970s, when he began learning the Suzuki method as a kid. Soon, he was performing in his family’s folk band alongside parents Dan and Jenny, sharing stages with the likes of Don McLean and Ricky Skaggs, and exploring his own unique style on his own.
“Outside of the classical pieces I played while learning Suzuki violin, I was also figuring out how to take liberties and make the music my own a bit more,” Brock recalled.
In his teens, Brock discovered an early jazz violin player named Stéphane Grappelli, who helped crack open his notion of what violin music could be.
“He was the perfect gateway drug for me getting into jazz violin because he challenges your sense of what the violin should sound like,” Brock said. “I really gravitated toward that when I realized everything he was playing was being made up on the spot.”
That infatuation eventually resulted in Brock turning to local legends like the late Norman Higgins and Jim Rankin, both of whom pushed him even deeper into improv as his family’s folk band began morphing into more of a jazz ensemble.
Following an adolescence in Lexington that culminated with graduation from Bryan Station High School in 1992, Brock went on to study violin performance at Northwestern University, where he earned a degree in 1999 — later than planned, due to a car collision with his bike that resulted in over three years of surgeries and rehabilitation. While the accident nearly derailed his music career, Brock pushed forth after recovering, going on to release a handful of albums with various projects before joining Snarky Puppy in 2008. He’s since been one of the band’s most frequent members and is featured on three of its Grammy winning records: “Culcha Vulcha” (2016), “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” (2021) and “Empire Central” (2023).
Lexington-based violinist Zach Brock, a longtime member of the Grammy-winning jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy, recently assumed a new role as director of the Lexington Chamber Music Festival. Photo by Otega Photography
After time spent living in New York City and Chicago, Brock and his family resettled in Lexington a couple years ago for a much needed change of pace. Those plans took an unexpected turn late last year when he got a phone call from Nathan Cole, the co-founder and artistic director for the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington the past 19 years. With mounting responsibilities due to a newly appointed role as concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cole was looking to phase out of his role with the Lexington festival, which takes place over 10 days each summer. He felt that Brock, who had served as artist-in-residence for the event back in 2017, would be the perfect replacement.
While it was a big leap for Brock, it was one he was eager to take on.
“When Nathan called me in December, I thought it was to see if I wanted to be an artist-in-residence again at first,” explains Brock. “Then he asked me if I wanted to be artistic director… I was flabbergasted because it’s never something I’d even thought about or considered. Despite me coming from more of an improv space, he saw that I understood the core principles and values of the festival, which has me excited to get to work and break down the boundaries between my world and the classical realm the Chamber Music Festival has existed in.”
In a conversation with Smiley Pete Publishing reporter Matt Wickstrom, Brock spoke more about his musical upbringing, his new role with the Chamber Music Festival, the upcoming premiere of one of his new works, and more.
Was there a specific moment where you realized music was something you could make a career out of? Because of the family environment I grew up in, I always just assumed I would be a musician to some extent. I was really lucky that I never had any resistance from my family. From lessons early on to performing with the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra and getting tutored by members of the local community, they’ve been supportive of me from the very beginning.
When I was 16, I remember still having no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. One day I’d have a fantasy of becoming a professional skateboarder, then the next I’d want to be an architect or poet. The turning point was the following summer when I went to the Governor’s School for the Arts. There I got to meet kids from all over the state who were also interested in the arts, which had a huge impact on my trajectory because when I was growing up [the School for the Creative and Performing Arts] didn’t exist. There were only four high schools, and you either played sports or were a nerd, basically [laughs]. Experiencing that left me feeling emboldened, and that’s when I started to seriously consider pursuing a liberal arts degree in college.
But even then, I still didn’t have a crystal-clear idea of what I wanted to be doing when I turned 40. Part of that was due to me being a very rebellious teenager. Even though I loved music and my parents were accepting of it, I didn’t want to do anything with it that was expected of me. With that in mind, a career in jazz is almost like another micro-rebellion.
What does it mean to you to return to Lexington after everything you’ve accomplished in your career thus far? My only regret about coming back to Lexington is that I didn’t do it sooner. I’ve always come back to visit family during my time living in places like Chicago and New York, but in the last 10 years I’ve noticed a palpable change in Lexington with so many new things going on that build upon stuff that I enjoyed when I lived here previously like Chester Grundy’s Spotlight Jazz Series [which was the nation’s longest running collegiate jazz series, during its day]. Even when I lived in Chicago, I remember there sometimes being better concerts in Lexington that I would make the six-hour drive to see. Now folks like Richard Young, with help from Grundy, are reigniting that spark with the Origins Jazz Series. Events like it showcase the kind of potential we can achieve in Lexington and why it’s such a great time to be here.
Zach Brock. Photo by Otega Photography
How do you plan to put your own touch on the Chamber Music Festival? I try not to think so much about what I plan on doing to personalize it, but more about how I can serve the music and community around it. A lot of the jazz I’ve played in my career is more like chamber music than big band material, so while I do come from a different background there are more ties between the types of music I play and what the Chamber Music Festival is known for than people may think. It’s not abnormal now for young classical musicians to improvise just like they were during the Renaissance. I look forward to tapping into that more to expand on how classical music continues to evolve in the modern day.
Kentucky is often associated with country and bluegrass music – not necessarily jazz or chamber music. What are your thoughts or goals on broadening people’s perceptions of what Kentucky music is in your new position? There’s so much going on in Lexington in the jazz and classical space, from the Chamber Music Festival and Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra to the Origins Jazz Series and shows at places like the Singletary Center, The Burl and Kenwick Table. We have the venues, organizations and players, we just need to continue highlighting them and building that story, so this type of music is as much at the forefront of people’s minds when they think of Lexington as other types of music.
You’ll also be premiering your latest orchestral suite, “What Remains,” with the Lexington Chamber Orchestra on May 9. What can folks expect from that? I think they can expect to be surprised. For a long time, people have described my work as living in the space between jazz and classical, and I understand why they say that, but this suite feels like something different to me. It’s not a hybrid. It’s a unified concept that I’m only just now coming into, both artistically and emotionally. The piece is about loss and memory and what actually persists after someone or something is gone, which sounds heavy, but there’s a lot of warmth in it too. I think people will leave having heard something they didn’t quite have a category for, and that’s exactly where I want to live.
Do you have any other projects in the works? For the first time in a while I’m genuinely inspired to write new material. I have a couple of different album ideas forming, and I’m going to have to create them on the road this year, because the Snarky Puppy touring schedule around the “Somni” record is intense. I’m actually looking forward to that. Being out on the road gives me a kind of clarity I can’t manufacture at home. It shows me a side of myself I’m not always in touch with otherwise.
What has music taught you about yourself? That I need discomfort the way other people need security. Every time I’ve played it safe, creatively or professionally, I’ve felt myself shrink a little. Music keeps showing me that the thing I’m most afraid to try is usually exactly the thing I need to do next.
Zach Brock. Photo by Otega Photography