An Interview with Jazz Pianist and Japanese Garden Horticulturist Jose “Juicy” Gonzales
Seattle Japanese Garden horticulturist Jose Gonzales is multi-talented. When he’s not carefully pruning pines or weeding moss beds in the Garden, he can often be found perfecting his craft as a jazz pianist. The Jose Gonzales Trio put on a brilliant show at the inaugural Music in the Arboretum event series in 2023, and the group is returning for an encore performance this year, on August 20. Foundation Communications Manager Niall Dunne sat down with Jose to learn about his musical and botanical journeys—and to ask him how they might intersect.
ND: How did your musical career begin?
JG: It all started when I was seven years old, at the very beginning of third grade. I walked into my new classroom, and the first thing I saw was a big upright piano. I was intrigued. I’d seen one before and may have heard one, too, but I’d never touched one. At some point during the day, the teacher asked the class to gather around, and she started playing—and we started singing.
It was something patriotic, like America the Beautiful, and I was blown away by how we came together and seemingly, out of nothing, created a song. It wasn’t about whether the performance was any good—most likely, it wasn’t that great. It was more about the group joining together and sharing this moment in music. To me, music is a miraculous thing. It’s something that you can’t see or touch. It’s just this vibration that’s happening—a true physical vibration—and moving through all of us.
ND: Has the piano always been your instrument?
JG: Yes. I went home that day and told my mother all about the experience, and she could tell I was very excited. “Do you want to take piano lessons?”, she asked. And I said, “yes, please, I think that would be fun.” And my parents found me a teacher. I grew up in Arlington, Washington, a really small Northwest town about an hour north of here. This was back in the early 1970s. And I just took to the piano right away. I wanted to practice. I wanted to play. I started with the basics of classical music, and pretty soon I was playing it well. But I also loved ragtime—you know, tunes like Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer. And things just started to go from there.
Recording of Jose and his trio at the Royal Room, Seattle.
ND: You gravitated to jazz early on in your career?
JG: Yes. Initially, I was drawn in by the syncopated quality of ragtime, which was a forerunner of jazz music at the turn of the 20th century. Later on, in high school, I was asked to play piano for the jazz choir. The basic tunes were written out and notated, but at this point I was also able to improvise rhythmically. This excited me. As a classical pianist, you have to play the notes that are written down—and if you don’t, you’ve messed up. Whereas with jazz, there’s much more flexibility because of its improvisational nature: You play what you hear in your head.
Of course, each piece has a rudimentary melody or chord sequence that the jazz players all know, but there’s no agreed-upon notes that we’re all going to be playing. Instead, we’re listening to each other, reacting, and making it happen in the moment. In the moment…that’s really what it’s all about.
ND: So, even if you’ve played a tune many times before, each performance can feel fresh and new?
JG: Yes. Certain songs that our trio has done many times have a set arrangement. But even then, things are always changing. For me, music is a dynamic experience.
Jazz is also very expressive. Because of the spontaneity and how jazz musicians listen and internalize the music, we get to express what we’re feeling at that particular moment. It could be sorrow, anger, joy, or all of the above. I’m mostly a very joyful player. And when I’m playing with the trio, I’m also drawing on the energy from the audience, and it’s a really wonderful feeling that just feeds me.
ND: Your own music is eclectic. On your website you describe it as “rooted in jazz, fueled by the blues, marinated in funk.” Who are some of the non-jazz artists who influenced your style?
JG: I was a kid from the 1970s AM Radio. So, all those AM radio hits—from The Beatles to Elton John to Led Zeppelin—informed my musical likes. Now, I often take those songs and put them through the jazz trio filter.
ND: You recently recorded a fabulous album of tunes by The Beatles, including classics such as “Come Together” and “Blackbird.” Do certain pop/rock songs lend themselves more easily to jazz interpretation—perhaps because they are more layered and complex?
JG: I think one of the misconceptions of jazz is that it’s just tons of chords and it’s super complicated. You do, of course, need to know your way around chord changes. But simplicity can really go deep, even in jazz. The great jazz pianist Keith Jarrett once said, “don’t be afraid of playing the obvious.” And I prefer a more accessible sound—and that’s why I love to weave in the blues, which a lot of people relate to. That being said, I also like songs that have different sections, because they give me different places to go, feeling-wise.
Jose Gonzales Trio performing at Music in the Arboretum in 2023.
ND: Something you’re really well known for in Seattle and beyond is your live performance of Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” How did that come about?
JG: It started out about a dozen years ago as a fundraising project for the Strawberry Theater Project, and now it’s something of a seasonal hit. We sell out the Cornish Playhouse every year! I don’t just perform the music from the holiday special; I also—in between songs—dive into story behind the making of the special. It’s really quite interesting.
ND: Will you play any songs from that at the Arboretum show on August 20th?
JG: It’s a bit early in the year for Christmas material. We’ll play a nice mix of jazz standards with a bluesy twist, as well as jazzy versions of pop tunes.
ND: And who are the other players in the trio?
JG: The drummer’s name is Matt Jorgensen, a wonderful percussionist and educator who plays with a lot of great musicians here in Seattle. I heard him years and years ago and fell in love with his drumming. And one year, I finally got the courage to ask him to join me for a gig. Michael Marcus is the bass player, and I’ve been with him for even longer. We were just kind of shoved together at one gig, and right away, we had a connection. I try to have these two in every gig I play.
ND: Your stage name is Jose “Juicy” Gonzales? Care to elaborate?
JG: You can call me “Juicy.” You can call me “Juice.” But I’m not going force you to do that. The reason I call myself Jose “Juicy” Gonzales is because I want to distinguish myself from all the other Jose Gonzales-es in the world, in particular, a really wonderful and famous Swedish singer-songwriter, who is awesome, and who I love. However, when I was first starting out with my trio, people would come to my show thinking they were going to see Swedish Jose. And that bummed me out for them. Though, secretly, I loved it for me, because I had an opportunity to make some new fans.
ND: Who came up with the nickname?
JG: That would be my wife, Lisa. I told her about my dilemma, and she said, well, you should call yourself “Juicy” because you are so…ahem…juicy, which sounds naughty, but her point was that I live my life with passion. I enjoy simply being, and when it comes to things that really get me going—music, gardening, theater—I become really impassioned.
ND: Tell us a little bit about your horticultural journey. How did that come about?
JG: Well, in high school, I worked as a delivery person for a flower shop, which was enjoyable. I was actually a theater major in college, and after I graduated, I needed a job, so I started working at a local nursery/flower shop, the Wallingford Garden Spot. And it satisfied another need for me, my love of plants.
Like with music, I feel that plants are miraculous. It’s a miracle that we’re on this rock that’s spinning through space, and beautiful things grow on it. And that we can plant something on the space rock, and it becomes food for us.
Eventually, I ended up getting a job at City People’s Garden Store, in Madison Park, as a buyer of their annual herbs and vegetables. I loved that place, and I loved turning people onto gardening. I took a Master Composter course to learn about all the important things happening below the ground. And I started gardening seriously at home. I’m not much of a vegetable grower, though I have some fruit trees. It’s more of an English cottage garden—full of flowers, trees, shrubs—wild and overgrown. It’s like stepping into another world.
Jose at work in the Seattle Japanese Garden. (Photo by Niall Dunne)
ND: How did you end up at the Japanese Garden?
JG: I was at City People’s for many years and even became an owner for its final four years, when we were trying to relocate. But the move never materialized. I stopped working there during the Covid pandemic and spent a lot more time playing music. The pandemic was awful, but there was a silver lining for me, in that I was able to spend hours at the piano every day, revisiting the fundamentals, and upping my game.
Eventually, though I needed to get another job, so I started working with the city of Seattle, helping them with their pandemic relief, signing people up for the vaccine. Then, I saw that the City was hiring gardeners. So I applied for general gardening position. I thought I was going for a job as a district gardener, who roam around and work at different parks in Seattle. But I was thrilled to be offered a position at the Seattle Japanese Garden, where I’ve been for about three years now.
I’ve learned so much in that time, about the Japanese garden style, and about specialty pruning. Our Garden is all about the details. And really, all gardens are, but this one in particular. I mean, we’re talking square-inch gardening.
ND: Do you see any connection between your two professions—making musical art and curating a landscape in which all the elements are carefully, artfully designed?
Oh yes, they are both very focusing, but also they both force me to zoom out to take in the big picture and stay true to the intention. Like with the Garden, music can be very granular one moment—where you really focus down to a single note—and the next, it can take you really wide to appreciate the whole score.
Another similarity is with rhythm. The Japanese Garden is a traditional stroll garden and actually has a built-in rhythm in how a person walks through it. You have these long, straight stretches that move you forward. And then curves and hidden views that slow you down, and beautiful vistas that make you pause. And then natural breaks in the rhythm caused by stepping stones, where you need to be careful…and so on.
And of course, the piano is naturally rhythmic because it’s a percussion instrument. It’s not a wind or string instrument. You know, you hit the hammers, hit the strings, so it’s percussion. I’m a drummer, who also can play chords and melodies.
One place where I think my work at the Garden and my jazz music diverge is the level of restraint. Everything at the Garden is very controlled and cut to perfection, whereas the improvisational nature of jazz allows me to let loose and be much more expressive.
JG: You performed at the inaugural Music in the Arboretum two years ago, and the crowd loved it. As a gardener on the grounds, does it give you a special feeling to perform here?
First of all, I love playing outside. But playing Visitors Center terrace was amazing, not just because of the beautiful plants all around, but also because the acoustics are really interesting—something about how the sound is moving and deflecting through the space. I was in heaven, and I’m looking forward to August 20!
BANNER PHOTO: Courtesy Portland Japanese Garden.
