Return of the Guitar Man

October 2011 | No. 114 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com George Benson Return of the Guitar Man ARE U SPECIASL GUIIST Vic Juris • Mary Halvorson • Loose Torque • Event Calendar When one thinks of the instrument that most closely defines jazz, the saxophone is the obvious choice. But guitar has been making a strong case for decades now and some of the most compelling players in jazz history have been six-stringers. New York@Night What makes the guitarist most interesting is that they often have the most 4 expansive view of jazz and its possibilities, saddled with less history and fewer Interview: Vic Juris archetypes. We feature three of them in this, our special Guitar Issue. George Benson (On The Cover) has been a polarizing figure, heir to the throne of Wes 6 by Ryan Blotnick Montgomery but willing to disappoint purists because of his crossover activities; Artist Feature: Mary Halvorson Benson plays Town Hall this month in support of his new (return-to-jazz) album Guitar Man. Vic Juris (Interview) got his start, like many of his kind, working with by Martin Longley 7 organists, but also absorbed the nascent fusion movement, establishing his On The Cover: George Benson credentials with Dave Liebman and as a leader and educator; Juris plays around by Bill Milkowski town several times this month. And Mary Halvorson (Artist Feature) has rightly 9 been described as a unique voice on her instrument, to which her various projects Encore: Lest We Forget: and appearances as a sideman attest; this month she plays with mentor Anthony 10 Braxton as well as leading or co-leading several typically wide-ranging projects. Johnny Smith Attila Zoller We also have features on guitar legend Johnny Smith (Encore), Attila Zoller (Lest by Marcia Hillman by Clifford Allen We Forget), a Megaphone by guitarist Terrence McManus, Listen Ups on two Megaphone VOXNews up-and-coming plectricts (JC Stylles and Chris Welcome) and the first four pages by Terrence McManus by Suzanne Lorge of our CD review section devoted to modern (and past) practitioners. 11 In addition to the cornucopia above, please browse our massive Event Label Spotlight: Listen Up!: Calendar for concerts by others guitarists like Peter Bernstein, Vernon Reid, Sean Moran, Paul Bollenback, Gilad Hekselman, Tomas Janzon, Peter Leitch, Gene 12 JC Stylles Loose Torque Bertoncini, Mike Stern, Avi Rothbard, Brad Shepik, Steve Cardenas, Jack Wilkins, by Ken Waxman & Chris Welcome Paul Meyers, Ryan Ferreira, Russell Malone, Miles Okazaki, Kazumi Watanabe, Ben Monder, Dom Minasi, Brad Farberman, Jon Lundbom, Rez Abbasi, Juan- 13 Festival Report: Oslo • Météo • Vail Carlos Formell, Amanda Monaco, Bucky Pizzarelli, Michael Musillami and others. CD Reviews: Wes Montgomery, Joe Morris, Howard Alden, Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor Andrey Henkin, Editorial Director 14 Pat Metheny, Stanley Jordan, Gord Grdina, Marc Ducret and more On the cover: George Benson (photo by Marco Glaviano) 42 Event Calendar Corrections: In last month’s Label Spotlight, Hans Reichel’s instrument was incorrectly identified as a saxophone when it is actually a Daxophone. In one of last 49 Club Directory month’s NY@Nights, the drummer with Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow at Doma was Ben Perowsky. Miscellany: In Memoriam • Birthdays • On This Day Submit Letters to the Editor by emailing [email protected] 51 US Subscription rates: 12 issues, $30 (International: 12 issues, $40) For subscription assistance, send check, cash or money order to the address below or email [email protected]. The New York City Jazz Record www.nycjazzrecord.com Managing Editor: Laurence Donohue-Greene To Contact: Editorial Director & Production Manager: Andrey Henkin The New York City Jazz Record Staff Writers 116 Pinehurst Avenue, Ste. J41 David R. Adler, Clifford Allen, Fred Bouchard, Stuart Broomer, Tom Conrad, Ken Dryden, New York, NY 10033 Donald Elfman, Sean Fitzell, Graham Flanagan, Kurt Gottschalk, Tom Greenland, United States Laurel Gross, Alex Henderson, Marcia Hillman, Terrell Holmes, Robert Iannapollo, Francis Lo Kee, Martin Longley, Suzanne Lorge, Wilbur MacKenzie, Marc Medwin, Laurence Donohue-Greene: Russ Musto, Joel Roberts, John Sharpe, Elliott Simon, Jeff Stockton, Andrew Vélez, Ken Waxman [email protected] Andrey Henkin: [email protected] Contributing Writers Duck Baker, Ryan Blotnick, Anders Griffen, George Kanzler, Terrence McManus, General Inquiries: [email protected] Gordon Marshall, Bill Milkowski, Matthew Miller, Sharon Mizrahi, Sean O’Connell, Flo Wetzel Advertising: [email protected] Contributing Photographers Editorial: [email protected] Lena Adasheva, Scott Friedlander, Peter Gannushkin, Marco Glaviano, Calendar: [email protected] Jan Granlie, Alan Nahigian, Susan O’Connor, Drew Winners All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All material copyrights property of the authors. THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | October 2011 3 NEW YORK @ NIGHT Guitarist Michael Pisaro’s “Ascending Series (6)” on Danish multi-saxist Lotte Anker has been working Sep. 13th marked a sort of an end for two weeks at The with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Stone curated by Erstwhile Records as well as a prelude Cleaver since 2003, with two recordings under their for the two-day Gravity Wave Festival, which featured collective belts. The trio musically reacquainted his quiet compositions and capped the run. The piece themselves at Barbès (Sep. 7th), launching a mini-tour - an exercise in silence and tonality in just under 40 to include the Guelph Festival on 9/11-eve. Anker minutes - was written for and played in duet with started on soprano sax with a throaty tone of shaking trombonist Radu Malfatti, another devotee of stillness vibrato and stuttered attacks, gradually bringing her in music. Each of the musicians was armed with a sound forward to a full boisterous resonance, moving timer, which kept them both in silence for the first to alto mid-piece and ending the set on tenor. Cleaver several minutes before Pisaro initiated a low drone followed a similar arc, at first showing his mastery of with Ebow and electric guitar, matched in short order the understatement, playing barehanded or grabbing by a much higher tone (seemingly generated by for an unusual assortment of sticking implements Pisaro’s laptop), then another extended low tone from (baby rattle, telephone cord, sleighbells) and Malfatti’s horn. All of this came off like a tableau ‘preparing’ his kit in various ways to produce a against another rather appealing sound, which may panoply of percussive textures, eventually building to have come from the computer or perhaps water in the a rock-solid ten-beat pattern that pulsed with an avant- pipes overhead. Three distinct tone fields - trombone meets-Motown sound. Taborn, the third ‘leg’ of the (low), guitar (low or high) and electronics (high), the improvising triangle can, like Anker and Cleaver, be absence of sound perhaps being a dominant fourth - sparse and spare when the musical environment calls seemed to work in strict but independent time for it, or let loose with both shotgun barrels when so intervals. The elements were so few that it began to inspired. In many places his musical commentary was feel like an unevenly measured round, each of the three merely implied or insinuated, but elsewhere his voices cycling in and out (variations within them were energetic fusillades of two-handed passages decorated few; occasional quick notes in the upper register were with jagged ornaments filled every corner of the room. the greatest alteration), sometimes occurring The drums and bass played powerful hits together and concurrently. But even with the silence, there was the group came to a vibrant climax just before ending always the feeling of method, of a process at work. the first piece and again during a shorter ‘encore’. - Kurt Gottschalk - Tom Greenland P h o t o b s y s e S n c n o t A t F m r i i J e d y l b a n o t d o e h r P Michael Pisaro & Radu Malfatti @ The Stone Cleaver/Anker/Taborn @ Barbès Despite having played in duo only once before - a set On Sep. 9th, The Kitchen, a four-decade bastion of of less than 15 minutes some 10 years ago - the pairing experimental improv, began “Pioneers of the of saxophonist John Butcher and synthesizer player Downtown Sound”, a mini-series curated by Rhys Thomas Lehn at Issue Project Room Sep. 20th was a Chatham to revisit and update its early years. Chatham, natural. The two, of course, have played together in most known for No Wave “guitarchestras”, opened other situations, most notably the trio Thermal with with solo cornet filtered through three channels of guitarist Andy Moor of Dutch ‘rock group’ The Ex. digital delays in long-decaying overlapped loops, With the brash sound of the saxophone, it was tempting building on a single pinched note, gradually adding to hear them as a duo of some sort or another: sax and tones above and below, false-fingered trills and organ, sax and drums. But it proved easier - or at least squelched burps to construct a gurgling swirl of sound, more economical - to give up on the idea of the horn ending the minimalistic conconction on his knees, as if altogether. Butcher’s sax is his laboratory, the science in prayer, hands stretched forward to the fader knobs. of air pushed through tubes his area of expertise. Joan La Barbara sang an etude of descending Playing alternately unamplified, into a microphone exhalations immediately alternated with ascending running through a volume pedal or a second mic inhalations, accelerating and expanding each cycle, boosted to feedback levels, Butcher had access to the adding multiphonics, then reversing direction to whole dynamic range of the horn. Lehn, meanwhile, reprise her opening gesture. “Twelvesong” featured was unusually understated for the first half of the set, live-dubbed vocalizations (cat and bird calls, ripping letting soft waves emanate from his synthesizer and cloth, radio static, creaking doors, etc.) over a slowly build.

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