Diving into the enormous flood of new recordings that are published on the secondary roads that jazz travels in today's music, we discover several projects that renew the role of the guitar in the genre, far beyond its classic role as a solo voice. . The electric guitar continues to be relevant in jazz, not only as the absolute protagonist of proposals inherited from tradition, but as a catalyst for authentic encounters at the summit that pivot around the six strings. Among the many protagonists of contemporary jazz guitar, we highlight three recent projects, very different from each other, but that share a series of essential issues in their approach to 21st century jazz, such as nonconformism, collective creation, harmonic freedom and, perhaps above all, the importance of sound: not only of the guitar itself (as a transversal and intergenerational voice), but of the entire group as an artistic laboratory.
Mendoza Hoff Revels is the name with which guitarist Ava Mendoza and bassist Devin Hoff have baptized a group that brings together four of the most brilliant musicians on the North American scene: apart from Mendoza and Hoff, the extraordinary drummer Ches Smith and the saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who continues to build an overwhelming career based, among other things, on joining projects like this. Despite the overwhelming personality of this saxophonist, here it is Mendoza who lays the foundations and sets the pulse of the band's music, as shown in her wonderful debut, Echolocation (AUM Fidelity).
The guitarist is not particularly known outside specialized circles, even though she has been on the scene for a few years, but in recent times she has been revealed as a powerful and original voice, heir to both the footsteps of Jimi Hendrix and his old teacher Fred. Frith or such strong personalities as Sonny Sharrock and Nels Cline, among many others. Her guitar is carnal, dirty and rotund, and Mendoza is a master of texture, with an expressiveness that finds its primary origin in the old blues guitarists, which she drags unceremoniously into the 21st century creating vibrant music that is nourished not only by the avant-garde jazz from which Mendoza, Hoff, Smith and Lewis come, but also from the entire tradition of black music, from rock to blues and even funk.
In a completely different language, and with a freer approach, perhaps, although also more arid, is another project that shares a rhythm section with Mendoza Hoff Revels. Devin Hoff and Ches Smith are two-fifths of Sunny Five, a kind of supergroup without stars, to the extent that, despite hosting authentic totems of contemporary improvisation, we could safely surmise that none of them can ever be considered a star, due to his eternal profile underground and nonconformist. Both the saxophonist Tim Berne and the guitarists David Torn and Marc Ducret have written memorable pages in the creative music of recent decades, sometimes coinciding in different projects of the saxophonist, but never with Torn and Ducret flanking their music with their guitars, as happens on the debut album of this project, candid (Intakt).
In it, although the quintet performs totally improvised music collectively, what is most fascinating and revealing is the duality of Torn and Ducret's guitars. The first is a creator of textures, more supported by electronic sounds and with the capacity for suggestion of someone who knows how to use sound to build landscapes in which the rest of the instrumentalists can roam. The second, technically more seasoned, is responsive and incisive, but always adapting to the framework that is drawn in real time, with the five musicians creating in unison, listening to each other and rowing in the same direction. Although Berne might seem like the leader of the session, such is the personality of both guitarists that the saxophonist's character is invaded by a fierceness that is not found in many of his projects.
On the other side of the world, and completely far from the sounds of these North American groups, guitarist Jakob Bro leads a trio that brings together three generations of leading Danish jazz musicians: on the one hand, the octogenarian trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, a true legend of the genre in Europe; on the other, the percussionist Marilyn Mazur, an essential name in contemporary jazz with an overwhelming career. Although Mikkelborg was already a luminary of European jazz in the second half of the 20th century, both became internationally known in the late eighties thanks to the album Aura, by Miles Davis, a work composed by Mikkelborg himself for the trumpeter. Mazur, for his part, caught Miles' attention so much that he took her on tour, greatly boosting his career.
In the delicious album 'Strands', Jakob Bro's guitar leads three generations of leading Danish jazz musicians
The meeting of both veterans with Bro – undoubtedly the most promising Danish musician today –, recorded live on the delicious Strands (ECM), shows a radically different type of language than those of Mendoza Hoff Revels or Sunny Five, even though it has several things in common, such as the importance of the interaction between those involved or the creation of acoustic textures above an essentially linear approach. or soloist by the performers. In Strands everything is space and contemplation, with Bro's guitars and Mazur's percussion creating aerial backgrounds, woven with pure calm, through which Mikkelborg's trumpet glides gracefully and liquidly. The epicenter of everything is in the guitar and Bro's compositions, which sets the tone of each piece, raising magnificent sound scaffolding, rooted in the Nordic tradition and far from the black roots or the heritage of the free jazz of his North American contemporaries, but with the aim of decentralizing the figure of the soloist as the axis of jazz interpretation, and that love for sound and texture as its primary vehicles.
Mendoza Hoff Revels
Echolocation
AUM Fidelity
Sunny Five
candid
Intact
Palle Mikkelborg, Jakob Bro, Marilyn Mazur
Strands – Live at the Danish Radio Concert Hall
NDE
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