Chillin’ with Gary Bartz
By Phillip Lutz
“Trane used songs that were from Broadway and Irving Berlin,” Bartz said, in discussing how he chose classic r&b tunes for his new recording, Damage Control. “I wanted to use songs more from my community.”
By Josef Woodard
By Cree McCree
Lee Ritenour — genial and relaxed at 73 — took time while on tour in Europe this past summer to participate in his first Blindfold Test, commenting that “I want to thank DownBeat for this. As a kid growing up, the magazine came to the house every week. I was a huge fan, but later on I was disappointed. They always gave my records bad reviews because they were too contemporary for them.”
The public event took place as part of the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, Ritenour playing his Sadowsky electric nylon guitar, unplugged, while he spoke. As the event drew to a close, he shared a memory triggered by the locale. “In 1975, Morricone came over to record a film score in Los Angeles and I got hired for the session. For film soundtracks, most times they’d have 70 or 80 musicians. Morricone had more than a 103! I was excited — I got there early because I thought Morricone was writing some difficult music. I remember talking to some of the string and woodwind players, and we’re all looking at the music we were given. It was very, very simple, nothing unusual on the score. Then the maestro arrives, we all applaud and started to play. It was amazing. From the very first chord, it sounded completely like Morricone! It was the way he put the score together and orchestrated it. Complete Morricone.”
