Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Guitarist Pat Metheny topped two DownBeat Readers Poll categories this year: Guitar and Jazz Album, for his disc From This Place (Nonesuch).
(Photo: Jimmy & Dena Katz)“Probably within 50 miles of here, I could find 200 people now who could play ‘Giant Steps’ in all 12 keys backwards and forwards,” he asserted. “It used to be, you couldn’t find anybody who could do that. But now, that kind of fluency is abundant. Now, it’s almost taken for granted that you’re going to be a good player and a good musician.
“But to get that level of fluency combined with [a playing style that makes me think] “What was that?”—it’s like every 10 years or so somebody comes on like that. James [Francies] is in that category. And he’s still very young.”
Metheny also heaped praise on Dyson, calling him “one of the most exciting drummers I’ve heard in years.”
Although Side-Eye hasn’t released an album yet, the band did recently film a performance in Japan. Metheny was pleased with the footage, though he generally isn’t interested in concert films.
“I don’t really like the visual thing that much,” he said. “If there was a way of doing what I do while invisible, I would love that—because to me, it’s not really about the image of the people playing; it is only about what it sounds like.
The guitarist, who is an avid reader, explained that the pandemic-related break from touring had afforded him the opportunity to tackle several books, including biographies of Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, as well as physicist David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (Penguin).
“Like probably half the people on the planet, I’m about three quarters of the way through [Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York], which is, for somebody who lives in New York, both fascinating and infuriating,” he said with a chuckle, referring to the 1,344-page tome.
This extended period of time off the road also has given Metheny an itch to revisit a backlog of compositional ideas. “This is the chance to finish those 70 halfway-done tunes that have been sitting there,” he said. “I know there might be some good tunes there, just waiting to get finished. And out of that 70, I’m going to get 10 [good ones], because my batting average is about that.” DB
This story originally was published in the December 2020 issue of DownBeat. Subscribe here.
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
Mar 4, 2025 1:29 PM
If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the…
“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
Jan 16, 2025 2:02 PM
In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
