Review: Alternative Takes on Jazz Guitar

Review, From the Magazine, Joel Harrison, Elliott Sharp, Nels Cline

By Bill Milkowski I May. 13, 2025

Nels Cline issues his jazziest Blue Note offering yet with Consentrik Quartet: from left, Ingrid Laubrock, Cline, Tom Rainey and Chris Lightcap.
(Photo: Nathan West)

There has been no more fervent a champion of guitar, in all of its myriad colors and expressions, over the past 20 years than Joel Harrison. Composer, arranger, bandleader and founder of the Alternative Guitar Summit, an annual showcase of inventive players “celebrating the road less taken on guitar,” Harrison also promotes the instrument through his annual Alt Summit Guitar Camp, a summer gathering for players of all levels that features master classes by notable guitarists at a 100-acre wilderness retreat in upstate New York.

With 25 wildly eclectic releases as a leader already to his credit, Harrison explores some brave new territory on his ambitious, two-CD Guitar Talk, Vol. 2 (AGS; ★★★★ 95:38), which is divided into classical duos and jazz duos. His nylon string duets alongside fellow acoustic guitarists Fareed Haque and Dan Lippel on strictly through-composed material for the classical portion recall groundbreaking ’70s recordings like Egberto Gismonti’s Sol De Melo Dia (with Ralph Towner) and Bola Sete’s Ocean. On the jazz disc, Harrison offers lyrical gems in “Song For Carla Bley” (with Wolfgang Muthspiel), “D.C.” (with Mike Stern), “Listen To Luther Sing” (with Adam Levy) and “Point The Way” (with Camila Meza). His edgier, experimental side comes across in electric encounters with Gregg Belise Chi (“Endless Wars”), Nels Cline (“Rang, Bang, Thrum”) and Anthony Pirog (“Etude #1 For Improvising Guitarists”).

Ordering info: joelharrison1.bandcamp.com

The ever-prolific multi-instrumentist Elliott Sharp, an indomitable force on New York’s downtown scene over the past 50 years, has released well over 100 albums in various configurations from solo and duo to string quartets and orchestral projects. On Hudson River Compositions 1973–’74 (zOaR; ★★★½ 52:08), he revives some compositional ideas that lingered since his days living in Germantown, New York, on the Hudson and were documented back then as graphic images and later superimposed on manuscript paper. Recorded in 2024 with a nonet featuring pianist and longtime collaborator Anthony Coleman, trumpeter Nate Wooley and Sharp alternating between reeds and stringed instruments, these pieces travel from sparse interactions like “Fireflies” to more dense abstractions like “Unison” (with Sharp on guitar going toe to toe with violinist Sara Salamon in a hellacious encounter) and “Play The Opposite.” “Flocking” alludes to Third Stream while “Max Density” is not recommended to the faint of heart. Sharp’s unique guitar prowess is unleashed on the aptly named “Overtone Frenzy.” He takes more of a grindcore approach in his caustic duet encounter with drummer Bobby Previte on Poppo–Eternal Performance (zOaR; ★★★ 36:58), documenting a 1985 live performance where they accompanied a butoh dance company in a vacant lot outside of the underground East Village club 8BC.

Ordering info: joelharrison1.bandcamp.com

The jazziest of his recordings since coming to the iconic label in 2016, guitarist Nels Cline’s Consentrik Quartet (Blue Note; ★★★★½ 67:44) finds him in a loose, playful and often swinging mode in the company of tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Nightcap and drummer Tom Rainey. While the rubato opener “The Returning Angel” sets an ominous, darkly atmospheric tone, things get lively from there on “The 23.” Built on a muscular guitar ostinato in combination with Lightcap’s hypnotic bass line and Rainey’s polyrhythmic groove, this animated number is buoyed by some powerful tenor playing from Laubrock. Cline’s potent guitar solo here, as well as on the bubbling “Surplus,” is edgy, unapologetically electric and eminently swinging, à la early John McLaughlin on Extrapolation. The suite-like “Satomi” starts as a giddy romp through an intricate alt-rock head before giving way to some freewheeling abandon, topped by conversational exchanges between Laubrock’s soprano sax and Cline’s guitar. Midway through this complex 10-minute number, it settles into a peaceful bit of introspection, with Lightcap’s bowed bass and Laubrock’s soprano sax blending in long tones over the leader’s gentle staccato chording. “Slipping Into Something” does the same about-face, but in reverse — from peaceful introspective to swaggering, groove-oriented, blues-tinged throwdown replete with rowdy call-and-response between Cline’s guitar and Laubrock’s robust tenor. The frantic swinger “The Bag” finds the husband-wife team of Rainey and Laubrock engaging in a fierce tenor-drums breakdown mid-song while Cline’s backwards guitar effects add a touch of avant garde to the jam. A more delicate side is revealed on conversational rubato numbers like “Allende,” the sparsely introspective “Inner Wall” and the melancholy “Time Of No Sirens,” the latter underscored by Rainey’s sensitive brushwork. And the open-ended “Down Close” is a reverent nod to ’60s free-jazz. DB