The Jazz Man Cometh

John Scofield

at Regattabar

March 7

The circle is now complete. Again. John Scofield, master guitarist and long touted as one of the “big three” of the six strings company that includes Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell is back. In another phase of a career founded on jazz-funk fusion that later moved on to more straight jazz, and then returned to his rookie days, Scofield has turned around once again. On the North American leg of a world tour, Scofield stopped in for a four-night set on March 7 at the Regattabar, for an event that seemed as much a celebration of his eclectic career as it was an opportunity to promote his latest CD, Works for Me.

While his accompanying trio differs entirely from the recording sidemen, Scofield has assembled a dazzling array of supremely talented, if currently little known musicians who more than live up to his title of “the real drea band.” While the standout by far was drummer Bill Stewart, who matched Scofield’s intensity and complexity with dizzying dexterity and frenetic zeal, tenor player Seamus Blake and acoustic bassist Jesse Murphy also acquitted themselves admirably. Blake furnished lean and frequently blistering solos, with Murphy impelling forward the night’s proceedings with tight grooves robust solos, complementing Scofield’s continually surprising harmonic invention.

Instead of settling into the dirty mellow grooves that have marked his last three albums, Scofield launched into a steely edged and slightly jarring bop sound with “Do I Crazy?” from Works for Me. After brushing off the cobwebs collected from a few days on the road, Scofield stuck into the unsettling syncopated rhythms, weaving shattering dissonant chords into elaborate finger runs as he revelled in conjuring the glory days of jazz when bop was a budding musical form.

For most of the evening, bathed in blue light, hunched over his guitar and pacing up and down in the Regattabar’s intimate surroundings, Scofield called upon a bewildering stylistic arsenal. His soloing on the greasy, rolling “Chicken Dog” called upon jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery’s pioneering style as he conjured segments of thick parallel octaves. These soon gave way to electronic pedal antics from tone bending to evocations of Jimi Hendrix’s wa-wa guitar bending on his legendary “Voodoo Child.”

Despite the far-reaching quotations in his work, it never seemed that Scofield was derivative or stretched for motivation. Grasped by the inspiration for a musical idea, he would push it to the limits of creative invention, feeding off his sidemen until grasped by a fresh concept that he would subsequently exhaust. Blake’s tenor provided particularly potent fuel, as they, face to face, improvised harmonies, some of which melded seamlessly with the tune. Others that didn’t quite work were nonetheless commendable for their innovation. Free to experiment beyond the confines of chords or melodic conventions, Scofield and Blake fed off each other, reaching daring levels of free-form creativity.

Not to be left out of the conversation, Stewart toyed with the repetitive and infectious grooves of “Loose Cannon,” allowing the audience to catch a true glimpse of his virtuosity. He constructed polyrhythmic extrapolations onto the initial simple patterns, building on the rhythm and blues flavored hooks and then subsiding into sparse, off-putting snare shots as he tried to push Blake’s more cool and subdued solo into another, more frenzied direction. Blake’s resistance to percussive prodding created a palpably apparent tension, until Stewart resolved the matter, asserting his authority in the first of many explosive solos. Building up from a simple extended interplay between nothing but hi-hat and bass drum, Stewart frenetically tore into his kit, twisting spell-binding, gravity defying licks, occasionally straying into Latin inspired patterns that provided a pulsing cross-current to Murphy’s bass.

However, all was not brash thunder and explosive lightning. To temper the vitrolite building through the first of two stunningly executed sets, the group called upon the folk song “Scarborough Fair” and a little known Gershwin standard, “Soon.” Perhaps the most compelling diversion was one of Scofield’s elegant compositions, an ode to his wife entitled “Mrs. Scofield’s Waltz.” A lyrical and haunting ballad, it allowed Black to soar over the melody, as he engaged in touching introspective moments in the middle register and soaring to plaintive highs in upper octaves. As such, work provided a fitting counterpoint to the previous “Chicken Dog.” While the former relieved tension by closing with mellow, mellifluous chords, “Mrs. Scofield’s Waltz”was rudely interrupted at the end by piercing dissonances, the heart-rending tribute rendered barren by coarse and interruptive cacophony. It merely serves to demonstrate how Scofield refused to let his audience become complacent with the music.

In these moments, John Scofield’s force as a composer and bandleader were realized, as he emerged to shape the music to become greater than the some of individual parts. In transcending his musical boundaries and establishing compositional prowess, he truly does belong in the “big three” of jazz guitarists, because he left this reviewer with heart pounding, mind racing, and completely out of breath.