Julian Lage Concert
Wunderkind Julian Lage (rhymes with 'mirage') returned to his roots and his home town of Santa Rosa last week for a three hour concert at the Last Day Saloon. Julian, as most folks know, is the current guitarist in Gary Burton's Next Generation Band, and as such, spends the better part of every year on the road, so it was something of a special treat for his homies to have him to show up here to strut his considerable stuff.
I sat with jazz fans Steve Russell, his lovely wife, Nancy and their friends Mark and Becky Wells, and since Steve will occassionally contribute to this blog, I asked him if he would write a review of this show. He said he would, and he did. Here it is: (My own comments will follow)
(Steve and Nancy Russell, Good Jazz Fans)
One of the unique pleasures available in Sonoma County for the last few years has been the emergence of homeboy Julian Lage as a mature musician. I first saw young Mr. Lage when he was, I believe, about 14 years old at the 2000 San Francisco Jazz Festival where he opened with Russell Malone. A year or two later I caught him again at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Two years ago it was a Valentine's Day show at the Sonoma Community Center.
Malone's graciousness and Lage's emerging talent are what stands out in my memory of the San Francisco show. By Healdsburg one could see the youngster starting to come into his own. The Sonoma show, a guitar trio rather than a band, per se, highlighted Lage's lack of ego and an ability to find his place in the mix.
The recent show at the Last Day Saloon featured what is now a young man ('He has facial hair', my wife, Nancy noted) who has firmly established himself in the musical firmament. It is difficult to convey feelings about music but if I had to choose two words that capture for me the difference between the Julian Lage as a boy and the Julian Lage I saw Sunday, those two words would be 'authoritative' and 'distinctive'.
Authoritative meaning where the Julian Lage I saw in the past offered you his music, this Julian Lage presents it to you. Distinctive because he appears to have absorbed and internalized various influences and now has a style all his own.
The Julian Lage Group is a quartet of talented Bay Area musicians who demonstrate a total feel for the Jazz idiom and seem to genuinely enjoy performing together.
Lage has an impressive history for one so young. He has most recently toured and recorded with well-known vibraphonist Gary Burton.
(Photo: Julian Lage)
Dayna Stephens, featured on tenor sax, attended the Berklee School of Music and the Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute in Los Angeles. He has performed with a number of well-know musicians, including Herbie Hancock.
Scott Amendola on drums is a band leader in his own right and has toured and/or recorded with a diverse group that includes Charlie Hunter, Phil Lesh, Peter Apfelbaum and Jim Campilongo.
David Hoff on base is from Colorado and has been a professional musician since the age of 15. He is currently a member of a number of working Bay Area bands.
All band members are also composers and the show Sunday consisted largely of their original numbers. The group did, however, offer some inventive takes on old chestnuts such as 'Autumb Leaves'. Old or new, the execution was crisp and spirited throughout.
The show was well attended by an enthusiastic crowd and deservedly so. As he has played events recently as far-flung as the Tokyo Jazz Festival, having the opportunity of seeing Lage in such an intimate local setting was a treat that may be all too rare in the future.
S.R.
There is simply no denying that this boy is truly something special. While he is certainly not to be confused with Charlie Christian, at least not yet, for someone of his tender years, he comes with a train-load of talent and promise.
But take it from someone who's been around this scene for a lot longer than I care to admit, there is some tweaking that needs to be done. Someone's got to tell him - when he's playing as a side man - say, with Gary Burton - he doesn't have to concern himself with song selection. The boss does that. All he has to do is play. But when he's the leader of the group, music selection becomes another responsibility, and therein - as I see it - lies the problem.
When his entire song list is comprised of original music, pieces written by all the various band members - and unless you happen to be Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk - that's a bad idea. Of course you want to reward your players by playing music which they have written, but you must be honest with them and yourself, and face the fact that these are not all jazz masterpieces.
The program would have benefited by featuring a more generous offering of familiar tunes - classics, to use a cliche' - sprinkled with an occasional original - but for the most part, tunes to which the audience can relate. In my humble opinion, that's the best recipe for capturing and holding an audience. Rarely will you see the seasoned professional do otherwise.
Pick up any jazz CD, and you'll find the same formula. But Not For Me, There Will Never Be Another You, The Boy Next Door and an original by the artist, BeBop Jam. It may be old, but it works.
One other thing: I kinda got the feeling that this was a very young audience, and so that shrill, upper register,twangy electric guitar that Julian seems to prefer over his acoustic, probably didn't have the same 'fingernail on the blackboard' effect on them that it had on someone with my old (and therefore, super sensitive) ears. If he was trying to achieve some sort of a hard-rock nuance with his electric axe, I'm afraid that as far as I could tell, he was immensly successful.
All in all, I guess you could say there was a little someting for everyone. Some, more than others, but like they say, that's why there's chocolate and vanilla.
L.A.
