Guided Tour (Mack Avenue)

Guided Tour (Mack Avenue)

The New Gary Burton Quartet

Released August 19, 2013

Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2014

YouTube:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt2rvM0nuzA&list=OLAK5uy_nttM_AMGBwTJ0-2g43ERlT44Oo1pisp8A

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/1DwyLu1Ggxd9NX7gUZlSzx?si=J7SOzsJrTUSQ9ynhlYVftw&dl_branch=1

About:

A popular phrase in years past was “Life Begins at 60,” but Gary Burton – as he has done so often throughout his career – is rewriting the book on retirement. Having turned 70 in January, an age when most artists begin to solely look back, Burton forges ahead with his new Mack Avenue Records album, Guided Tour, which solidifies the reputation of his next great band, The New Gary Burton Quartet. In addition, Burton has literally written the book on his life, saving those backward glances for his upcoming autobiography, Learning To Listen, due on Berklee Press in September 2013.

His stature as the former Executive Vice President at the famed Berklee College of Music caps a three-decade life in jazz education, which coincided with his already busy career as a performer and recording artist. Known for reintroducing and expanding the technique of fourmallet playing while crafting one of the jazz world’s signature sounds, he is also celebrating the 40th anniversary of his ongoing collaboration with pianist Chick Corea (winning yet another Grammy Award in 2013 for their most recent project, Hot House). And having established the first on-line courses for Berklee, Burton has recently expanded his web presence to create a course in improvisation for Coursera (the massive online education platform), which, as of two months before its launch, had already enrolled 25,000 students.

On Guided Tour, jazz’s most innovative and accomplished vibraphonist proves that The New Gary Burton Quartet—which he premiered last summer on his Mack Avenue debut, Common Ground—was no one-trick pony. Featuring the prodigal guitar genius Julian Lage as well as two veterans, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Antonio Sanchez, Guided Tour provides a road map to one of the most dynamic bands on the scene today.

Apart from their own playing, many of jazz’s greatest figures—Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis—are also known for the handful of indisputably great bands they led throughout their careers. Like them, Burton has assembled a few such Olympian groups of his own: his first quartet, which pioneered the fusion of jazz and rock in 1967; his quintet with Pat Metheny in the 1970s; and now this band, which achieves a rare synergy.

“It’s the difference between playing with some excellent musicians, and finding a group chemistry that goes beyond that—a coming together of ‘sympatico’ creative minds,” says Burton. “In my five decades of playing in various bands, mostly my own groups, I have only experienced this a handful of times; if even one player is not an equal part of the combination, it doesn’t achieve that magical state. But from the first recording of this band, everything just clicked perfectly.”

If that’s how this band started out, you can imagine how they sound now, with a year’s growth and a world tour on their resume. “I’m happy to report that our second album is every bit as strong a statement of group identity as before,” Burton affirms. “If anything, we have evolved as an ensemble—which is the dream of every band leader.”

As he recounts in the upcoming autobiography, Burton was already a steadily working musician in rural Indiana in his high school years, before heading for Nashville, recording the very first jazz-and-country album (with guitarist Hank Garland), and scoring a major-label record contract—all before entering the Berklee College of Music at the age of 17, in 1960.

Throughout his career, Burton has “paid it forward,” introducing other precocious young artists to the jazz world – Larry Coryell, Pat Metheny, Donny McCaslin, Makoto Ozone – and Lage, who made his first recording with Burton in 2004 at the age of 15, has continued as the next recruit to that echelon. Lage further develops as a front-line collaborator on this new album, able to match the virtuosity of Burton himself.

On Guided Tour, Burton sought out original material from all the group’s members (as he did with Common Ground), illuminating their wide range of cross-cultural musical styles. “They outdid themselves this time,” he says. The program includes “Legacy” – a haunting ballad written by Scott Colley to honor his recently deceased father – and the two Antonio Sanchez pieces that bookend the disc: the splashy Latin-themed opener, “Caminos,” featuring solos from only the percussion instruments (drums and vibes); and “Monk Fish,” a romp on familiar chords infused with the wry humor found in the music of bop-era pianist Thelonious Monk.

Three pieces from Lage demonstrate the unusually mature sense of composition that also marks his solos. In “The Lookout,” he cleverly recasts “Careful,” written by the influential guitarist Jim Hall (and one that Burton has recorded, with Hall himself, in the past). On “Sunday’s Uncle,” we find Lage playing what Burton calls “one of his own devilishly challenging melody themes with apparent ease, in counterpoint to my own part – which is considerably less difficult I’m happy to say” – before easing into a particularly memorably solo. And “Helena” exploits the guitar’s Iberian heritage while updating that tradition with complex rhythms and jazz harmonies.

What’s more, Burton – a famously reticent composer, who has always relied primarily on others’ compositions for his repertoire – contributed two new songs of his own. He describes the first, a jazz waltz entitled “Jane Fonda Called Again,” as “whimsical and Bill Evans-ish (intentionally so).” He might have added that it subtly recalls some of the legendary composers whose music has dovetailed with Burton’s own throughout his career, such as Steve Swallow, Carla Bley and Pat Metheny; Lage’s solo especially stands out. And Burton’s “Remembering Tano” pays tribute to his “tango mentor,” the master composer and bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla (nicknamed “Tano,” for his Italian heritage); their 1986 collaboration The New Tango opened up a fresh avenue of world-music exploration for the vibist.

Two songs from outside the band complete the set list: the stately Michel Legrand ballad “Once Upon A Summertime” and pianist Fred Hersch’s “Jackalope,” written (mostly) in 7/4 time and delightfully unpredictable in its phrasing.

For Burton, the proof of this album’s success came several weeks after the musicians had left the studio. “I can’t judge an album very well right after I record it, having gone over and over the tracks in editing, mastering, etc.,” he says. “So I always put a new project aside for a month or so, then come back to it and listen with fresh ears – as I imagine a listener might hear it for the first time. And when I did that with Guided Tour, I was struck by the richness of the content, the range of the compositions, and how well the group captured each piece.

“And, of course, the superb musicianship, but with players like these, that’s a given.” Add in a tour guide like Burton, and the path is clear, on an album likely to rank among the year’s best. At 70, having already led one of the most remarkable careers in music history, Gary Burton seems to be just warming up, with a landmark year in 2013.

Now in his seventh decade, Gary Burton has recorded nearly seventy albums/CDs as a leader. He has been nominated for 22 Grammy awards. He has won a total of seven Grammy awards and been voted best vibraphonist in many jazz polls, year after year. He is recognized not only as a major bandleader and innovator, but also a highly respected jazz educator, who has touched the lives of thousands of students. Recently Gary Burton penned his autobiography, “Learning To Listen,” which was voted Best Jazz Book of 2013 by the Jazz Journalists Association.

Track Listing:

1. Caminos (Antonio Sanchez) 7:20

2. The Lookout (Julian Lage) 5:55

3. Jane Fonda Called Again (Gary Burton) 6:25

4. Jackalope (Fred Hersch) 6:35

5. Once Upon a Summertime (Eddie Barclay / Michel Legrand / Johnny Mercer) 6:45

6. Sunday’s Uncle (Julian Lage) 6:06

7. Remembering Tano (Gary Burton) 6:55

8. Helena (Julian Lage) 7:19

9. Legacy (Scott Colley) 6:41

10. Monk Fish (Antonio Sanchez) 4:48

Personnel:

Gary Burton: vibraphone

Scott Colley: bass

Julian Lage: guitar

Antonio Sanchez: drums

Recorded at MSR Studios, New York, NY

Produced by Gary Burton

Recorded and mixed by Pete Karam

Mastered by Mark Wilder

Review:

For some, retirement means winding down and enjoying what life has to offer, after a lifetime spent with the daily grind of making a living. With most musicians, however, while making a living has been a not insignificant challenge, making music can hardly be called a daily grind; it’s work, to be sure, but it’s also play. Still, for those who have— either by choice, necessity or both—engaged in a career that’s a mix of education, recording and gigging, retirement canmean clearing the plate of at least one of those responsibilities.
Such is the case with vibraphonist Gary Burton who, after retiring as Executive Vice President of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, has done something he’s not done for over three decades: put together a group that’s released two consecutive recordings without a change in personnel. The last time he did that, with 1980’s Easy as Pie and 1982’s Picture This—two ECM recordings that remain on the list of recordings from the German label still awaiting release on CD—he had a sax-led quartet that, in addition to longtime musical partner Steve Swallow, included two young players he’d met through his association with Berklee.
Based on the captivating, bursting-out-of-the-speakers Guided Tour, which follows 2011’s similarly impressive Common Ground—Burton’s Mack Avenue debut and first recording with the New Gary Burton Quartet—the vibraphonist has brought these three musicians back because, as terrific an opportunity as it undoubtedly is for all of them to work with one of the living legends of the instrument, it’s equally clear that they’re giving something back, lighting a serious fire underneath Burton that he’s not had in a steady band for a long, long time.
It’s time to stop referring to Julian Lage as a wünderkind because— despite an impressive start as the subject of the 1997 Academy Award- nominated documentary, Jules at Eight, live performance at age nine with Carlos Santana and, just a year after playing on mandolinist David Grisman’s Dawg Duos (Acoustic Disc, 1999), establishing his first connection with Burton—the 25 year-old guitarist has already amassed a rich résumé that, in addition to two recordings under his own name (including his eclectic 2009 EmArcy debut, Sounding Point), is full evidence of a guitarist who has well and fully arrived. If recording and gigging with everyone from relative contemporaries like Taylor Eigsti and Eric Harland to more seasoned veterans like Nnenna Freelon and Terri Lyne Carrington isn’t enough, then recent collaborations with fellow six-stringers Nels Cline and Jim Hall—a particularly significant touchstone and mentor for the young guitarist—should be.
Burton first encountered drummer Antonio Sanchez on the reunion tour with Swallow and Pat Metheny that resulted in Quartet Live (Concord, 2009), and it’s no surprise that he’s recruited the Mexican expat for this new group as well; Sanchez has been Metheny’s drummer of choice for over a decade, and for good reason: there’s truly little (if anything) that this firebrand forty-something drummer can’t do. Ditto the ubiquitous Scott Colley, a bassist whose own resume—in addition to infrequent but superb recordings under his own name, like 2007’s Architect of the Silent Moment (Cam Jazz, 2007)—has included everyone from John Scofield and Kenny Werner to Jim Hall and, not coincidentally, Sanchez, whose own New Life (Cam Jazz, 2013), is a major compositional leap forward for the drummer.

Like Common Ground, Burton’s new quartet also draws mostly on its own compositional acumen, with only two of its ten tracks culled from external sources. One, an old chestnut, Michel Legrand’s collaboration with Johnny Mercer, “Once Upon a Summertime,” opens as a dark, rubato tone poem brimming with implication that is ultimately (and briefly) delivered upon when the quartet moves into straight time for brief but beautifully constructed solos from both Lage and Burton, before returning to the out-of-time intro where, once again, Lage layers the familiar melody over an ethereal bed of vibes, Colley’s soft arco, Sanchez’s swelling cymbal work and the guitarist’s own overdubbed, finger-picked voicings. The other, Fred Hersch’s “Jackalope,” first heard on the pianist’s Alive at the Vanguard (Palmetto, 2012), is so radically reinvented—rhythmically, alternating between 7/4 and 3/4 passages, and extraordinarily reharmonized—as to make it almost completely unrecognizable from the original, but in the best way possible. It’s one of the album’s most incendiary tracks, as Sanchez delivers an almost nuclear punch over the song’s changes (rather than the more typical and anticipated) ostinato, giving the drummer an opportunity to further flex his compositional muscles, but this time in the context of soloing.
The original music is nicely divided amongst the group, with Lage contributing three tracks to Sanchez and Burton’s two apiece. Colley contributes just one, but makes it really count. Opening with a lyrical a cappella bass solo, Colley’s balladic “Legacy” patiently unfolds, slowly leading to solos from Burton, Colley and, finally, Lage, who is so completely atypical for a guitarist his age in that he’s already reached the point where he’s got nothing left to prove, leaving him free to surrender to the demands of the music, rather than the other way around.
Sanchez’s opening “Caminos” is a propulsive, modal, 6/8 burner; after a series of knotty lines and unexpected starts and stops, it ultimately reveals itself to be a minor-keyed blues that gives both Burton and Sanchez—this time, indeed, over an ostinato—a chance to cut loose. The drummer’s swinging “Monk Fish,” on the other hand, closes out the set with a discordant theme that pays homage to its source, pianist Thelonious Monk, while at the same time playing with tempo in ways the jazz icon would never have imagined.
Two of Lage’s three compositions—”The Lookout” (another altered blues) and, especially, “Sunday’s Uncle”—are amongst the album’s fieriest, but what gives them a certain levity of sound, beyond the delicacy of Burton’s vibes, is Lage’s tone throughout the set. Avoiding the rock-edged overdrive, heavy reverb, looping and other effects processing employed by so many guitarists, Lage’s tone, instead, rests somewhere between acoustic and electric—not unlike Jim Hall but, with greater attention to attack, leaning harder on the acoustic side of the equation. Lage occasionally uses a harmonizer to double his lines an octave above or below, but even that is used so sparingly and mixed so low as to be felt more than heard. “Helena,” Lage’s third contribution to Guided Tour, is another up-tempo tune with Lage’s most impressive solo of the set—a combination of angular phrasing and lithe linearity, as he builds towards a climax of chordal sophistication that speaks more than outright virtuosity ever could.
The entire quartet is, of course, predicated on a collective technical mastery that nevertheless avoids any kind of excess on display. Instead, the music comes first, as on Burton’s “Jane Fonda Called Home,” an ambling 6/8 piece that challenges both the vibraphonist and Lage to find new ways to weave melodies through an endless series of changes. And find they do; Burton has always held a reputation as a player rarely less than perfect, even as he takes risks at every turn, but with this group, he’s surrounded himself with three players capable of the same degrees of predictable unpredictability, precision in execution, and intense interpretive and interactive skills.
With everyone so busy (except, perhaps, the retired Burton), it’s a task in itself to keep a group like this together, but with the one-two punch of Common Ground and, now, the even stronger Guided Tour, the hope is that Burton can now do something he’s not done before: keep a lineup stable for a third round. With the most impressive group he’s had since the ’70s, when his two-guitar quintet with Mick Goodrick and a very young Pat Metheny tread new territory with records like Ring (ECM, 1974), the only thing to ask of Burton at this point in his career is: more, please.

John Kelman (All About Jazz)