The Joyous Feel of Guitarist Dave Stryker on "Strykin' Ahead"

Dave Stryker Strykin' Ahead

Sometimes when you just do what you do so well you can be taken for granted. Guitarist Dave Stryker has been around now plying his trade like a journeyman for nearly forty-years. During his maturation, the Omaha born guitarist did a two-year apprenticeship with the organist Brother Jack McDuff, and then worked a ten-year stint with the saxophone giant Stanley Turrentine. With twenty-eight recordings as a leader under his belt, you’d think he would be better known. His last three recordings Eight Track, Messin’ with Mr. T and Eight Track II,  and his work with the under-the-radar saxophonist Steve Slagle, have all received critical acclaim. People are starting to notice just how good Stryker is. The guitar icon Pat Metheny said about Stryker “…he just gets better and better with one of the most joyous feels around.” 

This summer, I had the opportunity to see Stryker as he played with the bassist Nilson Matta in Bar Harbor, ME on a program titled Samba Meets Jazz.  He struck me as a subtle, accomplished player, not prone to showing off technical prowess, who was well versed in all styles and whose fluid playing did indeed exude a sense of joyous exuberance

Dave Stryker photo Ralph A. Miriello 2017

On his latest Strykin’Ahead the guitarist redeploys the musicians that he used so successfully on his Eight Track II album. The group includes Jared Gold on organ, McClenty Hunter on drums and Steve Nelson on vibraphone. Boy can these guys make magic together.

From the cascading opener Stryker’s “Shadowboxing” to the beautifully realized version of Wayne Shorter’s classic “Footprints,” the arrangements and execution are nuanced and superb. Stryker knows the strengths of his fellow bandmates and he employs them with a deft precision. Nelson’s use of space and Gold’s light touch on the B3 are both exemplary.  Stryker’s playing, almost non-chalant, is never flashy, always so confident and subdued that it can seem deceptively simple. But rest assured it is full of imagination. Hunter is that rare trapmaster who has  dynamic propulsion, big ears and exquisite taste.

Billy Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower” is given a brushed Bossa beat by Hunter, with Gold’s bass lines pulsing the music forward. Nelson and Stryker are musical soul-mates; both artisans in their ability to say so much with less.

Stryker shines on another of his originals “Strykin’ Ahead,” the fleet intro- Nelson, Gold and Stryker all playing the rapid opening line with cool precision.  With the gurgling pace provided by the driving Hunter, Stryker’s notes just fall from the guitarist’s fretboard like raindrops from a cloud. There is a stream of consciousness feel to the way he attacks his notes, a consistency that produces a smooth organic flow. When this group gets into a groove their cohesiveness  is a pure delight.

With guitarists, there is always room for a blues and on “Blues Down Deep” we get a little window into where it all began for Stryker. No flash here, just an economy of notes played with a sustained sense of emotional depth, following in the footsteps of some of his idols. Gold has a marvelous control of his B3,  producing sounds that are juicy with pathos and Nelson’s vibes resonate with bluesy authenticity.

The remainder of the set includes Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring,” the Broadway hit “Who Can I Turn To” -where Stryker uses some Montgomery-like octave work-, and Parker’s tangled “Donna Lee,” which Stryker conforms to his slipstream style of playing.

 Strykin’ Ahead is an immensely satisfying album that should firmly establish Dave Stryker into the elite ranks of jazz guitarists working today.

Brian Charette's "Kurrent" : Futuristic Circuit Bent Organ Trio

Brian Charette's Kurrent

Having grown up in the golden era of the soulful, hard-bop jazz organ trio, I have particularly fond memories of hearing this style of music that was so prevelant in the sixties and early seventies, when almost every lounge on the east coast had a B3 on its stage. Jimmy Smith, Don Patterson, Charles Earland and Jack McDuff were but a few of the names that created some memorable sounds on their B3's with those rotating Leslie speakers. But the basic sound of the organ trio has barely changed since Larry Young started to move in a new more progressive Coltrane-inspired direction in the seventies, before his untimely dealth. Now along comes Brian Charette.

Keyboard artist Brain Charette originally hails from Meriden, CT, where he was influenced to play the piano at an early age by his mother, herself an excellent pianist. He studied music at the University of CT where he received his BA and toured Europe as a working musician. He was drawn to the culture and jazz scene in Prague and lived in the Czech Republic for a time. As early as age seventeen, Charrette was working with jazz legends like Houston Person and Lou Donaldson. He took up the organ more seriously in the 1990s when he was finding more work playing organ than playing piano. For the past several years he has made the East Village of New York City his home and he can be often seen in New York accompanying other artists whenever an organist is required.  His keyboard skills have been recognized and utilized by such top tier pop artist as Chaka Khan, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.

On his latest self-released album Kǘrrent, Charette is joined by guitarist Ben Monder and drummer Jordan Young. Reportedly, the trio has been working on this original music for the last two years and it shows by the groups tight and intuitive interaction. Charette has labeled the group a “futuristic circuit bent organ trio,” with the intention of preserving the core tradition of the organ-guitar-drums jazz-trio format and extending it into modernity with the addition of electronics and by conceiving more contemporary compositions.

The group starts off with “Doll Fin,” a catchy rythmically driven song, with Charette providing a driving bass line,(presumably with his B3 foot pedals or on a loop), then inserting a mechanistic, almost robotic sounding ostinato keyboard line. You can almost imagine the cool efficiency of an assembly-line of robotic arms working in musical unison. Monder’s guitar lines enter and eventually morph into a ripping, more distorted solo as Young provides skillfully placed crashes and splashes. Charette returns with a more traditional sounding B3 solo before reprising his robotic synth work and Monder’s repeating guitar lines. The song ends in a flurry by Young as Charette and Monder play a unison, electronic drone that decays at the finale. Welcome to the future of organ trios.

Kurrent: Jordan Young, Ben Monder & Brian Charette

Other songs that employ a more traditional organ trio sound include the bouncy “Time Changes” and the memorable ballad “Honeymoon Phase,” although Charette manages to include a synthetic harpsichord and some spacey electronic accents at the end of “Time Changes.” 

Charette and company always keep the music moving and the keyboardist is quite adept at using his Hammond pull bars to create just the right sound. Monder shows a beautiful harmonic sense in his deft accompaniments and Young is equally atuned to the group effort.

“Mano Y Mano” features some vocoder tempered vocals and some raw guitar work by Monder. The otherwise atmospheric “Shooby’s Riff” contains a strange repeated, electronically altered vocal riff that is indecipherable to my ears and that breaks the mood and rhythm of the song. There is a sci-fi element to this one that conjures up images of space travelers encountering looped transmissions from alien life.

There are three, short “Intermezzos;” small musical vignettes that seem like free improvisations that use electronically altered, textural interplay between keyboard, guitar, voice and drums.

The synth and organ driven “Conquistador” is like a musical journey to places that seem at once familiar and at the same time strangely foreign. Juxtaposing sounds that combine the weird and fanciful with the exotic, Charette and company are able to transport you into a Lucas-like world reminiscent of the bizarre alien bar scene from the original Star Wars.  Back to the Future indeed.

The futuristically funky “5^th Base” is a driving vamp that allows Monder to shred a little with a nasty, distorted sound that pierces through your flesh. Charette has obviously been influenced Larry Young’s forward thinking style, but he has also been influenced by some of the synth masters of years gone by, as I hear elements of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman in his playing on this wild electronic jaunt.

There is a Minuet quality to the opening of “The Shape of Green,” Charette and Monder trading lines in a formal dance of notes behind the cadenced traps of Young. Eventually the song breaks into a repeating vamp, then opens up to a Monder guitar solo that pierces through clouds of electronic sounds that rainmaker Charette conjures up like a weather shaman.

The finale is a song titled “Catfish Sandwich,” and has a Monkish sounding line to it. This leads to an adrenaline driven electronic disco beat. Monder lets loose as Charette and Young provide the rhythmic drive. Charette changes over to the traditional B3 sound and the trio starts to percolate as he plays some of the most inspired straight organ soloing on the album. The intensity builds to a frenzy at the coda with Young providing a bombardment of traps, toms and cymbals to the end.

By mastering the myriad of possibilities that can be produced on a Hammond B3, incorporating synthesized and electronic effects tastefully and utilizing inventive arrangements, Charette, Monder and Young have managed to create a hybrid jazz-organ-trio sound that rockets into the future. Their music just might be the natural heir apparent to the progressive legacy of organist Larry Young. 

The Harmonic Sorcery of Jerry Bergonzi's "Spotlight on Standards":

Jerry Bergonzi Spotlight on Standards SCD 2158

The Boston based tenor magician Jerry Bergonzi returns to the organ/tenor/drums format to spin his harmonic sorcery on his latest offering titled Spotlight on Standards. The saxophonist/educator known as the Gonz, while lauded by the insular community of his peers, is not a household name among the general public. He is known for his muscular, hard edged sound, his exquisite fiery technique and his boundless creativity.

Jerry Bergonzi grew up in Boston and started on clarinet at age eight. He credits a musical uncle who used to live upstairs from him with turning him onto jazz early. In youth bands  he learned from  two of the best instructors, John Laporta and Joe Viola and eventually studied  music education at University of Mass in Lowell, MA.  Bergonzi spent several years in New York developing his sound, jamming and shedding with other notable musicians of his era before getting a call from pianist Dave Brubeck. With Brubeck, Bergonzi traveled and played some of the largest and most prestigious festivals and venues in the world. It was a liberating experience and a steady paycheck. The first recording on his discography is from 1973 on Brubeck’s Two Generations of Brubeck. The now sixty-eight-year-old Bergonzi was the saxophonist with Brubeck’s Quartet from 1973-1975 and then again from 1979 to 1982. By the early eighties Bergonzi was back in Boston and began his teaching career, first with private instruction, then publishing books on improvisation and eventually becoming a full time professor at The New England Conservatory of Music where he teaches to this day. Over the years Bergonzi has written upward of one hundred songs and played as a leader or sideman on over thirty records.

On his latest, Spotlight on Standards, Bergonzi is joined by organist Renato Chicco and drummer Andrea Michelutti. This organ trio format is one the saxophonist last used with organist Dan Wall and drummer Adam Nussbaum back in 1999.

From the opening lines of the Cy Coleman classic “Witchcraft” you can hear Bergonzi’s muscular tenor is not about to play this or anything else straight up. It is his resolute willingness to re-harmonize the theme in his own unique way that makes the music so much more than a re-hash of an old standard. This is a re-imagining of the song where the melody is a mere armature upon which to reconstruct something fresh and new. Coupled with his signature saxophone sound the song takes on a new life.

The next four tunes are all Bergonzi originals. His distinctive technique uses creative articulation, a fluidity of thoughts and innovative dynamics to achieve that most precious of commodities- originality. Listen to the elastic logic of his saxophone on his composition “Bi-Polar.”  The notes gush like a wellspring of exploratory thought from a savant’s mind.  On “Blue Cube” he creates a memorable repeating motif. Chicco and Michelutti sustain the easy shuffle over which Bergonzi offers a series of deliberate, sometimes searing lines. He often takes no easily readable path, but nonetheless he lead you to his intended destination. Chicco’s B3 soloing is subtly but equally probing.

“First Lady” is an interesting composition with an uplifting, almost Bossa feel. Bergonzi’s use of the lower register of his instrument never fails to swing. He drifts over the changes with an airy lightness and solid conviction. Michelutti is a master of interjecting timely accents while maintaining a rock-steady rhythm.

Bergonzi’s mournful “Gabriella” is perhaps his most sensitive ballad on this album. The plaintive tenor sound is quite compelling throughout, offering a window into the deepest recesses of the artist’s soul.  It is a wistful cry that cannot be ignored. Chicco’s deft church-like organ brings a pious, religious quality to the whole proceeding. Bergonzi’s command of his instrument, using it as an extension of the human voice,  is extraordinary.

The program returns to the American Songbook with “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Out of Nowhere.” At all times the group displays a solid swing and a masterful ability to create surprising iterations of the melody.  On Johnny Mercer’s “Come Rain or Come Shine” we find Bergonzi’s at his best. His punchy sound articulates with authority as the rhythm section grooves along. He seems to draw from an inexhaustible well of ideas that never seem to repeat and never fail to surprise.

Ned Washington and Victor Young’s venerable standard “Stella by Starlight” is treated with authority and conviction when Bergonzi and company re-imagine this classic. The solid swing, the aggressive declaration of Bergonzi’s saxophone with his  rapid fire lines and Chicco’s unusual B3 musings that seem to directly descend from Larry Young, make this one special. It’s almost an entirely new song. Bergonzi’s solo is overflowing, bursting with ideas, Chicco’s playing is stellar and Michelutti is so subtly correct as to be transcendent.

Here is a link to hear "Witchraft" from Spotlight on Standards

https://soundcloud.com/highnote-savant-records/01-witchcraft-jerry-bergonzi