Lionel Loueke

That was probably the best concert I've watched this Mosaic season. I don't really want to compare him to Branford, who's almost an institution in the intellectual landscape of today's jazz scene, but I enjoyed the concert thoroughly. The spirit displayed was something rarely seen nowadays - a sort of urgency - i think necessity is the word, of the music. The best music sounds inevitable rather than contrived - it sounds like it's been around forever and all the musician had to do was discover it.

It brought to mind something Ornette Coleman said in an interview (and this is the smartest man ever to be completely unable to explain himself, mind) - that a B flat on a saxophone or a trumpet is not the same as a B flat on a piano or a guitar. What he meant is that pitch is only one aspect of the note, and that sound must be considered in its entirety - timbre, rhythm and placement being equally important and (in his own music) equivalent. Jazz is notorious for putting emphasis on the pitch of the notes. The more modern jazz gets, the more interchangeable its instruments get. I've heard the Coltrane solo from 'Giant Steps' played on steel pans, of all things. So last night it was a new thing and indeed a relief to hear Lionel Loueke not just play jazz on the guitar but play the timbre of the guitar as well as the pitch of the strings. Everything fit into his sonic conception, which had the joy of the African pop musics (a language I must learn) as well as the sophistication of jazz.

A night to remember.

adam