George Garzone came onto the jazz scene in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, initially as a sideman – with Woody Herman, George Russell, Gil Evans and others – then as a leading post-Coltrane soloist. This emergence can be seen in a great YouTube video of Garzone doing Impressions with Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman and Joshua Redman (http://bit.ly/1525Uq and http://bit.ly/LmAkUL). It’s exciting just to see these heavy tenor players up on stage together, not to mention listening closely to what they’re actually playing. And what Garzone and the others play tells us a lot about jazz since the late ‘60s.
Garzone, Brecker and Liebman represent the first generation of post-Coltrane improvisers who carried over Trane’s interest in harmonic colour (in the form of chromaticism) into the aesthetics of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Brecker’s chromatic approach, flavoured by his interest in R&B, has a direct (it’s-smart-but-you-don’t-have-to-analyze-it) emotional hit. Liebman’s emotional punch can be more abstruse because there’s the flavour of late ‘60s Miles making it more abstract (it moves you in a “what-just-happened?” kind of way). Garzone’s chromatic approach is equally hard hitting but in a slightly different way again. He explains it as a kind of play with triads – not polytonality so much, just his own take on pan-diatonic chromaticism. (Then there’s Redman, whose approach represents a break from these three, but that’s a topic for another blog.)
When Garzone gigged with me last week and I called Impressions, I had this YouTube video very much in mind. It was great to hear him up close working his chromaticism hard on this tune once again. Here’s an excerpt. The chord of the A Sections is D minor, but you don’t get any of that in his solo at this point. The thinking and playing is out.
It was also great to hear him playing on my acoustic fusion tunes. Stylistically one step removed from modal standards (the repertoire – tunes like Impressions – that sent Trane off to the outer reaches of the tonal universe), my tunes have a bit more harmonic crunch built into them. Garzone’s soloing on them affirmed that, when it comes to colour, Trane’s direction is still the only game in town.
Check out Garzone here www.GeorgeGarzone.com