Julian Lage
The Town Hall
Manhattan, NYC
3/23/24
To the uninitiated, jazz music can seem a secret language — rendering one’s witnessing of a performance akin more to eavesdropping than being spoken to. For aficionados, begrudging and reluctant as they may be to admit that this music touted at “democratic, of/by/for the people,” is in fact difficult and occasionally off-putting, the inscrutability of this language is, if we’re to be honest, one of the great joys of the music altogether!
However, there’s a secret within the secret: Deep structures abound here. Watch a jazz combo, of whatever size duo and upward, watch the faces they make, the extra-musical gestures, the little turns and nods, and witness there a language of some complexity composed entirely of smirks, wiggling eyebrows, yawps, and subtle footwork.
Julian Lage is one of the masters of this bottomless, full-bodied language of joyous performance.
His musicianship is second to none — first picked up guitar at the age of 5, and thus has that sort of “third-limb” relationship with the instrument. It’s almost egregious how good he is making the guitar do anything, with wide-ears and wider smile.
That said, the boy will just play.
There’s a feeling during the show, especially coming from the younger saxophonist, that Lage takes up and camps out in every square inch of musical space possible, playing counterpoint to himself, jumping from sparkly runs and arpeggios to sudden chug and thrash. Having myself been a jazz musician at one point, in the ever-observational roll of bass player, I know this language of faces better than I do the exigencies of the rigorous musical grammar they serve. From the younger saxophonist, there’s no small amount of frustration during last night’s set — Julian never once really let up.
I’d like to pause for a moment here before any reader takes this as criticism, especially of Lage himself. I don’t know how long Julian’s played with this horn player, but I do know that anyone who knows Lage’s music ought to know what they’re in for. I know that the bass player that night was Lage’s constant standby, and has been for some time.
I also know the school Lage is coming out of. Gone and done is the hierarchy of rhythm section support and soloist supremacy. In this school — exemplified by the music of Bill Frissell (another guitar virtuoso, but aged fine out of his flash) and Fred Hersch (of whom, if I’m not mistaken, Lage is a direct protégé) — room is made for all, the invitation is open, none need wait their turn. It’s not about finding time to shine, but making the whole thing shimmer.
The supreme object here is the tune itself, the wide vista of musical opportunity contained within the small recurrent structure of a melody, a few chords, and their collective suggested vibe.
A few beautiful things were confirmed through the set, in order now from nerdiest observation to least nerdy observation:
1) Triadic harmony is plenty to work with, and without tortured extensions the simplest chord structures and forms give rise to the greatest complexity.
2) Tunefulness and virtuosity can co-exist in musical space and sacrifice nothing to each other.
3) Every guitar player, fundamentally, really just wants to play the blues.
And here is the last thing I’ll say about the purity of Lage’s talent: He plays the instrument, true to a desire to investigate what the thing is capable of in a rawest state, no effects, it’s all touch, and what it ultimately comes down to is … the blues. Every soaring, reaching, stratospheric line; each complex chord and rhythmic modulation; every atonal quirk and ironic aside; each clever lick and sing-song melody; all of it ambitions to the truth of the blues, that simplest, purest, most true, and final expression of his instrument’s history. Joy in sorrow, dirge in dance, gospel in artifice, the tearing it down to one sound wherein everyone knows the language, wherein nothing is kept secret.
