Our man in NYC 2

CJ Intern's NYC Adventure Part 2: Guitar Duel, or the Importance of Being Earnest When Meeting Your Heroes

by Jeremy Tsuei

One week down! And to quote another, albeit lesser-known, Lin-Manuel Mirada number in this report's preamble (hopefully this doesn't become a habit), "it's all happening"...

Saturday: Christian McBride Big Band with special guests

This one was a treat, although I think I almost wore myself out with a day trip to Newark and a big dinner... Christian McBride has long been one of my favourite bassists ever - certainly, he's the one guy who can do it all. This concert featured vocalists Philip Bailey (Earth, Wind & Fire), Lisa Fischer (The Rolling Stones), and Dianne Reeves (an NEA Jazz Master), for a night of soul, R&B, and vivid big bad arrangements. All three previous Christian McBride Big Bad albums have won Grammys for Jazz Instrumental Albums, and if this sneak peek into next year's album was anything to go by, Christian has nothing to worry about in keeping that streak up. Special mention goes to the band's second tune, "The Shade of The Cedar Tree" - one of my favourites, and one that I still haven't quite nailed live in my Canberra gigs, a twisty but effortlessly catchy tune that segues smoothly between broken, swing, and Latin feels, which I now know was dedicated to the great Cedar Walton.

Sunday: Basik jam featuring Theresa Sanchez quartet

A neat little jam in Brooklyn. Bassist Theresa Sanchez had this massive sound coming in - imagine my surprise when I stepped up and saw she was coming out of a piddly Rumble 15 1x8 combo! Those things are like $89 AUD, and I'd recently rehearsed with one, grumbling at the lack of power for the whole time. Yet in this cafe environment, with no restrictions on audience volume and some seriously powerful bandmates, Theresa's sound was - well, I've already described it as 'massive', but there's no other word that really covers it. I asked Theresa how she went about getting such a big sound, and her response was modest. Maybe the secret ingredient has been hidden in beginner value packs all along...

Tuesday: Mike Stern and Larry Banks Sextet

Mike Stern is such a darl y'all.

We'll rewind a bit. Back when guitar was my primary instrument, Mike Stern was the guy - I bought a Seymour Duncan '59 neck pickup so I could have the same pickup that he uses, and I even tried getting a chorus/distortion combo to match his sound. Of course, I should've spent more time learning his licks, but I did pick up a habit of warming up on Bach violin Partitas from him...

I had the chance to meet Mike before and after his set at the DROM. He was seriously nice, and encouraged me not to look at myself as a 'former guitarist, now bassist' but a continual learner on both - "What do you mean, you used to play guitar?", he asked me. He also seemed genuinely interested in my cerebral palsy when I told him about how listening to his album Trip was super formative for me while I was first getting into jazz, especially as I was reading stories about his injury and reflecting on my own physical challenges.

And of course during his set he played one of the best guitar solos I've ever heard - period. His wife Leni was also excellent - a very different player, but you got the sense that she only played what she heard. And bassist Edmond Gilmore blew the roof off with a slap solo that just kept going and going and going, in the best way possible.

Chasing this up was the Larry Banks Sextet in Smalls, leading into the 1am jam. I got to play in this one too, but let me tell you, the house band was so good that it almost felt wrong to follow them up. Still - we had fun and there was a really good turnout from musicians and punters alike, even as we started to get well into Wednesday...

Thursday: John Scofield and Nicholas Payton

Another massive gig featuring another guitar favourite. Nicholas Payton was a real standout for this one, especially for his compositions, including "Backwards Step" and "Othello on the Low". Such a lyrical and inventive player, with a killer tone and timefeel. Heaps of repeated figures leading into classic bebop flurries.

Scofield is such a different player to Stern, but with both you can hear who they are from the first note. Both guitarists weren't afraid of bringing in tunes with solo guitar passages - and while both are known for their distorted or 'electric' tones, you can also hear the wood and resonance of their instruments as they play. It's that element that you'd struggle to describe outside of using adjectives such as 'authentic' and 'human'...

Massive gigs to wrap up this first week! A couple more weeks and a few more gigs and jam sessions to come - can you tell I'm having a blast? But for now - Jeremy the CJ Intern signing out.