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Rating: Scofield still plays with marbles, but he does it well!
John Scofield, 59 years “played” with great enthusiasm, is a mature gentleman, but his, let's say, “childish” artistic curiosity aimed at the most diverse sounds and musical genres is now his hallmark. Due to this peculiarity, over the last 10 years, he has made many critics' heads spin, attributing to him a substantial decline in inspiration, while others adore him, considering him a daring experimenter.
After the last “Piety Street,” his excellent, in my opinion, reinterpretation of the gospel universe, the guitarist this time (2010) releases an album of contemporary jazz, but he does so in the company of the marvelous Metropole Orkest, (the same one that accompanied Mike Patton for the recent “Mondo Cane” project, for clarity), based in the Netherlands, which is the most versatile orchestra in the world, boasting innumerable collaborations, from jazz to pop, through ethnic music, composed of 54 “marbles” (!) and directed for some time by Vince Mendoza, a friend of our John since the '90s.
The spiteful might say:... of course, with such a setup it's too easy... very true, but this little operetta could also have turned out to be a sterile exercise of style and much skill, instead the result is so evocative and balanced, between emptiness and fullness (big band crescendos, dark movie themes, and liquid jazz, between romanticisms and virtuosity never for its own sake) that here we really don't know among the 54, who to compliment first, if it weren't for the fact that 7 tracks out of 9 were written by Sco and the remaining two, “Jung Parade” and the ballad “Say We Did” by Mendoza.
The arrangements, almost all by the conductor, are elegant, effective, and modern; the soloists' interventions, like Leo Janssen on tenor sax, Bart Van Lier on trombone, Hans Vroomans on piano and Hammond organ (sublime on “Peculiar”) are a delight, the unmistakable blues-funk-oriented guitar of our John is incisive and incredibly inspired, delivering to us, on an improvisational level, a work born of renewed creative vigor.
Fantastic artwork, score 4.5. ...if you like it, otherwise everyone keeps their own marbles!!!
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