Guitarist Julian Lage came through Leeds, United Kingdom, near where I live, on November 23, 2024. This was Lage’s long-awaited solo acoustic tour, the one he never got around to 15 years ago when his stone masterpiece World’s Fair came out (co-produced by fellow six-stringer Matt Munisteri). I couldn’t resist grilling Julian a little bit backstage about John Zorn’s acoustic guitar music, which he’s been quietly documenting for the Tzadik label in duos with Gyan Riley (Terry Riley’s son, pronounced ghee-Yahn), as well as trios with Riley and the great Bill Frisell.
The duos (pictured above) are Her Melodious Lay, Midsummer Moons, Quatrain and The Book Beri’ah Vol. 4: Chesed. The trios are Nothing Is as Real as Nothing, A Garden of Forking Paths, Lamentations, Nove Cantici Per Francesco D’Assisi, Parables, Teresa d’Avila and Virtue. These span the years 2017-2024.
Who knew? Not me. I had just discovered these records recently at the time of the Leeds solo show. In a slack-jawed tone I told Julian, “I didn’t even know about them!” He gave me a glance and simply said, “Bro.” In other words, “Yes, we’re aware, thank you for your comment.” As your new JazzTimes editor I am very in touch with that sentiment.
Here at the magazine we are problem-solvers (we’d better be), and the fact that this extraordinary family of albums, essential to modern guitar literature, is not more widely known is a problem, to me at least. So I wanted to bring these gems directly to your attention.
In the spirit of John Zorn, who probably does not care what I write, I’ll refrain from exhaustively breaking down these releases. There’s so much that it’s not really breakdownable. The music can be surpassingly gentle and simple, or strident, or more improvisatory, or more tightly composed — that’s the pleasure, you can dip into these anywhere and you never know. On Chesed, the first one I discovered, there are recurring Tristan & Isolde references dropped into “Zeir Anpin,” seemingly at random. A few tracks later on “Shevira,” it is “Blue Monk” that becomes the material, deployed in an almost Warholian manner.
The best part, on both the duos and trios, is the playing — Lage flatly told me, after correcting my pronunciation, that Gyan Riley is the best guitarist out there, full stop. That is high praise from the best guitarist out there (in my humble opinion). The series also reveals how in touch Zorn remains with every emerging generation of players, and how his stylistic branching-out simply never ends.
How did Lage manage, amid his own blossoming solo career and busy collaborative life, to record so much of this stuff? It was all incredibly efficient, he said. You come in, everything is all set up and you just knock it out. The end result: knockout after knockout. JT