Eric Jensen

At The Blue Whale in down­town Los Ange­les last Fri­day night I was reminded of the spirit of open­ness and musi­cal inven­tion I expe­ri­enced as a music stu­dent in Boston. I was quite for­tu­nate to stum­ble into  a very inspiring, wide open, musi­cal com­mu­nity. Gary Burton’s groups included ground­break­ing gui­tarists Mick Goodrick and Pat Metheny and fea­tured new com­posers like Carla Bley, Steve Swal­low, and Michael Gibbs. The music was cross­ing bound­aries, explor­ing approaches beyond the lan­guage of bebop and post-bebop tra­di­tions. Man­fred Eicher’s ECM records was a ris­ing force, bring­ing Euro­pean clas­si­cal har­mony and a lush sonic palette to the mix, and ‘world music’ influ­ences were mak­ing deep inroads into the Amer­i­can impro­vi­sa­tional tra­di­tion. Some of the most influ­en­tial gui­tarists in the last thirty years passed through Boston dur­ing this time; John Aber­crom­bie, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Mike Stern, and many oth­ers less well known. It was an excit­ing time when any­thing seemed pos­si­ble. Tom Rizzo (May­nard Fer­gu­son, Doc Sev­erin­sen) gui­tar, Scott Bread­man (Jose Feli­ciano, Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham, The Rip­ping­tons) per­cus­sion, and Darek Oles (Brad Mehldau, Billy Hig­gins, Pat Metheny) upright bass, brought their unique, col­lec­tive sound to this inti­mate venue. After warm­ing up with their take on a cou­ple of clas­sic tunes (includ­ing a beau­ti­ful ver­sion of Bill Evans’ “Time Remem­bered”), they dug into their own mate­r­ial, pri­mar­ily com­posed by Rizzo. Rizzo is a sea­soned writer and his strong com­po­si­tions focused the band’s iden­tity and sound. His gui­tar play­ing has a play­ful, uplift­ing feel. He is a mod­ern, straight-ahead gui­tarist with fluid sin­gle note and chordal chops.…