7/4

In the late '80's I really wanted a Steinberger, but I couldn't afford a new guitar at the time. I never did get one.

March 21, 2008 Music Review | Marian McPartland Marking a Milestone With a Light Touch By NATE CHINEN, NY Times After settling into her station at the piano on Wednesday night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Marian McPartland took a stab at solidarity. “Is anybody else here 90?” she asked, polling the crowded room. There were no affirmative responses, so after a brief moment she moved on. In this place, at this moment, she was unique in more ways than one. Ms. McPartland was presiding over her own 90th-birthday party with characteristic lightness and aplomb. While her gold lamé gown underscored a sense of occasion, she made sure to dispense with formality. “I guess I should say thank you to the Arthritis Foundation,” she said, eliciting much laughter. She seemed pleased by the piano-shaped cake that was eventually presented to her, but her focus was chiefly on the music. This should surprise no one who has heard “Piano Jazz,” the entertaining and edifying show Ms. McPartland has had on public radio for nearly 29 years. “Piano Jazz” features thoughtful conversation and tandem playing by Ms. McPartland and her guests. The first set at Dizzy’s conveyed a similar feeling, though there wasn’t room enough for two pianos on the stage. So the only pianist to sit in was Jason Moran, who offered a warm and knowing solo rendition of “Time and Time Again,” one of Ms. McPartland’s compositions. The other musical guests fell in with Ms. McPartland and her longstanding trio, featuring Gary Mazzaroppi on bass and Glenn Davis on drums. Jeremy Pelt, playing fluegelhorn, brought an easy grace to the songbook standard “Moonlight in Vermont.” Regina Carter imbued her violin with a hauntingly vocal quality on an exquisite reading of “Come Sunday,” the Duke Ellington hymn. Karrin Allyson sang a pair of enduring ballads by Ms. McPartland: “Twilight World” (lyrics by Johnny Mercer) and “There’ll Be Other Times” (lyrics by Margaret Jones). And Norah Jones, who recalled seeing Ms. McPartland when Ms. Jones was 13 and hoarding bootleg cassettes of “Piano Jazz” — “You killed my social life, Marian,” she said — sang three standards in a row. They got progressively better: “Blame It on My Youth” was likable, but “Yesterdays,” sung at Ms. McPartland’s request, felt rewardingly like a stretch. For a moment Ms. Jones sounded like a true-blue jazz singer, even as she sounded like herself. Ms. McPartland still has her pellucid touch and her careful yet comfortable style, as she demonstrated on several trio numbers, including “Turnaround,” a blues by Ornette Coleman. That tune can be heard on “Twilight World” (Concord), Ms. McPartland’s sparkling new studio album. So can “Alfie,” the Burt Bacharach movie theme, which Ms. McPartland plays as a solo meditation. She included it in her set at Dizzy’s, and it was a quiet gem: sophisticated but simple, without an ounce of pretense or self-absorption. In other words, entirely appropriate.

March 20, 2008 Small Group, Big Sound By NATE CHINEN, NY Times Pat Metheny has cultivated an extraordinarily broad musical terrain over the last 30 years, exerting substantial influence in the process: as a guitarist, as a composer and conceptualist, as a champion crossbreeder. His most steadfast outlet is the Pat Metheny Group, an electro-acoustic ensemble that sheds a generous warmth and illumination; his most explicitly jazz-based outlet is the guitar-bass-drums trio, which projects more of a tight, focused beam. That’s the standard line, anyway, bolstered by recorded evidence and the consensus of a dedicated fan base. But Mr. Metheny’s sold-out trio concert on Tuesday night at Town Hall was hardly a sparse proposition. Its reach was maximal, from the tiniest gesture to the most emphatic. And its impact was serious: Mr. Metheny’s trio was playing jazz, the genuine article, with the same nuclear intensity he brings to his barnstorming Pat Metheny Group tours. The evening began in quietude, with Mr. Metheny taking the stage alone with his baritone acoustic guitar. He tolled a sequence of major chords, thoughtfully voiced and lightly annotated with arpeggios, before moving into the realm of one of his more recent compositions, “Make Peace.” There was marvelous concentration in his playing and an orchestral fullness to his sound, emphasized by the rich amplification of his lower strings. He offered a few more songs in this solo format, one of which, “The Sound of Water,” featured his harplike 42-string Pikasso guitar. Each of these performances — and his solo introduction, later in the show, to “Is This America? (Katrina 2005)” — conveyed the message that intensity can take the form of a whisper as well as a roar. The greater portion of the concert featured Christian McBride on acoustic bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums, and skirted the edge of musical catharsis. Mr. Metheny has worked with these musicians on and off for years — their brilliant new studio album, “Day Trip” (Nonesuch), was recorded in a single day in 2005 — and their rapport has strengthened and deepened. Tuesday marked both a homecoming and the end of their latest long excursion, which accounted for the climactic tone. Mr. Metheny improvised throughout with passion and erudition, combining mercurial fretboard runs with more limpid, searching phrases. And he gave his partners equal say. Mr. McBride nailed the lightning-bolt melody of “Let’s Move”; he swaggered through a potent solo on “Calvin’s Keys,” the sort of blues shuffle he eats for breakfast. Mr. Sanchez fashioned several technically dazzling and thematically sound solos of his own, closing the show with his strongest, on the up-tempo samba “Lone Jack.” That song, from the Pat Metheny Group archives, received a welcoming cheer. A more moderate version of the same response greeted “Police People,” a searing jangle from Mr. Metheny’s sessions with the alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman; “The Bat,” a requiem for one of Mr. Coleman’s contemporaries, the tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman; and “When We Were Free,” a modal waltz from the Pat Metheny Group book that was repurposed for the new album. For an encore Mr. Metheny and his band mates plugged in and pushed toward head-spinning prog-rock, all torque and distortion. It was like a shot of espresso after a harmonious meal: jarring yet bracing, and naturally part of the whole.

Joe Pass, Tommy Tedesco and Frank Zappa. .

Lot o' good news there Jim. and way cool gear head details too! .

If she paid my bills, I might be interested.

Sarah Jessica Parker's nose job.

This is true.

Sounds like Zorn knows his smoked meats. .

I think she did. .

It's certainly a stupid poll. I wouldn't pay it much mind. I never really liked that show...I'm glad I have a life.

And what was the Smoked meat incident? .

I'd say she's homely. .

I'm catching a bit of this...

My jazz thing is doing a hell of a lot better these days.

I never heard any that made me want more. .

It's a lot to remember. I have much delayed plans for another design with less notes to the octave and straight frets that will make it more flexible in the modulation dept. Maybe I'll get it made by the end of the year. .

cool. it looks like a sarod. I wouldn't mind having a 10 string classical. hey...I wouldn't mind having a 6 string classical!

I think we're just talkin' tempers here. .

That's right. How about board members with short fuses? .

Can you tell us more about this fretboard? Interesting... It's fretted for intervals from the harmonic series, a system known as Just Intonation. Since it's not tuned to 12 tone equal temperament, it would also be called microtonal. It's just one of an infinite number of possibilities for this tuning system.

my MIJ Tele looks like this, but with a humbucker in the neck:

more D'Aquistos: