One of the most reliably swinging, pyrotechnic players on the jazz scene over the past decade, guitarist Paul Bollenback casts a wide net on his sixth recording as a leader, turning in adventurous and eminently hip interpretations of tunes from the realms of pop, r&b, country and classical music. Few other musicians would even think about including material from Puccini’s Tosca alongside Ray Charles hits and tunes by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Neil Young and classical guitarist Ernesto Garcia de Leon on a single record. But the open-minded guitarist and bandleader not only manages to bridge the gaps, he also puts his own stamp on this wildly diverse collection so that ultimately it all sounds truly of a piece.
“It’s not so much about the material, it’s more about how you treat the material,” says the longtime sideman to organ great Joey DeFrancesco. “You could treat all this material completely differently or you could find completely different material and treat it the same way. That was kind of my view on it. And listening back, it doesn’t sound like a mish-mash of things because of the way things are formatted. It sounds like one whole project.”
Bollenback is aided in his efforts to coalesce Puccini, Ray, Stevie, Neil and Ernesto into an organic whole by his unerring, keenly interactive rhythm section of bassist James Genus working in tandem with drummers Terri Lynne Carrington and Ari Hoenig. Pulling heroic duty on the front line are saxophonists Gary Thomas and Tim Garland. Chris McNulty contributes hauntingly beautiful wordless vocals on a few pieces, while also delivering the dramatic lyrics to Young’s “Philadelphia” with a mix of understated elegance and uncommon passion.
Special guest David “Fathead” Newman lends his soulful, smoky tenor sax to poignant renditions of “Unchain My Heart” and “You Don’t Know Me,” both associated with Fathead’s former friend and employer. “I had mixed feelings about it,” says Bollenback of his decision to approach Fathead about playing Ray. “You know, it’s the obvious thing to do and no doubt it’s not the first time he’s been asked to do that since Ray passed. He’s got his own Ray Charles tribute record out and John Scofield’s got his Ray Charles tribute record. So I did a little research, wanting to make sure that it wasn’t going to sound like any of those projects. And when I realized that my approch was different, I didn’t feel too bad about it. I just figured that a 32-bar tune like ‘You Don’t Know Me’ is basically a standard. It may be a country standard but it is a standard, nonetheless. And standards have always been open to interpretation by jazz musicians. So here’s my take on it.”
As for his decision to tackle a section of Puccini’s Tosca, the guitarist says, “There’s a little section of that opera always gets me, and I just found a way to adapt it to this band. It’s basically just five lines from the libretto...not a lot of material...but it turned out to be the most difficult out of all of them to find common ground on.”
Bollenback’s three-part suite, “Dark Eyes of Floria Tosca,” opens with a rubato free section that concludes with an intimate guitar-bass duet with Genus. The second section introduces a 5/4 band groove culminating in some powerful soloing from Thomas and Bollenback. The third section, a descending 7/4 motif, is meant to represent Tosca’s leap from the tower to her ultimate death.
Says Bollenback about undertaking such an eclectic project, “When you get deep into some arrangements of other styles of music and you present it to really great players, they’re going to put their own thing on it. Sometimes it winds up not being what you had in mind but that was kind of the goal on this particular project. My attitude was, ‘Here it is, I’m gonna play my thing on it and we’re gonna play some music together and let’s see where it goes.’ And I didn’t give a lot of direction. Basically, I just wanted them to play the tunes and stretch on them. And they all played great.”
The guitarist’s relationship with saxophonist Thomas goes back to the early ‘80s when they began playing together in the Baltimore-D.C. area. “The very first record I ever played on was Gary’s Seventh Quadrant, which came out on Enja back in 1987,” explains Bollenback, who has played on five recordings by Thomas to date. “He’s such an amazing player. For me he’s a complete original. So many of the players that are out there now are getting these incredible accolades but to me they don’t really have anything distinctive about their playing, other than the fact that they’re technically very proficient. But they don’t have a voice where I can hear them and know who they are right away. And Gary has that. He’s always had his own thing. A lot of people kind of shunned it because it’s very edgy, but he does what he does and it’s very distinctive and strong. Even when we’re playing really standard type stuff he finds a way to take his sort of twisted view of the thing and bring it in, so he’s still doing his thing but it really fits with what’s going on. That’s pretty rare, I think. Most guys just kind of come in and blow through it, but not Gary.”
Multi-reed man Garland, who plays soprano sax, tenor sax and bass clarinet throughout Brightness of Being, is a more recent acquaintance of Bollenback’s. “I had the pleasure of working with Tim on his album from last year, Change of Season (Siroccco Jazz), and subsequently toured the U.K. with him. It was a great experience. Tim’s thing is he’s a composer first and then he had become a saxophone player afterwards, after he had studied composition. So he brings that to the table as opposed to being a player who also writes. And as a player, Tim has such command over all those reed instruments. He’s also got a very different approach to the tenor sax than Gary Thomas. Gary’s thing is very edgy and bright and Tim is sort of smooth and real lyrical. And I wanted that contrast on this project. I had no problem writing for either one of those guys as far as the arrangements were concerned. Basically they were able to handle whatever.”
The two tenor titans only play on two songs together -- Paul’s “Together,” which he wrote as a tribute to longtime friends and colleagues Joey DeFrancesco and drummer Byron “Wookie” Landham (who have played together on a dozen recordings by the Hammond organ burner), and a freewheeling rendition of Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing,” which features some fierce tenor exchanges.
Bollenback’s rendition of “El Desierto” was sparked by his recent classical guitar studies with Michael Lorimer, who turned Paul on to the great classical guitarist from Mexico, Ernesto Garcia de Leon. “These are some of Ernesto’s etudes that we started working on,” says Paul. “They’re very interesting because they address technical issues on the guitar through musical problems. I tried to extract the melody from the actual guitar part itself.” The fugue-like piece develops into a full band romp in 7/4, with a couple of parts in 5/4 time. Garland doubles on soprano and bass clarinet on this challenging vehicle.
On a gentle rendition of Young’s “Philadelphia,” Paul’s acoustic guitar blends brilliantly with McNulty’s ethereal vocals. “Chris is another one who has a unique quality to her voice,” says Bollenback. “There’s something about the sound of it when she’s not actually singing lyrics....the open sound of the voice itself...that reminds me a little bit of Miles’ trumpet sound. It’s got that very airy kind of thing. It’s a different color that mixes well with the instruments.”
The guitarist’s other original compositions here are the lyrical acoustic guitar ballad “Breathe,” which features some soaring soprano sax from Garland, the soulful “7 a.m. Special” and the swinging closer “Siberian Passages.” As Paul explains, “Breathe’ was written around the time that both my parents passed, which would’ve been January, 2004. My father had trouble breathing when he passed, so maybe it was an exhortation to breathe. But also, the melody is based on a lot of long tones and so whoever is singing it or playing it, you have to breathe. It has that feeling of respiration to it.”Hoenig’s melodic touch on the kit is especially effective on this poignant ode. As Bollenback notes, “I wanted that color, that very open color thing that Ari does, because his cymbal sound and his drum sound is very clear. It’s like really focused. So there’s a lot of space inbetween whatever it is that he does.”
“7 a.m. Special,” which was previously recorded in 2000 by the Jazz Times Superband (featuring Bollenback with organist DeFrancesco, trumpeter Randy Brecker, drummer Dennis Chambers, saxophonist Bob Berg), was written in 1999 in Japan while Paul was in the throes severe jetlag. “To keep myself from being bored I would write tunes and that was one of them. I think I wrote that at 7 a.m.,” he explains.
“Siberian Passages” was written in 2002 on a four-hour flight to Moscow. “I was playing duo concerts there with Russian pianist Andre Kondakov,” says Paul, “and this tune just came to me while I was sitting on the plane in the middle seat. I’m trying to get more into writing and learning about more classic forms of composition but it’s hard to find the energy and the time to do it. So I write whenever or wherever it comes to me.”
Whether it’s his own original material or stirring interpretations of familiar fare, Bollenback consistently hits the mark with on his most ambitious outing to date.
--Bill Milkowski
Bill Milkowski is a regular contributor of Jazz Times and Jazziz magazines. He is also the author of “JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius” (Backbeat Books).