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Guitarist John Scofield, one-time sideman to Miles Davis and with credits as long as your arm, applied his steely jazz eye to a bar-room repertoire and joyously rekindled the passion of his formative years. As advertised, rock hits blended with jazzed-out folk songs, while teenage rock and roll morphed into edge-of-seat jazz.
Scofield opened the evening with an overture of stinging lead lines and precisely bent notes, while skitters of drums darted into the repetitive thud of indie rock. As the piece changed shape and key, whispering organ conjured neighbourhood bars, funky basslines added grit and Scofield probed the outer reaches of a sequence of simple chords.
The tone of the evening established, the guitarist gleefully set about his stated task with a gently strummed intro to Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman”, although at this gig, playing the tune like nobody else was just the start. Jon Cowherd’s piano solo added tension in the middle range, Scofield conjured melodies on the fly and lines moved from high notes to low. The piece segued into Pharoah Sanders’ “The Creator Has a Master Plan” with high-pitched whines supported by bassist Vincente Archer’s trademark riff.
As the evening progressed, Scofield and his band used the moods and melodies of well-known songs to launch detailed explorations of harmonic possibilities and emotional depth. Cowherd was inquisitive and engaging on organ and piano, but it was Scofield’s imagination, invention and commitment that were the evening’s focus and key to its success. The guitarist, visibly in his element, compressed country, jazz and rock references into a single solo, sometimes in the space of a few bars.
Clarity was maintained by the unassuming support of Archer and the enthusiastic, all-styles-covered drumming of Josh Dion. Scofield developed Randy Newman’s “Dayton, Ohio — 1903” into a series of sharply played stabs, but it was Archer and Dion’s steady rhythm that underpinned the tune’s sense of menace. And on “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” by Hall & Oates, it was Archer’s rock-solid riff that sustained Scofield’s invention.
Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” was the evening’s ballad, opening with a beautiful duet between guitar and double bass. Scofield captured the song’s sense of deferred desire and defiant hope on the playout, supported by Cowherd’s supple piano pedal point and quiet figured bass. The one vocal, introduced as a “special surprise”, was the Grateful Dead’s “Black Muddy River”, sung by drummer Dion in a high-pitched tenor as he laid down a basic rock beat; Scofield restricted himself to immaculate support.
The encore, “Mr Tambourine Man”, began at a whisper, hinted at the abstract and had solos for all. Dion pulled out all the stops, the rock-solid Archer stepped into the limelight and also raised the house, while Cowherd, unaccompanied, delivered a dialogue between left hand and right. Scofield, imperious and inventive, had the final say, and signalled the evening’s end with a single crunchy chord.
★★★★☆
