Release Date: 11 March 2016
Label: Mack Avenue
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 673203110724
Genres: Rock
Release Date: 17 June 2016
Label: Mack Avenue
Packaging Type: Gate Fold Vinyl
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 673203110717
Genres: Rock
Description
Guitarist Julian Lage releases 'Arclight', which marks his first recorded outing on electric guitar and in a trio format, backed by double bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wollesen. The album showcases Lage's growth as a leader and songwriter, and further solidifies his status as a premier guitar virtuoso.
The pace he sets is brisk, the mood often upbeat, the playing so quick-witted and offhandedly dazzling that one is compelled to immediately press "repeat," especially when tracks like "Persian Rug" and "Activate" whiz by in under two and a half minutes. For a thoughtful artist like Lage, who will research and ruminate on a project long before he sets foot in a studio, this was a liberating experience, plugging in and playing with a kind of abandon.
Though up to now Lage has largely recorded and performed original material, he wanted to explore his interpretive skills on 'Arclight', concentrating on music from the early to mid-20th century, "jazz before be-bop." Including Spike Hughes' "Nocturne", W.C. Handy's "Harlem Blues," a Gus Kahn-Neil Moret piano roll number. The rest of the album consists of originals, which, notes Lage, "celebrate the other period I'm obsessed with, the Keith Jarrett American quartet period, an improvisational jazz era that had such a rich connection to songs and to folk music. This was the concept for the album."
Personnel: Julian Lage (guitar), Scott Colley (bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums, percussion)
Description
Lage has long been heralded for his virtuosic ability as an acoustic guitarist. In fact, he was well known in musician circles as a guitar prodigy whose early genius was captured in a 1997 Oscar-nominated documentary short, Jules At Eight. As an adult, he's fulfilled the promise of his extraordinary youthful talent. The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson declared, "He is in the highest category of improvising musicians, those who can enact thoughts and impulses as they receive them."
Nate Chinen of The New York Times called Lage "one of jazz's breezier virtuosos, possessed of an unflappable technical facility and a seemingly boundless curiosity." After independently releasing a solo acoustic set of largely original material called World's Fair in 2014, that curiosity prompted Lage to reconsider the electric guitar-specifically a Fender Telecaster, "the most refined embodiment of the modern guitar," as he puts it.
Tracklisting
Tracklisting
Christian McBride & Edgar Meyer
Mike Stern
Veronica Swift
Christian McBride Big Band
Emmet Cohen
Various Artists
Oscar Peterson
Connie Han
Julian Lage
Julian Lage
