There is a perfect jazz guitar storm hitting San Diego in the next month or so. Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, and John Scofield—the most influential guitarists of the Baby Boom generation—have all have all played San Diego before, but I don’t recall them ever arriving within such close proximity.

Legendary jazz guitarist John Scofield

^{Photo by Nick Suttle}

Tuesday evening marked the first front with John Scofield’s appearance at Anthology. Scofield is usually associated with rock-jazz-blues fusion, but in his opening set with pianist Mulgrew Miller, bassist Ben Street, and drummer Kendrick Scott, his talents as a straight-ahead jazz improviser were the main attraction.

Scofield’s song list was dominated by jazz standards: “Gone With the Wind,” “I Want to Talk About You,” “Steeplechase,” “Stardust,” and a new chart based on “Back Home Again in Indiana” which borrowed liberally from “Donna Lee” (Miles Davis’s celebrated variation on the changes to “Indiana”).

Scofield eschewed overly elaborate solos; he’s not really known for cranking out 16 notes where 5 or 6 well-chosen ones will do. I wouldn’t call his improvising laconic, but he clearly believes that less is more. His solos were usually confident and direct, although that didn’t preclude playing some wryly dissonant notes when he wanted to ratchet up the tension. A good deal of the fun in hearing him Tuesday was listening to how he would transform his style over the course of several choruses from straightforward bluesy melodies to crunchy post-bop lines, as he did in his second solo for his own funky chart, “Groove Elation.”

A key component to his improvisations was the feedback Scofield received after throwing a solo to Mulgrew Miller, that monster of jazz versatility (Miller’s thorough knowledge of many styles has resulted in his being one of the most-recorded pianists of his generation). Miller would pick up where Scofield left off, stretch the harmonies, twist the idiom, and hand it back to Scofield completely transmogrified. It was a joyful game that Scofield and Miller played, catching what one threw, juggling it around until it transformed into something else, and tossing it back to see what the other would do with it; this was some of the headiest interplay I’ve heard at a local jazz concert in a while.

Scofield’s timbre leans toward the clarity of older electric guitarists like Farlow or Lowe, yet he judiciously modifies his sound with fuzz, subtle feedback, or subtle electronic processing when desired. This arsenal of timbral control that Scofield brings to the stage aids him in moving in and out of rock, jazz, and blues stylings.

The last time I wrote about Miller here, he was the main event, heading his own trio. The surprises, the sense of play, and the stylistic shifts, and the reworking of standards to make them Miller’s own were all on display Tuesday, but as a sideman rather than a leader this time around, his lightning-quick responses to Scofield were breathtaking. Miller didn’t just back Scofield, but also altered his comping in ways that spurred Scofield to transform his guitar solos. In any good jazz group there will be feedback between a soloist and the rhythm section, but the musical evolution that occurred with Miller leading the section and shifting Scofield in different directions was on a rarified plane indeed.

Among some of the more inspired moments of the evening were:

• Miller’s solos in Scofield’s unnamed “Indiana” chart, which on their own referenced “Donna Lee” even though Scofield’s reharmonizations didn’t correspond one-to-one;

• the way this same number immediately dropped in tempo with the repetition of each ensemble chorus at the end of the number, slowing down more each time until you wondered just how long they could stretch that out (Scofield’s obviously figured out the perfect number of repetitions, as he stretched it enough to make it entertaining, but never crossed the line into frustration);

• Scofield’s take on “Stardust,” unaccompanied for the verse, bringing in the rhythm section for a moderate jazz walk on the chorus, ending the number with a bass solo for the first 16 bars of the chorus, and handing it over to Scofield to finish unaccompanied;

• Miller’s solo on “Stardust,” incorporating some exotic scales over the chords usually played;

• Miller throwing in “Misty” quotes during “I Want to Talk About You,” highlighting how much in common the two songs have, enough to support a contention that Garner was subconsciously hearing “I Want to Talk About You” when he worked out “Misty” at the piano (Garner didn’t read or notate music);

• Miller and Scofield encouraging each other to play further out in “Steeplechase,” with Miller humorously referencing Bud Powell

Rounding out the rhythm section was Ben Street¹ on bass and Kendrick Scott on drums. Street was not a flashy bassist that evening. He belonged more to the Freddie Green school of musicianship—he unobtrusively laid down a groove, did it so well you didn’t even know that he was doing it. When called upon to solo, he played with efficiency and taste, kept the spirit of the number going, then stepped back into that groove and let the boss man take over. That was Street’s appointed task for the evening, and he performed it with grace and perfection.

I hadn’t encountered Kendrick Scott before, but from the way he kept time, and from his ability to shift between styles to back Scofield and Miller, I’d say he’s already taken that proverbial oyster of the world, pried it open, and is gulping down the fresh savor of it all. His playing was spot on, and when given the opportunity to solo (I didn’t count, but it seemed like he had more solos than Street), he did it in character with his band mates.

In “Groove Elation,” Scofield gave Scott a chance to strut his stuff by arranging a simple groove for the piano left hand doubled on bass. Just as Scofield and Miller used the beginnings of their solos to leap off into some new territory, so did Scott here. He began with simple New-Orleans-flavored snaps, rolls, and cymbal crashes, gradually transforming these into some exciting polyrhythms that danced against the fundamental groove played by Miller and Street. I’ll let Scott have the last word here, courtesy of this video from Scofield’s show in Oakland earlier this month.

^1. Hey, I used to live on Ben Street! 3552 Ben Street in Clairemont. I resided there when Shawn Nelson decided to take to a tank for a joy ride. I was at work when that happened, but in the video footage you can see him turn off Ashford onto Bagdad, and slice through a trailer home before he decided to spin around just before when he was about to hang a left down my street. Imagine what it felt like for me to come home late at night, not having heard the news, and see half a dozen cars smashed up and two trailer homes with their sides sheared off as if someone had taken a giant rip saw down the length of them. The only thing I could think of was that a twister went down the block.