![]() ![]() In recent years, Gomez has applied his skills to several projects that denote his willingness to no longer “shy away from trio things and homages to Bill.” These include an Italian tour in 2010 with a highly stylized trio comprising pianist Mark Kramer - a frequent partner in the ’00s - and late-period Evans drummer Joe LaBarbera, and a summer 2011 concert with LaBarbera and Sicilian pianist Salvatore Bonafede devoted to the legacy of the virtuoso bassist Scott LaFaro, who, during his 20 months with Evans and Paul Motian from 1959 to 1961, established the template of bass expression upon which Gomez would place his own unique stamp. When soloing, a horn player or singer might envy the speed and dynamics of his phrasing, as he moves in the course of an idea from fortissimo bellows to mezzo piano whispers, seamlessly incorporating extended techniques more commonly associated with “outside” playing into Evans’ harmonic world, never with “because I can” intention, but always toward unfailingly musical imperatives. When accompanying, he gooses the flow with clear, limber lines that both anticipate and complement Evans’ train of thought. ![]() In both contexts, Gomez displays the gifts that placed him atop his instrument’s food chain by his early 20s. The radio broadcasts - which include a five-tune 1975 performance by Evans, Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund - retain only a hint of that unruly flavor the musicians, intimate with each other’s moves after years of bandstand proximity in clubs and concert halls, finish each other’s thoughts with burnished, cosmopolitan phrases. Performed with the real-time bustle of late-’60s Bleecker Street unfolding outside the club’s glass doors, the Top of the Gate tracks are unremittingly intense, the protagonists exchanging opinions with a freewheeling, serious-as-your-life attitude akin to the South Village coffee shop and saloon culture that prevailed when Evans himself was coming of age a decade earlier. Nor does anything in the canon more effectively represent the breathe-as-one simpatico the pianist and bassist could achieve as the five duets they play on Disc 1 of The Sesjun Radio Shows, recorded in the Netherlands in 1973. Few extant Bill Evans trio dates can match the creative energy generated on the two April 1968 sets with drummer Marty Morell that comprise Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate . The Evans-Gomez connection is once again a hot topic, thanks to two recent drops of first-commercial-release archival material. ![]() So I’m able to feel it and express it and verbalize it.” “It’s like getting away from a parent or father figure, recognizing what a certain time in your life really was, that it’s part of you and you are part of it. “I feel there are lots of other things to talk about, but being with Bill is huge in my heart,” Gomez continued. ![]() The skin on his fingers, which he spreads in fan-like waves when emphasizing a point, is smooth and barely calloused. At 68, he looks a decade younger, his barrel chest and muscled forearms obscured by a loose black sport jacket and black button-down shirt. “It’s been a third of a century, there’s a body of work, and I’m more self-assured and confident in my career and art,” Gomez said in June at a café a few blocks from his Greenwich Village home. Thirty-five years after leaving the Bill Evans Trio to pursue new opportunities and musical adventures, Eddie Gomez, once averse to public discussion of the 11-year run that made him the most visible - and perhaps most emulated - jazz bassist of that era, is happy to dwell on the subject. In any case, that’s who I was, and still am.” -Eddie Gomez, New York City, 2012 But to play my own devil’s advocate, maybe it took away my ability to focus on one particular way or style. There’s a positive side to playing in many genres, which I like to do. Maybe I was too busy being fragmented to develop that. They had everything already in place, and they were innovative. “Certain musicians arrived on the scene who were just complete. As much as he fits me like a glove, you would almost think that this is the only way he can play because he does it so perfectly, but it’s not true.” -Bill Evans, Helsinki, 1970. Eddie is marvelous in that he has a very wide scope. Or he’ll get on that very free, expressionistic bag. Sometimes I wake up in the morning to The Today Show and see an Israeli folk group playing their folk music, and there’s a bass player in the back playing like he was born in Israel. “Eddie has the most surprising flexibility. In honor of bass virtuoso Eddie Gomez’ 72nd birthday today, here’s a feature piece that ran in Jazziz in 2012. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |