The joy of jazz guitar

Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo considers Southwest Florida his home away from home when he's not touring the world. He was happy to be back on Sunday, November 14, after the pandemic lockdown stymied his touring for more than a year.

Figueriedo performed a matinee solo concert in Venice FL in the Jazz With Morrie performance series, in advance of his three nights of performances next weekend at the Suncoast Jazz Festival in Clearwater. 

"It's a pleasure to be back performing live after a long, long time," Figueiredo said. He did some online performances from his home in Franca, Brazil during the pandemic but noted: "I didn't feel the emotion, the connection with the audience."

That connection was back on Sunday as he shared the joy of jazz guitar, digging into the Brazilian jazz songbook, several original compositions, a bit of movie music, and jazz standards.

A Brazilian's musical travelog

Brazilian acoustic guitar wizard Diego Figueiredo treated a full-house in Sarasota on Sunday, February 23 to spellbinding technique and an around-the-world travelog of places he's been that have inspired his music.

Diego Figueiredo

Figueiredo, 39, has been playing guitar since age 6. He has mastered the acoustic instrument with blended classical and jazz techniques into something distinctly Diego. At one point, he sounded like two different guitarists performing the same song together as he shifted between - and blended - arpeggio and tremolo styles.

His solo guitar program included an Antonio Carlos Jobim medley playing tribute to the father of the bossa nova, and snippets of music and styles from around the world - including France, Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, Turkey and the United States.

Guitar mastery on full display for jazz fans

Diego Figueiredo's Brazilian guitar artistry will make your jaw drop. His nylon-stringed acoustic guitar is merely the vessel for astonishing sounds that come out of his musical psyche, delivered by unusual blends of technique.

A jazz event 50+ years in the making...

To say it was long overdue is an understatement. Joshua Breakstone and Don Mopsick grew up in Linden. NJ. Their families knew each other and sometimes hung out together back in the 1960s, long before either man had any designs on a career in music.

Joshua Breakstone

Guitar modernist Breakstone and Mopsick, best known as the bassist in Jim Cullum's Jazz Band for more than 18 years, performed together for the first time on Friday,. February 17 at a South County Jazz Club matinee concert at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Venice.

A fine tribute to Brazilian jazz

To fully appreciate the rich place that Brazilian jazz holds today among the world's music forms, you have to go back to its roots in the late 1950s and the 1960s. So that's what a top-notch quintet did on Sunday, February 12 on Longboat Key, across the bay from Sarasota FL.

The event, co-sponsored by the Jazz Club of Sarasota and Longboat Key's Temple Beth Israel, musically transformed the temple into an acoustically superb jazz room for the afternoon, one where the instruments needed little or no amplification.

A masterful night of straight-ahead and Gypsy jazz

Martin Taylor

Jazz guitar master Martin Taylor was the Naples Philharmonic Jazz Orchestra’s featured guest at the sextet’s January 4 concert at Daniels Pavilion. It was a spectacular night on all counts. 
 

 The award-winning Englishman, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, dazzled the Artis Naples audience with his style and musicality in a 75-minute set that showcased his sheer talent, sense of bandsmanship and touched on his best-known career association. He spent toured the world and recording more than 20 albums with French violinist Stephane Grappelli from 1979 to 1990.

CDs of Note - Short Takes

Guitars and saxes aplenty. Taking a closer look at CDs by Russell Malone, Hailey Niswanger, Bjørn Solli, Dave Stryker and Doug Webb….

A sound all his own

Brazilian jazz guitarist Diego Figueiredo is a musical talent to take note of. Many notes, in fact.

Figueiredo  (pronounced fig-a-reed-o) drew a packed house at the Fogartyville Cafe in Sarasota FL on Wednesday, March 18 where he put on a mesmerizing display of solo guitar artistry, blending a variety of Brazilian styles, including bossa nova of course, with a handful of classic American jazz standards. 

Figueiredo, who first picked up the guitar at age four in his native Franca, Brazil, is now in his mid-30s and has released 22 CDs. He has won several major guitar competitions, including one held at Switzerland's prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival.

 You can find an interesting range of his material on YouTube. Check him out.

Nickelson excels in jazz setting

LaRue Nickelson

Guitarist LaRue Nickelson's Tampa-based jazz trio opened the Englewood Art Center portion of the South County Jazz Club's 2013-14 season today.

Nickelson is a modernist who shows great respect for players who influenced him. He has absorbed many such influences - including Tal Farlow, Jim Hall, Pat Martino and Jimmy Raney - but parrots none of them when delivering his own take on standard fare. His bandmates were bassist Mark Neuenschwander and drummer Ian Goodman. (All three are on the University of South Florida music faculty.)

One value of the jazz jam session

André Roy

Jam sessions are great for a lot of things. One of my favorite values: the opportunity to hear musicians from near or far with whom one might not cross paths otherwise.
Over the past few months, I got a chance to hear Toronto guitarist André Roy at the South County Jazz Club's weekly jam, which has been held for the past year at Allegro Bistro in Venice FL.

Roy is a guitar modernist born of the rock era, and his beautiful guitar sound is infused with a rockish energy and intensity. Think John Scofield for comparisons.

Jazz saxophonist comes full circle

Scott Hamilton (Blue Duchess photo)

Scott Hamilton, now a renowned jazz tenor saxophonist, was 15, playing harmonica and leading a blues band in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island when he first met Duke Robillard.

It was in the late 1960s, a couple of years after guitarist Duke Robillard and pianist Al Copley founded the no-holds-barred, Chicago-style blues band Roomful of Blues - and nearly a decade before Roomful's first album release.

From Brazil to Ellington with a few stops in between

Nate Najar

Guitarist Nate Najar performed today at the South County Jazz Club's Englewood Arts Center series to the biggest crowd the venue has seen for jazz to date. There were 120 jazz fans in the center's main gallery. Additional folks were turned away due to space limitations.

An abundance of chops and chemistry

Lew Del Gatto and Dan Miller

A newly formed organ jazz-inspired band in southern Florida is shaking things up from its home base in Naples and a regular weekly gig in Fort Myers. The Dan Miller-Lew Del Gatto Quintet ventured north to Sarasota last night to open the South County Jazz Club’s five-concert series at the Glenridge Performing Arts Center.

Dan Heck

The band was formed in May and has been working steadily ever since. Trumpeter Miller is a veteran of bands led by Harry Connick Jr., Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman and Wynton Marsalis. Tenor saxophonist Lew Del Gatto spent 25 years in prime time as the baritone player in NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” band. The band also includes pianist Stu Shelton, drummer-singer Patricia Dean and guitarist Dan Heck, who earned his pro stripes with his Seattle-based band Bebop and Destruction before moving to the New York jazz scene, then the fertile music scene in and around Naples.

CDs of Note - Short Takes

Taking a closer look at new CDs from Michael Occhipinti, Pat Metheny and Gene Ess...

Cool, hip and funny (updated)

I interviewed singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli for a profile that will be in the December issue of Hot House in conjunction with a mid-month (December 14 to 18) run with his quartet at Birdland in Manhattan. As is usually the case with these encounters, John had far more to say than space allows in the magazine. See the online edition, p. 31.

Here’s one such JP gem, part of his discussion about the fun he’s been having for five years on his syndicated broadcast show Radio Deluxe. He invited fellow vocalist Kurt Elling to be a guest – and he has become a multi-time guest, including a 2009 live taping at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival.

“I just really met him doing the show and we became friends right away,” Pizzarelli said. “We’re two very different singers with strong ideas about what we want to do about our music.”

He has tremendous admiration and respect for Elling’s work. “It is an intelligent act. It really is something smart and special,” Pizzarelli said. “It is enjoyable to watch because he demands your attention. It is not for the faint of heart.”

CDs of Note

Yotam, Resonance (JLP)
Tel Aviv-born, New York-based guitarist Yotam Silberstein is out with his third disc as a leader. It’s a gem, and he’s got some terrific players along for the ride, including pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Christian McBride, drummer Greg Hutchinson and, as special guest on two tracks, trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Hargrove is featured on versions of Clifford Brown’s “Daahoud” and Joe Henderson’s “Mamacita.” Every track is wonderful in its own way, featuring Yotam and Co.’s splendid improvisations and the leader’s warm, distinctive tone. My favorite: their take on the reggae-based Monty Alexander tune “Renewal.” But there is much, much more to savor on the other 10 tracks as well.

Dana Lauren, It’s You or No One (Dana Lauren Music)
Connecticut native Dana Lauren is a singer on the rise. At age 21, this Berklee College of Music student is out with her second CD – and it shows that she has a vocal maturity and understanding of songs far beyond her years. She’s got great intuitive chops and presents a wonderful interpretation of jazz standards on this project. Her band for the session features Joel Frahm on tenor, Manuel Valera on piano, Luques Curtis on bass, Jake Goldbas on drums, with guitarist Will Graefe on five tracks. There is one very different gem here: Lauren plus Christian McBride on a voice and bass duo version of “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” Lauren’s dusky voice also shines on her arrangement of “Give Me the Simple Life.” Frahm, Graefe and Valera stand out among the support team. McBride is one of her musical mentors. Another is trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, who produced her 2008 debut, Stairway to the Stars. Keep your eyes - and ears - on this wonderful talent.

Odean Pope, Odean’s List (In+Out)
Saxophonist Odean Pope is out with a dandy, and perhaps his most powerful recording - as a leader. This longtime member of drummer Max Roach’s bands assembled an all-star octet for this session. It consists of eight originals plus Eddie Green’s “Little Miss Lady” and the Jimmy McHugh-Frank Loesser standard “Say It (Over and Over Again.)” The band includes saxophonists James Carter and Walter Blanding, trumpeters Terell Stafford and David Weiss, drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, bassist Lee Smith and pianist George Burton. My favorite: their take on Pope’s “Phrygian Love Theme,” which gets a Spanish-tinged treatment that features Carter and Stafford. To my ears, this one is highly creative, perhaps more as a showcase for Pope as bandleader rather than his playing. Carter, Blanding, Stafford and Weiss provide the most interest.