You never know what will happen when jazz musicians get their hands on an iconic—well, let’s say “a culture changing and legendary”—rock album such as Sgt. Pepper’s...
You never know what will happen when jazz musicians get their hands on an iconic—well, let’s say “a culture changing and legendary”—rock album such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Do I even have to mention who made that record?) But there I was at Berkeley’s beautiful Freight and Salvage club late last year, anticipating a performance by the San Francisco String Trio to celebrate the release of May I Introduce to You [Ridgeway Records]—the group’s inspired take on the Beatles’ transformative 1967 masterwork.
The players were certainly up to the challenge, as bassist/vocalist Jeff Denson, violinist Mads Tolling, and guitarist Mimi Fox are undeniably transcendent players, arrangers, and composers. The instrumental rethinks (along with three vocals by Denson) are gorgeous and artistically sensitive mash-ups of styles and moods—they’re almost master classes on how deft creative minds can twist and turn a great melody without tasering the conceptual majesty of the songwriters.
What I didn’t expect was a shred-fest from Fox.
I kind of sat astounded and openmouthed like some hapless dork who had never seen a guitar performance before (thank goodness I was sitting in the back of the club), but I can only defend myself by saying the catalog of techniques that Fox unleashed was mind blowing. She tapped, banged, went outside, came back home, fired off fast passages like a teenaged metalhead, played legato, leapt into savvy pull-offs and bends and hammerons, and did stuff I couldn’t even explain (and I’m supposedly the editor of a guitar magazine). It was quite the experience. I was forever changed by it.
Okay. I don’t think I can even catalog the techniques you deployed for the album and the live performance. I’m rather dumbfounded here…
I kind of just do what I need to do