Almost a year ago I posted on the remarkable young guitarist Julian Lage, noting his leaps-and-bounds improvement since working with Gary Burton as a teen. Well, Lage is at the Blue Note through Saturday with violinist Mark O’Connor and bassist John Patitucci, playing unamplified guitar in a string band that combines the best of O’Connor’s “Hot Swing” group and his more unclassifiable Americana. Get down there and hear it.
Since I saw him in ’09, Lage has somehow taken another quantum leap. His playing is utterly uninhibited, ceaselessly imaginative and technically/theoretically off the charts. Combine that with O’Connor and Patitucci and the whole thing is pretty hard to handle. One of the most musically rigorous and genuinely entertaining sets I’ve seen in a long while.
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