CD Reviews

Michael Musillami Trio

The Treatment | Playscape

By JON GARELICK | October 1, 2007

3.5 Stars

The entire jazz-guitar world doesn’t spin around the Metheny/Frisell/Scofield axis. Musillami’s playing is effects-and-feedback-free and doesn’t make much use of volume, but his clean, dry, aggressive attack is almost rockist. His compositions chug along on angular vamps, and the bite in his rhythms has as much to do with chord patterns and note choices as with the sound of plectrum digging into string. There’s plenty of space all around, too, so that the fast 9:53 “Brooms” can break off for an out-of-tempo guitar-bass dialogue — a reverie — over brushed drums. The sound quality is up-front — clean diction, with none of the blurring pastel reverb of, say, ECM production. Musillami’s long-time trio partners, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer George Schuller, are key to the push-pull elasticity of that space. And here he also has the brilliant violinist Mark Feldman, picking along in unison, or bowing saxophone-like arpeggiated runs and Indian-style ululations. Musillami sounds familiar — this is swinging jazz guitar, after all — but not quite like anyone else.

Michael Musillami Trio + Mark Feldman | MIT, Killian Hall, Hayden Library, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge | October 4 at 8 pm | 617.253.2826

Related: Skimming the cream, John Abercrombie, Three in two, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Mark Feldman, Joe Fonda, George Schuller

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