Things are changing in the jazz world. Ideas drawn from funk, hip-hop and drum 'n' bass are changing the way rhythm sections play. Technological innovations are giving instrumentalists a much broader palette with which to play. Young audiences weaned on the Grateful Dead and Phish are discovering the intense improvisation of jazz.
And John Scofield couldn't be happier.
"It's really a good time," he says, over the phone from his home in suburban New York. "There's a new audience for -- I'm not even going to say 'jazz,' but for music that stretches out. Instrumental music, and stuff with improvisation."
Stuff, in other words, like the music Scofield makes. Scofield is a jazz guitarist, but part of the new generation, a player as likely to invoke Jimi Hendrix or Bill Frisell as he is Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell. Although his roots are clearly in jazz -- no surprise, given a background that includes stints with the likes of Charles Mingus, Gary Burton and Miles Davis -- his ears are open to a lot of new music, and that has made him a magnet for adventurous young listeners.
"They're really into the group improvisation aspect," he says, adding that he suspects these younger fans got their first taste of free-form improvisation from listening to the Grateful Dead.
"I don't even know, really, because I was never really a Dead aficionado," he says. "But I guess those guys used to really take it out. So now, when my group gets into just letting the music go to a different place, they're with us. And they're dancing.
"It's just this really cool time, with these young kids that are into instrumental music."
What makes this success all the sweeter is that Scofield has not had to change his playing one bit to reach this audience. "I've always gone between kind of funky jazz and more straight-ahead, swinging stuff anyway," he says. Onstage, his new band -- which includes bassist Matthew Garrison, keyboardist Will Boulware and drummer Marlon Browden -- leans pretty heavily on the funk side of things, but they don't play smooth jazz or R&B.;
"It has to be funk that swings," says Scofield. "That's why me and Medeski Martin and Wood and all these guys who are, for lack of a better word, jazz musicians go to that kind of funk rhythm. All of a sudden, you're home, and the whole history of jazz, that you've been studying all your life, works in that rhythmic realm. So when you improvise, you feel real free."
Scofield feels equally at home with the revved-up kineticism of drum 'n' bass. "My band's playing a live drum 'n' bass tune," he says. "Which, to me, is so weird. Because my first gig with a well-known band was with Billy Cobham's band in 1975, and that's what Cobham did. He played a really fast funk beat. When I hear drum 'n' bass, I keep thinking, 'Billy Cobham should just make a record like this, because those are all his beats!' "
John Scofield
What: Grand opening of Recher Theatre (formerly the Rec Room) with John Scofield and Lake Trout
When: Tonight at 9 (doors open at 8 p.m)
Where: Recher Theatre, 512 York Road, Towson
Tickets: $18
Call: 410-481-6500 for tickets, 410-337-7178 for information
Pub Date: 03/11/99