Gene Bertoncini

From time to time, Rifftides Washington, DC correspondent John Birchard reports on musical events in the US Capital City.

NO STEREOTYPES, PLEASE

The Smithsonian Jazz Café hosted a 70th birthday celebration for guitarist Gene Bertoncini on Friday, April 20th. What words come to mind when you think of Bertoncini? Taste, quiet beauty, delicacy? All true. But it was a different Gene Bertoncini on display Friday night. The Café was packed and LOUD. The place attracts a blend of true jazz fans, tourists looking for a meal and a place to sit down after a week of schlepping through national landmarks and monuments, and folks looking for something different to do on a Friday night. The mix is not conducive to the nurturing of hothouse flowers.

One can't be sure what he was thinking as he stepped before the chattering crowd, but what came out of Bertoncini's guitars was surely designed to deal with the evening's reality. We got a side of the man we hadn't heard before. Tasteful, yes. Elegant, sure. But also strong and swinging. He turned up the amp and appeared to have fun.

Accompanied by two Washington area musicians - bassist Tommy Cecil and drummer Chuck Redd - Bertoncini scored with standards such as "I'll Remember You", "Gone With the Wind" and a nice medley, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" and "It Might as Well be Spring".

The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", long a part of Bertoncini's repertoire, closed the first set and showed the guitarist still willing to take risks and solve self-imposed challenges. He tried a solo version of Strayhorn's "Lush Life", but it drowned in a sea of babble and laughter. Not the time or the place for subtlety.

The closer for the second set was Miles Davis's "Milestones". Bertoncini played the hell out of it, piling chord upon chord, finding odd voicings to lead in fresh directions, conducting interplay with Cecil and Redd with head nods, eye contact and grins.

As I headed for home, I was thinking about this "different" side of a musician I had long ago pigeonholed. And, I thought, "Who's limited here - him or me?" You don't get to be 70 years old and perform as a professional jazz musician all these years by being a hothouse flower. You adapt, you overcome, you live to play another day.

So, hats off to the Birthday Boy - and to all who earn a living making art in difficult circumstances.

--John Birchard