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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Julian Lage at the Bootleg Theater

February 21, 2018 by Scott Timberg

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LAST night’s show by the young Santa Rosa native was one of the greatest jazz gigs your humber blogger has ever seen. Even knowing a few of his records and having seen him play a delicate, restrained, kind of perfect show with pianist Fred Hersch a few years back, I was knocked out by how fleet his playing was, and how well-matched to a more assertive style.

Lage, a onetime child prodigy who turned 30 a few weeks ago, is currently wielding a Telecaster, and playing standing up, with a powerful trio; his new LP, Modern Lore, echoes rockabilly and surf guitar as much as it does Eddie Lang or Wes Montgomery. In some ways he seems like the jazz-guitar version of Brad Mehldau, another player who mixes great facility with strong emotion and has been able to engage a relatively young audience. As with Mehldau, who can play Rodgers and Hart of the Beatles, this is not cheesy fusion or a forced art/ pop marriage — the melange feels real.

This clip, from a 2016 show at the Blue Whale, gives a sense of his current style. (He plays with a different bassist and drummer these days.)

Let me add that while the Bootleg — at which I’ve seen a range of things, from indie rock to a one-man-show — is always a place I end up enjoying. Intimate and cool in a way I can’t put my finger on.

 

 

For what’s it’s worth, there is a new list of best jazz guitarists — here — which has some wonderful clips. I don’t concur with all of it, but I’m glad to see Grand Green up so high. And worth nothing that Lage is the youngest here.

 

Filed Under: Los Angeles, west coast Tagged With: Jazz, Jazz guitar

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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