{"id":5292,"date":"2013-12-10T15:48:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T23:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=5292"},"modified":"2013-12-10T16:32:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T00:32:34","slug":"jim-hall-1930-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2013\/12\/jim-hall-1930-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Hall, 1930-2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Devra Hall Levy informed friends this morning that her father died last night in his sleep at home in New York, six days following his 83rd birthday. In her message, Ms. Levy wrote from Los Angeles, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He was not feeling well, but had not to my knowledge been diagnosed with any particular illness.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

Jim Hall was born in Buffalo, New York, raised in Cleveland and received his formal musical education at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The guitarist performed steadily into his eighties, including a concert at \"Jim<\/a>the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival. Hall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first major professional notice was in 1955 as a member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Later, he had successes with Jimmy Giuffre, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer and Bob Brookmeyer, collaborated with Paul Desmond, Ron Carter, Bill Evans and George Shearing, and led his own trio. <\/p>\n

\nHall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence extended beyond jazz to virtually all genres of music. His appearance at a guitar shop in Los Angeles in the 1980s drew many of the jazz guitarists in town but also rockers, country pickers and classical acoustic players. In a style that grew out of Charlie Christian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, he developed daring uses of chords that reflected his knowledge of and love for modern classical composers. Hall once said that B\u00c3\u00a9la Bartok was his hero. A master of the effective use of space in his solos, he was also noted for the intensity of his swing and the lyricism of his melodic lines.<\/p>\n

\nIn the notes for the 1975 album Jim Hall Live!<\/em><\/a> I wrote:<\/p>\n

He is a wizard, truly the only contemporary guitarist to be mentioned with Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Over the years, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard him in playing situations ranging from the Sonny Rollins Quartet in the gloom of McKie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bar on the Southside of Chicago to the East Room of the White House at Duke Ellington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 70th birthday party. He has never been less than superb.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Discussing his approach to improvisation, Hall told Juan Rodriguez of The Montreal Gazette<\/em> in a 2002 interview, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want a picture in my mind of the way a solo looks as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m playing it. That way I can keep it from becoming boring— to me or the listeners— and avoid clich\u00c3\u00a9s. Here he is not being boring in the mid-1960s playing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sometime Ago,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with Farmer on flugelhorn, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Walter Perkins.<\/p>\n

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