Guest Book

Just a brief report as to yesterday's semifinal at the Thelonius Monk Int'l Jazz Guitar Competition. Miss Enigmajean and I sat next to last row, dead center (Baird Aud.- @ the Mus. of Natural History - 500 seats, all good) when four rows down sits L-R: Bill Frissell*, Pat Martino, Russel Malone,Stanley Jordan, Earl Klugh, and John Pizzarelli. That sight was worth the trip. For the next three plus hours we were treated to 10 young players who were each great in their own way. I wouldn't have wanted to be a judge - I agreed strongly with one of the finalists, the other two I would have chosen others, but that was more personal style than their playing. The judges seemed to be a bit more into the ECM style, i would have chosen a couple of guys who had more wes/blues in their playing. The backup band for the competitors was bill james piano ("taxi" theme), chris potter sax, terri lynne carrington drums, and john genus (sat night live band) bass. Intro given by theonius monk jr. and hosted by billy dee williams. Tonight we'll be attending the finals at the Kennedy Center, where the three finalists (Lage Lund, Norway - i'll be rooting for him, but the other are great as well, David Mooney, Louisiana, USA, and Miles Okazaki, Washington, USA., will perform, followed by a performance by the composition winner Junko Moriya - she's from japan, then the judges will perform backed byan all-star band led by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. . Finally an award will be presented to George Benson. we talk a lot here about who can play guitar, who's better than who, etc., but i'll just say jazz is america's classical music and these cats straight bring it. i feel very lucky to able to absorb this stuff. *ABB connection: derek trucks band has a song called "frissell"