His new album is called Speak to Me, a perfect title for a musician who happily lets others speak in this overly talkative world and only expresses himself with tact. Sideman of vibraphonist Gary Burton and, more recently, of saxophonist and flautist Charles Lloyd, member of the New Masada Quartet revived by John Zorn, American guitarist Julian Lage has had a successful career as a leader since 2009 which led to his signing in 2021 with Blue Note. According to the slogan of the prestigious house, “the best of jazz since 1939”.
A term which, for Lage, embraces widely. Speak to Me makes the multiple facets of his art heard, whether acoustic or electric, solo or within the trio he formed with double bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Dave King, reinforced on the occasion of a prepared piano , a clarinet or a saxophone. And a wide variety of genres, blues (Northern Shuffle), people California (Omission), romance (Serenade) or Latin desires (Speak to Me). The guitar can be Spanish when the shadow of Andrés Segovia hovers (Myself Around You), or gypsy when it is that of Django (Two and One).
A festival of possibilities which never turns into a demonstration because Julian Lage puts all his virtuosity at the service of the melody (the sublime Hymnal et Tiburon) and lyrical sensitivity. With exclusively originals, the instrumentalist asserts himself as a leading composer in a register that could be described as “songs without words”, to use the expression chosen by Felix Mendelssohn with his piano pieces from the 1830s-1840s.
Improvise on speeches
“I do without words because I have notes, rhythms and pitches, observe Julian Lage. But I like structures for telling stories. Think in terms of narrative and start from an architecture that evolves. My guitarist father told me that ideally you shouldn’t feel the same way at the beginning and end of a song. Songs can be great vehicles for expression, but they can also be extremely limiting, especially when the lyrics are repeated. »
The musician, who was able to improvise by practicing speeches by the writer James Baldwin (1924-1987), “fascinated by the tempo of the phrase, its swing and its flow”must still resort to the lexicon to baptize its instrumentals: “I have a long list of titles, thousands. Every time I hear a phrase or word that I like, I write it down and can use it when the music has been recorded. The goal is not to summarize the content but to leave ambiguity so that the listener can project themselves. »
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