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John
Patitucci
At the Crossroads of Melody,
Rhythm and Harmony
By Dan Ouellette
The word “prolific” leaps to mind when considering John
Patitucci’s recent jazz contributions, whether he’s serving as a
support-team member for a range of musicians or leading his
own projects. Accomplished on the double bass as well as the six-string
electric, no bass player has been more in demand of late. In the past year
alone, Patitucci went high-flying on the road with Wayne Shorter as the
anchor and co-rudder of the saxophonist’s otherworldly quartet, imaginatively
filled the bass chair in Roy Haynes’ sparkplug trio and performed
dynamic double-duty with Joe Lovano at the Monterey Jazz Festival on
the saxophonist’s gig with Hank Jones and his trio project featuring
Brian Blade.
On this year’s recording front, Patitucci co-starred with old friend
Jack DeJohnette on the drummer’s luminous Music We Are trio CD (also
with Danilo Pérez) and buoyed Edward Simon’s Poesia CD (another
triad outing with Blade). In addition, Patitucci played the leader card for
the first time since 2006’s Line By Line, delivering the outstanding CD
Remembrance, a collection of 11 originals paying creative tribute to jazz
legends in yet another trio setting (Lovano and Blade, as well as a few
guests augmenting the affair).
At a North Sea Jazz Festival panel discussion with Patitucci in July, he
talked about how his career as a sideman has impacted his role as a leader,
which officially launched while he was with Chick Corea. “You learn
from people you work with,” he said. “Over the years I’ve had the privilege
to apprentice with a lot of older musicians, masters like Chick and
Wayne. From their example, they taught me to choose guys who are
going in a direction and give them space to become a grander version of
who they already are versus hiring a musician and trying to change them.
That kind of micromanaging never works. I’m a composer. I’ve been
writing music since I was 12. When I look for musicians to work with, I
want to find people who will have fun putting their own stamp on my
music.”
Case in point: Patitucci’s all-star trio, whose first-take chemistry captured
on Remembrance translated brilliantly into a live setting at Dizzy’s
Jazz Club in New York this summer. You could hear the shouting
onstage—gleeful, provocative, even flabbergasted in the wake of extemporaneous
surprise—as Patitucci piloted his fellow top-flight improvisers,
focusing point-blank on performing con brio.
While Lovano reserved his expressions of exhilaration to his saxophone
gusts (no hollers, just arched eyebrows as he moved to the side of
the stage to survey the rhythm-team interaction), both Patitucci and Blade
yelped at various junctures of the full-steam-ahead set. “Believe me, it’s
not contrived when we start yelling,” said Patitucci, who also smiled,
laughed and danced his way in step through the set. “We’re not thinking
about anything when we play together. We just react. It’s an act of throwing
something out there and seeing what will happen. I get excited when I
wonder what these guys will do with my music. I hand it to them and let
them run with it. As the bandleader, it’s great to be playing with people
who are interested in telling stories to move people, to inspire them.”
He added, in deference to his longstanding sideman relationship with
Shorter (beginning in 1986), “Wayne says that what he does is like making
a movie that you get swept up into. He’s not about, hey, look at me;
look what I can do. He believes that our quartet with Brian and Danilo is
a collective where each person tells stories and moves the music. It’s like
a community, or as Brian calls his band, a fellowship.”
48 DOWNBEAT November 2009