ZohoMusic.com - Latin Jazz With A New York Vibe

Following a succession of five acclaimed cutting edge jazz-rock trio outings with bassist Harvie S. and drummer Victor Jones (including 2013’s Throwback on ZOHO, featuring special guest trumpeter Randy Brecker) guitarist Jake Hertzog decided to scale back and go inward. That radical change in musical direction resulted in 2016’s intimate solo electric guitar album, Well Lit Shadow, followed by 2018’s acoustic duet project with Yishai Fisher, Stringscapes, and 2023’s innovative techno-improv-ambisonic duet with Adam Hogan, A Turn of Events.

After receiving a generous grant from the South Arts Organization, funded by the Doris Duke Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Hertzog opted to dream big. Drawing on his classical and jazz studies, he created a large-scale work for jazz orchestra, guitar, and string quartet along the lines of revered guitar concertos of the past, from Kenny Burrell’s Guitar Forms with the Gil Evans Orchestra (1965) to John McLaughlin’s The Mediterranean concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra (1988) and more recently Bill Frisell’s Orchestras with the 60-piece Brussels Philharmonic (2024).

Hertzog’s Ozark Concerto, which had its world premiere in April 2024 at the UARK Jazz Festival on the Fayetteville campus of the University of Arkansas and was subsequently recorded for this ZOHO release, is coming directly out of that tradition.

A grandiose concerto for electric guitar, with active underscoring for the 23-piece Ozark Jazz Philharmonic conducted by Susumu Watanabe (who also contributed several arrangements), Hertzog’s latest ambitious undertaking finds his considerable chops and creativity spilling over to a much larger canvas than he’s ever worked on before.

“I wanted to make not just a collection of songs that happened to have large ensemble backing, but I wanted to create something that from start to finish followed more of an orchestral or classical philosophy of what a feature for an instrument could be,” he said. “It’s telling the story of an instrument all the way through.”

Hertzog was exposed to the idea of pairing jazz combos with orchestral accompaniment as a graduate student at the Manhattan School of Music. “I had the pleasure of taking some classes there with (pianist-composer-arranger) Jim McNeely, and in those classes, you had to do large orchestra writing. They put their jazz students and their orchestra students together for a few concerts a year to do these large scale works of modern composers, some with 100 or more people. That was my first experience playing with jazz and orchestral instruments together. And as somebody who mainly works just solo and trio, you put that aside and say, ‘Maybe one day.’”

Hertzog’s day finally came after getting that grant last year. “The vision with this project was, ‘How can we create something on a large scale like we did at the Manhattan School of Music with the talent that we have here?’ And so the local performers became a big part of it.”

Divided into seven parts, the Ozark Concerto showcases Hertzog playing his trusty red Artinger electric guitar in the company of full orchestra (“Part I,” “Part III”, “Part V” and “Part VII”), brass instruments (“Part II”), string quartet (“Part IV”) and saxophones (“Part VI”).

Part I opens with a minimalist guitar figure sounding somewhat Philip Glass-ian, though Hertzog admits that it actually came from U2 guitarist The Edge. “I think he’s always been one of the most influential guitar players,” he said. “And while The Edge is not the only one to explore the concept of the guitar being almost like a percussion instrument, he certainly made a career exploring it. For the beginning of this piece I kept coming back to the guitar riff from ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ [from 1987’s The Joshua Tree]. So that opening and that closing are like a little wink toward The Edge.”

Part II opens with a proficient fingerstyle guitar solo, a technique that Hertzog picked up from Mick Goodrick, his guitar teacher at the Berklee College of Music, before the brass enters at the 53 second mark against a mellow mid-tempo swing feel. The horns engage in some active conversation with guitar while Hertzog showcases his impressive command of the fretboard, shifting from daring intervallic leaps to heroic sweep picking along the way.

The dynamic Part III, fueled by Chris Peter’s muscular drumming, is an extravaganza for full orchestra. Hertzog launches into some fusillades against the intricate contrapuntal swirl of strings and woodwinds around him before settling into the engaging melody. Symphonic trombonist Cory Mixdorf and trumpeter Cameron Summers also contribute potent solos here.

Part IV showcases Hertzog on some introspective solo guitar that makes dramatic use of space before he is joined midway through the piece by the string quartet to introduce the poignant melody.

Part V kicks off with a Chick Corea-like solo piano intro by Matt Nelson before the piece settles into a lovely brushes ballad with trombonist Mixdorf carrying the warm, tender melody. The piece gradually builds to a grandiose peak that has Hertzog unleashing some screaming electric guitar licks before it settles back into the mellow theme. Perhaps the most intricate piece of the suite, it highlights Hertzog’s brilliant playing in some highly interactive, contrapuntal terrain.