Heartcore

The last couple days I've spent some time with Kurt Rosenwinkel's Heartcore.  I have now realized that I have no choice but to make this statement:  Kurt's solo on 'Blue Line' is the single most important recorded guitar solo of the last five years.  Not only is it a masterpiece of melodic and harmonic control, but it serves as a window into the future of jazz guitar.  That is how many young guitarists will play, guaranteed.  I also found out that Kurt plays all the bass and drums on the record.  Very impressive pocket playing, and only a couple of times(the last track, for example) it becomes clear that the job should have been given to professionals and not been over dubbed.  Kurt also makes some interesting comparisons between the harmony that occurs in hip hop to that of schoenberg. This is an interesting quote from the vervemusicgroup.com page:

It is in this sense that Heartcore draws from hip-hop, where powerful beats are so often deliberately countered by bubbling, mysterious loops and tracks. In fact, says Rosenwinkel, it is in hip-hop that he finds some of the most sophisticated harmonies around. “A lot of the harmonic moments in hip-hop remind me of what I hear in, say, Schoenberg’s music,” he says. “He’ll create a chord that is very much dependent on the dynamics of the performance - the strings are mezzo piano, the oboe is mezzo forte, and the piccolos are piano piano. Together they produce a harmony that might not work in jazz theory, but works perfectly in reality. You hear the same things in a hip-hop mix. It’s all in the ear – something works because it sounds like it works,” he continues. “Those kind of lessons are very important for the jazz musician. It’s a great antidote for the pedagogical, theoretical school of jazz.”

Amen.