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Reviews about "Patterns"
Echoes of Metheny, Stern, and Breau (among others) surface in Hertzog’s playing, but his dazzlingly adventurous approach puts him in a jazz league all his own. What a gifted guitarist, and at 22, he’s just getting started! Buckyball.
Art Thompson Guitar Player Magazine
Excellent jazz and fusion album from guitarist Hertzog whose technique rivals that of Allan Holdsworth without in any sense being a Holdsworth clone. This is creativity set loose and reveled in! A young player who obviously brings influences to the sound of a jazz guitar trio other than the usual jazz players and fusion icons. There is something here that hasn't been heard before! Of course, it is grounded well enough in jazz tradition that listeners who wish to approach his work as "jazz" will be satisfied to have another CD from a fine player to add to their collections, whereas people looking for a new take on the jazz tradition will also find a lot to love on "Patterns". Hertzog plays confident, even blistering solos without loosing sight of the tune and structure while throwing in enough left turns to keep us surprised and smiling! A fine sophomore release from a new force in the world of jazz. Adding Hertzog's name to the list of jazz fusion innovators like Metheny, Holdsworth, McLaughlin and Ray Russell might be a little premature but if that is going out on a limb then I'd confidently sit on that branch to watch the sunrise! Certainly a must-buy for fans of great fusion and jazz guitar! ZNR.com
Jake Hertzog: Patterns (Buckyball br022, www.buckyballmusic.com) Young electric guitarist Jake Hertzog just released this second trio date featuring the same stellar accompaniment by bassist Harvie S [Swartz] and drummer Victor Jones as on last year'sChromatosphere (That's Out Records, TO1, www.cdbaby.com). Hertzog, still in his early 20s, has played pop with the Naked Brothers Band (with Nat and Alex Wolff, sons of jazz pianist Michael Wolff), and is the youngest winner (at age 20) of the Montreux Jazz Festival's Jazz Guitar Competition's Grand Prize (in 6). Hertzog plays in a variety of styles onPatterns, ranging from the crunchy, edgy swing of the opening "McJazz" to the classic, straightforward rendition of "Georgia on My Mind." Eight of the 11 songs are originals, including the appropriately titled "Wistfully," the off-kilter blues of "Not Blues" and the melodic "Her," which evokes tropical images. In short, Hertzog is an up-and-coming guitarist to watch.
Martin Z. Kasdan Jr. Louisville Music News
Jazz guitarist Jake Hertzog has once again teamed up with producer Joshua Paula Thompson and his dynamic duo of a rhythm section starring bassist Harvie S and drummer Victor Jones to release Patterns, an album filled with wildly eccentric technical playing highs, memorable melodies, and quaint experimentalism.
Following the lead of his preceding album, Chromatosphere (2009), Patterns leads with its most energy-driven track, “McJazz.” This rock-fueled, jazz-spiked listening adventure displays Jake’s awesome technical abilities and a tight rapport with the rhythm section. You definitely can’t help but go on. However, like Chromatosphere, the opening track is really nothing like the rest of the album. On the second track, “Whistfully,” the album takes on a different persona altogether, which introduces you more to the vein of the rest of the album’s recurring themes, notably a plentiful use of delay and guitar layering.
Track three, “Joining Hands,” is Jake’s first epic. The song is written like a story, taking you from introduction, a gradual build, and giant climax, all resolving into a satisfying conclusion. There’s a lot going on and it all works together quite well. Part of what makes this track so successful is Jake utilizing the studio as a musical weapon to create more sonic textures in which to express his music. What particularly stands out is the acoustic guitar. This really gives the different elements of the song a more connective sound as it adds a more rhythmic element than the electric, plus an expanded tonality with bigger chords to support the layers of overdubs.
There’s one track on this album that’s just Jake and it’s one of the most covered jazz standards of all time: “Georgia On My Mind.” It’s reminiscent of something Jimi Hendrix might have done on a solo cover of a jazz standard. Interestingly, though, some of the more bluesy fills have a Stevie Ray Vaughn vibe to them. The playing here is more laid back and pretty than a lot of what we’re used to hearing from Jake. Plus, being in a key that allows for open strings really adds to this thoughtful interpretation of a familiar song.
As always, Jake’s guitar playing is technically impressive. He has a very dissonant soloing style that’s heavy with well-practiced arpeggios and some intermittent bluesy digressions. It can get excessively notey, though. Some of the guitar solos go off on tangents that gush technique but seemingly lack purpose. This leads to a lot of disconnect from the rhythm section, who are remarkably solid and concrete, but gives the impression that they’re not always on the same page as Jake, who expresses himself more abstractly. On “What’s New,” the rhythm section just fades out and we’re left with another two and a half minutes of aimless experimenting with the delay pedal that’s just a lot of noodling, finishing up with a cliché rhythm section hit and an improvisational fade out.
One thing that could have been improved on this album was the mixing. There are a lot of great ideas in the overdubs but they’re often too low in the mix and they’re not really expressed at their maximum efficiency. Also, throughout a lot of the album, the bass seemed to have either been leveled too low or lacked clarity.
This is one of those albums that definitely need a few listens to warm up to. There isn’t anything on this album that hasn’t been experimented with before in other genres of music but it does serve as a potential inspiration for other players who are predominantly jazz-oriented to experiment more with sonic texturing and utilization of the entire studio and all its potential, something that’s always been severely lacking in jazz music. As a player, Jake is very solid and gifted; as a songwriter, there is still a bit of maturing that needs to be done but there is definitely no lack of potential or will to experiment. Patterns is another positive step in revealing Jake Hertzog’s potential to become a force to be reckoned with.
Marcus Jesberg thejazzpolice.com
I reviewed a fantastic CD from Jake in issue # 93... this one is even better (& that's hard to believe, because the first one was miles above all the other jazz guitarists)... the opener, "Mcjazz", is killer! Pumping & full of life-giving energy, it will propel you through the outer edges of the galaxy at near light-speed... Jake's guitar leads the exploration, of course! You'll fall in love with "Joining Hands" from the opening bar... mighty mellow strings here, with solid bass lines and a pattern that will stick in your ears (& your head) for years to come. It was track #5, though, "Not Blues", that gets my pick as favorite... particularly poignant snatches of what it's "not" slide in & around your ears, but the jazz influence is heavy & totally original! His pace here & throughout the album, is totally gentle, yet filled with groove! I'm once again highly impressed - and knowing I have an album my ears will listen to over & over & over again, as will yours (unless you're totally a traditionalist, with no sense of adventure in your ears). I give this one a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, as well as my "PICK" of the issue for "best guitar jazz". "EQ" (energy quotient) rating is a smashing 4.98. Rotcod Zzaj improvijazznation
It’s almost safe to say that this sounds like nothing you’ve heard before. To say that Hertzog is a shredder that can’t be stopped is just to get the conversation started. Playing somewhere between jazz and rock, this is what “Metal Machine Music” might have sounded like if Lou Reed had intended it to be something more than a pile of shit to get him out of his contract. Wanna hear young Al DiMeola on speed? What else can I say? This is the guitar record you play when you absolutely, positively need to have you mind melted. Yngwie Malmsteen and Charlie Christian rolled into one, all this kid has to do is not run so fast that he trips over himself and the world will be his oyster. Hot stuff for shredder ears.
Chriss Spector Midwest Records
Exerpts from Guitar Magazine 2009 interview
Describe how you might approach re-harmonizing a jazz standard.
At this point, I’m into this interval thing using two of my fingers, as I mentioned when discussing my right-hand technique. Rather than harmonizing a melody in the traditional way using the changes, I look for different interval combinations that will flow on top of the bass line. For example, I’ll use sixths and sevenths and voices based on them as opposed to the usual thirds and fourths. Those wider intervals have a different sound that obscures the harmony slightly, which I think is more interesting than just playing Bbmaj7, Ebmaj7, D7#5, because people have already heard that kind of harmony many times before. I’ll also choose intervals based on how dissonant or consonant I want the harmony for particular notes to be. For example, minor seconds, minor sevenths, and minor ninths will produce more dissonance, whereas fourths and fifths will produce a more consonant sound without giving away the structure of the chord, which is going to be in the thirds most of the time. Chord melody arrangements are beautiful, but I’m more interested in counterpoint or single lines or weird interval combinations that are going to produce sounds that aren’t expected. It sounds like dissonance is a big part of your harmonic concept. Dissonance is my entire harmonic concept! At least in the sense that instead of always approaching harmony in a chord/scale or linear way—which I also love and continue to practice—I prefer to think in terms of consonant and dissonant moments. So, if there is a Gmin7b5 chord, instead of thinking about the scales that’ll work with it, or non-harmonic triads or whatever, I think about which notes, intervals, and combinationsare going to be dissonant and which are going to be consonant. And when I have that as a reference point, I can say that within the context of a particular moment in the music, I want the harmony to be more on one side or the other. And that concept can also be applied to melody, for motif development or repetition of phrases, because I think they too have dissonances or consonances relative to whatever else is going on. Using dissonance as a basis for the conception of a solo or an entire piece is where I’m at right now.
What is the first thing you need to know when approaching jazz improvisation?
The first thing is to be able to identify parts of the song—form and changes and rhythmic ideas—from an overall perspective, so you have a mental picture of the framework you are going to be improvising within. Joe Lovano said something great to me once, which was, “If the song was different you would still have played the same solo.” That was a good lesson for me, because you have to be true to the song, especially if you are playing jazz. A lot of musicians ask how a song can service their improvisation, but the question should be how their improvisation can service the song. Know the song as if you wrote it. Everything after that point is style and language. How do you feel about smooth jazz? Just like with any kind of music, sometimes it is really great and sometimes it can be done badly. What I do like about it is that it allows people to sing along with jazz in a way that they probably haven’t been able to do since Cole Porter or George Gershwin, and I wish there were more jazz musicians who were writing tunes that people could dance to or sing along with or understand in an emotional way so that they weren’t required to have a music degree in order to enjoy them. So, for whatever else smooth jazz musicians sacrifice to get there, they at least bring that back.
What does it mean to be a jazz guitarist in 2009?
Jazz is all about searching for new musical concepts that haven’t been explored yet. That’s what the creators of the style were all about in their time, and I feel that, in our time, we should carry forward the same spirit
without playing the same notes. So, while I started by learning what had already been done, it was more important for me to push for something new than to study with the intention of sounding like somebody else or a player from some other era. Of course, traditionalists and innovators support each other, because the traditional forms provide the context for the newer forms. It’s just like with classical music, Mozart was great, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play Bach anymore.
Bios:
Harvie S.
The legendary Harvie S has performed and recorded with masters in music including Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Jim Hall, Michael Brecker, Gil Evans, Mike Stern, Arturo O'Farrill, Lee Konitz, James Moody, Houston Person, Pat Metheny, Art Farmer, Toots Thielemans, Tommy Flanagan, Roland Hanna, Dr. Billy Taylor, Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Chick Corea, Erik Friedlander, Yusef Lateef, Danilo Perez, Paquito D'Rivera, Grover Washington Jr. and Pat Martino.
Victor Jones
Internationally recognized for his consistent, subtle and stylish drumming on stage and in the studio, Victor Jones is known as an innovator who is not afraid to bring together different styles and sounds. He has played on hundreds of recordings, played hundreds of live concerts and performed in clubs everywhere on this planet, often as a backing musician for a variety of well-known artists.
For the past five years Victor has been recording and performing with his own group, Culture-Versy, effortlessly blending Hip Hop, Urban Soul, Modern Jazz and Funk. Victor Jones is a leader that understands and plays with every facet of great American Music and popular art forms.
Press & Quotes:
“Very impressive for such a young man!”
John McLaughin
“…the blazing wunderkind”
Guitar Player Magazine
“Brilliant…Hertzog is a tremendous guitar talent with a developing voice sure to garner widespread recognition”
All About Jazz
“Advanced, moving, and elegant.”
Jazz Times
“Jake Hertzog is a risk-taker and a mind-blowing guitarist. There is nothing else like it.”
Jazz Review.Com
“A bright young player who will quite possibly end up being one of the leaders in modern jazz guitar playing.”
Richard Lemke, Jazz Police.com
“Jake Hertzog is a jazz guitarist of and for the 21st century.”
Jack Kleinsinger, producer of “Highlights in Jazz” NYC
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