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Pat Martino: Undeniable
by Glenn Astarita
Guitar virtuoso Pat Martino's long awaited album, recorded live at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., serves as a homecoming of sorts, since he began his career within the classic jazz-organ combo format. As a leader, Undeniable is Martino's first album since the 2006 Blue Note Records Wes Montgomery tribute, Remember. Martino's quartet parlays a prominent groove quotient, alternating the dynamic throughout the program. One of many highlights is Martino's “Double Play," a sleek jazz-blues designed with an understated, ...
Continue ReadingPat Martino Quartet: Undeniable
by Chris May
Pat Martino QuartetUndeniableHighNote2011 Hot buttered soul-jazz, Batman, guitarist Pat Martino's Undeniable is the business! Recorded live at Washington's Blues Alley in June 2009, with tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, organist Tony Monaco and drummer Jeff “Tain" Watts, it harks back to Martino's early to mid 1960s roots in combos led by organists Don Patterson, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Richard “Groove" Holmes. The album revisits the codified, fifty year-old style ...
Continue ReadingPat Martino: Philadelphia, PA, November 25, 2011
by Victor L. Schermer
Pat Martino TrioChris' Jazz CaféPhiladelphia, PANovember 25, 2011Sir Edmund Hillary, when asked why he scaled Mt. Everest, replied, “Because it is there." A similar explanation could be given for why guitarist Pat Martino fans go to hear him repeatedly: because he is there--in the Here and Now!, as the title of his 2011 Backbeat Books autobiography, co-written with Bill Milkowski, proclaims. Fans know they are going to get that rarefied mountaintop feeling from his startling ...
Continue ReadingThe Grand Unified Field Of Harmony Part 1
by Catrina Daimon Lee
A Wordy Introduction A “Grand Unification" type of harmonic theory, to be useful, has to be transportable over the entire terrain of authentic musical activity, covering as many stylizations and idioms as in existence. It must be diagnostic, generative and predictive. All harmonic and melodic systems past and present are idiomatically bound to one or a very few stylistic areas, and are proven to be of limited usability, except within their stylistic purview. I discovered ...
Continue ReadingPat Martino: Martino Unstrung - A Brain Mystery
by George Kanzler
Pat Martino Martino Unstrung: A Brain Mystery Sixteen Films 2008 There is active dispute over whether guitarist Pat Martino's playing has the drive and edge it had before his brain surgery in 1980. Tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, one of the many (briefly) talking heads in this documentary, says: “I like his sound better now." The film includes a few astute comments on Martino the musician—the best, surprisingly, coming from Who guitarist Pete Townshend.But ...
Continue ReadingPat Martino Trio at Lakeland Jazz Festival, Kirtland, OH Feb. 28, 2009
by Matt Marshall
Pat Martino Trio 37th Annual Lakeland Jazz Festival Lakeland Community College Kirtland, Ohio February 28, 2009
Representing the “Present" in the 37th Annual Lakeland Jazz Festival's Legends of Jazz Past-Present-Future program, guitarist Pat Martino turned in two blistering sets with his organ trio, February 28 at Lakeland Community College. Backed by the athletically aggressive work of Hammond B-3 player Tony Monaco and drummer Louis Tsamous, Martino ran through the quick, fluid, ...
Continue ReadingPaul Broks: The Neuropsychology of Pat Martino
by Victor L. Schermer
Paul Broks is a prominent British neuropsychologist who is featured in the documentary film, Martino Unstrung, where he conducts a real-life study of guitarist Pat Martino's famed memory loss and recovery.Broks conceived the movie with director Ian Knox, and they completed the film with the help of a grant from the Wellcome Trust. In the film, Broks uses psychological testing, an updated MRI scan of Martino's brain, and other data, to arrive at tentative conclusions about the guitarist's ...
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