Henceforth

ジェイソン・パーマー、ドニー・マッキャスリンらと共演経験を持つギタリスト、マックス・ライトの初リーダー作
先進的で巧みなジャズギターテクとクラシカルな音楽性を組み合わせたハイセンスな作品
ワシントンDC出身ニューヨーク在住のギタリスト、マックス・ライトがSteepleChaseからキャリア初のリーダーアルバムをリリース。
マックス・ライトはワシントンDCの出身で、現在はニューヨークを拠点に活動しているジャズギタリスト。ニューイングランド音楽院で学士号を取得し、ウォーリーズ ジャズカフェでレジェンド"ジェイソン・パーマー"と共演した。クイーンズ大学のアーロン・コープランド音楽学校で修士号を取得し、2013年から2016年までワシントンDC ジャズ・アカデミー・オブ・ミュージックの講師を務め、ニューヨーク市およびオンラインで定期的にプライベート・レッスンも行っている。2019年ハービー・ハンコック・インスティテュート・オブ・ジャズ国際ギター・コンクールの審査で準優勝するなど、ニューヨークのジャズ・シーンで急速に地位を確立している。
トリオとしてリリースした前作『HERPLUSME』に引き続き、彼の持ち味でもある、音数の多いギターリフを楽曲の随所に施しており、リスナーとしても非常に聴き応えを感じる作品に仕上がっている。

There might not be a more evocatively named improviser than guitarist Max Light, whose 2023 album Henceforth displays his luminous, sun-dappled style of post-bop jazz. The second-place finisher of the 2019 Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Guitar Competition, Light has distinguished himself on the jazz scene, playing with other luminaries like bassist Kaisa Maensivu, trumpeter Jason Palmer, and tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger. In fact, with Preminger he has recorded several small group dates, like 2020s Contempt as well as their lyrical 2022 duo collaboration, Songs We Love. An exploratory soloist whose husky tone and architectural lines recall Sonny Rollins, Preminger once again joins Light here, along with bassist Kim Cass and drummer Dan Weiss. With his crisp guitar attack and penchant for contrasting long, note-heavy lines with shorter, more frenetic motifs, Lights playing brings to mind legendary players like Pat Martino as well as contemporaries like Kurt Rosenwinkel. While Preminger tends to play the melody on a song, Light and even bassist Cass play as much melodic material here. Often, as on the woozy title track and the shimmering "If You Could, Would You," they share the melody, intertwining their lines with a weavers delicacy. Other times, they take turns starting off a song unaccompanied, as on "Subjective Object," where Cass plays a mutative ostinato bass line tinged with Middle Eastern accents. Theres a low-key conceptualism to some of Lights songs, like the opening "Barney & Sid," which is dedicated to his cats. He kicks it off with a sparkling guitar flourish that has the wild-eyed energy of a cat playing with a string and nicely sets up the songs tail-twitching groove and off-kilter harmonies. Other conceptual ideas drive "Luftrauser," a hard-swinging number whose springy, fractalized melody sounds improbably like if Ornette Coleman composed a video game soundtrack. Elsewhere, they sink into "Animals," a smoldering, languorously played ballad in the Billy Strayhorn-Charles Mingus tradition, and display a knack for swaggering group interplay on the wryly titled "High or Booze." Theres also a deceptive complexity to much of Lights work, as on "Half Marathon," where the relaxed, dancerly melody might just slip by you before you realize its a bold contrafact of John Coltranes "26-2" written in an ambitious 13/4 time signature. Its that kind of heady yet always relaxed energy that Light and his band excel at throughout Henceforth. ~ Matt Collar