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Guitarist John Jorgenson brings Gypsy jazz to Payomet on Saturday. |
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Picking strings for a romantic swing
By Melora B. North
Banner Staff
Back in the ’30s, French Sinto Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt made music that would change the course of history. Brought up in Gypsy encampments around Paris, he intertwined the cultures of his environment to create a musical genre reminiscent of a dance on the strings with heated abandon.
The sounds are light and frothy, deep and throaty, a contradiction that perfectly melds together to move the spirit and ignite a passion for a romp on the guitar a la Roma music. It is the flight of Reinhardt’s pick that has captured the heart of guitarist John Jorgenson, who will be performing a concert of American Gypsy jazz with his quintet at the Payomet Performing Arts Center, Highlands Center, Truro, for Gypsy Weekend.
The concert is at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 28. Admission is $20-$25. Call (508) 487-5400 for tickets.
A native of Southern California, Jorgenson got his degree in woodwinds from University of Redlands, a liberal arts college in his hometown which he says was small, “only about 35,000 people, a good place to grow up.”
It was as a child that he learned to play piano and dabbled in clarinet, but it was at age 12 that he got his first guitar, and that was just the beginning. Today Jorgenson says he can play several instruments, but the public will get to see him shine on the clarinet and guitar this time around.
“I can play about 10 instruments, though my levels of proficiency differ,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t have the sports gene. When the other kids were out playing sports I guess I was practicing. I used to ski but that ended when I broke my shoulder three weeks before my first tour with Elton John. We had to cut a guitar part.” But that didn’t end things for Jorgenson with the famed singer-pianist; it was actually the start of something quite good.
“I was originally signed up to tour with Elton John for 18 months. It turned out to be six years,” says Jorgenson. “He first heard me when I was playing with the Desert Rose Band, a band I co-founded with Chris Hillman from the Byrds. Six years later he asked me to tour with him. He’s fantastic, funny, very smart and very respectful of other musicians. It was a good job.” And it opened a lot of doors.
Through John, Jorgenson got to meet the late opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.
“They were doing a duet,” says Jorgenson. “It was the coolest thing being backstage in Italy when he came backstage and all of a sudden you heard this voice. Elton was teaching him a song!”
Over the course of his career, Jorgenson has performed with other notables such as K.D. Lang, Roy Orbison, Barbra Streisand, Bonnie Raitt, Earl Scruggs and Benny Goodman, an eclectic assortment of talent to be sure. He has collaborated with Billy Joel and Sting, and three times he has won the American Country Music award for Guitarist of the Year. He even has a Grammy with Peter Frampton. But it is his affinity for Reinhardt that seems to keep coming to the forefront.
“Django is the godfather of my style,” says Jorgenson, who was asked to re-create Reinhardt’s music for film. He did the music for “Gattica” and “Head in the Clouds.” In fact, he played Reinhardt in “Clouds,” which starred Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz.
“They asked me to re-create a couple of pieces from an old score,” says Jorgenson. “The director wanted to show the guitarist on stage. They cut my hair and dyed it black. I had a mustache and they did make-up on my hands to make them look burned and scarred.” (At age 18 Reinhardt was rescued from a terrible fire that ravaged the caravan he was living in at the time with his first wife. He would later learn to play guitar with just two fingers despite the doctor’s declaration that he would never play again.) “I played with my two fingers. The film is a period piece, great fun. I did my best.” And his best was convincing.
“I’m Scandinavian, Scotch and Irish,” says the blonde with a laugh. “They did such a good job on the make-up, my wife Dixie [Gamble] didn’t even recognize me.”
A resident now of Nashville, Tenn., Jorgenson and his wife have lived down there for eight years. Prior to that the couple lived in California for eight years.
“When I was with Desert Rose we were doing country and going to Tennessee a lot — it was the mid- to late ’80s,” says Jorgenson. “It was OK to work in Nashville, but I thought I’d never live there. However, it’s where all the great country writers are.”
Nashville may be home now, but the road is always beckoning Jorgenson, sometimes on nostalgic journeys.
“We’re playing my hometown today,” says Jorgenson, who was at the airport Saturday waiting to board the plane for California the day we spoke. “It will be good to see my family and friends.”
When the quintet comes to town they will be doing so on the return leg from a gig at the Montreal Jazz Festival.
“We’re driving down from Montreal,” says Jorgenson. “We’ll leave in the morning. You get to see a lot of cool places but not for very long. I’m afraid we won’t get to see much of Truro. It’s hard to stay somewhere for long with a five-piece band. Some people want to be with their families, and the expense — it’s just hard. We’ll probably get to see enough and want to come back.”
For the concert Jorgenson and his quintet will be playing several selections from their new CD, “Ultraspontane,” along with the last one, “Franco American Swing.” They will also be performing classic swing that incorporates Romanian, flamenco and Latin sounds.
“It will be an energetic and romantic concert,” promises Jorgenson.
Kevin Rice, artistic director at Payomet, seconds that statement when he says, “It will be pretty happening, pretty alive. It should be jumpin’ and pumpin’.”
Melora B. North can be reached at mnorth@provincetownbanner.com
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Jun 26th, 2008