John Patitucci is one of the leading jazz bassists in the world. His astonishing versatility across both the six-string electric bass and the upright acoustic bass is probably unmatched, to the point of almost giving him a double identity.
This is brilliantly reflected in the structure and ordering of his recently released new album, Spirit Fall (Edition), in a trio with Chris Potter and Brian Blade.
Patitucci has a particular affection for the history of the saxophone-bass-drums trio. He says that making the album Remembrance with Joe Lovano and Brian Blade in 2007 led him to think a lot about playing in trios, and to have a taste for more: “I started realising that trio was the perfect medium and challenge for me as a bass player and a composer. I was in love with all the history of it, from Sonny Rollins onwards.”
Patitucci also feels blessed to have a personal and direct link to one of the most memorable moments in the canon of such trios when, in the context of the classic John Coltrane Quartet, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison would “break loose”, piano-less, affording the saxophonist a highly individual sense of freedom. In his early days as a professional, Patitucci played with Joe Farrell, who also worked with Jones and Garrison. “I was enamoured with that,” the bassist reflects.
Spirit Fall also has a very neat twist in its programming: having settled the listener into that world in the first three tracks, the album symmetrically returns there for the final three tracks. The mood shifts completely, and opens new doors with the quietly reflective track ‘Thoughts and Dreams’.
In the central four tracks where Patitucci switches to the six-string electric bass, with all its colourful and descriptive harmonic possibilities, we enter a different world of what Patitucci calls “orchestrational possibilities”. When he talks about this sound world, he colours it with references to some greats of the jazz guitar whose work he has absorbed deeply. He says: “If anybody really listens carefully, they can see that most of my articulation on the electric bass comes from Wes Montgomery.” He also mentions some other surprising names: George Van Eps and Lenny Breau. “People call that traditional style based playing. Yes, it’s rooted in history, but it’s absolutely essential.”
One of the tracks in the central section of four is the title track Spirit Fall. The bassist explained that the title references the kind of quasi-religious experience which happened when, for more than two decades, he was a member of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, widely regarded throughout its existence as the leading jazz group in the world, with its astonishing sense of freedom to go anywhere at any moment, or to suddenly pick up any of their previous repertoire: “Any one of us could cue any of the pieces in any part of the piece… just grab it and then start playing.”
Patitucci explained to me that a “spirit fall”, the feeling that things had changed spiritually in the room, was something he felt many times when on stage during the years with Wayne Shorter. “I felt that all of a sudden we were doing things together that were unexplainable.”
That thought makes him ever more convinced that the best things come not from individualism but rather from the astonishing things that can happen when “people are really knitted together.” There is also a quasi-religious sense that when something really extraordinary happens, there is surely the influence of the divine. He sums up those two feelings neatly: “I really feel like you have to be a little arrogant to think that you did that by yourself, right?”
When the bassist looks back at that chapter which has now closed, there is a straightforwardness and a humility about how he sees it now. He thinks straight back to the early days of the group and remembers that the blueprint which inspired them was the quintet of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis. “Nothing meant more to me than when Herbie and Ron started being extremely encouraging and complimentary before we had really got going. They were the people who made it possible for us even to imagine what we wound up doing with Wayne.”
I asked how he first got to work with Chris Potter. The saxophonist was originally recommended to him by no less a figure than Michael Brecker, and Patitucci still remembers being bowled over by Potter’s versatility at a very young age and that he always felt an affinity for his playing. With Brian Blade, the bassist originally became aware of his playing through his work with the original Joshua Redman Quartet, and remembers feeling a strong imperative to work together.
These days, all three members of this trio know each other well from “decades of knowing each other and playing in various combinations,” Patitucci enthuses. “I know who I’m writing for. I know their voices, they are in my head.”
As a result of that deep familiarity, the album was recorded in just one day. And when, in the final track – the calypso ‘Sonrisa’ – Potter quotes the Cole Porter song ‘It’s All Right With Me’, it conveys that sense of a job very well done.
Spirit Fall is indeed an album with an addictively easeful and persuasive flow, but which also repays repeated and close listening. It is an important addition to Patitucci’s discography as leader.
