Gitbox jazz9/3/2023 ![]() Pre-order here and visit Michael Gregory Jackson on Bandcamp. “Michael Gregory Jackson has always cut a singular musical path on his journey through many genres that have been his wheelhouse, through many schools of jazz, alternative rock and even Avant folk. This collection of solo electric guitar may be Michael’s most personal musical exploration yet.” “Michael’s powerful and melodic & rhythmic sensibilities imbues all these pieces with tactile energy,” says guitar great Vernon Reid. Matt Mattox gave a four week workshop in his Freestyle Jazz Dance at the Univ of California at Los Angeles, invited by Gilberte Meunier, in July 1986. Ornette Coleman is the dedicatee on “JcakJcak (for Ornette)”, a rapid fire, sometimes dissonant rollercoaster of melody first heard on his “Spirit Single Strata” trio album with drummer Kenward Dennard and bassist Keith Witty, and his Clarity Quartet collection, “After Before.” The same two albums included “Meditation in E (For Karen),” another airy ballad that showcases Jackson’s unique harmonic sense and bluesy sheets of sound soloing. This version has a new depth, one that only time and his mastery of the tonality of the electric SG can add. Another reinvented classic, “Theme X (For Geri Allen),” is a tribute to the late composer and keyboard master, an associate from his early days in New Haven and New York in the 1970s, a composition first heard on Jackson’s 2019 disc, WHENUFINDITUWILLKNOW, with his Clarity Quartet. With “Preleuoionti,” Jackson reprises the acoustic guitar showpiece from his 1976 debut disc recorded as a 23-year-old, Clarity, Circle, Triangle, Square. Both, according to the artist “are inspired by the struggle and defiant spirit of my ancestors, and artistic predecessors in all idioms, and all freedom fighters in the fight for the liberation of all oppressed peoples.” On another recent original, “Hymn for My People,” Jackson recites a funerial slow, ultra-mournful tone poem – largely in single note lines, while “Perseverance” is a driving anthem, as unrelenting as its title. On “Sweet Rain Blues,” Jackson revs up a gut bucket blues, one that Vernon Reed characterizes as “simultaneously rural, urban, then veers off into considerations of what’s really happening when the sun is shining although it’s raining in your heart”, while on “Wish” Jackson’s blues has a distinct sarod-like tonality. ![]() Through my guitars, I discovered discipline, self-awareness and inspiration, my git boxes opened a conduit, a dive in deep access and connection to the blues-ness in me.”Įlectric Git Box opens with a recent original, “Karen (Sweet Angel)”, an evocative ballad dedicated to his lady love, one which contrasts wide open chording and deep harmony with quicksilver melodies and fills. He goes on to explain, “My guitars, which I’ve called ‘git boxes’ since my teens, have always been my companions and a sanctuary to me, vehicles to help me through the angst of my younger life, and now. I was feeling angry, disconnected and erased thus, I recorded this music with some edges, some distortion, to communicate the multifaceted well of emotions that birthed this performance.” This project was borne of an angst-full period for me, I was feeling inundated with tragedies, the isolation of Covid lockdowns, re-occurring police and vigilante killings of Black people, and living with the omnipresent reality of systemic racism. Jackson sums up his approach perfectly in the final cut: prodigious technique + a penchant for wistful tuneage = “The Science of Beauty.Jackson says of Electric Git Box, “The nature of beauty is at the core of my being and my music, alongside aggression, passion, fire, and powerful feelings of personal independence and creative freedom. On “Meditation in E,” “The Rainy Days” and “Prelueoionti,” he lets his accessible writing speak for itself through the medium of his bluesy playing. Eschewing loops and overdubs, he simply plays his melodies, adding fills and chordal asides where appropriate. Jackson revisits his catalog by stripping everything down to the musical essence of what he does: the electric guitar. ![]() The solo guitar extravaganza Electric Git Box draws on songs from throughout his career, from his 1976 debut Clarity, Circle, Triangle, Square to 2019’s WHENUFINDITUWILLKNOW. guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson, whose career reaches back to the free jazz renaissance of the seventies and includes as much R&B and funk as skronk, didn’t have to wait to follow up last year’s brilliant Frequency Equilibrium Koan. GitBox is a cross platform tool to host personal private git repositories inside Dropbox folders that get automatically synchronized between operating systems, machines and backed up on the internet. One of the advantages of not being in the spotlight, especially in the digital age, is the ability to shift gears as you please, create the art you feel like in the moment, and get it out to the world without corporate gatekeepers.
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