There's so much string music on the schedule that one weekend can't hold it

By Walter Tunis — Contributing Music Writer

Posted: 8:28am on Feb 2, 2012; Modified: 11:57am on Feb 2, 2012

  • Story Photos

  • THE WEEK THAT WAS

    Stanley Jordan Trio at the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville: With his lean, lanky frame and sporting hair that was straightened and pulled back, Stanley Jordan could have passed for a more casual version of Prince when he strolled onstage before a sold-out crowd.

    To be sure, there is something of the rock star in the guitarist, from the vogue poses he would strike during solos to the general eccentricities of his pioneering "touch-style" instrumentation. But at heart, there were all kinds of inspirations and performance personas at work in this often-dazzling show.

    Although this was designed as a jazz concert, Jordan seldom devoted himself to a single style. Jordan's material, and his playing, revealed shades of R&B, pop, Afro-Cuban music, bop, swing and more. So what did he start with, after a brief solo segment that introduced the harmonic range of his touch-style soloing? How about Debussy? He launched into a playful arrangement of Reverie that swapped the composition's impressionistic foundation for pop-flamenco grooves.

    When it came time to incorporate the more flamboyant extremes of his technique, which had him playing guitar and piano simultaneously, Jordan opted for a version of the Horace Silver classic Song for My Father that played nicely off the rubbery acoustic bass of Paul Keller and the lighter Latin flourishes of drummer Kenwood Dennard. As for Jordan, the left hand played piano while the right maintained guitar, allowing the tune's robust melodic color to bloom.

    But when Jordan applied his technique solely to guitar, where he tapped out multiple melodic lines and even a few bass phrases on the instrument's neck, the stylistic range widened. Late into the performance, an unaccompanied reading of Eleanor Rigby bled into — after a few classical permutations — Stairway to Heaven. Jordan has employed both rock staples for decades as showpieces for his technique. Although a bit flashy and busy in places, the tunes proved arresting.

    The Cannonball Adderly/Joe Zawinul gem Mercy, Mercy, Mercy was served at encore time not as a jazz relic but as a vibrant serving of instrumental soul and swing. Sure, the technique grabbed the spotlight. But Jordan's unwavering sense of soul made the technical trickery seem like child's play.

Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers, Crossroads

7 p.m. Feb. 4 at Meadowgreen Park Music Hall, 303 Bluegrass Lane, Clay City. $15. (606) 663-9008. Kyfriends.com.

'WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour': Janie Fricke with The Roys, Matt Flinner Trio

7 p.m. Feb. 6 at The Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main St. $10. (859) 252-8888. Woodsongs.com.

Usually when there is this much string music available in a single weekend, you're sitting in the summer shade during bluegrass festival season.

Yet we have barely passed Groundhog Day, and we have at our finger-picking tips a wealth of world-class bluegrass during the next few days.

We start in Clay City on Saturday, with the annual wintertime visit by Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers at the ultra-inviting Meadowgreen Park Music Hall.

Sparks is one of the great bluegrass traditionalists. He has been a journeyman of the music for nearly 50 years. With family roots in Jackson County, Sparks, an Ohio native, introduced himself to bluegrass audiences in a big way in the mid-'60s, when he was a guitarist and vocalist in one of Ralph Stanley's first versions of the Clinch Mountain Boys.

Since 1969, Sparks has been the not-so- lonesome chieftain of his Lonesome Ramblers band, which today features fiddler Mike Feagan, mandolinist Jackie Kincaid, banjoist Tyler Mullins and bassist D Sparks. Through the years, he has remained a critical and commercial hit within bluegrass circles, twice winning the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards' male vocalist of the year (in 2004 and 2005) and album of the year (in 2005 for his recording 40). Sparks' most recent album is Almost Home.

Our next stop is the weekly taping of WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour at The Kentucky Theatre. Monday's bill features Janie Fricke, two-time Country Music Association female vocalist of the year (in 1982 and 1983). Thanks to the hits It Ain't Easy Bein' Easy and Your Heart's Not in It, she played Rupp Arena several times during the early '80s, usually as an opening act for country-pop juggernaut Alabama.

But Fricke has spent much of the past decade taking a detour into bluegrass. Her new album Country Side of Bluegrass personalizes the journey, with string-music updates of her '80s material. The standout track, though, is Fricke's ghostly take on the great J.D. Souther classic Faithless Love.

Fricke will be backed for the WoodSongs show by The Roys, the brother-sister duo touring behind its own contemporary bluegrass recording, Lonesome Whistle.

But the most recommended act of this entire pack is the Matt Flinner Trio, which completes Monday's WoodSongs bill. The extraordinary string-music ensemble builds on the jazz and classically accented acoustic music introduced decades ago by groundbreaking newgrass stylists David Grisman and Tony Rice and reintroduced by way of the recent all-star collaboration album The Goat Rodeo Sessions, featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile.

Mandolinist Flinner's new album, Winter Harvest, with guitarist Ross Martin and drummer and bassist Eric Thorin, maintains a melodic lightness that shifts from the Rice-flavored Raji's Romp to the more darkly playful Wheels to the bluesy newgrass cast of Slapping Is Encouraged (a showpiece for Thorin) to the intricate string lyricism of Bucolic Futurism, which steers into Pat Metheny-flavored fusion during its more expansive passages.

As if all these string sounds weren't enough, start making plans for next weekend. Bluegrass festival favorite Blue Highway takes to the rock-club circuit with a visit to Cosmic Charlie's on Feb. 10. We will check in with Highway-man Rob Ickes to preview that performance in next Friday's Weekender.

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