Right in the middle of one collaboration with a rock star, Jean-Luc Ponty convenes with jazz stars for another collaboration. D-Stringz (which dropped November 6, 2015 through Impulse! Records) arose from a 2012 all-star concert marking Ponty’s 50-year career. For one of the performances, the man of honor assembled a trio with his erstwhile collaborator — the bass pioneer Stanley Clarke — and someone neither hadn’t previously worked with, Biréli Lagrène. Lagrène, like Ponty, hails from France but has made his mark a generation later as some sort of a guitar wunderkind. The three nonetheless forged an immediate rapport, and a desire to continue mining that vibe led to this new release.
This get-together of all-acoustic performances by these virtuosos instantly draws comparisons to the Clarke/Ponty/Al Di Meola 1995 project Rite of Strings, a similar meeting of electric fusion titans adapting their songs of the style to the unplugged format and ended up making one of the most satisfying left-field jazz-rock recordings of the 90s. D-Stringz borrows some of Rite‘s ideas, such as the recycling of some old tunes by their participants. At the same time, the new group also allowed for covers and the overall intent here isn’t to play strictly acoustic fusion. Further, Di Meola’s flair for flamenco is replaced by Lagrène’s gypsy swing.
“Stretch” grooves as guilefully as anything they’ve done electrified, and the percussive plucks and strums by Clarke and Lagrène make any drums superfluous. “To And Fro,” a piece Ponty originally wrote for another trio featuring himself, Clarke and Bela Fleck is funky in its own way with Clarke laying down an appealing low harmonic part and Lagrène adding his frisky remarks.
Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson’s “Too Young To Go Steady” is the first of a handful of sturdy covers tackled for this record, which finds Ponty playing with as much Old World affection for this ballad as he’s done in decades while Clarke swings so sweet and gentle for his own solo. The swing gets a bit more heated for “A Bit of Burd,” the bassist’s homage to both Bud Powell and Charlie Parker; a bebop tune that could have been easily composed by either legend. Here it serves as a prime vessel for each of the three to show off their skills improvising over bop changes.
The former child prodigy Lagrène had mastered Django Reinhardt tunes before he reached the age of ten, so covering Django’s “Nuages” wasn’t going to be a chore for him, and neither is it for Ponty and Clarke, who just seem to be enjoying kicking back and playing loose and carefree on this upbeat melody. Elsewhere, Lagrène’s’ puckish playing on Ponty’s “Childhood Memories” makes clear why he’s a true guitar original.
John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” isn’t arranged much differently than how it was originally recorded but in the hands of these three it sounds like a nearly completely new song; dig Lagrène’s astonishing blurring of line between comping and soloing. “Paradigm Shift,” a composition first tried out on Clarke’s “Jazz In The Garden” trio record with Hiromi and Lenny White, begins with mystical blasts before settling into a blissful state where Ponty and Lagrène trade cheerful licks.
The most recognizable track has got to be Joe Zawinul’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” and the guys slow it down a bit and dig a little harder on the anthemic groove. Ponty gets down so righteously you almost miss out on Lagrène’s great rhythmic backing. The contemporary funk returns at the end: Lagrène’s “One Take” gets a little help with the swaying beat from guest percussionist Steve Shehan’s handclaps and the three principals are playing so tight together and yet so loose. It’s a performance that leaves us with an unmistakable message to the fans of them: making music is just as fun for them now as it was 50 years ago (Ponty), 40 years ago (Clarke) and 30 years ago (Lagrène).
The magic we’ve heard from all three over all these years has been rekindled with the D-Stringz project, and without the need to burn fossil fuels.
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