What I liked
N/A
What I didn't like
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My overall impression
A BRONZE MEDAL
“I’m used to no crowds, I’m a jazz musician,” quips Bruce Forman to a half filled house at the Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre, not an unappreciable crowd for a Monday night Fringe event.
Forman then proceeds to entertain those gathered in an evening entitled The Red Guitar with a narrative revolving around the jazz greats he has met, been mentored by or merely felt in awe of: Barney Kessel master of the chord center tunes on the guitar, the versatile bass man Ray Brown and Sonny Rollins. In the process we are treated to a brief history of Jazz improvisation and Forman’s observations, “Coltrane’s albums should have come with a warning label, Charlie Parker’s music should have come with an owner ‘s manual.”
Forman, both a figure in the jazz world and much regarded teacher, presently on the USC faculty, shares with us some of his career history as well; “I’ve been working my whole life to become an overnight success.”
His career has enjoyed some intriguing high points such as being approached by Clint Eastwood who requested that his string plucking be part of the sound track for Eastwood’s Academy Award winning Million Dollar Baby (2004), still Forman insists what the audience has before them is “the $100 Baby.”
Forman knows whereof he speaks, and he peppers the evening with the observations accumulated over his professional life;
Some glib – “Brothers get the Blues, white people get depressed.”
Some not – “Deep down stories are what we are.”
Which adds to making The Red Guitar a “Pushmepullyou” of conflicting factors.
Forman is right about the primacy of story-telling, and for all his rifts of improvisation the show would have benefited from the insertion of more dispatches from his career, and the anchors of set pieces.
It is the lack of these which effect the evening most grievously, as without them his improvisational flights have nothing to be gauged against and regress into repetition.
A single respite is offered in this regard with a cleverly re-worded take on Pat Ballard’s popular 1954 “Mr. Sandman”, into the griping of an acoustic jazz guitarist trapped in a blaring arena venue –
“Mister Soundman cause me some pain –
I don’t need ear plugs or Novocain – “
At the core of this evening is the narrative of a man who found in Jazz the reason breath is worth taking.
For the true Jazz junkie or ambitious guitar picker the evening would probably prove toe tapping rapture, for the rest of us less so.
The various elements of The Red Guitar served up in the right measurements could be a tasty treat indeed, they just aren’t here.
A Bronze Medal.
