John Scofield

at Regattabar

March 7

The circle is now complete. Again. John Scofield, master guitarist and long touted as one of the “big three” of the six strings company that includes Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell is back. In another phase of a career founded on jazz-funk fusion that later moved on to more straight jazz, and then returned to his rookie days, Scofield has turned around once again. On the North American leg of a world tour, Scofield stopped in for a four-night set on March 7 at the Regattabar, for an event that seemed as much a celebration of his eclectic career as it was an opportunity to promote his latest CD, Works for Me.

While his accompanying trio differs entirely from the recording sidemen, Scofield has assembled a dazzling array of supremely talented, if currently little known musicians who more than live up to his title of “the real drea band.” While the standout by far was drummer Bill Stewart, who matched Scofield’s intensity and complexity with dizzying dexterity and frenetic zeal, tenor player Seamus Blake and acoustic bassist Jesse Murphy also acquitted themselves admirably. Blake furnished lean and frequently blistering solos, with Murphy impelling forward the night’s proceedings with tight grooves robust solos, complementing Scofield’s continually surprising harmonic invention.

Instead of settling into the dirty mellow grooves that have marked his last three albums, Scofield launched into a steely edged and slightly jarring bop sound with “Do I Crazy?” from Works for Me. After brushing off the cobwebs collected from a few days on the road, Scofield stuck into the unsettling syncopated rhythms, weaving shattering dissonant chords into elaborate finger runs as he revelled in conjuring the glory days of jazz when bop was a budding musical form.

For most of the evening, bathed in blue light, hunched over his guitar and pacing up and down in the Regattabar’s intimate surroundings, Scofield called upon a bewildering stylistic arsenal. His soloing on the greasy, rolling “Chicken Dog” called upon jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery’s pioneering style as he conjured segments of thick parallel octaves. These soon gave way to electronic pedal antics from tone bending to evocations of Jimi Hendrix’s wa-wa guitar bending on his legendary “Voodoo Child.”