What the critics say about Mundell Lowe
Mr. Lowe is one of the best mainstream jazz guitarists, a musician
completely at ease with be-bop’s snakelike rhythms…Mr. Lowe’s solos
overflowed with harmony, and in the middle of his improvisations, he’d
stick in several choruses of chords, pushing and pulling the harmony until
the songs vanished. He slid chords smoothly up and down the neck letting
them melt into one another.
Lowe is a cool player—his sound is round and velvety and he lazes behind
the beat, improvising a note at a time…Pizzarelli providing accompaniment,
with that distinctive seventh bass string, to Lowe’s Lester Young-like
excursions…. The operative words here: swing, class and taste, zippily
delivered by a pair of master craftsmen.
Mr. Lowe stays closer to the melody than most of today’s jazz
guitarists…the suaveness and polish of his ballads are still present on
the surface of a swinging attack that seems to flow on its own momentum.
Mundell Lowe retains his cool. His lines are fluid and graceful, and he
produces a mellow sound from the electric guitar.
Mundell Lowe is a superb jazz player. This guitarist’s honey-smooth
quintet closed the evening with a group of state-of-the-art mainstream
improvisations done with an almost casual ease.
One could say there is nothing spectacular about his performance, unless
of course one considers eloquent, understated jazz to be spectacular. |
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