Guitarist Bruce Forman leads a power trio of jazz
Veteran jazz guitarist Bruce Forman’s Trio doesn’t just cook, it boils. Furiously. When they set up to perform songs from their new “The Book of Forman” album at Burbank’s Viva Cantina on Wednesday night, expect a full-strength dose of intoxicatingly hard-charging music.
“It says musically what I want to say right now. I want to burn and swing, we play hard, it’s very direct music,” Forman said. “A lot of my other friends in jazz are getting in more vibey things, which is almost evasive — I mean, I grew up hearing Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Hutcherson every night in the clubs in San Francisco, that music had very direct contact and content. It’s not sneaky.”
“The Book of Forman” is a hard-bop trialog of intricacy, intensity and accelerated expression that, even at its most reflective and reduced tempo, still maintains a singular artistic aggression. Its 11 songs were recorded live in two sessions and it’s a freewheeling, mostly original set that includes mellow-toned, sauntering blues, exotic Far Eastern safaris, flirtations with bossa and several coolly contemplative reimaginings of familiar standards. Each number is relaxed yet always muscular, and gleefully exploits the threesome’s relentlessly vibrant need to swing.
Forman, an internationally acclaimed musician and educator (he is an adjunct assistant professor at the USC Thornton School of music’s jazz guitar department) formed the group in 2014, with tenured drummer Marvin Smitty Smith and youthful bassist Alex Frank.
“Smitty and I ended up playing together last year at the Monterey Jazz festival and we just sort of looked at each other and thought, ‘Oh yeah, this works,’” Forman said. “I had these songs, the guys learned them and after we play them, then it becomes an arrangement. It’s pretty organic. Everybody contributes and this is the effective musical way to go. The players have a lot of personality and it comes through — it’s Formanism, we can take any song and make turn it into our own.
“We really are a bebop power trio. Sometimes I laugh to myself because it really is all out of the ’70s-style power-trip rock. The harmonics are jazz but the mood, energy and intent are from those rock bands I heard in the ’70s — Led Zeppelin, Cream. This is very different from the jazz guys with music stands who never look up from the chart.”
But Forman is no fusion goofball; he brings a serious pedigree, with a long late-’70s/early ’80s stint as guitarist for saxist Richie Cole, innumerable club dates and annual appearances at the Monterey Jazz fest and accolades from jazz legend Barney Kessel, who called the guitarist “one of the great lights of our age.”
“I didn’t just love the sound — I loved the characters who played it. They were eccentric and I was very attracted to the eccentricities of its practitioners. And those old guys always stayed on my ass to not sound like anyone else, it was encouraged and demanded,” Forman said. “Ray Brown and Barney Kessel taught me that you have to have a purpose for each song. It’s in my DNA, that attention to detail, what everyone just played in a song, where they left it, because you’ve got to button it up and give the song the respect it deserves.”
Forman’s mixture of jazz legacy reverence and spontaneous bandstand combustion never fails to dazzle, and Smith and Frank’s contributions are equally high impact yet tasteful. It’s an irresistible combination of talent, communication and musical joy.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am very competitive with myself, it really is my standard operating procedure,” Forman said. “At Viva, we are just going to unload and go for it, do our thing. Blast the music. And, hopefully, convert some people to Formanism, through the Book of Forman.”
Who: The Bruce Forman Trio
Where: Viva Cantina, 900 W. Riverside Dr., Burbank
When: Wednesday, Aug. 26, 8 p.m.
Cost: Free
Contact: (818) 845-2425, vivacantina.com
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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”