Top Guitarists Take Spotlight at L.A. Festival

The decibel intensity of the rock group playing in the Bonaventure Hotel Friday night echoed through the vast lobby at near-pain levels. For jazz fans in search of the third annual John Pisano Jazz Guitar Festival, it was, to say the least, an unnerving welcome.

Fortunately, once inside the crowded confines of the Bonaventure Brewing Company, the sounds changed dramatically--from eardrum-shattering electric guitar feedback to the more caressing qualities of jazz guitar.

Pisano assembled an impressive lineup of talent, backed by the sturdy bass of Chuck Berghofer and the expressive drumming of Paul Kreibich. And the musical highlights arrived in a continuous flow from a lineup of Los Angeles’ finest jazz guitarists.

Barry Zweig and Ron Anthony, opening the program, were a highly compatible pair, with Zweig’s soloing on “But Beautiful” a particularly attractive highlight of the set. Sid Jacobs, doubling with Pisano, followed with a romp through a pair of standards, “Have You Met Miss Jones” and “On Green Dolphin Street.”

But Jacobs was at his best with a superb solo medley that reached from a pair of Bill Evans tunes to a row of Thelonious Monk works. Translating the pianistic work of Evans and Monk into the language of the guitar is not easy, but Jacobs did it with an easy fluency.

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Pisano’s group, the Flying Pisanos (with his wife, singer Jeanne Pisano, fluegelhornist Warren Luening, Berghofer and Kreibich) played a few effervescent standards, showcasing Luening’s long-phrased solo on “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to” and Jeanne Pisano’s intense rendering of “Black Coffee.”

Capping the evening was the arrival in the spotlight of 78-year-old Herb Ellis, one of the patriarchs of jazz guitar, cruising through a set of standards and blues with the hard-swinging drive and imaginative improvising that have made him a jazz legend.