Pat Martino Trio

Cotton Club November 1, 2008

Pat Martino – guitar
Tony Monaco – Hammond B3 organ
Scott Robinson - drums

The Cotton Club was filled with guitar players November 1st , all there to let the intensity of Pat Martino’s pristine guitar washed over them and purify their own technique. Martino is the ultimate guitarist’s guitarist. His constant flow of calm, cool energy is more pleasure than instruction, though a lot of both. Guitarist or not, you want to be a guitarist listening to him play, but realize you’ll never get up to his level!

Starting out with “MacTough,” written for organist and Martino friend and bandmate Jack McDuff (and recorded on the excellent 2001 Martino CD “Live at Yoshi’s”), the trio got right to work. The three were a perfect pairing, with Monaco warming and bluesing his usually wilder Hammond B3 style. He merged seamlessly with Martino’s cooler musical worldview. Robinson, too, directed his wide drum perspective right into the nimble Martino style. Monaco and Robinson, a generation younger than Martino, clearly knew his style and songs by heart—warm and deep heart.

The energy and flow of Martino’s guitar was the central focus of the evening. Like Wes Montgomery, with whom Martino is often compared, Martino makes each note burst with energy. He plays amazingly fast, though you never think “He’s playing fast.” Instead, even the fastest tempos seem natural. And yet, as the notes whiz by, he hangs each one out there like a luscious floating bubble of sound that erupts with beauty right before the next one arrives.

His guitar lines come fast, but remain unfalteringly beautiful, each one special. Whether digging into a funky mid-tempo version of “Round Midnight” or a rousing encore of “Sunny” his guitar playing reinvents the wheel (or wheel of chords) each time, making the classics sound as if they were unwrapped for the first time just before the show. 

Martino never seems like he’s out to prove anything, even though he does. He has that old-school cool that remains focused, centered and very hip. A blend of restless bop energy with laidback urban cool is Martino’s trademark sound, and he brought plenty of that to the show. His relation with his fretboard leaves him little time to banter with the audience. Like so many jazz greats, he lets the music do the talking.

Because it’s so understated, it’s all the more impressive. You listen to several soloed lines and think wow, that’s amazing, but then he just keeps going, and you realize he was just playing with you before, and now he’s really going to show you something. You end up shaking your head in surprise, along with all the other guitar players in the room, who would be learning more if it wasn’t all done so fluidly and seemingly effortlessly. The evening was a master at work, pure and simple.