Location: Teatro Leonardo Da Vinci / Milan / Italy
Concert date: May 14, 2008
Attendance: 600
Ticket price: €15.00
California Guitar Trio, a trio of acoustic guitars and a whole lot more… Japan’s Hideyo Moriya, American Paul Richards and Belgian Bert Lams came out of nowhere, totally against expectations, and with their fascinating, extravagant takes on the giants of classical music and on legendary rock classics (not to mention their wittily inspired original catalog) they’ve won huge reputation and respect among lovers of gourmet music. This is music that knows no templates, music that keeps exploring, keeps heading into new dimensions, and with its one-of-a-kind beauty never stops thrilling and surprising.
California Guitar Trio pointed most of their late-spring shows at American soil, but they still found time for three European dates. And what I just said isn’t the only reason they’re an attraction. Their shows take on a special dimension and an extra stamp of uniqueness when one of the giants of bass playing joins them on stage: the fantastic Tony Levin, a legend without equal, a permanent fixture of Peter Gabriel’s studio and live crew and a member of King Crimson.
California Guitar Trio played practically in the center of Milan, at the Leonardo Da Vinci theater to be exact. The show kicked off a few minutes past 9 p.m. And luckily, no opening band. The trio and Tony Levin were welcomed with huge enthusiasm by a jam-packed hall. To crank the temperature up to the right level, they opened with a sped-up Melrose Avenue (“CGT + 2”, 2000). In this cheekily lively tune with a proper oriental flavor, the trio and Tony Levin had the crowd swaying hard in no time. Blockhead, with the main motif’s figures pushed to the front, poured oil on the fire, and the guys immediately showed off one of their trademarks, instantly weaving three guitars into a harmonic tangle. The perfect contrast to the opener was the surf-flavored Unmei, with the maestro Hideyo stepping into the spotlight, while Beethoven’s legacy rode the wings of dizzying speed and string harmonies flew by so fast that in the end you no longer knew whether the guys were still at Beethoven or had already spun Flight of the Bumblebee out of him. And let’s stay in classical waters a little longer, with Bach and Prelude Circulation, when Tony Levin grabs his famous stick and Richards announces the next tune with: “Iguana rossa!” Red Iguana filled the hall once again with a great dose of free-spirited experimentalism. The roots of those learning years under Uncle Fripp’s watchful eye, plus the baton of Tony’s stick, turned the whole experience in the hall completely upside down. The slightly jittery, nervy lines of the first part gave way to cerebral “soundscape” collages. Unique dynamics and a whole palette of moods! The guys carried on with their own material through the brand-new Turn Of The Tide, and then with Eve and Andromeda they hung a soft, dreamy, subtle sonic curtain of patterns over the hall, where time stops and the experience carries you off to some completely new, undiscovered place.
Levin leaves the stage and the guys go on to play the gentlest and at the same time one of their most beautiful creations, the opening track of the album “White Water” (2005), which Richards introduces as a tune named after a small town in Great Britain where they learned guitar with Robert Fripp. The Marsh is truly California Guitar Trio’s dedication to that guitar guru, and Lams, with his softness, coaxed real feelings of childlike innocence and purity out of it. This very special, moving moment was soon replaced by an arrangement of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (orig. Ennio Morricone), brilliantly reworked and gunslinger-ready, which got the hall roaring with laughter the moment Richards stomped on his quacking wah-wah pedal for the first time.
The show was tipping over into its peak when the main motif of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells rang out. The crowd gave the trio a thunderous welcome, and onstage they were first joined by Tyler Trotter on harmonica, then shortly after, in the dramatic closing section, naturally by Tony Levin again. A superb overture to the high point of the night, and in California Guitar Trio’s hands this wit-soaked arrangement just keeps going and going. What could possibly top that one-of-a-kind Oldfield classic? Maybe Pink Floyd’s Echoes? Exactly. The trio crowned all their genius and uniqueness in reworking the arrangements of originals by tackling that Pink Floyd classic from their album “The Meddle” (1971). Lams led the double harmonies that belong to the vocals in the original, while Richards took absolute command at this point, bringing David Gilmour’s guitar back to life with a slide and special effects. Until you see it, it’s hard to believe what you can create with just three guitars. An incredible psychedelic mix with a real, proper rock accent was, sadly, the closing point of the main set. The crowd was so thrilled they greeted the trio and Levin on their feet with loud ovations.
The encore went as expected. First a surf assault with Misirlou, the music from the film “Pulp Fiction,” and then the epic, atmospheric beauty Punta Patri, which once again underlined the exceptional musical expression of this trio, their polish, their tightness and the great power and magnetism of their constant stage awareness. Slowly and cunningly the trio weaves, through harmonies of transcendence, all the solemnity of the captured moment, creating a kind of hypnotic atmosphere of cerebral rapture, not to say mental absence, from which the hall just didn’t want to wake up for a few moments.
An hour and a half of an unforgettable musical adventure, which this trio’s witty grasp of the musical experience takes you on, and which bassist Tony Levin gives an unforgettable stamp, flew by in a flash. Tony Levin kept building on and rounding out the sound. The guy is so experienced and so well-oiled, with every trick in the book, that he almost routinely brought a moment of wit and his own brand of jazz experiment into the trio’s performance and sound. Levin also played his solo number with the trio, the fiery Relentless, which would surely please all fans of today’s King Crimson.
You might think it’s crazy, what the hell was I doing in Milan, since Nirvana, The Doors and The Beatles hadn’t risen from the grave, much less Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. But I can tell you that when you recharge your batteries like this, you don’t regret a single minute or a single kilometer driven, on your life path of constant learning. Learning by soaking up the boundless beauty of what we simply call freedom. And that freedom is music, its generator, its sun. One way or another.
1. Melrose Avenue
2. Blockhead
3. Unmei
4. Prelude Circulation
5. Red Iguana
6. Turn Of The Tide
7. Cathedral Peak
8. Eve
9. Andromeda
10. The Marsh
11. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
12. Tubular Bells
13. Echoes
—encore—
14. Misirlou
15. Punta Patri
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