The Musical Time Machine of Julian Lage
By Jon Hersey
What are the chances that, in the six weeks since I started “Noteworthy,” there would be new releases from The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and now Jimi Hendrix? But Hendrix’s Live at the Hollywood Bowl, at once frantic and sluggish, is not what I’d like to draw your attention to here.
Instead, it’s the latest music from a guitarist of almost unbelievable skill and musicality, Julian Lage: specifically, his new single “Omission,” released November 14, and his album The Layers from earlier this year, which has just been nominated for the Best Contemporary Instrumental Album Grammy.
Julian provides an inspiring example of single-minded yet patient devotion to a craft one loves. He picked up the guitar at age five, and his parents had a hard time getting him to put it down—ever. There’s a documentary of him, made three years later (yes, his prodigious talent had already warranted such attention), in which he says, “Since I was five, I’ve played every day, except this one day I had to go away and couldn’t take the guitar on the train.” He adds, with genuine sadness, “I really regret that day.”1 The documentary, Jules at Eight, shows the eight-year-old, with a guitar as long as he is tall, fronting a band and soloing to waves of applause. In another scene, when someone asks what he’s been listening to lately, he says “just lots of Wes Montgomery and Coltrane.” Many regard Montgomery as the greatest jazz guitarist of all time, and credibly so. But, if we can really rank such things, then Lage is, by this point, certainly offering stiff competition, and it’s not uncommon to hear him proclaimed the best guitarist alive.2 He had played with Carlos Santana by eight, had performed on the Grammys and with legendary vibes player Gary Burton by twelve and, by fifteen, had joined the Stanford Jazz Workshop—as a faculty member.
Mentored by Burton and jazz guitar legend Jim Hall, Lage combines a deep love for music of the past with the adventurous, tinkering spirit of a pathbreaker. What he’s said of the drummer in his trio, Dave King, applies equally to himself (and to his bassist, Jorge Roeder): “Every time he plays . . . you’re hearing the lineage, and you’re hearing the future.”3
That’s also an apt description of Lage’s two latest albums—View with a Room (2022) and The Layers (2023)—both of which came out of the same recording sessions. These featured Lage’s trio plus Bill Frisell, another jazz guitar heavyweight who made a name in the 1980s as a studio musician for ECM records. Lage describes The Layers as a sort of prequel to the earlier View album. At only six songs and twenty-five minutes, it nonetheless spans substantial musical territory. Much jazz revels in the obscure, eschewing the pleasing consonances of more popular music. But in Lage’s hands, the genre’s extended harmonic palette is instead used to milk maximum expressiveness from more familiar sonic territory. “Everything Helps,” for instance, centers on a simple yet beautiful two-chord vamp, alternating as naturally between them as between inhaling and exhaling. Tracks such as “Double Southpaw” and “The Layers” could almost be described as folksy, if not for the uncommon intelligence and coherence with which they integrate seemingly disparate musical idioms. Likewise, Lage’s new single, “Omission,” evokes not a smoky New York nightclub but a campfire on the American frontier. Its woody, acoustic tone has the lightness characteristic not only of much of Lage’s music but of his persona.
In response to the news of Lage’s latest Grammy nomination, one fan commented, “You earned this with your lifetime devotion to making beautiful music. Music has the power to change the world and you are a part of that, Julian. Thanks for sharing your gift with us!”4 With the holidays just around the corner, consider sharing that “gift” with your loved ones—perhaps with tickets to see Lage in person: He’s just announced his first full-band tour in more than a year. And when you need a break from the family and the frenzy of the season, remember that Lage’s upbeat yet relaxing music is there for you.