RIP Allan Holdsworth, Guitar Colossus

"I think Allan Holdsworth is the John Coltrane of guitar. I don't think anyone can do as much with the guitar as Allan Holdsworth can." ~ Robben Ford

Though I've never played an instrument, music has been a vital part of my life for as long as I can remember. And for decades, Allan Holdsworth has thrilled and inspired me like no one else with his astonishingly fluid and impossibly complex virtuosity and steadfastly uncompromising musical sensibility.

Frank Zappa called him one of the "most interesting" guitarists on the planet. Eddie Van Halen said he was simply "the best." John McLaughlin quipped that he'd steal Holdsworth's licks if he could understand them. The praise went on and on from guitar luminaries the world over.

But Allan Holdsworth died yesterday at the age of 70. So, there will be no more soul-searing guitar lines and otherworldly chordal phrasings from those magic fingers. A giant who perhaps stood taller than any other in the prodigiously demanding genre of guitar-centered "fusion" has passed on.

While it was well-known that he was in poor health, Allan's death still comes as something of a shock. A friend of mine saw him perform just a little over a week ago. And, despite his not having practiced much for a long time, he was still in virtuosic form.

Sadly, Allan never prospered from his music. In fact, he was apparently in pretty dire financial straits at the end. For while serious guitarists and hardcore guitar fans idolized him, most of the public never even heard of him. And if they happened to chance upon any of his music, they probably cringed from the strangeness of it.

I confess that, huge Holdsworth fan that I was, I found some of his music pretty "out there" too, and some of it left me cold. But then there was this solo, my favorite guitar solo ever, and this rare, hauntingly pensive and beautiful acoustic guitar piece on an album he despised and tried to suppress.

I was blessed to see Allan perform in person a couple of times. One such time was in the early to mid-80's at a local nightclub in Palo Alto, CA. This song, in particular, enraptured me and is probably my favorite song that he himself composed. I wish I'd been able to see more of him.

Fortunately, his recorded music lives on, and YouTube abounds with his live performances and this lovely tribute. RIP, Allan.

Hiromi's Sparks of Genius

“George Gershwin, Mozart, Bach, Monk, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Fats Waller, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. If that were the line up the whole world would turn out to see and hear some of the greatest music artist in the history of the world, the history of classical music, the history of jazz. Every TV station, every jazz radio station, every music and movie celebrity, film makers, broadcasters, play write, composers, musicians and just plain music lovers would fill the venue along with the streets outside. Living among us today is a music artist that embodies the skills of all those artist put together. Meet Hiromi Uehara!! A Modern Musical Genius! One of The Greatest Piano Players The World Has Ever Seen! Blending jazz and classical and fusion, weaving in and out of the stride techniques of Monk and Waller, implementing boogie-woogie techniques, swinging into bebop, rising from from her seat at the piano like a phoenix, arms stretched to reach inside the piano to play the strings as if they were a second instrument, injecting the composition with Weather Report/Herbie Hancock/Chick Corea fusion before floating effortlessly back to her seat. She lures you in with piano notes touched by the fingers of Vivaldi, Bach and Mozart as she

resumes a position of perfect posture at the keys. Folks, I am sorry but watching Hiromi play is complete insanity. It’s hard to get your mind around what this young lady is doing on the piano. She is redefining the words prodigy and virtuoso. Honestly there are no word to describe the musical experience you will be treated to when she sits down at the keys. I am at a loss, and I earn a living broadcasting, talking and writing.” ~ Asian Jazz Radio

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, once again, I give you Hiromi, from a recent performance on Japanese television of some of her compositions from her most recent album Spark.

Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun

Evil man make me kill you,
Evil man make you kill me,
Evil man make me kill you
Even though we're only families apart.
--Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was a genius. He revolutionized electric guitar playing. He may not have had the blinding speed and advanced compositional knowledge that many of today's guitar greats have, but you can bet your house that virtually every electric guitarist who came after him owes a huge debt to him.

Some people say that the legendary solo below is the greatest electric guitar solo ever captured, and I'm not sure I'd disagree. It's called Machine Gun and was recorded in a concert appearance at the Fillmore East in New York City with the group Band of Gypsys on New Year's Eve in 1969.

It's electrifying, in more ways than one--a performance for the ages.

Jimi Hendrix plays Machine Gun

Monster Mind Ed Witten

Yesterday, Bill Harryman at Integral Options Cafe speedlinked to an article reporting a poll in which 4000 members of the British public selected the "top 100 living geniuses." I agree with some of the selections. But not only were the "top 100" disproportionately British, but I think some very deserving people got left out. The two who spring most readily to mind are Ken Wilber and Edward Witten.

I would venture to guess that just about anyone reading this blog is familiar with Ken Wilber. It certainly seems to me that he belongs on the list. However, there's a theoretical physicist who didn't make it who surely belongs there as well.

Of course, Stephen Hawking is on it, possibly mostly because he's British, is an extremely well-publicized victim of ALS, has written a very popular book about cosmology, and has made some important contributions to astrophysical theory. It's also true that Hawking occupies Isaac Newton's chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and is popularly thought to be Newton's and Einstein's successor.

Yet, the person regarded by his fellow physicists and mathematicians to truly be the most likely successor to Einstein is an unassuming scientist at Einstein's old stomping grounds, Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. His name is Edward Witten. He clearly possesses what the late, great physicist Richard Feynman called a "monster mind." Or as one prominent cosmologist said of Witten: "We all think we're very smart, but he's so much smarter than the rest of us."

Witten has won a MacArthur Grant, the National Medal of Science, and has the highest h-index of any living physicist. This is a measure that attempts to quantify scientific productivity and impact. He's renowned for his grasp of and contributions to both mathematics and physics and is a winner of the extremely prestigious Fields Medal, the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The great geometer Sir Michael Atiyah said this of Witten:

Although he is definitely a physicist (as his list of publications clearly shows) his command of mathematics is rivalled by few mathematicians, and his ability to interpret physical ideas in mathematical form is quite unique. Time and again he has surprised the mathematical community by his brilliant application of physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems.

Witten is probably most famous for his spectacular contributions to superstring theory, and the video below features theoretical physicist Brian Greene touching upon Witten's involvement in this area and also shows Witten briefly.

The Genius of Art Tatum

I'm inspired by Bill Harryman's post over at Integral Options Cafe of Georges Cziffra playing Lizst to post a video of of the incomparable Art Tatum playing jazz. It is said that awesome classical musicians such as Vladimir Horowitz would walk away from Tatum's performances astounded by his "genius,"that fellow jazz musicians called him "the eighth wonder of the world," that Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff proclaimed him the greatest piano player in any style, and that the great jazz pianist Fats Waller once introduced Tatum by saying: "I only play the piano, but tonight, God is in the house." It is even the case that, quoting Wikipedia, "In 1993, an MIT student invented a term that is now in common usage in the field of computational musicology: The Tatum. It means 'the smallest perceptual time unit in music.'"

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Art Tatum playing Yesterdays.



And here is a clip from a documentary about Tatum.