I thought I’d share this lovely little clip of the late great jazz guitarist Joe Pass. It’s from a show that classical guitarist John Williams presented along with three other exponents of the guitar from different genres. At this point they had been talking about the similarities between Jazz and Baroque music, especially with regards to the improvisation, so Williams invited Pass to improvise on a Chaconne by Johan Sebastian Bach. The result is absolutely fascinating, not least because of the musical jokes in the form of blue notes that Pass includes during his spontaneous elaboration. The first elicits a big smile from John Williams because the tritone Pass plays was regarded as the diabolus in musica in Bach’s time, but for a jazz musician blue notes like this are par for the course.
P.S. it’s amazing how little Joe Pass’s right hand seems to move…
In the Dark 