Gordon Grdina’s Nomadic Guitar Polyphony

Courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

Last month Skirl Records released the debut album of Gordon Grdina’s Nomad Trio. Grdina is a prodigiously virtuosic guitarist whose imaginative approaches to jazz are balanced by an equal interest in Arabic music, which he explores on the oud. The other members of his trio are pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Jim Black. As is so often the case, Amazon.com is only distributing this recording through download, but there is a Bandcamp Web page that supports both physical and digital purchase of the content.

The first impression one gets from this album is that Grdina has a prodigious command of polyphony. He has no trouble maintaining multiple voices on his guitar; and, for that matter, his knack for teasing counterpoint out of a single melodic line follows admirably in the footsteps of Johann Sebastian Bach. As a result, Mitchell’s role in the Nomad Trio often involves weaving his own lines into Grdina’s polyphony; and those results can be mind-boggling. (To be fair, Mitchell’s command of rhythmic patterns is just as prodigious, meaning that he can engage with Black’s percussion work as adeptly as he does with Grdina.)

Indeed, this is an album that offers far more than can be absorbed by the simple sit-down-and-listen technique. Each of the six tracks has an elaborate life of its own. This is one of those “bleeding edge” jazz albums that demands so much attentive listening that each track is a cognitive adventure unto itself.