Larry Coryell, a giant of jazz, makes a rare concert stop at the Palladium next week

April is a prime month for jazz at the Palladium. We’ve got Chuck Redd, the great vibraphonist and drummer, in town to play with local favorites, La Lucha on April 6. We’ve got sax master Najee on April 10, plus the Roy Assaf Trio in from New York on the 17th.  AND  – we’ve got a rare Tampa Bay concert by the great jazz guitarist Larry Coryell. He’ll be appearing April 5, with our own Nate Najar opening the show. We’re presenting Coryell in partnership with our friends at the Mahaffey.

 

To get you ready for the show, I’m reprinting an interview with Coryell done by the Mahaffey’s Bill DeYoung. Enjoy:

 

He seems to be more melodic than ever, and he keeps exploring new techniques and chord combinations. There are certain players who reach for the goal of playing the guitar as if it was an entire orchestra. It may be impossible, but Coryell comes as close as anyone. Allentown Morning Call (2013)

 

Larry Coryell is explaining how it takes practice – lots and lots of practice – to make all that gossamer guitar innovation look effortless. “You have to work hard at it,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s like the swan who glides smoothly over the surface of the water. Underneath, the legs are churning like nuts.”

 

Coryell is an icon among jazz players, for his pioneering work in fusion, the blending of acoustic, electric and genre-hopping styles including bop, classical, eastern music, psychedelia and rhythm ‘n’ blues. He can –and has, and still does – play everything, and his fellow musicians have watched him, slack-jawed, for five mind-blowing decades. His approach is a studied mix of intellectualism and emotion.

 

The master musician makes a rare Suncoast appearance Tuesday, April 5, playing a “Mahaffey on the Move” show at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg.

 

Coryell is famous for his groundbreaking collaborations in duos, trios and quartets – but at the Palladium gig, it’ll be just him, alone onstage.

 

“I like playing alone, although I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he admits. “I’m just going to start playing and see what comes out. I’ll play an acoustic guitar, and I’ll play an electric guitar, and that’s about it.”

 

The jazz lifestyle – of taking risks and “seeing what happens” – attracted him from an early age. “I just wanted to get to New York,” Coryell remembers. “Because I knew that where I was living in college, in Seattle, Washington, I knew that I wasn’t playing very well. And I wanted to get to New York because the best in the world were there, and I could learn both classical and jazz music there. And probably get some work.

 

“Like so many people from the hinterlands, my original plan was to stay in New York for a year, I’ll learn everything I need to learn, and then I’ll go back. Of course I stayed.”

 

Because, of course, you can’t go home again. In Larry Coryell’s case, Seattle just wasn’t big enough to contain his talents.

 

There were the years playing with Chico Hamilton. Then Gary Burton.  And Herbie Mann. In 1970, he cut the classic Spaces with John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Chick Corea and Miroslav Vitous. His string of solo acoustic albums almost single-handedly defined a genre.

 

One of Coryell’s most famous associations was with McLaughlin and the flamenco guitar great Paco de Lucia (Meeting of Spirits).

 

These days, he makes how-to videos on technique and theory – and he’s begun teaching, which to his surprise has given him no end of pleasure.

 

“This morning,” he explains, “I had a lesson with a kid from Israel, who now lives in Ireland. He had just started learning all of Wes Montgomery’s solos from an album I bought when it first came out in 1962! It was really nice to see the way that legacy gets passed. I thought ‘This kid is playing this stuff, and it still sounds just as fresh as it did in 1962.’”

 

Opening Coryell’s show will be Tampa Bay jazz musician Nate Najar and his group. Najar, who’s considered the heir apparent to the late, great Charlie Byrd, is one of the few jazz guitarists using a classical (nylon-stringed) instrument, giving his music a warm, round, distinctive sound.

 

Larry Coryell with Nate Najar

Tuesday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m.

Palladium Theater, 253 5^th Avenue North, St. Petersburg