About a thousand years ago I saw Dave Brubeck in a live performance with his quartet, which was Dave on piano, Paul Desmond on sax, the incredible Joe Morello on drums, and Eugene Wright on bass. In that performance they played around with various time signatures, giving examples of the odd and rare so the audience could experience them. I recall two of those pieces vividly, one in 9/8 time (Blue Rondo à la Turk) and one in 5/4 time (Take Five). During the playing of Take Five, all the musicians got up and left the stage except for Joe Morello, who played a fabulous drum solo for a very long time, never boring, always incredible. Then they came back and resumed playing.
That so impressed me that when I had my first rock band featuring a great jazz drummer, we did the same thing and let our drummer (Tom Ralston) play alone for a while, and then finished the rock song.
Along comes a fellow named Lucas Brar, a jazz-classical guitarist of the finest order. He plays Take Five on the guitar, and the experience is rather amazing. In fact, it’s one of the finest pieces of guitar playing I’ve ever seen. He even has some of Morello’s drum solo in it! You might want to listen and watch it. After my many years of complex flamenco playing I could no more play this than I can fly without an airplane. See what you think:
Amazing!Sent from my iPad