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Martino Plays His Way Back

After a brush with death, guitarist Pat Martino plays with new-found serenity

By Nicky Baxter

It's a miracle that Pat Martino can play guitar today; indeed, he is lucky to be alive. After a brain hemorrhage in the late 1970s, the guitarist had to undergo a surgery that, though successful, left him with no memory. He literally had no idea that he was one of improvisational music's most esteemed talents. Martino felt as if he'd been "dropped, cold empty, neutral, cleansed ... naked," as he puts it in the liner notes for his new release, The Maker (Evidence).

Accompanied by pianist James Ridl, bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe Bonadio, Martino is inward looking, almost mystical. The album's five tracks undulate effortlessly, gliding into your consciousness like a gauzy dream. Cuts like "The Changing Tides," with its lazily descending motif, is eerily autumnal. Against a backdrop of Ridl's twilight piano, Johnson's roving bass and Bonadio's shushed cymbal work, Martino's guitar weaves a fragile and delicate tapestry of sound and silence.

"Yoshiko" is equally introspective, though Martino's tone is warmer thanks to his intermittent Wes Montgomery appropriations. Again, his sidemen are laconic; yet there is genuine interplay here. Even as the guitarist sets off on a vertical climb, Johnson's bass is present, tracking his every step without hindering Martino's ascent. And, when it's his turn to take off, Johnson demonstrates an uncanny knack for soaring at ground level. "This Autumn's Ours" on the other hand is friskier than its title implies. Buoyed by a sambalike groove, "Autumn's" relatively upbeat mood is defined by Bonadio's sharply syncopated beat-keeping and Ridl's spry piano.

While it would be foolish to imply that Martino is not the guitarist he once was, it is true that The Maker relies more on craft than blinding virtuosity. Good sense, not speed, is the operating principle. When he kicked off his career, Martino was hailed by some as the fastest gun in the west. But that was then; since his brush with death, he is less interested in crowing about his greatness than he is in appreciating life--and music--one day at a time. The Maker is his way of showing that appreciation.

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