AT A RECENT show in San Francisco promoted by Guitar Player Presents, Julian Lage reminded us that he is to be counted among the premiere acoustic guitar players on the planet. That refresher can also be had by listening to his new Blue Note album, Speak to Me. Although Lage is widely recognized as an electricguitar jazz wunderkind (because that’s been his primary instrument), Speak to Me finds him playing both electric and, mostly, acoustic, delivering a treat we don’t hear from him very often. On it, the guitarist performs unbridled steel-string acoustic in myriad settings, from solo to sextet, and covers every aspect — rhythm and lead, structured and improvised — effortlessly.
“Hymnal,” the pensive opener, is like a sunrise, while “Myself Around You” is a stellar solo acoustic excursion that features fabulous pull-off trills and thrilling bursts of creative chord clusters. “Omission,” the breezy album single, features Lage’s unplugged flights of fancy backed by a deep pocket of drums and bass. Other songs, such as “Two and One,” “Vanishing Points” and “South Mountain,” feature keyboard and woodwind accompaniment that ranges from sparse and peaceful to wild and outside. It all comes together on the tour de force shuffle “76”
Of course, watching Lage perform at SFJazz in San Francisco’s Miner Auditorium before a sell-outin outlines from song sketches but seems to be drawing from scratch as he considers the appropriate colors for each note of every tune in that moment.
