HIS NAME IS like that of a Marvel superhero or the title character in a new vigilante series airing on Netflix. But Max Light plays guitar with the gift of one who has organically incorporated the lessons of his six-string forebears Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ben Monder and Allan Holdsworth into a singular vocabulary.
While his long fingers allow him to make uncommon stretches on the fretboard and conjure up near-impossible chord voicings à la Holdsworth and Monder, Light’s blazing legato runs and use of an Electro-Harmonix POG2 to eliminate his picking attack come straight out of the Rosenwinkel playbook. And he applies it all in a flawless and captivating manner on his two most recent recordings, 2023’s Henceforth (SteepleChase) and his new album — and third as a leader — Chaotic Neutral (Alternative Guitar Summit Recordings).
Light grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, where, as a quintessential millennial, he played games like Dungeons and Dragons. He even named one frantically swinging Ornette Coleman–inspired piece on Henceforth after Luftrausers, an airborne dogfighting video game that served as the song’s impetus. “I was playing the game and was really into the music of Ornette Coleman at the same time,” he explains. “The form itself is an eleven-and-a-half-bar blues, basically, but with all these harmonic substitutions. So it’s a bunch of different ideas mashed together.”
Such serendipity might only come from an outstanding player and facile improviser with a Brainiac-like thirst for knowledge — which is an accurate way to describe the 30-year-old Light. He sits comfortably alongside such gifted contemporaries as Julian Lage, Nir Felder, Gilad Hekselman, Matteo Mancuso, and fleet-fingered Aussies Josh Meader and.
