Veteran Guitarist Jim Hall Keeps Up With Technology

Guitarist Jim Hall has made a career of eclectic jazz just off the beaten path. At 61, Hall looks to the young generation for inspiration, unlike some of his peers, who choose to look the other way.

One of Hall’s favorite young guitarists is Bill Frisell, who played Elario’s last year and who combines special effects with an odd range of influences to achieve startling, sometimes spacey sounds. Hall isn’t quite as cutting edge, but he’s definitely open-minded. Also unlike some of his purist peers, Hall has taken after Frisell and younger players by incorporating special-effects pedals into his act.

He’ll have a couple of these devices with him when he plays the Horton Grand Hotel in downtown San Diego this Friday and Saturday nights at 8:30 with his quartet.

“On the new quartet album (due in April and also featuring Branford Marsalis and Toots Thielemans), I use something called a harmonizer. You play a note, this pedal will give you a minor third below or any interval around the note you play. I use that and a chorus pedal like (Pat) Metheny uses that adds a little spookiness, a funny echo.”

Hall’s latest release, “Jim Hall and Friends Live at Town Hall, Vol. II,” which came out last year, is one of his personal favorites from among a dozen or so as a leader. He likes it because it is live and spontaneous, and because he selected the musicians to join him: young guitarists John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Peter Bernstein and Mick Goodrick and vibraphonist Gary Burton, among others.

Though Hall is often lumped with traditional jazz guitarists who look to the common godheads for inspiration--Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt--he names a number of other influences that feed into his eclectic directions.

“(Saxophonists) Lester Young, Ben Webster and especially Paul Gonsalves in Ellington’s band. Art Tatum. Count Basie’s band. Bill Evans. And classical music. Bartok was my hero when I was in school, and Stravinsky and Mozart. I probably listen to Stravinsky as much as jazz now.

“I hope that I’ve assimilated, or at least noticed, what other guys are doing. Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney and Wes Montgomery are also influences, but I think I’ve found an alternative way to approach jazz guitar, partly because those guys were so strong already, so it seemed stupid to try to imitate them.

“My compositional background helps me play in a more compositional way. I try to develop little things within the song, to play something, refer back to it, enlarge on it as I go. It’s a melodic-compositional approach. I hope that I’m growing all the time. I hope that I’m changing. I look on the whole process as similar to being a painter or poet. It isn’t that you want to be different all the time, but you do want to allow yourself room to grow.”

Hall, who lives in a New York City apartment with his wife, Jane, and keeps a second escape hatch in Upstate New York, is jazzed by his current quartet, which includes longtime band mates Steve LaSpina on bass and Terry Clarke on drums, plus Larry Goldings, a 23-year-old piano wiz who joined Hall’s group last year.

Hall hasn’t been in San Diego in at least 10 years, he said, and he will turn this stop on his three-week West Coast tour into a family reunion of sorts: his mother, Louella, and his brother, Dick, both live here.

The newest addition to jazz academia in San Diego County is Komla Amoaku, who joined the faculty at Cal State San Marcos last fall as a professor of ethnomusicology.

Ghana-born Amoaku, 51, a drummer and percussionist, once played straight-ahead jazz with Johnny Griffin, Grover Washington Jr., Woody Shaw and Slide Hampton. But he has increasingly dedicated himself to educating people about the diverse influences of various cultures--especially Africa’s--on Western music. Part of this effort is his own 10-piece percussion ensemble, San Cofa, named after a mythical African bird that flies forward but always looks back at where it came from, much as Amoaku tries to do with his music.

Amoaku’s created the original version of San Cofa at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, where he chaired the music department from 1978 until moving to San Marcos. Now, he has struck up a new incarnation of the ensemble, a portion of which will play the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego this Friday night from 9 to 1, billed as the Afro Jazz Group.

San Diego bassist and group member Gunnar Biggs helped Amoaku recruit a crew of locals, including trumpeter Bill Caballero, drummer Mark Lamson and percussionist Dave Hampton. Original material by Amoaku blends traditional jazz with R&B;, reggae, calypso and assorted African and Afro-Caribbean rhythms.

“What we’re trying to do is show the homogeneity of all musics,” Amoaku said. “There are some underlying trends that are parallel in all cultures.”

Amoaku believes he is aided in his quest to educate the public by the music of pop artists such as Sting and Paul Simon, and jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, whose new album, “Tchokola,” leans heavily on African influences.

“In many respects, what someone like Paul Simon is doing is great because, for a long time, no one ever heard about African music, except those who went to college and took some African studies classes. Now, because of what Paul Simon and Jean-Luc Ponty have done--it’s absolutely fantastic. That’s part of what I’m doing with San Cofa, but bringing these things together in an academic focus.”

Amoaku also plans to bring his educational skills to the U.S. Grant. He will pause between numbers to explain the cultural derivations of various rhythms and may even get the audiences involved in clap-alongs. There is no tuition.

RIFFS: Friday afternoon at 3, Phyllis Hegeman will interview La Jolla saxophonist Joe Marillo on KSDS-FM (88.3). The two will discuss the state of jazz in San Diego, dating back to Marillo’s Society for the Preservation of Jazz, which presented several shows at the Catamaran during the 1970s.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

BE-BOP SAXMAN McPHERSON RETURNS HOME

Fresh off a fall tour of Spain, Holland and Great Britain, during which he sold several hundred copies of his self-produced 1990 album, “Illusions in Blue,” San Diego-based alto saxman Charles McPherson plays at the Jazz Note in Pacific Beach this Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

McPherson, who has an urgent, urban sound rooted in be-bop, is working on new material he hopes to put on a self-produced release later this year. He may unveil some of it this weekend.

The other news is the pending arrival of his third child--a girl--in May. He and wife Lynn Sundfor-McPherson haven’t selected a name yet, nor has the saxophonist penned a tribute, but McPherson said he is working on both. McPherson will be interviewed on KSDS-FM (88.3) this Friday afternoon at 2. As of last weekend, the Jazz Note is smoke free.

McPherson’s band will include Harry Pickens on piano, Jeff Littleton on bass and his son, Chuck McPherson, on drums.