Solo Mastery on Guitar From Jordan

How does he do that? The question hovered behind the perplexed looks on the faces of guitarist Stanley Jordan’s audience at Catalina Bar & Grill on Tuesday night.

And with good reason. The sounds produced by Jordan--working as a solo act--were unlike almost anything heard in jazz, or in pop, for that matter. Utterly unique, they were neither the single-line, horn-like improvisations typical of jazz nor the feedback-heavy, blues-drenched melodies of rock. They were, instead, rich-textured musical assemblages, filled with moving lines and unexpected harmonies, playing that can be described as orchestral in quality and style.

So how does he do it? By tapping the strings. Instead of the familiar guitar style of strumming or plucking with one hand and stopping the strings on the fingerboard with the other to produce chordal combinations, Jordan simply finger-taps his strings at the frets. And because the strings are placed close to the fingerboard, each time he taps a fret, a note is produced.

The technique is musically liberating, allowing him to literally play the fingerboard with both hands, very much in the way a pianist plays the keyboard with both hands. And Jordan, over the years, has mastered the style so effectively that he can produce a myriad of sounds, not just from tapping, but from occasional interspersed power strumming, from sudden, ethereal harmonics and with the quick contrast of occasional straight-ahead jazz lines.

On “Autumn Leaves,” he used the method to lay down a rapid- fire bass line with one hand, while playing a brisk, upper register improvisation with the other. It was an astonishing feat of ambidexterity. On “El Condor Pasa,” he generated a feeling of Latin rhythm within a lush harmonic texture. And in a series of ballads--”Willow Weep for Me,” “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” and “When You Wish Upon a Star” among them--he waxed rhapsodic, surrounding the melodies with a blanket of moving harmonies and counter-melodies.

Jordan’s only flaw was a tendency to push some of the pieces a bit beyond their real survival points. “Eleanor Rigby,” for example, became an episodic event, with the ending constantly approaching, only to be circumvented back to the middle of the tune.

But there’s no denying the fascination of Jordan’s work--both in the imaginative powers of his improvisations, and in the remarkably visual way in which it is produced. He is a true one-of-a-kind.

* Stanley Jordan at Catalina Bar & Grill through Sunday. 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (213) 466-2210. $14 cover tonight, $17 cover Friday and Saturday, $15 cover Sunday, with two-drink minimum. Jordan performs two shows nightly, at 8:30 and 10:30.