Pittsfield\u00a0\u2014 Jason Ennis\u2019 summer itinerary traces a path from Lenox and Williamstown to New York City\u2019s Jazz at Lincoln Center, but the guitarist sees it less as a tour than a continuation of long-running musical conversations. Whether performing with his improvisation-driven trio Tone Forest, collaborating with Chilean vocalist Natalia Bernal, or leading his own jazz trio, Ennis brings together influences from jazz, blues, Brazilian music, and classical guitar into a voice that is distinctly his own. With two recording projects currently in production and a schedule that includes appearances at The Mount, Dizzy\u2019s Club, Studio 9, and the Clark Art Institute, the Pittsfield musician is entering one of the busiest and most creatively fertile periods of his career.<\/p>\n
I interviewed Ennis by email last month. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Check out his summer itinerary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n You have new recordings in the works with both Tone Forest and Natalia Bernal. What can listeners expect from those projects, and how do they differ from one another?<\/p>\n The big difference is that the Tone Forest project really features longer improvised sections that are a bit more open-ended. Natalia\u2019s project is based on the presentation of songs and is a bit more structured, with more involved arrangements for the group. That\u2019s a distinction that gets pretty blurry, though.<\/p>\n Every tune on the Tone Forest project will feature just the trio, with the only variable being whether I\u2019m playing arch-top jazz guitar or classical guitar, so it\u2019s a pretty unified sound throughout. Natalia\u2019s recording\u2014though it\u2019s an outgrowth of La Voz de Tres, our long-time collaboration with pianist Mike Eckroth\u2014features a variety of groups on the different tunes. In December, we recorded three songs with a quintet (Natalia, me, Mike, bassist Gregg August, and drummer Mark Walker) plus a string quartet. These were arrangements that we had written eight years ago or so to perform at the Geneva Music Festival in Geneva, N.Y., with legendary oboist and multi-instrumentalist Paul McCandless. We dug those arrangements up past year and reworked them to play with strings players from Kids 4 Harmony<\/a> at a concert at the Linde Center at Tanglewood, which inspired us to get the ball rolling on this project. We did a separate session last month with just the quintet, except with electric bassist Itaiguara Brand\u00e3o. I suspect a duo tune and a trio or two might end up on the final project, as well.<\/p>\n How have the Tone Forest recordings evolved since the release of \u2018Tone Forest\u2019 in 2024?<\/p>\n One of first gigs as a trio was in late 2019, when we subbed for the wonderful bassist Ike Sturm at the Jazz Vespers at Saint Peter\u2019s Church in NYC. We played with two amazing singers, Melissa Stylianou and Catherine Russell. Afterwards, Catherine said a really funny thing that we\u2019ve been tempted to use as a promo blurb ever since: \u2018I get it, you guys are like half serene, pastoral, and meditative and half downright grooving!\u2019 That\u2019s paraphrased, but more or less accurate. I think she hit the nail on the head with that one.<\/p>\n Our first album leaned more toward the meditative side, with core of the album being long-form and slowly evolving pieces like Miro\u2019s \u2018Quiet Lake,\u2019 Marty\u2019s \u2018The Mother Tree,\u2019 and my \u2018A Wave Away.\u2019 This one seems to be a bit more swinging, bluesy, and straight ahead. We\u2019re even going to include a couple of standards, and I\u2019m playing as much if not more arch-top guitar with a pick as I am the seven-string classical guitar. It\u2019s really fun for me to play that guitar, which is more what people think of when they think of jazz guitar, with this group. We often fall into heavy, swinging grooves where I\u2019m playing four-to-the-bar rhythm guitar, which I love to do. With this group, it retains its openness, hopefully evoking the way Jim Hall plays with Bill Evan on \u2018Undercurrent.\u2019<\/p>\n What has your collaboration with Natalia Bernal taught you about composition, arranging, and storytelling through music?<\/p>\n My collaboration with Natalia has been a central part of my musical for about 18 years now. As an arranger, composer, and co-leader, working with her has allowed me to develop in a lot of different ways. First of all, though we met through our shared love of Brazilian music, she introduced me to other Latin American repertoire and styles, like Andean Huayno, Peruvian Waltzes, and Argentinian and Chilean folk styles like Cueca, Chacarera, Zamba, etc\u2026 She\u2019s open enough to my crazy ideas that I\u2019ve been able to develop my concept of arranging, whether for La Voz de Tres, En Diablada, or our duo work. We always try to honor the song when we put our spin on a known standard, so that anything we do to it is meant to support our interpretation of the melody, lyrics, and intent of the tune. I think we\u2019ve been fairly successful with that, whether it\u2019s an Andean folk tune like \u2018Ojos Azules,\u2019 a North American standard like Irving Berlin\u2019s \u2018How Deep is the Ocean<\/a>,\u2019 or the beautiful \u2018Sue\u00f1o con Serpientes<\/a>\u2018 by Silvio Rodriguez.<\/p>\n Collaborating on songwriting with Natalia has been especially rewarding. I love the fact that our process is that there is no process! We have some tunes, like \u2018Sol de Pisco<\/a>,\u2019 that Natalia brought to me almost complete, having written the melody and lyrics a cappella\u2014her melodies always imply a fair amount of harmony, even if she came up with it away from the guitar or piano\u2014so all I needed to do was suggest a few tweaks, write an intro, come up with some chord voicings for guitar, and arrange the tune for larger ensembles; some tunes, like \u2018M\u00e1s Alll\u00e1<\/a>,\u2019 grew out of jamming on a concept; recently, we wrote a song I\u2019m very happy with, \u2018Es Hora,\u2019 which started with a melody, lyrics, an idea Natalia was exploring with the guitar, while doing Friday writing retreats at The Mastheads studios at Arrowhead, during the pandemic. We jammed on that idea a bit and recorded it on one of our phones and rediscovered it late last year. Natalia decided she didn\u2019t care for the lyrics or melody, but I dug the vibe and some of the harmonic and melodic ideas I was getting at. I ended up starting with that and writing a whole new tune and form based on pretty much just the feeling of her original idea. She wrote some beautiful lyrics to my melody, and now it\u2019s a song that will most likely end up on our next recording.<\/p>\n Looking at this summer\u2019s schedule, from The Mount to Dizzy\u2019s Club and Studio 9, are there performances you\u2019re especially excited about?<\/p>\n Do I have to choose? I feel very lucky to have such wonderful projects in the works and to have the opportunity to play this music with such amazing bands. The Tone Forest recording sessions\u2014both the studio session and the live concert recording on August 2 at Studio 9\u2014and concerts will certainly be a highlight of the summer. I\u2019m especially looking forward to playing at Dizzy\u2019s at Lincoln Center on June 25.<\/p>\n Playing with Natalia\u2019s band (The Mount in Lenox on June 11 and The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown on July 22) is another \u2018pinch me\u2019 moment. The band is amazing and super versatile; Mark Walker has been Paquito D\u2019Rivera\u2019s drummer for 30 years, he was in one of my favorite groups ever, Oregon, with the late Ralph Towner, and he can play just about any style you throw at him. Itaiguara Brand\u00e3o is one of the top-call Brazilian bassists in NYC, having performed with Diane Reeves, Romero Lubambo, and many others. I used to go check him out playing with the Brazilian pianist Cidinho Teixeira at the Zinc Bar in NYC when I was just getting into Brazilian jazz, so it\u2019s an honor to now consider him a friend and colleague. Mike Eckroth is our long-time collaborator in La Voz de Tres, and saxophonist Michael Zsoldos has one of the most beautiful sounds you could hope for, on both tenor and soprano saxophones.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll also have some more lowkey gigs with various groups, including a trio date with Conor Meehan and Adam Cot\u00e9 at the Lion\u2019s Den in Stockbridge on July 8. Guitarist Michael Junkins has done an amazing job programming the jazz nights in the Den (Wednesday and Sunday) and other music at the Red Lion Inn and cultivating a nice scene that allows local and regional jazz musicians to play in a club environment.<\/p>\n The Studio 9 event combines a live concert with a recording session. Does the presence of an audience change the way you approach recording?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been listening to a some Clifford Brown CDs in my car recently (yes, my car still has a CD player!), one is \u2018Study in Brown\u2019 with Max Roach, recorded in 1955, and the other is a Pacific Jazz\/Blue Note box set, which culminates with two live sets at Birdland in 1954 with an early incarnation of Art Blakey\u2019s Jazz Messengers. (I\u2019ll try not to go on too much of a tangent here, but it\u2019s amazing to compare these two recordings and to hear the growth and development in Clifford Brown\u2019s playing in that one year! It really puts in perspective what a towering genius this 24-year-old was and underlines the tragic loss his death a year later was.) Anyway, at the end of one of the Blakey tunes, Art Blakey pics up the mic and exclaims, \u2018First time I enjoyed a record date!\u2019 Recording in the studio is a challenge. I mean, it\u2019s great because we get to capture subtleties of our instruments that get lost in a lot of environments, things we get used to hearing when alone in the practice room. It\u2019s also a powerful and sometime necessary way to put the music under the microscope and figure out what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t. But often, it can feel inhibiting, uncomfortable, and energetically very different than live performance.<\/p>\n We came up with the idea of doing this live recording session last fall, after a week in which we played Mezzrow jazz club in NYC, then did a day at a wonderful studio n Paramus, N.J., called Trading 8s, and then played the Northampton Jazz Festival and another concert, all within five days. In the studio, we recorded some very nice takes, some of which might possibly end up on the next album. But the set at the Northampton Jazz Festival was just amazing! Feeling the energy of an amazing audience in a beautiful space really elevated the music and allowed us to take all of that detailed work we had done in the studio earlier that week and just have fun with it. To finish the recording, we\u2019re going to try to get the best of both worlds; we\u2019re going to do another day at Trading 8s, in the midst of a string of gigs in late June, then reconvene a month later for the concert at Studio 9<\/a>, where we can have a live audience, but be recorded through their beautiful gear. Since we\u2019re pretty confident we\u2019ll have really good take of all the tunes on tape by then, we\u2019re going to try to treat that just as a normal concert and be in the moment with the audience and see what happens!<\/p>\n Your playing draws from jazz, blues, Brazilian music, and classical guitar traditions. How did those influences come together into your own voice?<\/p>\n The first thing that really got me excited about playing guitar was blues. At the end of high school and going into college, all I wanted to do was play and listen to BB King, old Buddy Guy, Albert King, Robert Johnson, etc\u2026 A concert I heard at the beginning of my sophomore year at Middlebury College really blew things wide open for me, which was a trio by saxophonist Fred Haas (who was teaching jazz at Middlebury at the time), pianist Don Friedman, and guitarist Atilla Zoller. I blame that concert on the \u2018D\u2019 I got in my Animal Behavior course, which encouraged me to drop my biology major and switch to music! I was lucky, at a school with a small music department, to have a wonderful first jazz teacher like Fred Haas. The next fall, he brought the great Gene Bertoncini to the school to do a concert. Gene immediately became not only a friend and mentor, but one of my biggest influences. He inspired me to start studying classical guitar repertoire and technique and really got me excited about bossa nova, which really got me rolling with my love for music from Brazil.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t grow up immersed in any of these musical traditions, so my approach has always been to be respectful of the traditions and to diligently study the many facets of them. At the same time, I\u2019ve never wanted to pretend I\u2019m something I\u2019m not. I try to learn from the wisdom of these great traditions and then put that in the blender and see what comes out of my guitar!<\/p>\n Brazilian music has been a significant part of your career. What continues to inspire you about that tradition?<\/p>\n When we say \u2018Brazilian music,\u2019 we need to keep in mind that there are numerous styles of music from that country. Like many jazz musicians, what I\u2019ve been mostly interested in are mostly styles that I got into by tracing the web back from bossa nova, like samba and choro, plus some other styles that become intertwined in the global jazz language, like Bai\u00e3o and Ijex\u00e1. When I think of the music of my favorite Brazilian musicians (Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chico Buarque, Garoto, Guinga, Rosa Passos, Joyce Moreno, Jo\u00e3o Bosco, etc\u2026), I always feel there is an amazing and very special blend and balance of musical elements: beautiful and surprising melodies (check out this Guinga tune, \u2018Ramo de Delirios,\u2019 that La Voz de Tres recorded<\/a>); amazing lyrics (one of the joys of having studied Portuguese is that I can almost, with some work, understand the lyrics of Chico Buarque, Aldir Blanc, etc\u2026); harmonies that not only heighten the beauty of the melody and lyrics, but are super fun to explore as an improvising jazz musician; and some of the most exhilarating rhythms one could imagine. Plus, they play some serious guitar in that country!<\/p>\n How would you describe the chemistry between you, Marty Jaffe, and Miro Sprague?<\/p>\n The three of us have been friends and collaborators for a couple decades now. And yes, that does mean that I first played a jam session with Marty when he was 12! For years, most of the playing we did together was work for other bandleaders, like Sonya Kitchell, Samirah Evans, Karrin Allyson, etc\u2026 We always had a nice, natural chemistry on stage and enjoyed exploring musical (and life) concepts off the bandstand, often in a very fun and silly way. Finally, in 2018 or so, Miro suggested that we do a trio concert on his next trip to the East Coast (he lives in LA these days). That first concert was pretty magical, built on a strong foundation of trust, shared rhythmic sense, and deep listening that allowed the music and our musical personalities to really take off.<\/p>\n In a trio setting, where there is nowhere to hide, what does trust look like musically?<\/p>\n I have three trios that I work with fairly regularly: Tone Forest<\/a>, my longtime collaboration with pianist Mike Eckroth and Natalia Bernal, La Voz de Tres<\/a>, and my first call lineup for a more standard guitar trio format, with drummer Conor Meehan and bassist Adam Cot\u00e9. The thing each of these groups has in common is that the music just clicked right off the bat, leaving us feeling like \u2018Wow, this is easy!\u2019 With each of these lineups, I feel like each musician is listening and reacting to what\u2019s happening in the moment, in a supportive and ego-free way, while still playing with such rhythmic and harmonic integrity that the individual parts could stand alone. This goes for a bass player like Adam, but it also holds true for a singer like Natalia; we do a lot of duo gigs, and I find that her sound, pitch center, rhythm, and musical intent are so strong that I certainly don\u2019t need to prop her up with my chords. If each musician is able to carry the music forward individually and is listening and responding in a creative way, then the music can really breathe and go to unexpected places.<\/p>\n You balance an active performing career with teaching at Dartmouth and Williams. How do those roles inform one another?<\/p>\n It\u2019s tricky to find time to work on my own music and to book and prepare for concerts with the teaching schedule and other responsibilities of adulting, for sure. However, I feel very lucky that my day-job involves teaching and playing music that I love. I certainly have some students at both schools that keep me on my toes, and I find I\u2019m constantly learning by teaching music, no matter at what level.<\/p>\n What skills do young musicians need today that previous generations may not have needed?<\/p>\n A friend and former Dartmouth College student, Andrew Brozek, just sent me an amazing track last night for me to check out. It was his composition, and he sang, played guitar, banjo, fiddle, and bass. He also did an amazing job recording and mixing the song. He\u2019s a very clear communicator, photogenic, and a very good teacher (he was my TA for a beginning guitar class at Dartmouth). He\u2019s getting traction and gigging\/teacher opportunities through his effective social media activity, supported in part by the fact that his sister did her masters thesis on the TikTok algorithm. This is all to say, musicians basically need to do it all these days!<\/p>\n What are you listening to these days?<\/p>\n As I mentioned before, I\u2019ve had Clifford Brown in heavy rotation recently. I\u2019ve also been listening to a CD by the great Brazilian singer\/songwriter\/guitarist Jo\u00e3o Bosco\u2019s record called \u2018Afro Canto.\u2019 We just saw him play at Birdland last month, which was phenomenal! He was celebrating his 80th birthday and was still blowing us away! (I hope to be like him when I grow up.) I\u2019ve also been cycling through three CDs that include the guitarist Peter Bernstein: Bernstein\u2019s \u2018Monk,\u2019 Larry Goldings Trio \u2018Moonstone,\u2019 and Joshua Redman\u2019s \u2018Freedom in the Groove.\u2019 Three great recordings, and I always love the clarity of ideas, beautiful sound, and soulful feel Peter Bernstein brings to everything he does. Of course, I had to pull out \u2018Saxophone Colossus\u2019 by Sonny Rollins, after he passed away last week. Another one that I\u2019ve been revisiting is by two recently departed heroes: \u2018Oracle,\u2019 by guitarist Ralph Towner and bassist Gary Peacock. The record is gorgeous throughout, and Towner\u2019s opening notes on the first track, \u2018Gaia,\u2019 by Peacock, always knock me out.<\/p>\n Is there a piece of music you wish more people knew?<\/p>\n \u2018Elis e Tom,\u2019 the 1974 recording by Antonio Carlos Jobim and the great singer Elis Regina. It\u2019s just kind of a perfect recording in all ways and something I\u2019m always thrilled to turn folks onto.<\/p>\n What\u2019s next for Jason Ennis?<\/p>\n In addition to these projects for which I\u2019m leader or co-leader, there are a few projects that I\u2019m involved in as a sideman; I recorded last summer with a band led by Bassist Fumi Tomita. He composed music inspired by Japanese Yokai, which are demons and other mythological figures. That record is very cool and should be coming out in mid-fall\u00a0of this year.<\/p>\n I also play in a band led by bassist and part-time Berkshires resident Mary Ann McSweeney. Her project is inspired by Portuguese Fado music. No new recording on the way, but I just heard that we\u2019ll be playing the Lulu Fest on September 19. Lulu Fest is a jazz festival featuring women band leaders, produced by vocalist Suzi Stern and pianist Peggy Stern (no family relation!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsfield\u00a0\u2014 Jason Ennis\u2019 summer itinerary traces a path from Lenox and Williamstown to New York City\u2019s Jazz at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-258044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}