Kino Šiška in cooperation with Brane Rončel presents a 4th dimension concert. Following the acoustic encounter with John’s Shakti in Cankarjev dom last November, we are happy to welcome the ‘high energy’ electric image of this guitar giant to our own stage. To make the event even more special, we will have the opportunity to
Kino Šiška in cooperation with Brane Rončel presents a 4th dimension concert. Following the acoustic encounter with John’s Shakti in Cankarjev dom last November, we are happy to welcome the ‘high energy’ electric image of this guitar giant to our own stage. To make the event even more special, we will have the opportunity to experience live his new masterpiece, the current album “The Boston Record”.
JOHN McLAUGHLIN guitar
ETIENNE MBAPPÉ bass
GARY HUSBAND drums, keyboards
RANJIT BAROT drums
British-born musician, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin is one of the key and most important jazz guitarists of our time. In 1969 he released his first solo album, “Extrapolation”, and soon afterwards moved to the United States, where he joined Tony Williams’ jazz-rock trio Lifetime and the band of the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis. With Davis he collaborated on his major jazz-fusion works, such as “In A Silent Way”, “Bitches Brew”, “A Tribute To Jack Johnson”, “On The Corner” and “Live-Evil”. His own electric band, which was one of the first fusion bends, the Mahavishnu Orchestra (Jerry Goodman/violin, Jan Hammer/electric and acoustic piano, keyboard/Rick Laird/bass, Billy Cobham/drums) was at its most active from 1971 to 1973, when they recorded three very intense albums released on Columbia: ‘The Inner Mounting Flame’, ‘Birds of Fire’, ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’. Mahavishnu Orchestra introduced an entirely new stile into the ABC of music, i.e. a fusion of electric jazz and rock with eastern and Indian music influences. Following some changes in the line-up and McLaughlin’s growing fondness of eastern religions (Sri Chinmoy), the band disintegrated in 1975 and the attempt at reviving it about a decade later was also unsuccessful. John McLaughlin was reaching ever deeper into eastern spiritualty and mysticism, thus developing a related music interest. In 1975 he founded the band Shakti, in which they integrated jazz and Indian music. With this band, he performed in Slovenia for the first time in 1977 in Tivoli hall. In his long career, John McLaughlin worked with numerous musicians, such as Carla Bley, Gil Evans, Miroslav Vitouš, Wayne Shorter, the Rolling Stones. In 1979 he connected with drummer Tony Williams and bass player Jaco Pastorius to form the short-lived Trio Of Doom. The same year he performed in Tivoli hall, Ljubljana with Larry Coryell and Al Di Meola. The 1980s were a busy decade for McLaughlin. He played with many musicians, including the Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu, and it was John’s trio that Gurtu first performed in Slovenia with (Cankarjev dom 1991/with Kai Eckhardt on bass). In 1996, John McLaughlin again connected with his colleagues Paco de Lucia and Al Di Meola. They formed The Guitar Trio to go on a world tour and release the eponymous album.
In 2007, John founded a new jazz fusion quartet, 4th Dimension. In March this year they released the album “The Boston Record”, which was not their first, but the first performed by the updated line-up. Drummer Mark Mondesir was replaced by the virtuoso Ranjit Barot (Uttar Pradesh/India), otherwise composer of film scores, music director, arranger and singer. Bassist Hadrian Fereud was replaced by the impressive Etienne Mbappe, and the only remaining member is keyboard player and drummer Gary Husband. Replacing the Aladdin carpet by high-octane fuel once more, McLaughlin has in his last recording again been tracing the direction leading to a cohesive music form. Rumour has it, that at the age of 72 McLaughlin is at the peak of creativity, his latest album serving as proof that just like 50 years ago he remains an important element of the music industry. Following the acoustic encounter with John’s Shakti in Cankarjev dom last November, we are happy to welcome the ‘high energy’ electric image of this guitar giant to our own stage. To make the event even more special, we will have the opportunity to experience live his new masterpiece, the current album “The Boston Record”.
Chick Corea
…what John McLaughlin did with the electric guitar set the world on its ear. No one ever heard an electric guitar played like that before, and it certainly inspired me. John’s band, more than my experience with Miles, led me to want to turn the volume up and write music that was more dramatic and made your hair stand on end.
Pat Metheny
McLaughlin has changed the evolution of the guitar during several of his periods of playing.
Frank Zappa (1977)
A person would be a moron not to appreciate McLaughlin’s technique. The guy has certainly found out how to operate a guitar as if it were a machine gun. But I’m not always enthusiastic about the lines I hear or the ways in which they’re used. I don’t think you can fault him, though, for the amount of time and effort it must have taken to play an instrument that fast. I think anybody who can play that fast is just wonderful. And I’m sure 90% of teenage America would agree, since the whole trend in the business has been “faster is better.”
John McLaughlin:
By the time I arrive in New York, I’d just passed my 27th birthday, and playing with Tony and Khalid was one of the greatest experiences of my life. The times were pretty wild at the end of the 1960’s and the music followed the times. My good luck didn’t end there as I found myself in the studio with Miles a day after my arrival in New York for the recording of ‘In a Silent Way’. Miles’ influence on me went into hyperdrive from that point, and I had the best of all possible musical worlds: playing and recording with Tony and Lifetime, and Miles Davis.
With Miles, for me, it was his simplicity, his directness, the authority of his music from a rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic point of view. His conceptualizations, from my point of view, were revolutionary. Everything I could see in Miles touched me. McLaughlin found liberation in Davis’s general, even cryptic directions: He’s amazing to work with, because he’d never say, ‘I don’t really want that’; he’d just say, ‘play long’or ‘play short’. Once he told me, ‘Play like you don’t know how to play guitar.’ That’s Miles, and you just go along with it.
