PizzaExpress Jazz Club (Soho)

Julian Lage is of the "highest category of improvising musicians, those who can enact thoughts and impulses as they receive them." (New Yorker). The California-born, now New York–based guitarist has evolved from collaborator (with such giants as Gary Burton, Jim Hall, David Grisman, Béla Fleck, and Charles Lloyd) to band leader. On 'Modern Lore', Julian Lage’s second studio recording with his trio, the composer and guitarist focuses on the groove, building his melodies and solos around the work of the prodigious rhythm section of double bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wollesen. 'Modern Lore' finds Lage playfully flipping the script he followed on his acclaimed 2016 Mack Avenue debut, 'Arclight'. UK’s Jazzwise describes Arclight as "... a bright light shone on very specific, finely wrought musical miniatures that unfold untold pleasures."

“There’s a disarming spirit of generosity in the musicianship of Julian Lage, and a keener sense of judicious withholding. A guitarist with roots tangled up in jazz, folk, classical and country music, he has spent most of his life bathed in a bright, expectant light.”

New York Times

On Modern Lore, Julian Lage’s second studio recording with his trio, the composer and guitarist focuses on the groove, building his melodies and solos around the work of the prodigious rhythm section of double bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wollesen.

Modern Lore finds Lage playfully flipping the script he followed on his acclaimed 2016 Mack Avenue debut, Arclight. That album produced, like Modern Lore, by Lage’s friend and collaborator, the singer-songwriter Jesse Harris, was his first trio set on electric guitar and found Lage inspired by the sounds and the attitude of the freewheeling, pre-bebop jazz era, when, as he puts it, “country music and jazz and swing were in this weird wild-west period.”

This time he incorporates the sensibility, if not the outright sound, of early rock and roll, a similarly hybrid form driven by rhythm, personality and a passion for the electric guitar. “Last time it was specifically a combination of the electric guitar being a lead voice interacting with those pre-bebop songs. I wanted to do a jazz record the way I had always craved to do one,” Lage recalls.

Band Lineup

Julian Lage (guitar)

Jorge Roeder (double bass)

Eric Doob (drums)