Pat Martino Think Tank CD

Personnel: Pat Martino (guitar); Joe Lovano (tenor saxophone); Gonzalo Rubalcaba (piano); Christian McBride (bass); Lewis Nash (drums).
Recorded at the Sony Studios, New York, New York in January 2003. Includes liner notes by Bela Fleck.
THINK TANK was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. "Africa" was nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: Pat Martino (guitar); Joe Lovano (tenor saxophone); Gonzalo Rubalcaba (piano); Lewis Nash (drums).
Audio Mixer: Kirk Yano.
Liner Note Author: Béla Fleck.
Recording information: Sony Studios, New York, NY (01/08/2003-01/10/2003).
Photographer: Kirk Yano.
Guitarist Pat Martino has tempered his serpentine, machine-gun improvisational style over the years into a soft-focus graph-paper approach that lies somewhere between Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell. His playing, at once mathematically dense and puritanical in its economy, can impress with long bursts of harmonic complexity and stylistic flourishes that cross rockabilly-esque chicken scratch with ECM-style repetition. Unfortunately, for all his harmonic panache, Martino never really commands the swing on the cerebral, blues-tinged, and ultimately disappointing Think Tank. Similar to his bandmate here, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, Martino floats over the rhythm section, dancing around the groove but never coupling with it. The result leaves drummer Lewis Nash flailing ineffectually as if to fill up space. Worse, bassist Christian McBride, largely renowned for his muscular and swinging approach, simply coasts along, his acoustic double bass over-miked into a slack drone. That said, the title track is an intriguing scientific theorem of a tune that Martino built out of the letters in John Coltrane's name. Even more engaging is the ballad "Sun on My Hands," in which pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Martino delicately play off each other in a kind of plaintive call and response that brings to mind Martino's dusky, reflective 1976 album We'll Be Together Again. Think Tank isn't a bad album; it just contains a few too many ideas that probably sounded better in theory than they do in practice. ~ Matt Collar
Despite a serious condition in the late 1970s that left him with the sketchiest of memories of his past, Pat Martino rehabilitated his life and his formidable career with superhuman determination. Claiming that the people his music attract--players, students, fans--are ultimately what is important to him, and that his chosen instrument is "just an apparatus," this guitar master re-learned his instrument from his own earlier recordings and climbed back to the top of his game.
Martino's considerable musical palette includes Coltrane (they met through the legendary teacher Dennis Sandole), Tristano, modalism, and, finally, ersatz psychedelia, which in his oeuvre, often stands in for balladry (yes, Pat likes to play fast). On THINK TANK, he is joined by a group of New York-based players with enough cache to make any producer greedily rub their hands together in anticipation. This music, largely Martino originals, combines a floating lyricism with sharp, clean-cut corners. Worthy contributions come from the solid rhythm section of Christian McBride and Lewis Nash and the driving, uncompromising solos of Gonzalo Rubalacaba and Joe Lovano.CMJ (10/6/03, p.26) - "...There is a certain mystical feel to the ballads and an overwhelming sense of revelation that seems to fuel the more upbeat numbers..."
JazzTimes (11/03, pp.102-3) - "It sounds best when the band breaks down into component parts..."k
Mojo (Publisher) (12/03, p.120) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Here an all-star team spur the polite-toned, heavy-chops guitarist to a distinctive, further distilled blend of the cerebral and hearty."