Wes Montgomery, center. Courtesty Jazz da Gamma
Location: Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts,
926 Center St.
Milwaukee WI 53212
Donation: $15
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Hey folks, now’s the time to see a film about a rarely filmed artist: Wes Montgomery.
It’s titled Wes Bound:The Genius of Wes Montgomery.
Given his influences as a guitarist you’ll know a handful of his style when he grabs a chord and churns up siome momentum. The harmonies may drive you to a rhyhmic frenzy of good feeling, if you let them. It’s partly because the chords are wapped in alluring melody. Milwaukee’s own Manty Ellis is one player who absorbed Wes like a sponge.
Same is true of Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Larry Coryell, and Pat Martino, among others.
Wes Bound producer/director Kevin Finch and Robert Montgomery interviewed dozens of musicians, family members, and friends for the documentary, including platinum record-selling artist George Benson, rock and roll guitar icon Slash, 20-time Grammy winner Pat Metheny, Russell Malone, Mimi Fox, Grammy winner Lee Ritenour, Steely Dan co-founder Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Grammy-winning rock guitarist Eric Johnson, second-generation Hampton family musician Pharez Whitted, bassist Larry Ridley (formerly of Indianapolis), Wes’s touring drummer Billy Hart, and others.
In addition to the interviews, the film also features the music of Wes and his famed brothers, bassist Monk Montgomery and pianist and vibraphone player Buddy Montgomery, who spent many years in Milwaukee.
Methey expressed well the ineffabe but palpable qualities of Wes’s playing:
“The whole idea of being an improvising musician for me sometimes gets a little clouded up with the nuts and bolts of it. But at its core it’s about storytelling and Wes for me, above everything else, you could always follow it – he had this this amazing ability to describe very complex ideas in ways that were so clear and so well backed up with spirit and soul. But also if you just look at it in a linear way, he almost never played any idea that didn’t have two or three – sometimes more – responses to what the idea was.”
Following the film you’ll hear a live performance from the UWM Jazz Ensemble Repertoire Combo, doing Montomery material, and directed by drummer Dave Bayles.
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