The Art Of The Blues

Great musicians have been doing their own take on the blues since the form was created, and now Bruce Arnold joins their company with The Art Of The Blues. Arnold has exhibited astonishing versatility with his various projects, tackling pieces as disparate as Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" and Native American chants. He is best known however, for his explorations into the application of 12-tone theory in jazz improvisation. Arnold here applies a similar intellectual rigor to the 12 tracks that are by turns lyrical, spare, haunting and always intriguing. As Bruce explains it: "In The Art Of The Blues I have applied the structural rhythmic and harmonic ideas that I have been working with over the past several years to the blues form. These structures deal with small three note groups and the superimposition of time fields over a basic pulse. I've used the unit of a half step and a minor 3rd as my motif, and composed twelve blues, one in each key. You'll also hear some fun with time signatures and the use of a dotted quarter note as a vehicle for multiple time layering." Joining Bruce on this bracing set and negotiating the tricks and turns are stalwarts Tony Moreno on drums and Dean Johnson on upright bass. Although Bruce's composition is forward thinking, his chordal accompaniment style throughout Art of the Blues conscientiously harkens back to the roots of Rhythm and Blues guitar. All these elements combine to create a collection of tunes that while sounding like a traditional jazz guitar CD also presents a personal new approach and direction for the blues.