Clay Birds from JUBILANT RAIN by Jack DeSalvo

I discovered improvised music little by little as a teenager, studying classical guitar and playing in garage bands. It was, however, the solo recordings of Keith Jarrett that intimated a process that was perhaps even more paradigm shattering than the astonishing jazz that I was listening to at that time. He wasn’t simply improvising over the harmonies inherent in a composed song.

He was making the whole thing up.

The only parallel to this, and it is far from the same process, is channeling. Yet the music produced in this context, though completely fresh and of-a-piece, is not completely unaffected by one’s physiology and the reservoir of music available to human ears in this historical period.

I was determined to search for, if not the same process, a process that would necessitate moving myself out of the way and allowing music that clearly already exists in some other world, some other dimension, some parallel universe beyond myself, to flow through my instrument, the guitar.

There has been, incidentally, countless other precedents of truly extemporaneous composition in performance, a list which would include the Bengali Baûls, certain Sufi musicians and maybe even J.S. Bach himself. Whether or not I have been utterly successful in finding such a lofty process, what we are offering here is completely spontaneous music that is representative of the search.

— Jack DeSalvo
All music by Jack DeSalvo

JACK DeSALVO developed his extraordinary guitar style from a deep immersion into jazz, classical guitar and his own prolific compositional output. He has studied with Bill Connors, Leonid Bolotine, Ariada Mikéshina, George Russell and at Berklee. He is a professional musician, composer, recording artist and record producer for Unseen Rain Records. He has toured the world with many jazz greats.

jackdesalvo.com