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Discography
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Montréal's
Sonny Greenwich has been compared to a
number of the giants of jazz... usually as a way of describing his
incomparable-ness!  Much like
his fellow guitarist
Lenny Breau,
Sonny is often considered a "musician's musician". On several occasions,
his playing has been likened to that of
John Coltrane:
both exhibit a
piercing intensity of tone which conveys their sense of powerful
spirituality to their listeners. And Sonny also has an inclination to
pursue a broad spectrum of artistically challenging, "it'll-never-sell"
projects -- a kind of relentless integrity and sense of self that reminds
me of no one so much as
Ornette Coleman!
But personally, if I were to try
and compare the unique Sonny Greenwich to anyone, it would be the also-unique
Thelonious Monk.
Both of them play in a style which
is, for the most part, deliberately a-technical -- starker,
searching for the uncommon chord or new run, less flashy than
most of their contemporaries, but a careful listen will reveal sparks of
technique that tell us it's all there, they can use it when they wish to.
Both of them have an aggressive, utterly personal sound which can be
identified nearly by a single note.
In Sonny's case, it's a personal sound distinguished by a firm, direct attack
tempered with the odd fluid line, a powerful guitar tone which also avoids
the hard-rock distortion we usually associate with guitar "power". What he
ends up with is a sound of focused, laser-like guitar purity [indeed, much
like Trane's penetrating tone], the sound of a man confident and comfortable
with who he is and what he's doing.
While I'm admittedly a Greenwich
newbie, I've already learned that, like Monk, like Trane, the sound
of Sonny Greenwich is the sound of a master.
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