- Classic guitar trio (John Hart on guitar, Bill Moring, bass, Tim Horner on drums) that conveys a clear, unpolished sound.
- Rooted in 1950s and 60s bebop/post-bop jazz, focused on subtlety and musical taste rather than flashiness.
- Hart compositions include “Think,” “New Mantra,” and “Abyss.”
- Also covered: “Some Other Time,” “Stella By Starlight,” Monk’s “Reflections,” and “The Masquerade Is Over.”
- A refined, understated jazz guitar album recommended for fans of classic straight-ahead jazz.
Dear reader, I reach out to you with this latest review. If pushed for time you can glean the gist of it above. Otherwise feel free to spend more considered quality time with the album and peruse some clips later in the review. Because you’re worth it.
I think of these lines from a Walt Whitman poem ‘To A Stranger’ part of Leaves of Grass when thinking of whomsoever it is reading this review privately and quietly searching for the best jazz:
“Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)” – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860.
I am an experienced listener and reviewer but my thoughts are subjective. You gotta realise that as a starting point. I’ll try to avoid paralysis through analysis and give my honest opinion and a few thoughts that occur.
There’s no horn of any description on this latest from US musician John Hart unlike the set-up when Kirk Knuffke joined the guitarist on Love Is.
Humility is part of the New Mantra charm allied with huge skill and taste, the guitar, double bass and drums set up allow the sonics to be unadorned much with overly finicky production to get in the way. Metaphorically there is no blanket on the ground to muffle the sound.
In other words you can hear the guitar very clearly and it’s catnip for anyone whose sweet love for jazz first began in the bop and beyond Golden Age of the 1950s and 60s. Opener ‘Think’ works although perhaps there is too much of a bass solo from Bill Moring that distracted me a bit. The tune is a gem though and so is the title track. These are both Hart tunes.
Hart, 64, has worked as head of the jazz guitar department at the Frost School of Music in Miami. Frost, where Pat Metheny studied and taught in the 1970s, is making quite a reputation for itself in more recent years more generally – a collaboration with London’s Royal Academy of Music playing the music of Kenny Wheeler for instance garnered a Grammy nomination this year. It’s a brilliant record…
… yes some days are indeed similarly better when you hear an album of such quiet romance and beauty in another idiom and scale entirely boiled down to the essence from Hart & the cats on New Mantra.
Hart played with organist Jack McDuff for many years. By the way in case you are making the connection he doesn’t sound much like George Benson who had also played with Brother Jack long before Breezin’ fame made GB a household name.
The guitarist-composer’s sound reminds me more of Pat Martino and Kenny Burrell in places on this latest – I am thinking firstly of albums of Martino’s like 1980s album The Return which has the same instrumentation. More on the Burrell comparison later.
Hart worked with future tenor star Chris Potter, the Larrys Goldings & Grenadier and Al Foster (1943-2025) on Pure and from 2011-2014 was the musical director of the Birdland Jazz Quartet, the house band at the Birdland jazz club in New York City.
Hart has been with Danish jazz indie SteepleChase for a long time now. It’s a true connoisseur label up there A&R wise with the Dutch straightahead aligned masters, Criss Cross Jazz, and revered American outlet Smoke Sessions.
The run of his own tunes found on the opening portions of New Mantra shows how sensitive and multi-faceted a writer he is building from a firm understanding of an array of modes and subtle scalar shifts. I like ‘Abyss’ most with the faster bass contribution far better than on other tracks.
The drummer is Tim Horner who is quite unobtrusive but as on the beautiful reading of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Some Other Time’ makes a difference. Hart’s treatment of the Bernstein melody is very different to the way trad-jazzer John Pizzarelli did using a seven-string to interpret the 1940s Broadway On the Town classic on Stage and Screen issued a few years ago.
Listening to both back to back tells you a lot about the modernism of Hart’s approach which aligns well with the modality of Bill Evans for example transplanted to guitar in this instance. (Of course Evans did the song with Tony Bennett.)
I love the piece ‘Stella By Starlight’ mainly through Miles Davis. Hart’s rendering here allows far more extensive soloing than found elsewhere on New Mantra and is a big highlight.
Also here on New Mantra – sub title I am making up “same as the old one” if you subscribe to Golden Age thinking when modern jazz was at its zenith, no problemo in that – is Monk’s ‘Reflections’ which was on the 1953 trio release Thelonious. The piece is also sometimes known as ‘Portrait of an Ermite.’
Carmen McRae recorded the tune as ‘Looking Back’ with words by Jon Hendricks on Carmen Sings Monk.
I’m not going to go on all day. But suffice to say Hart’s album isn’t one that shouts the big I AM or scream LOOK AT ME, be ridiculous, remove all one’s clothing on stage or go TA DAH to understandable gasps. It’s all the better for that, pride doesn’t come before a fall and mercifully instead is something of a must for non hubristic seeking heritage jazz guitar lovers.
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