Guitarist Lionel Loueke to Reissue Album “Close Your Eyes”

GUITAR MASTER LIONEL LOUEKE TO REISSUE CLOSE YOUR EYES,
HIS FIRST STANDARDS ALBUM

Originally released in 2018 by the celebrated vinyl-only Newvelle Records, now available on CD and digitally from Massimo Biolcati’s Sounderscore label

Featuring Loueke on electric guitar with bassist Reuben Rogers & drummer Eric Harland

Three bonus tracks, including John Coltrane’s incendiary “Countdown”

Available October 22, 2021

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Left to right: Reuben Rogers, Lionel Loueke, Eric Harland
Photo Credit: Elan Mehler

Lionel Loueke, one of the jazz world’s most searingly original and sought-after guitarists, has devoted the bulk of his output to original music. But Close Your Eyes, originally released on vinyl by Newvelle in 2018, found the Benin-born Loueke focusing entirely on standards and canonical jazz classics. Joined by the marquee rhythm section of bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland (known for their inspired teamwork in groups led by Charles Lloyd, Aaron Goldberg and more), Loueke applied his distinctive rhythmic and harmonic approach to material from the Great American Songbook as well as the oeuvre of jazz greats John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. Now, thanks to Sounderscore Records, an independent label founded by Loueke’s longtime Gilfema bandmate Massimo Biolcati, Close Your Eyes is being issued for the first time on CD and digitally, streaming on all major platforms, with download and CD purchase links to be found on the label’s website sounderscore.com.

Three additional songs not featured on the vinyl release — John Coltrane’s “Countdown,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark” and Thelonious Monk’s “We See” — are also now available for the first time on the Sounderscore reissue.

Loueke’s maiden effort for Newvelle was the extraordinary 2017 duet session Hope with veteran pianist Kevin Hays (digitally reissued by Edition Records in 2019). For that encounter Loueke played nylon-string acoustic guitar, the instrument that brought him to prominence with his flagship trio Gilfema on such releases as Karibu, his first Blue Note album, in 2007. Nylon-string was also in the foreground for HH, Loueke’s magisterial 2020 solo tribute to Herbie Hancock. On Close Your Eyes, however, Loueke continues to refine an electric guitar sensibility he’s been pursuing on record since Heritage in 2012 — not to mention in his sideman work with Hancock, Dave Holland, Chick Corea and other luminaries. (He recorded Close Your Eyes, in fact, during a one-day break from overlapping tours with Corea and Hancock.)

Analogous in a sense with HH, Close Your Eyes finds Loueke in the frame of mind to pay homage to the masters. As Steve Provizer wrote at artsfuse.org, “The broad outlines of the music are familiar, but the landscape is fresh and rejuvenating.” Wayne Shorter, another great Loueke mentor, gets a nod with the opening meditation on “Footprints,” while Coltrane is represented with a fast odd-metered “Countdown” and an alluring, abstracted solo guitar treatment of “Naima.” Monk’s “We See” and “Blue Monk” as well as the Miles Davis staple “Solar” bring out the trio’s hard-swinging side, though in terms of timbre, articulation and harmonic and melodic choices, Loueke is entirely himself even in the straightahead idiom. The five songbook standards include Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” as an affecting, slow-grooving guitar/drum duet; the minor-key midtempo groover “Close Your Eyes,” by Tin Pan Alley composer Bernice Petkere; and the Hoagy Carmichael evergreen “Skylark,” which Loueke previously recorded on nylon-string for Karibu, making the electric version on Close Your Eyes a noteworthy historical contrast.

As Newvelle label head and Close Your Eyes co-producer Elan Mehler wrote in his liner notes, “[Lionel’s] West African … background informs his interpretations in a way that feels so organic and clear. It’s almost as if he can accordion his whole past and musical background on top of itself to dizzying affect.” Evoking the instruments of his native region via palm-muting and other textures, he creates pointed, staccato inflections as he navigates modern jazz harmonic structures in a wholly individual way, redefining the parameters of his instrument. Close Your Eyes offers the clearest, most sustained evidence to date of his deep engagement with the show-tune canon and his ability to transform everything he plays into his own musical language.

In addition to his own sterling catalog as a leader, Loueke played on Herbie Hancock’s GRAMMY-winning River: The Joni Letters as well as Terence Blanchard’s GRAMMY-nominated Flow. He has lent his unmistakable musical voice to recordings by Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, Angelique Kidjo, Kendrick Scott, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Avishai Cohen and many more. His journey from Benin to Côte D’Ivoire’s National Institute of Art began after taking up guitar at the late age of 17. From there Loueke studied in Paris at the American School of Modern Music, then on to Berklee College of Music in Boston and ultimately the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (then in Los Angeles). At the Monk Institute he not only came under the tutelage of Shorter, Hancock and Blanchard, but also met his Gilfema trio mates Biolcati and drummer Ferenc Nemeth as well as vocalist Gretchen Parlato and other dear musical compatriots, jump-starting the creative path that he follows to this day.

Massimo Biolcati formed Sounderscore in 2019 as a platform for his own work and that of his colleagues. Prior to Close to Your Eyes, the label released Gilfema’s 2020 reunion album Three (“a joy from start to finish” — London Jazz News), Biolcati’s Incontre and Momenta, and the co-led quartet album A Way Out with Biolcati, Yoav Eshed, Lex Korten and Jongkuk Kim. The next Sounderscore release after Close Your Eyes will be from drummer Ferenc Nemeth with two sax-bass-drums trios, featuring Dayna Stephens and Marcus Strickland with Biolcati on bass.

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