Almost as influential as Metheny was in his first flowering is guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, who followed him 20-some years later at Berklee and in Gary Burton’s band. The Remedy: Live at the Village Vanguard, Rosenwinkel’s first album on the Web-based ArtistShare label, is a kind of valedictory. The long-term line-up that played those January 2006 dates included pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Eric Harland; at the Regattabar this weekend, the current Rosenwinkel band will have Aaron Parks, Ben Street, and Obed Calvaire, respectively, in those chairs.
The new band received strong notices for their recent New York appearance — but that doesn’t change what The Remedy achieves. Rosenwinkel is redefining the mainstream much the way Metheny did 30 years ago. Here is tonal, song-based jazz that’s free, loose, swinging, technically accomplished, emotionally warm. It’s an unhurried set — just eight songs over its two discs, four of them passing the 16-minute mark. But the pieces don’t feel long, and neither do the solos. Rosenwinkel proves the pop truth that anything can be a hook — a few chords, a rhythm, any refrain that sets up or satisfies expectation. On the set opener, “Chords,” it is indeed those cycling chords in Goldberg’s hands, the following bass, the 6/8 groove, and the melody that Rosenwinkel laces over it. On the title track, it’s an abstracted tango rhythm.
Rosenwinkel and his long-time collaborator, tenor-sax Mark Turner (the one constant in the band), play winding melodies in unison, or split off into cadenzas of improvised counterpoint. Meanwhile, Goldberg, who came out with Joshua Redman’s quartet and has released his own workmanlike albums, emerges as a major voice, contributing as much as anyone to the elastic ebb and flow. His left hand is sometimes such an independent, steady comping chorus — establishing and holding the hook — that you might forget how that harmonic rhythm is coming from the same person who’s spinning those free-flowing lines, trailing off, doubling back, always listening. This is ensemble music that creates its own unique space.
PAT METHENY TRIO | Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, Somerville | March 16 | 5 + 8 pm | 617.931.2000 | KURT ROSENWINKEL GROUP | Regattabar, Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St, Cambridge | March 13-14 | 617.395.7757