photo by Nick Suttle
John Scofield Trio
John Scofield - guitar
Vicente Archer - bass
Bill Stewart – drums
Guitarist John Scofield (Dayton, 1951) first caught the public's eye when he played in Miles Davis' band in 1982. Although he already had ten years of professional experience - playing with jazz greats including Jerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Billy Cobham, Charles Mingus and Dave Liebman, as well as releasing several solo albums - it was his work with Miles that launched him into the jazz orbit: he recorded three albums with him, had an extensive amount of solo time and was credited as a (co)author on several tracks.
In his music, he combined his youthful love for the Beatles and the blues, the bebop tradition and Coltrane's modal development, and the jazz-rock and fusion of his generation. Openness to different genres inspired stylistically comprehensive albums featuring funk, blues, New Orleans rhythm and blues, gospel, country, electro-jazz, hip-hop, standards and original jazz.
He made over forty albums as a leader and more than a hundred as a sideman. Still, he received his first Grammy (for the best instrumental jazz album Past Present) only in 2016, almost four decades after his discography debut with the album John Scofield Live. That was the jump-start - the following album Country for Old Men won the same award, plus he "caught" the Grammy for the best-improvised jazz solo ("I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"). He holds an honorary doctorate from Berkeley College since 1997 and is a professor at the Steinhardt School, New York University. He performed at the Belgrade Jazz Festival for the first time in 2006, as the star of its 22nd edition. He repeated the role seventeen years later and in the same place, in the MTS hall. This year's performance is a part of the worldwide promotion of Scofield's new double album Uncle John's Band, scheduled for release two weeks before the Festival by the famous Munich production ECM Records.
