photo credit: Darcy Beck
On a long-scale baritone guitar that accentuates his elegant, intricate chordal work, jazz guitarist Elliot Freedman focuses on arrangements of music by and associated with Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, and Kenny Wheeler, and on his own compositions, which he has recently arranged for string quartet, soloist, and jazz trio, and which are featured in his duo with vibraphonist Nick Apivor. In general and especially for pieces not commonly associated with jazz guitarists, Elliot aspires to expand on harmony, to find evocative chord voicings and inner-voice motion, and deploy them daringly and tastefully. With awards and grants for composition from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Performing Arts, and international music festivals, Elliot pursued music in Europe in the 1990s. With his group, The Elliot Freedman Group, which Guitar Player magazine has heralded as playing “Very, very good avant fusion”, he advances a harmonically elegant, rhythmically muscular, and uncompromisingly adventurous update on the electric jazz of the 1970s.