Instrumental virtuosity is like any kind of power on earth, corruptive and constructive in equal measure. Its a handicap, in a strange way: the musician must acquire one more level of refinement to turn it toward the good. If you can sing through your instrument--particularly if you can do it very, very speedily--you can make a music that seems lordly, pinched and gloating. Or you can spread a generous feeling through a room and somehow transcend your own gifts.
Jazz-rock fusion and progressive metal are still areas of unrepentant virtuosity in music, and young prog-metal musicians are still taking cues from aging fusion guitarists. Allan Holdsworth, possibly the most influential of those early 1970s-generation fusion heroes, played his annual gig at Iridium last week, with his quartet. And a prog-metal show at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza on Saturday, including the Florida band Cynic, confirmed the flow of information.
Over the past few years Mr. Holdsworth has been revisiting the music he played as a member of the drummer Tony Williams's jazz-fusion band Lifetime in the mid-'70s. There are three other outwardly skillful players in the current band--the keyboardist Alan Pasqua, who was in the same edition of Lifetime; the bassist Jimmy Haslip; and the drummer Chad Wackerman, who tattooed all the music with loud tom-tom fills. But no matter how well they play--and Mr. Pasqua in particular was loose and intense in Thursday night's early set--you tend to sit and wait for the guitar solos.
Jazz-rock fusion and progressive metal are still areas of unrepentant virtuosity in music, and young prog-metal musicians are still taking cues from aging fusion guitarists. Allan Holdsworth, possibly the most influential of those early 1970s-generation fusion heroes, played his annual gig at Iridium last week, with his quartet. And a prog-metal show at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza on Saturday, including the Florida band Cynic, confirmed the flow of information.
Over the past few years Mr. Holdsworth has been revisiting the music he played as a member of the drummer Tony Williams's jazz-fusion band Lifetime in the mid-'70s. There are three other outwardly skillful players in the current band--the keyboardist Alan Pasqua, who was in the same edition of Lifetime; the bassist Jimmy Haslip; and the drummer Chad Wackerman, who tattooed all the music with loud tom-tom fills. But no matter how well they play--and Mr. Pasqua in particular was loose and intense in Thursday night's early set--you tend to sit and wait for the guitar solos.
