Jake Hertzog and The Ozark Concerto

Guitarist Jake Hertzog leads a Concerto for Electric Guitar and Jazz Orchestra with String Quartet.

Arkansas guitarist Jake Hertzog has just released an album with a jazz orchestra and string quartet.  For this project, he has recruited arranger and conductor Susumu Watanabe, who has contributed several arrangements.

JB:  Your new album is very creative and distinctive.  Tell me one or two classic electric guitar with orchestra albums that have particularly impacted you as a musician.

JH:  I mean, Jim Hall’s “Concierto” is certainly a classic record for guitar and large ensemble, and I love that album for both the music and the concept behind it. For me personally, I was probably the most inspired by Pat Metheny’s “The Way Up” for the ‘long form’ compositional idea and Kurt Rosenwinkle’s “Our Secret World” for its use of guitar as a main lead instrument.  To me, I wanted to make a hybrid of these two ideas, the first being one long united “symphonic” type composition and the other being the guitar as the ‘front’ of a big band. Adding the string quartet was a way of creating another voice on the project, another character so to speak. 

JB:  Jake, are there any special orchestration aspects in arranging music with the electric guitar out in front of the orchestra?

JH:  I certainly think the idea of ‘balance’ has a lot to do with how the guitar can function in a large ensemble. I was fortunate to work with an incredible arranger on several of the large movements, Susumu Watanabe. One of the recurring themes was the role of the guitar – for example, is the guitar a rhythm section instrument (as in the very beginning of the work, Part I), or is the guitar a member of the horn section (for example the main melody in Part III). Or, is the guitar a soloist (for example, the distorted solo in part V). I think we tried to give the guitar a variety of roles, so that by the end of the work, we have heard the guitar doing a little bit of everything that a guitar can do. I also think this ensemble provided some really neat textural combinations, for example guitar and trombone (such as the beginning of Part V) is a really fun sound and the trombone anchors the guitar. Whereas guitar and string quartet (for example, the opening theme of Part VII) accentuates the breath of the guitar and how it blends with other string instruments. Finally, I’ll say that this concerto also includes several shorter movements where the guitar is playing with a smaller subset of the orchestra. These also serve to balance the work and feature other timbral combinations. The guitar plays a rhythm part against the cello in Part IV and gets centered inside a saxophone ensemble in Part VI, so it was really wonderful working with so many possibilities. 

JB:  As a guitarist, how did you need to think differently being supported by an entire orchestra?

JH:  A little bit! I definitely think as a soloist, you have an entirely different set of constraints – but that’s what makes it challenging and interesting. I also found that playing the guitar and working to blend with different instrument combinations demands special attention to articulations, fingerings, and dynamics – which on an electric guitar, really come out in a studio setting.

JB:  Was the music on this project specifically written for this concerto?

JH:  Yes! I really wanted to create one large-scale work. That said, the main theme in Part I I had written several years earlier, and always knew I wanted to create a large ensemble project, but it was ‘waiting for its moment.’ 

JB:  In certain movements, you use occasional guitar effects.  Are they prescribed in the score or left to the guitarist’s discretion?

JH:  Certainly, at the guitarist’s discretion. Actually, one of my hopes for this project is that another guitarist will want to play it and they will add an entirely different spin and voice on to the music. That’s the dream for composers – we hope the music lives on far beyond just the performers playing it at the time.

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