New Release From John Stein, Among Friends

JGT contributor Joe Barth talks to guitarist John Stein about his new guitar album of voice, cello, and guitar, Among Friends.

John Stein is a swinging guitar player and a very capable professor of music theory at Berklee College in Boston.  Now retired from teaching at Berklee, he is focusing on some album projects he has wanted to do for years.  One is an album of music performed on the guitar, cello, and voice.  The other, an album of music dedicated to his grandchildren. 

JB:  Voice, cello, and guitar, tell us about your goals in making your new album, Among Friends? 

JS:  I think my goal was simply to make some music with two people with whom I had worked early in my professional life and whom I enjoyed very much as people and as musicians. 

Among Friends was released in May this year. The recording was actually accomplished sometime in the 1990s, so long ago that none of us remember the actual date. Until now, it had never been released. Fortunately, good music doesn’t have an expiration date, and I am very pleased to now offer it to the world. I brought my two friends to my home and recorded the music in my living room live without overdubs, on equipment I borrowed from Berklee College of Music, where I was a professor in the Harmony Department. I’m not much of a techie, so I’m amazed that I was able to capture the three of us playing live on tape. When I arranged to release the music, I took it to my mastering engineer, John Mailloux at Bongo Beach Productions, and John worked his magic on the files so that it sounds as good as a pristine studio recording. 

The musicians on Among Friends are, besides myself, Fay Whittaker on vocals and Chris White on cello. One of my early opportunities as a musician was when I got a steady gig playing guitar in duets with female vocalists at a café in the Boston area on Thursday and Friday nights. The opportunity lasted 3 or 4 years, longevity which is rare in the music business. At the café, it’s possible that I played with every female jazz vocalist who lived locally in the Boston area. I loved playing with most of them, but the person I most enjoyed collaborating with was Fay Whittaker. She did more of those nights than any other vocalist, and we played in a variety of other musical situations together as well. Fay has a wonderful, deep voice, and she sings in tune with great jazz phrasing. 

When I was first learning to play jazz guitar, I looked for collaborators with whom I could join in this new pursuit. I was able to find a few, and the cellist Chris White was my favorite. Chris has an affinity for improvisational music, and he plays multiple styles with a wonderful fluidity. 

We open the album with “I Thought About You” because it features all three of us and gives the listener a taste of what we each bring to the musical table: Fay’s wonderful swinging vocals, Chris’ pizzicato bass parts and lovely arco improvisation, my guitar comping and soloing. 

JB:“I Thought About You” is a great song. Why open the album with this Jimmy Van Heusen- Johnny Mercer classic? Also, I love your treatment of Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss.” What drew you to this song? 

JS:  All of the vocal tunes on the album are tunes that Fay loves to sing, and they are songs that we have done many times on gigs and on which we have developed a strong concept. “Prelude to a Kiss” is a good example of this. We did alter our arrangement, however, when we brought Chris into the picture. It became an opportunity to showcase Chris’ beautiful comping skills. It is really a feature for him, along with Fay’s emotional singing. 

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JB:  Were your three original songs composed for this album? Talk about the compositional process of a couple of the songs. 

JS:  “Our Love Will See Us Through” was an instrumental ballad that I composed and included on my second release, Green Street, under a different title. I was playing in an organ trio at the time I recorded Green Street, but I was also a sideman with the wonderful Boston jazz vocalist Ron Gill in that era. Ron loved that tune, and he wrote lyrics for it. Ron and I recorded it twice – first on a Ron Gill band album that hasn’t yet been released, and then later as a duet on an album that we released called Turn Up the Quiet on my old record label, Whaling City Sound. I recorded another version of the tune on another previous album, No Goodbyes, with Cindy Scott singing Ron’s lyrics. Fay and Cindy have very different voices, and both versions are glorious! 

The other two original compositions were both previously recorded on my third album, Portraits and Landscapes. They are “Sarlat,” a minor key melody I composed in France and named after the town where I was when I got the musical inspiration. The other is “Switch-a-roo.” It’s a straight 8ths 24-bar blues. “Switch-a-roo” also appears on the duet album I recorded with master bassist Dave Zinno on the Whaling City Sound record label titled Wood and Strings. The thing about good tunes is that they can be treated very differently, played by different musicians with different affinities, and they will sound good in a variety of contexts. Both of these original tunes on the album are duets with Chris, and I love how interactive and flexible he is. 

JB:  That is a lively duet with Fay on “Route 66.” 

JS:  My duets on the album with Fay come straight out of experiences we had performing the tunes live on gigs so many times. “Route 66” is, as you say, a lively blues. “It Might as Well Be Spring” is a bright Brazilian fling. “Since I Fell for You” is a bluesy ballad I have always loved, and Fay kills it, singing with so much emotion and soul! “Autumn Nocturne” is simply a gorgeous ballad, and I love the beautiful voice and guitar textures. 

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JB:  What do you appreciate most about Fay Whittaker’s voice? 

JS:  I love her phrasing, and I love that she sings in tune. Fay also conveys emotion when she sings. She is not simply a technician. Music is a form of human expression, and Fay shares her feelings when she sings. 

JB:  As a guitarist, is there anything unique in comping and supporting Chris White’s cello lines?” 

JS:  Playing with Chris is really nice for me because he listens closely and reacts to what is happening in the moment. Making music with him is truly an interactive experience. I treasure the moments when I am making music with partners who are able to do this. The fact that he is able to do this on a cello is something special. That’s true both because the cello has such a glorious timbre and because it covers so much range. It sounds wonderful playing pizzicato bass parts and pizzicato solos, and it can soar into the middle and higher registers when played with the bow. The cello, creates superb duet possibilities for a guitarist. 

JB:  Let me ask about your album for your grandchildren, Next Gen. Tell me some general comments about your goals with this album. 

JS:  Next Gen, Jazz for my Grandchildren, was the first of the two recordings I released this year. It features my working trio of Ed Lucie on bass guitar and Mike Connors on drums. The story of the recording is as follows . . . 

The group began playing together during the COVID pandemic, doing outdoor sessions on Mike’s back porch. Next Gen is actually the third recording this band has accomplished together. In 2023, we released a recording called No Goodbyes, augmented by the lyrics and wonderful singing of vocalist Cindy Scott. When I gave copies to my daughters and their families, one of my daughters said, “Nice Dad . . . but when are you going to write some music for your grandkids?” So, that instantly obligated me to do another recording with compositions dedicated to each of the kids. 

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Usually, when I write music, I think about musical issues of melody, harmony, rhythm, groove, tempo, etc. Once a new tune is completed, I then search for something to title it, which is really separate from the compositional process. In this case, however, I had the titles ahead of time – my grandkids’ names. And I considered something more – their personalities. There is something of each child in the song structure itself, and also in the way I am inspired when I play on each of these tunes. 

In addition to the five compositions for each of my grandkids, the album is filled out with standards and jazz standards that we enjoy playing. I think the recording documents my current style and ability, and after five years of steady playing together with Ed and Mike, the music on Next Gen also reflects our close musical and personal friendship. It is an understatement to say how much I appreciate their superb bass playing and drumming! 

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