I have in the last few weeks discovered that Australia has lately been exporting lady guitarists. Well, Canada has the monopoly on lady singer-songwriters, so the Australians had to do something different.
The first is the jazz bassist Tal Wilkenfeld. Here she is at the tender age of about 23 with the guitar god's guitar god Jeff Beck at Ronnie Scott's...
The other is heavy metal guitarist Orianthi Panagaris,who has played with most of the guitar gods you can think of because she impressed the hell out of Steve Vai when he was touring Australia. Yes, that's right, she impressed the guy who impressed the hell out of Frank Zappa when he was about the same age. Here she is with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani...
What's remarkable is the number of You Tube commentators who say something like "yeah, she's okay, but there's loads of people who can play like that". And that may even be true. But it's not what it takes. There's a line in the movie Basquiat where the art critic Rene Ricard says "part of the artist's job is to get the work where I will see it". Self-promotion, getting yourself heard, sending your CD to Herbie Hancock and asking if you can support him on his tour of Australia, is what it takes. And that's what all those other people don't have.
To my generation, there's nothing odd about a 20-ish-year old playing at the top levels. Eric Clapton, Stevie Winwood, Pete Townsend, Tony WIlliams, Herbie Hancock, Steve Vai, Joe Bonnamassa to name just a few. Hancock was headhunted by Miles Davis when he was twenty-three, Williams when he was seventeen. Bonamassa opened for BB King when he was twelve! To my generation, what's odd is guys and gals in their thirties just making it past their first record deal. Jesus! You're supposed to be dead by thirty, leaving a legacy of erratic brilliance behind you.
There is one thing I hope. Ms Wilkenfeld has a fantastic technique and a solid grasp of the harmonic complications of contemporary fusion jazz. Catch is, fusion jazz is emotionally empty. There's more emotion in Coltrane's opening phrase of A Love Supreme than there is on the whole of a Gwilym Simcock album I bought as an experiment. It would be a huge waste of her talent if she stayed in that line, and a huge use of it if she tried to do something new, with something that moves the soul. The point of being young is that you can learn fast and aren't scared of trying something new. She's still got some time - Ornette Coleman was twenty-nine when he released The Shape of Jazz To Come.
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