Many sides of guitar great John Scofield will emerge in Bay Area run

John Scofield’s 2011 concert at Grace Cathedral wasn’t quite his first unaccompanied performance, but filling that reverberant room with sound as part of SFJAZZ’s Sacred Space series seems to have kindled a slow burning creative flame that fully ignited a decade later during the pandemic.

Returning to the SFJAZZ Center this week, the guitarist opens a four-night run April 14 with a solo show focusing on tunes from his debut solo recording, an eponymous album recorded last summer and released last week on ECM. With time on his hands, he decided to plunge into a demanding and exposed project that he’d long kept on the back burner.

“Grace Cathedral was only the second time I’d ever played a solo show, and it was when I started to really consider a situation like that,” said Scofield, 70, who did several short European tours in recent years to hone a solo approach and develop a body of material suitable for a jazz artist’s version of the full Monty.

“Solo jazz guitar is impossible,” he said. “Andres Segovia I am not. I had to figure out what would work with my limitations, and I realized that working with the looper pedal gave me a lot of possibilities.”

Given Scofield’s ability to thrive in diverse musical situations — he’s as apt to interpret songs by Ray Charles and Hank Williams as he is works by Keith Jarrett or Carla Bley — it’s not surprising that the ECM album covers a lot of ground. Highlights include a bristling version of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” a sleek and melancholic take on the ballad “It Could Happen to You,” and a rendition of the traditional Irish song “Danny Boy” that wanders into a Hindustani raga.

The April 15 concert reunites Scofield with bass legend Dave Holland. They first made an impression together on tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson’s 1993 tribute to Miles Davis “So Near, So Far (Musings for Miles),” though it was while touring with Herbie Hancock following his 1996 album “The New Standard” that they really got to know each other. They also co-led the collective supergroup ScoLoHoFo with saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Al Foster.

Aside from a week at the Blue Note in the fall of 2019, this is their first duo date in the U.S., a connection that brings Scofield back to his formative years. “Dave was around when I was learning about jazz, and I heard him when he was with Miles,” Scofield said. “I’ve always loved his playing.”

If the show with Holland reunites Scofield with a jazz giant who inspired him, the April 16 show finds the guitarist embracing his status as a pervasively influential figure himself, when he takes the stage with his multi-generational quartet Combo 66. The group features the brilliant drummer Bill Stewart, who’s been a Scofield mainstay since 1989.

Stewart suggested his Nicolas Payton rhythm section mate Vicente Archer for the bass chair, and pianist Gerald Clayton “is someone I’ve known since he was a kid,” Scofield said. “I just love his playing so much. His ability to play as part of the band lifts the whole group up. He can go way back and he can play completely free too, though his real métier is more post-bop. I can’t say enough about him.”

The SFJAZZ run closes April 17 with two shows by Scofield’s new band Yankee Go Home, which also features Archer, Brian Blade Fellowship keyboardist Jon Cowherd, and drummer Josh Dion, a player better known for his work in rock bands (Yankee Go Home also plays two shows Monday at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz.).

As the “yankee” in question, Scofield designed the quartet to explore songs by American artists he grew up listening to, such as Stevie Wonder, the Grateful Dead, Leonard Bernstein and Neil Young. Given the rock and pop origins of many Yankee tunes, Archer figured he’d be playing electric bass as well as standup, but Scofield wanted the acoustic sound.