Tim Berens

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Originally published in the May, 1996 issue of the newsletter of the Cincinnati Jazz Guitar Society. Howard Alden chooses his words as carefully as he chooses the notes he plays. During our chat, I was struck by how much his speaking resembles his playing - soft spoken, thoughtful, emotional, cliche-free, and direct from the heart. I was also struck by the content of the story, which is in many ways a classic American jazz tale: a 10 year old kid takes some banjo lessons, becomes inspired, begins practicing and through hard work, dedication and talent becomes a well established name in the world of jazz. Howard, 37, began playing the tenor banjo at age 10. He studied with a retired banjo player who taught him to read and also taught him many old tunes. A few years later, he took up the guitar and began listening to Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and the other jazz guitarists of the day. In his teens, he attended a Howard Roberts guitar seminar, and then attended the group classes that Howard Roberts held that evolved into GIT. He studied at GIT during the first year of its existence, and after that year stayed on as a teacher/assistant. Howard's first professional gig was as a banjo player working in pizza parlors in Southern California. He says of being a 12 year old professional banjo player "I was a curiosity". From those humble, pepperoni and mushroom covered beginnings, Howard's career slowly grew to the point where his resume includes work with Ruby Braff, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, George Van Eps, Joe Williams, Woody Herman, Flip Phillips, Charlie Byrd, and many others. We were chatting about his recent recording with fellow guitarists Jimmy Bruno and Frank Vignola when the following question came up. TB: The tightness of the ensemble is a major issue when putting together a guitar ensemble. Could you shed some light on what it takes to put that together verses what a group of sax players who have been playing in sections for years would have to do? Did you have more work or less? HA: Maybe a little more. Guitarists, although they've got millions of techniques at their disposal, it's not something that guitarists do often so they're not used to phrasing together. Everybody has different picking techniques. Everybody has a slightly different sound. Of course you can say the same thing for saxophones. It's something that I got used to doing because I play with a lot of different horn players. I tailor my sound when I do parts with them, whereas not only do you attack the note at the same time, but you end it at the same time. Fortunately, Jimmy and Frank are so fast, they're both brilliant players. We spent a fair amount of time rehearsing. Before we recorded the album, we had a week long gig at Yoshi's in California in Berkeley. So we had a week of performance as well as rehearsal. Once you get used to playing that way , once you get to listening to all the other players around you, once you get in the habit of doing that, it comes together pretty easily. It's just a matter of thinking that way.

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