Gene Bertoncini
‘Love Like Ours’
Ambient Music

There’s a case to be made that Johnny Green’s “Body and Soul” is the most beloved and most performed jazz standard of all time. Furthermore, the bridge to the song, which contains multiple key changes, is a minor miracle unto itself. Jazz musicians for almost a hundred years now have been devising untold thousands of different ways to play both the central refrain and the bridge.  

Just recently, I heard the veteran guitarist Gene Bertoncini play “Body and Soul” several different ways in several different contexts, and in collaboration with other master musicians. One was a duo with the vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, on “Love Like Ours,” his new album of duets with four great instrumentalists, and the other was during a live performance last week with a fellow guitarist, Peter Bernstein, and longtime bassist Josh Marcum.

The concert was held at the Interchurch Center on Manhattan’s Claremont Avenue, where Mr. Bernstein started the tune; Mr. Bertoncini then took over the melody when they reached the bridge. For the final chorus, they reversed the pattern. 

The two guitarists’ styles complimented each other brilliantly; in fact, they achieved a perfect balance: They were similar enough to make the transitions smooth and seamless, but distinct enough to make it interesting. Between the switching off of one guitarist to another, using the shift into the bridge as a point of demarcation, it almost felt like two different musicians on the same instrument playing a kind of medley of two different songs at the same time.

On the album, Mr. Mainieri starts with the bridge — first in solo, stretching it out as much as he can, and then getting slower still as he reaches the last part of that section, the notes corresponding with the lyric. He ratchets up the suspense, which is then appropriately broken when Mr. Bertoncini enters and joins him for the last eight bars.  

As the vibraphone states the melody of the last eight bars, the guitar trails behind him, offering supportive notes and functioning as a second voice. When the song starts again, it’s still the vibes that are playing Johnny Green’s melody, but it’s almost as if the vibes and the familiar tune are now forming a backdrop for Mr. Bertoncini’s stellar variations in the foreground. (Clearly this is a tune that musicians can’t get enough of; Mr. Bertoncini recorded an equally wonderful solo version in 1999.)

The album, “Love Like Ours,” is a series of encounters between the 87-year-old Mr. Bertoncini and trumpeter Terrel Stafford, violinist Sara Caswell, and drummer Jeff Hamilton — and one “bonus” track — in addition to Mr. Mainieri. Throughout, the interplay is both intimate and exciting. 

Mr. Bertoncini and his partners play not only with the melody and the rhythm of each tune, but with our expectations. On Johnny Mandel’s “Emily” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” we expect the trumpet to be in the spotlight and the guitar to provide accompaniment, and yet Mr. Bertoncini is as much a part of the central action as Mr. Stafford, who plays with an uncommon sensitivity here — reminding us that Mr. Bertoncini has had considerable experience playing with the most sensitive of all trumpeters, Chet Baker. 

The set opens with Ms. Caswell playing “Last Night When We Were Young,” a soaringly operatic ballad by Harold Arlen that anticipates his symphonically informed “Over the Rainbow.” Throughout “Last Night,” the two detour through other songs with a similar narrative, Mr. Bertoncini with “Young and Foolish” and Ms. Caswell with “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.” The result is a one-of-a-kind mashup of multiple melodies of love, youth, innocence, and foolishness. 

By that standard, should we expect that the two duets with Mr. Hamilton will be primarily exercises in rhythm? Not necessarily. In his use of brushes, Jeff Hamilton reminds me of another West Coast percussion icon, Shelly Manne, in that he is an exceptionally lyrical drummer. For the 1937 ballad “Gone with the Wind,” the drum is the wind beneath the guitar’s wing – as well as the wind that he is gone with. Mr. Bertoncini seems to be expressing astonishment in Mr. Hamilton’s remarkable skill set by quoting “Jeepers Creepers,” as if to say he can’t believe his own eyes and ears.

“Love Like Ours” ends with what might be the most satisfying duo of them all, in which the great lyricist Alan Bergman sings the title song — which he wrote with keyboardist-composer Dave Grusin and his late personal and professional partner, Marilyn Bergman. Although far from one of the most widely recorded songs by the Bergmans, it has been sung by some heavyweight divas, famously Barbra Streisand, and Mr. Bergman recorded it himself for his 2007 album “Lyrically.” 

Still, I prefer this performance here to any that I’ve heard. Even in his younger days, Mr. Bergman — who turns 100 in September — never had the chops of a Billy Eckstine, but he knows precisely how to deliver a lyric. He has impeccable pitch and even better rhythmic placement; Mr. Bertoncini’s accompaniment is neither minimal nor maximal: not one note too few or one too many. Rather like Mr. Bergman’s delivery, it is precisely perfect. 

“Love Like Ours” is a particularly compelling song in the context of this album, describing, obviously, the love that Mr. Bergman still feels for his late wife and partner, as well as the love that he and Mr. Bertoncini have for each other. There’s also the love that Mr. Bertoncini feels for his other duet partners in this project and, not least, the love that they all have for this music. It is properly titled “Love Like Ours,” but it isn’t theirs exclusively; it belongs to all of us.