Newtown, Pa., resident Audric Jankauskas finds happiness in fusion. He’ll perform with his trio at Gobbler’s Restaurant in Point Pleasant April 12.
By: Jodi Thompson
For now, just call them the Audric Jankauskas Trio. The band members are working on a better name, something catchy and hopefully easier to pronounce but they’re not letting on what it is at the moment. Curious listeners will have to wait about six months until the trio releases its first CD.
In the meantime, the jazz trio will perform at Gobbler’s Restaurant in Point Pleasant, Pa., April 12. Mr. Jankauskas, a Newtown, Pa., resident and guitarist, will play contemporary jazz covers and some original material with bandmates Tom Cottone and Rob Lewcun. Mr. Cottone is a professional drummer who hails from Princeton and Mr. Lewcun, of Willow Grove, Pa., plays bass when he’s not earning a living as a physician.
!["A]("/local/Z/ZWIRE1091/zwire/images/040802audricjankauskas.jpg") |
| A guitar technician by trade, Audric Jankauskas plays on handcrafted guitars of his own design. "Some people know me for making guitars and fixing guitars," he says, "but my passion is music."
|
Keeping their moniker under wraps relates to Mr. Jankauskas’ fondness for the surprise and spontaneity inherent in jazz.
"My heart is really in what’s called jazz-rock fusion music, which right now is a little bit unpopular," he says. "It’s sort of gone by the wayside. It’s either pop jazz or smooth jazz sound. There are some great players to listen to, but overall, as a musician I get a little bored with it because I know a lot of it’s contrived.
"I really love straight-ahead jazz. What I’m doing is really somewhere between straight-ahead with elements of rock and funk built in to it, hence the name fusion or jazz-rock."
A guitar technician by trade, Mr. Jankauskas works at George’s Music in North Wales. He purchased his first stringed instrument on a whim at age 13. By that evening, he was hooked on the guitar and music. His influences include Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, names synonymous with electric guitar.
"That still comes out of me," he says, describing his early role models. However, Mr. Jankauskas doesn’t perpetuate the rather nasty habit of destroying the guitar after a performance. There won’t be any instruments set on fire or smashed following the Gobbler show.
Each of Mr. Jankauskas’ guitars is handcrafted, of his own design. He played his pale green "space guitar" for 15 years and it shows only a little wear. Its far out color and shape, in addition to the whammy bar, make it "a little too radical" for him today. The smooth paduk guitar he made recently is more to his present liking. Its paduk, maple and babinga woods are hand oiled with no lacquer. The frets sport inlayed mother-of-pearl. Unseen are 12 chambers hollowed into the heavy body. It is a work of art before producing any sound.
"Some people know me for making guitars and fixing guitars," he says modestly, "but my passion is music."
Mr. Jankauskas’ zeal for tunes isn’t limited to making them on six strings. He plays keyboard, teaches, composes and is a deft sequence programmer and sound engineer. His CDs attest to that. Outer Limits is an exploration of jazz-fusion on which many of the tracks are Mr. Jankauskas’ compositions. Sponge celebrates a process he calls sponging, which captures the essence of the creative process through improvisation. What’s Ahead is Tom Alexander’s debut solo piano recording co-produced and mastered by Mr. Jankauskas.
His opuses are not created from a vacuum. They are inspired by his life, good, bad or indifferent.
"I never can sit down and say OK, I’m going to compose something and all of a sudden something will come out of me out of the blue," Mr. Jankauskas says.
He can often pinpoint specific events that influenced his music. "Spirit Song" is one such tune. He visited a shop with a Native American drum for sale and was so fascinated by the sound the huge drum produced that he came directly home to compose a piece visual enough to warrant sound track consideration. It opens with a howling wind, produced in a most basic manner blowing across the mike. The synthesized drumming sets a rhythmic beat, while a fabricated language emulates American Indian vocalizations. Mandolin-type trills lend an ethereal ambiance to the electronic oeuvre. He admits the piece varies from his other work.
"Basically all my compositions start off with just a seed of inspiration," he says. "It may be just a rhythm or a melody in my mind. I really don’t know where it’s going to go because that goes hand in hand with being a jazz musician. I’ll just try to absorb myself, or dive into the feeling of the music and then other things just spring out of me spontaneously."
Mr. Jankauskas has earned kudos from Guitar Player Magazine, WRTI Philadelphia Jazz Showcase, National Public Radio and Bob Miles’ World of Guitar on syndicated television. His music fills the sound track of films Philly Flash and Flies of Cupid. After playing venues throughout Bucks, perhaps the jazz loving public can guess his trio’s name.
The pressure is on for the band to produce a moniker creative enough to live up to its sound.
The Audric Jankauskas Trio will perform at Gobbler’s Restaurant, 37 Byram Road, Point Pleasant, April 12,
8 p.m. For information, call (215) 297-8988. On the Web: www.gobblersrestaurant.com.
Audric Jankauskas on the Web: www.aujanmusic.com