About Town: Guitarist Charlie Ballantine at The Hemingway Room April 18, 2025

Guitarist Charlie Ballentine’s group at the Hemingway Room on April 18 tugged at the audience’s heartstrings in a way that few artists with a jazz background achieve. The band’s sound was hard-driving, layered, and virtuosic, combining jazz improv and melody with a direct and song-based sensibility. Peak moments of the night were reminiscent of a rock concert: Ballentine engulfed the room in a wall of sound, pounding powerful and sentimental chords with anthem-like melodies carried by the trumpet, sax, and bass clarinet. During quieter, freer and more intimate tunes, the guitarist communicated more with the bass and drums, letting loose meandering, complex, and playful lines that went into unsettled and atonal territory.

HIghlights of the set included an original take on the blues-influenced, spiky-sounding Thelonius Monk compositions “Off Minor” and “Trinkle, Tinkle.” These angular melodies sound fresh as reinterpreted on Ballentine’s guitar with its spacious reverb and subtle, distorted bite. He carried them off with an impressive virtuosity. Amanda Gardier’s alto solo on these tunes was full of leaping, startling, and original lines. On other compositions, Brandon Woody’s musical voice contrasted nicely with Gardier’s: one of his solos brought down the house with a slow crescendo of ever-higher and more powerful sustained notes. Bass clarinetist Todd Marcus demonstrated a full command of bebop language on his instrument, and his mellow, dark tone blended beautifully when the band played the head.

Ballentine’s vocabulary is extremely varied, drawing on chord melodies, fast chromatic ideas, and singable melodies, yet he connects these ideas artfully with a coherent voice. He’s one of those rare players whose touch is immediately identifiable, in no small part because of his unique choice of guitar tone and the singular blend of rock, folk and jazz that makes up his style. In speaking to the audience, he put forth the gentle warmth that comes through in his music. As Ballentine noted, the city is a haven for those who would form a community around the transformative and connecting power of music—and the concert itself was put on by an organization called The Sonic Lifeline dedicated to that ideal.

–By Kai Knorr

Kai Knorr is an aspiring journalist and an alumnus of St. John’s College. He is a member to whoWhatWhy’s Mentor-Apprentice Program. He is also an adept player of the upright bass and regularly plays at the Django jazz jam session in Baltimore.

Note:  The Sonic Lifeline presents a live jazz series at The Hemingway Room, an intimate performance space at Little Havana Cuban Restaurant on Key Highway. In 2022, producer Ed Baldi and photographer Nick Moreland founded this innovative entertainment production and promotion group “with a mission to meticulously craft artist-centric experiences that not only captivate audiences but also foster community through the power of live performance” (per their website). Besides Ballantine’s concert, their 2024-2025 winter-spring season featured performances by Tim Green, Akua Allrich, Tedd Baker, Jose Andre, Gracey Jay, and Corey Wallace.