Life in the emerald beyond

If you find yourself in Monaco on a Sunday night, make your way to La Note Bleue, a cozy restaurant and music bar on the beach by the Avenue Princesse Grace. There, you're likely to find a legendary world/fusion guitarist sitting in with a group of young jazz musicians eager to cut heads with the acknowledged maestro of inner awareness and otherworldly spirits. Forever known to some as “Mahavishnu,” you can call him by his birth name, John McLaughlin.

- MIKE METTLER

"It's the emotion-the deep emotion, and how much you care about it-that is shown in what you play."

“Yes, I have a little group here at my local jazz restaurant,” McLaughlin said during a recent Zoom call from his homebase overseas. “For the anglophones, we're known as the Blue Note Band. I've been doing it for about a year now, and what I do is, I invite graduate musicians between the ages of 18 and 24 from different academies around Europe—France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK—to come out. It’s the only place we play.”

Having retired from touring, McLaughlin, still spry at 83, recently celebrated his career on the planks with Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2022, a two-LP/two-CD plus Blu-ray disc set released by earMUSIC.