I was considering calling this interview, “Stalking Stochelo Rosenberg”. The much sought after guitarist was in Montreal to play a concert at the Place des Artes Theatre in Montreal and I’d been hunting him down.
With a career that spans five decades and multiple genres, it’s no surprise that guitarist Tommy Emmanuel is respected by players and music fans the world over. His unique finger style technique of playing with all ten fingers has dazzled and amazed even legends, so much so that Emmanuel was presented with the “Certified Guitar Player Award” by the great Chet Atkins, an honor earned by only four other guitarists before Atkins’ death in 2001.
Hailing from Boston, Gerry Beaudoin first took up the guitar at the age of 10 and has since evolved into one of the finest jazz guitarists and music arrangers in the country. He is the recipient of the 1992 National Association of Independent Record Producers award for best jazz recording, 1994 Cadence Magazine Editor’s Choice Award for his CD Sentimental Christmas, as well as a submission for a 1998 Grammy nomination.
Greg Howe is an amazing guitar virtuoso who has become one of the most in-demand performers, clinicians, guitar teacher, studio and touring musicians on the scene today. Howe has performed with musicians such as Michael Jackson, Enrique Iglesias, N’Sync, Victor Wooten, Dennis Chambers, Stu Hamm among many others. In this interview we talk about Howe’s music, jazz influences in his music, his touring with different pop stars as well as Howe’s thoughts on Allan Holdsworth, success and teaching individuality.
In my early development as a guitarist, I had aspirations to play as well as Jim Hall one day. Jim Hall and Ron Carter’s Alone Together is one of the main records that inspired me to learn how to play jazz guitar, and his melodic inventiveness maintains my attention even until this day. I saw him perform at the National Guitar Workshop this past summer, and his playing did not cease to surprise me.
In this interview with one of the most influential jazz guitarists alive today, we discuss his duet recording with Ron Carter as well as many other things. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did!
I first heard and saw John Benitez perform with the Richie Flores Sextet during the 2011 Heineken Jazz Festival in Puerto Rico. Benitez’s enthusiasm, charisma and personality were felt subtly through his performance with this ensemble. Benitez contributed a sense of truthfulness to the performance that many young performers are in search for today.
Jazz, like many genres of music, is defined by its classifications. Is this artist a Beboper? Is this artist a Modern Jazz performer? Do they play Modal Jazz, or Latin Jazz, or Fusion? It seems that everyone from record companies to festivals to radio stations to fans are constantly trying to figure out how to categorize artists and their musical output. This is a great way to help fans figure out if they will like a new artist, being able to compare them to an artist they already know, but it also leads to problems because some artists just don’t seem to fit into any one category of classification with their music.
For many musicians, being given a 50 plus minute drum solo to listen to, then asked to write and record a duo track to accompany that drum solo, before devoting two years of one’s life (on and off) to the project would seem out of the question, if not a little crazy. But that is the scenario that Chapman Stick player Trey Gunn found himself in when he teamed up with percussionist Marco Minnemann on their duo album Modulator. The album features a pre-recorded drum track, which is almost an hour in length, that Gunn was then expected to work with as he composed, improvised and recorded his second part of the album. The result is not only thought provoking from a compositional and musical standpoint, it is an engaging work of avant-garde art that pushes one to break down their expectations and boundaries as they join these two world-class musicians for this hour-long epic ride.
New York City jazz guitarist Chris Taylor’s music transports jazz aficionados on a sonic wave that is both aurally and imaginatively appealing and one that is magically visual in its coloration and drive. East Coast jazz can be grounded in traditional jazz, but some artists dig into the improvisation mode to channel the essence of their musical palettes in very personal journeys. And from what I’ve heard of Taylor, his willingness to drive hard into improvisation can be tastefully melodic and fearless.
With the online guitar learning community exploding over the past decade, several names have risen to the top of the heap as the leaders in online guitar education. One of these players is Jimmy Bruno, and recently Jimmy has branched out on his own, after working with another company on a previous website, to launch a new site called the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Workshop. If the past is prologue to the future, then this site should be a great resource for guitarists of all levels and backgrounds that are looking to better themselves as players, and all at a very affordable price.
Do you love the guitar and all things guitar related? 
