Jazz Articles about John McLaughlin

About John McLaughlin

Building a Jazz Library

Few tasks are more daunting than picking just ten of a great jazz artist's albums for a library collection. Each record adds in its own way to the appreciation of any artist. But in the case of guitarist John McLaughlin (b. 1942), choosing representative albums is made an even more difficult chore because so many of his records run at odd angles to each other. He seems to change styles so often that just keeping track can be a daunting ...

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Building a Jazz Library

Modern Jazz Guitar

by AAJ Staff
April 13, 2015

Six strings, ten fingers, improvisation, and a sense of adventure: these are the tools required to play modern jazz guitar. While guitar greats like Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall laid the foundation for bop guitar, a whole new crop of musicians came of age starting in the late '60s. Modern jazz guitar, for lack of a better term, describes the new players who took the traditional forms and twisted them asunder. The new generation has absorbed swing, bop, ...

Live Review

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension at The Royal Festival Hall

by Ian Patterson
November 28, 2014

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension Royal Festival Hall EFG London Jazz Festival November 20, 2014 For any artist to be invited to play three years in a row is unusual by the standards of most festivals. Guitarist John McLaughlin, however, is not 'any artist,' having blazed a unique and highly influential trail from his collaborations with Miles Davis and The Tony Williams' Lifetime in the 1960s and with his own groundbreaking bands the Mahavishnu ...

Book Review

Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond

by Maurizio Comandini
November 11, 2014

Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond Colin Harper Jawbone 512 pagine ISBN: 978-1-908279-51-4 2014 Questa biografia del famoso chitarrista John McLaughlin, scritta dal giornalista inglese Colin Harper, è uno dei migliori lavori che ci è capitato di leggere negli ultimi anni. Un lavoro corposo e dettagliato che ci permette, in filigrana, di approfondire anche la storia del jazz in Inghilterra nel magico periodo che copre la fine ...

Talking 2 Musicians

McLaughlin, Barot, & Mbappe Remember Mandolin Shrinivas

by Alan Bryson
October 24, 2014

Uppalapu Shrinivas, best known as Mandolin Shrinivas, was born in 1969 in southeast India. At a very young age his affinity for the mandolin and his precocious musical talent was recognized by his father who placed him under the tutelage of an instructor in the carnatic school of Indian classical music. By the time he was nine years of age he was playing in public and quickly gaining fame in his native India. In 1983 at the age ...

Album Review

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension: The Boston Record

Read "The Boston Record" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
August 18, 2014

The Boston crowd's roars on this live set from John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension's 2013 tour say as much about the dazzling interplay of the band as it does about McLaughlin's enduring appeal. For sure, McLaughlin remains one of jazz-fusion's major draws but the acclaim has little to do with nostalgia and everything to do with the excitement that his performances--in whatever guise--generate. This incarnation of the 4th Dimension seems to have inspired McLaughlin to his fieriest electric playing ...

Book Review

Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond by Colin Harper

by John Kelman
June 12, 2014

Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond Colin Harper 480 Pages ISBN: 978-1908279514 Jawbone 2014 Few guitarists in the history of jazz have leapt onto the scene the way John McLaughlin did when the relatively new British expat made two very different appearances on albums by seminal American artists in 1969: first, with drummer Tony Williams' then-new group, Lifetime on the dense, intense and intentionally supersonically loud Emergency! (Polydor); ...