Results for "guitar"

Paul Nash

Born: 1948

The Triumph of Life and Legacy

"My life has been given sudden definition
An end point that I can almost prepare for
At once frightening and magnificent..."
Paul Nash Diary, December 28 2003

The measure of a person's life can be seen in the impact they have on other lives and how they handle the often grim vagaries of life. In the face of one's own mortality, the entirety of emotions and fears can be overwhelming. Many though decide to soldier on and concern themselves with the time they have left, the mark they leave behind; with the story of how they inhabited this life and walked the earth.

Paul Nash, composer, educator and jazz guitarist, has written such a life story

Wolfgang Muthspiel

Born: March 2, 1965

Born in 1965, guitar player Wolfgang Muthspiel lives in Vienna. 30 CDs with mainly his own compositions document his work as bandleader and co-leader. Being trained as a classical musician he approaches the acoustic guitar with the same ease as improvisation and jazz.
 His Mozart-loving father encouraged him to start with violin playing at age six. At the age 14, he switched to guitar and started to create his own music with his brother Christian. His interest for improvisation led on to jazz. He moved to Boston/Massachusetts and attended the Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship in 1986 where Mick Goodrick introduced him to complex harmonic worlds

Doug Munro

Born: July 9, 1953

Doug Munro is a critically acclaimed New York-based jazz guitarist. Since 1986 he has released 20 albums as a leader and has appeared on over 100 recordings as a sideman, producer, and arranger, working with artists like Dr. John, Michael Brecker, and Dr. Lonnie Smith. He has over 75 published compositions and over 300 recorded arrangements to his credit.

In the recording field, Doug has received two Grammy nominations and two NAIRD awards.His 2011 release, A Very Gypsy Christmas was a top 5 pick by the Wall Street Journal. Amazon.com picked Boogaloo to Beck, which he arranged, co-produced, and on which he played, as a Top Ten Jazz CD of 2003. Doug also did orchestration on the Oscar-winning documentary film When We Were Kings. His last CD released in 2017, The Harry Warren Songbook, received rave reviews and still enjoys strong airplay.

Joe Morris

Born: September 13, 1955

Joe Morris was born in New Haven, Connecticut on September 13, 1955. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane's OM which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended a student run alternative High School called The Unschool in downtown New Haven next to the campus of Yale University

Thurston Moore

Oscar Moore

Born: December 25, 1916

Oscar Moore’s guitar licks are among the mostmemorable in Americana, though his name may not drawknowing nods from the listeners of today.

Moore is perhaps best known for his impeccablecontributions to Nat “King” Cole’s version of “TheChristmas Song (Chestnuts)” a tune which is among themost standard of great American standards and a stapleof the holiday season. The momentous track, recorded in1946 by the original King Cole Trio, represents a high-water mark in the productive career of the famedbandleader and was one of a select handful of pop hits inthe era to feature beautiful jazz-tinged post-CharlieChristian guitar playing.

John Mooney

Born: April 3, 1955

John Mooney - guitar, vocals Throughout the years John Mooney has developed one of the most distinctive and easily identifiable guitar and vocal signatures of anyone alive today. Part of the original impetus for his interest in music may have filtered down from his grandfather, a musician himself. “He used to play the mandolin and banjo back in the 20’s” says Mooney. “He even cut a couple of 78’s for the Peerless label that I’ve heard. It was really hot stuff, a kind of raggy jazz.” John left home at 15 and began playing with Joe Beard at about that same time. Joe introduced him to the first and most enduring influence on the development of Mooney’s music, the legendary Delta blues singer, Ed ‘Son’ House

Wes Montgomery

Born: March 6, 1923

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States (where he also died of a heart attack in 1968), Montgomery came from a musical family, in which his brothers, Monk (string bass and electric bass) and Buddy (vibraphone, and piano), were jazz performers. Although Wes was not skilled at reading music, he could learn complex melodies and riffs by ear. Montgomery started learning guitar in his late teens, listening to and learning recordings of his idol, the guitarist Charlie Christian.

Along with the use of octaves (playing the same note on two strings one octave apart) for which he is widely known, Montgomery was also an excellent "single-line" or "single-note" player, and was very influential in the use of block chords in his solos. His playing on the jazz standard "Lover Man" is an example of his single-note, octave and block chord soloing. ("Lover Man" appears on the Fantasy album THE MONTGOMERY BROTHERS.) Instead of using a guitar pick, Montgomery plucked the strings with the fleshy part of his thumb, using downstrokes for single notes and a combination of upstrokes and downstrokes for chords and octaves. This technique enabled him to get a mellow, expressive tone from his guitar. George Benson, in the liner notes of the Ultimate Wes Montgomery album, wrote that "Wes had a corn on his thumb, which gave his sound that point. He would get one sound for the soft parts, and then that point by using the corn. That's why no one will ever match Wes. And his thumb was double- jointed. He could bend it all the way back to touch his wrist, which he would do to shock people."

Ben Monder

Born: May 24, 1962

A musician in the New York City area for over 30 years, Ben Monder has performed with a wide variety of artists, including Jack McDuff, Marc Johnson, Lee Konitz, Billy Childs, Andrew Cyrille, George Garzone, Paul Motian, Maria Schneider, and Marshall Crenshaw. He also contributed guitar parts to the last David Bowie album, "Blackstar". Ben conducts clinics and workshops around the world, and has served on the faculties of the New England Conservatory, NYU and the New School. He was the recipient of a Doris Duke Impact Award in 2014, and a Shifting Foundation grant in 2013. Ben continues to perform original music internationally in solo and trio settings, and in a long standing duo project with vocalist Theo Bleckmann

Chieli Minucci

Born: 1958

Guitarist, composer, and arranger Chieli Minucci is the leader of the Grammy-nominated jazz-fusion group Special EFX, which he co-founded with the late George Jinda in 1984. A major force on the jazz and world music scene for 25 years, Special EFX’s newest release, “Without You” is a diverse collection of jazz-fusion, Latin rhythms, and the effortlessly flowing guitar artistry that Chieli (key-eh-lee) is known for. A true sound-tapestry, blending layers of sound and harmonic texture, “Without You” is an instant classic. This brilliant double CD collection of tracks features the original Special EFX lineup of favorites drummer Lionel Cordew, bassist Jerry Brooks, keyboardist Jay Rowe, and vocalist/percussionist Philip Hamilton, plus many brilliant guest artists, including keyboardist Jeff Lorber, violinist Karen Briggs, keyboardist Lao Tizer, vocalist Will Brock, bassist Dave Anderson, and violinist Alan Grubner. Special EFX is one of the most prominent world fusion groups of the era