Interviews

If you want to change your playing you have to change how you hear. Take note of the qualities in people’s playing that you enjoy. If their music resonates with you, it is telling you […]

Something else I might suggest, although it’s not really a component, is to keep an open mind and listen to everything that you can, because there are so many ways of playing guitar. And don’t […]

With a large majority of our Jazz Guitar Legacy players passed on, it is a rare moment indeed when one gets an opportunity to talk with such a player, especially one who has been around […]

What I would say is that nothing moves me more than people improvising with genuine emotional directness and range. All the greats have it, and not just in the jazz world. It’s nothing to do […]

During my formative years,  I guess my biggest jazz guitar influences were Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery. Both produced the sound that I wanted, but both were different in their approach to the instrument and […]

In recent years, I’ve been most interested in the problem of “being with others” and that of “authenticity”, more particularly how phenomenology, a modern branch of philosophy, treats them. Jazz busies itself with these two […]

Well, they didn’t have that then, but they did have something else. It’s a thing called “hot licks.” You know, you hear a hot lick and you say to yourself, ‘hey, play that again. Let […]

“Kenny Burrell was a champion and mentor to me during a still very formative time in my career. As the years have progressed beyond that time, the magnitude of what he was trying to do […]

…the light bulb came on as to what I needed to do if I wanted to have a sustained career in music. With that credit I was able to go on and work with Ronnie […]