About the Authors
Guitarist, composer, arranger, lyricist, writer, educator, and vocalist Joel Harrison has “created a new blueprint for jazz” (New Orleans Times-Picayune). A Guggenheim Fellow (2010) he has released 25 CDs as a leader on seven different labels since 1994. Harrison’s music may be founded on jazz but veers into classical, rock, country, and all manner of American roots music.
Succinctly described by the New York Times as “protean… brilliant,” he has also written multiple works for chamber ensembles and is an active film composer, having worked on the Oscar-nominat- ed Traffic Stop and the Sundance awardee Southern Comfort.
Harrison is the author of Guitar Talk: Conversations with Visionary Players as well as Modern Jazz Standards for Guitar. He has contributed articles to Premier Guitar, DownBeat, Jazz Times, and other music periodicals, and is also a writer of fiction.
Harrison studied guitar and jazz with Jimmy Wyble, Mick Goodrick, and Charlie Banacos, and composition with Joan Tower and W.A. Mathieu. He attended the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music and was a member of the Agbekor W. African Drum and Dance troupe in the 1980s in Boston.
Harrison is the founder and director of the Alternative Guitar Summit, an annual festival devoted to new and unusual guitar music. Pat Metheny has called the Summit “one of the most interesting and distinguished forums for guitar on the planet.”
In 2017 Harrison founded the Alternative Guitar Summit Camp, a meeting place for some of the world’s best improvisers and generally considered the foremost guitar teaching camp in the world (alternativeguitarsummitcamp.com). He runs the educational site Guitar Unlimited (patreon.com/guitarunlimited) and teaches master classes in the U.S. and Europe.
Joel can be found online:
- Website: joelharrison.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/joelharrisongtr
- YouTube: @joelharrisongtr
- Instagram: instagram.com/alternativeguitar
Guest Contributors
Nels Cline is a guitarist and composer of uncommon versatility and imagination. Crisscrossing the worlds of free improv, jazz, rock, and much more he has released over 30 CDS as a leader. Cline has been lead guitarist for the band Wilco since 2004.
nelscline.com
Adam Levy is a guitarist and educator who has supported some of the most respected singers of our time including Norah Jones and Lizz Wright. He records and performs his own music and has been hailed as one of the most lyrical players of our time.
adamlevy.com
Vernon Reid is a founder of the Black Rock Coalition and is a co-founder of the seminal rock bad Living Colour. Criss-crossing funk, rock, punk, jazz, and free, he has worked with some of the greatest artists of our era including Jack Bruce, Bill Frisell, Mick Jagger, Public Enemy, and Bernie Worrell.
Henry Kaiser has been a champion for experimental guitar music for close to five decades. His catalog of more than three hundred releases tell the story of a player with infinite curiosity and endless appetite for the sonic road untraveled.
Bill Frisell is a defining guitarist of our era. Straddling all manner of American music he has been lauded far and wide for his poet’s touch and boundless vision.
billfrisell.com
Elliott Sharp has been a central figure in the avant garde and experimental music in scene in New York City for close to forty years. He has released eighty -five recordings ranging from orchestral music to blues, jazz, noise, no wave, and techno music.
elliottsharp.com