<< Readings at City Lights Bookstore
Joel Harrison with Henry Kaiser and Nels Cline
Saturday, May 29, 2021, 3:00 p.m. Pacific / 6:00 p.m. Eastern, This is a virtual event that City Lights will host on a platform to be announced.

   

celebrating the book launch for

Guitar Talk: Conversations with Visionary Players

from Terra Nova Press/The MIT Press

Hear the secrets of master musicians, revealed in conversation.

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This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on a platform to announced shortly. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. We will proovide you with more details in the next few days. This event is not being held on Zoom.

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Event is free, but registration is required

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(Click Here) to register. Link to be posted soon.

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(CLICK HERE) to purchase book. Link to be posted soon.

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Guitar Talk offers interviews with fourteen of the most creative guitarists of our time. The book celebrates the enormous range of approaches and sounds that exist in the modern guitar. The instrument can howl, scrape, scratch, scream, sing, pluck, and soothe. What stands out in this book is not so much the instrument itself, rather the wonderful and idiosyncratic personalities of these bold souls, their sometimes wild, often zigzagging, and ultimately profound journeys toward beauty, meaning, and excellence in their work.

We find out that jazz icon Bill Frisell won a high school band contest playing R&B tunes, beating out future members of Earth Wind and Fire. We learn which of Nels Cline's compositions he wishes to have played at his funeral. Michael Gregory Jackson recounts painful episodes of racism as he stretched between the chasm of avant jazz, rock, and R&B in the 1980s. Many more revelations, amusements, and philosophies abound from maestros like Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny, Ben Monder, Nguyen Le, Fred Frith, and Mary Halvorson.

Joel Harrison has been awarded grants by the Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, New Music USA, Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, Doris Duke, and Flagler Cary Trust. He has appeared on the "Rising Star" Downbeat Magazine poll for many years. His twenty albums as a leader showcase his prowess as a shapeshifting composer, including works for orchestra, big band, string quartet, solo cello, and percussion, small group jazz, and voice. Harrison is the founder and director of the Alternative Guitar Summit, a yearly festival devoted to new and unusual guitar music.

Henry Kaiser is a guitarist, ethnomusicologist, and composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is an influential figure on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. In 1977, together with Rova Saxaphone Quartet's Larry Ochs and Greg Goodman, Kaiser founded Metalanguage Records. He has travelled around the world recording roots music and collaborating with such artists as the Malagasy Musicians. His other musical collaborators have included Fred Firth, John French, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Wadada Leo Smith, Nels Cline, Mike Keneally, Steve Smith, John Medesky, Elliot Sharp, and many others. Kaiser has appeared on more than 300 albums and scored dozens of TV shows and films, including Werner Herzogs Encounters at the End of World . He has been nominated for both Grammy and Academy Awards for his work.

Nels Cline is a guitarist and composer. He has been the guitarist for the band Wilco since 2004. In the 1980s he played jazz, often in collaboration with his twin brother Alex Cline, a percussionist. He has worked with musicians in punk and alternative rock such as Mike Watt and Thurston Moore. He recently released his 3rd Blue Note album titled  Share the Wealth, a double album. His long-running project The Nels Cline Singers feature saxophonist and punk-jazz iconoclast Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsella, bassist Trevor Dunn, longtime collaborator and drummer Scott Amendola, and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. His recording and performing career — spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental — is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader.  Cline has received many honors for his work including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 "new guitar gods" and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.

 

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation