John Laird Abercrombie was an American jazz guitarist. His work explored jazz fusion, free jazz, and avant-garde jazz. Abercrombie studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. He was known for his understated style and his work with organ trios.
Denny Laine is an English musician, singer, and songwriter, known as a founder of two major British rock bands: the Moody Blues, with whom he played from 1964 to 1966, and Wings, with whom he played from 1971 to 1981. Laine has worked with a variety of artists and groups over a six decade career, and continues to record and perform as a solo artist. In 2018, Laine was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues.
Anthony Christopher Hicks is an English guitarist and singer who has been a member of the British rock/pop band the Hollies since 1963, and as such was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.
Joseph Satriani is an American guitarist, composer, songwriter, and guitar teacher. Early in his career, Satriani worked as a guitar instructor, with many of his former students achieving fame, including Steve Vai, Larry LaLonde, Rick Hunolt, Kirk Hammett, Andy Timmons, Charlie Hunter, Kevin Cadogan, and Alex Skolnick; he then went on to have a successful solo music career. He is a 15-time Grammy Award nominee and has sold over 10 million albums, making him the bestselling instrumental rock guitarist of all time.
John Leslie 'Wes' Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. One of the most influential guitarists of the twentieth century, Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb and his extensive use of octaves, which gave him a distinctive sound.
Albert Laurence Di Meola is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as Elegant Gypsy and Friday Night in San Francisco earned him both critical and commercial success.
Jesús Alfredo Merchán ), known professionally as Chucho Merchán, is a session jazz and rock bassist and guitarist. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cambridge University in 1980. He has performed with Nucleus, Eurythmics, The Pretenders, Thomas Dolby, George Harrison, Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Robi Rosa, Bryan Adams, Kirsty MacColl, Jaguares, and Everything but the Girl.
Stephen Lawrence Winwood is an English singer, songwriter, and musician whose genres include blue-eyed soul, rhythm and blues, blues rock, and pop rock. Though primarily a vocalist and keyboard player, Winwood proficiently plays other instruments, including drums, mandolin, guitars, bass, and saxophone.
Regina Ilyinichna Spektor is a Russian-American singer, songwriter, and pianist.
Sir George Ivan Morrison is a Northern Irish Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer, whose recording career is in its seventh decade. He began performing as a teenager in the late 1950s, playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Known as 'Van the Man' to his fans, he rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B and rock band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic 'Gloria'. His solo career began in 1967, under the pop-hit orientated guidance of Bert Berns, with the release of the hit single 'Brown Eyed Girl'. After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought out Morrison's contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). While initially a poor seller, the album is now regarded as a classic.
John Symon Asher Bruce was a Scottish bassist, singer-songwriter, musician and composer. He gained popularity as the co-lead vocalist and bassist of British rock band Cream. After the group disbanded in 1968, he pursued a solo career and also played with several bands.
Jennifer Batten is an American guitarist who has worked as a session musician and solo artist. From 1987 to 1997 she played on all three of Michael Jackson's world tours, and from 1999 to 2001 she toured and recorded with Jeff Beck.
Javier Ruibal is a Spanish musician and songwriter.
Ryo Kawasaki was a Japanese jazz fusion guitarist, composer and band leader, best known as one of the first musicians to develop and popularise the fusion genre and for helping to develop the guitar synthesizer in collaboration with Roland Corporation and Korg. His album Ryo Kawasaki and the Golden Dragon Live was one of the first all-digital recordings and he created the Kawasaki Synthesizer for the Commodore 64. During the 1960s, he played with various Japanese jazz groups and also formed his own bands. In the early 1970s, he moved to New York City, where he settled and worked with Gil Evans, Elvin Jones, Chico Hamilton, Ted Curson, Joanne Brackeen amongst others. In the mid-1980s, Kawasaki drifted out of performing music in favour of writing music software for computers. He also produced several techno dance singles, formed his own record company called Satellites Records, and later returned to jazz-fusion in 1991.
James 'Blood' Ulmer is an American jazz, free funk and blues guitarist and singer. Ulmer plays a Gibson Byrdland guitar. His guitar sound has been described as 'jagged' and 'stinging'. His singing has been called 'raggedly soulful'.
Eric Patrick Clapton, is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone's list of the '100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time' and fourth in Gibson's 'Top 50 Guitarists of All Time'. He was also named number five in Time magazine's list of 'The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players' in 2009.
Richard 'Hen' Henshall is a British progressive metal multi-instrumentalist. He is best known for being the guitarist and keyboardist for the bands To-Mera, Haken, Nova Collective, and Opinaut. He has released one album (Exile) with To-Mera, six with Haken, and one solo album. He has also released EPs and singles: Oxygen, Redemption, Earthbound, and Restoration. Henshall was classically trained on the piano from the age of seven. By the age of 11 to 12, he started playing the guitar on a self-taught basis. He also had drums and clarinet classes.
Peter Tripp Sprague is an American jazz guitarist, record producer, and audio engineer. He owns SpragueLand Studios and the label SBE Records. He invented a twin-neck guitar with one neck from a classical guitar and one from a steel-string acoustic guitar.
Graham William Nash is a British-American singer-songwriter and musician. Nash is known for his light tenor voice and for his songwriting contributions as a member of the English pop/rock group the Hollies and the folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. Nash became an American citizen on 14 August 1978 and holds dual citizenship with the United Kingdom and the United States.
Vernon Alphonsus Reid is a British-born American guitarist and songwriter. Reid was the founder and primary songwriter of the rock band Living Colour, Reid was named No. 66 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
Roy Wood is an English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He was particularly successful in the 1960s and 1970s as member and co-founder of the Move, Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. As a songwriter, he contributed a number of hits to the repertoire of these bands. Altogether he had more than 20 singles in the UK Singles Chart under various guises, including three UK No. 1 hits.
Larry Eugene Carlton is an American guitarist who built his career as a studio musician in the 1970s and '80s for acts such as Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell. He has participated in thousands of recording sessions, recorded on hundreds of albums in many genres, for television and movies, and on more than 100 gold records. He has been a member of the jazz fusion group the Crusaders, the smooth jazz band Fourplay, and has maintained a long solo career.
Earl Klugh is an American acoustic guitarist and composer. He has won one Grammy award and thirteen nominations. Klugh was awarded the “1977” Best Recording Award For Performance and Sound” for his album “Finger Painting” by “Swing Journal” a Japanese jazz magazine.
William Henry Marcus Miller Jr. is an American film composer, jazz composer, record producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a bassist. He has worked with trumpeter Miles Davis, pianist Herbie Hancock, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, among others.
David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Lee Mack Ritenour is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s.
John McLaughlin is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Indian classical music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz-fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.