A guitarist is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar by singing or playing the harmonica.
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.
Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gómez, known as Paco de Lucía, was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flamenco guitarists to branch into classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists".
Rasgueado is a guitar finger strumming technique commonly associated with flamenco guitar music. It is also used in classical and other fingerstyle guitar picking techniques. The rasgueado is executed using the fingers of the strumming hand in rhythmically precise, and often rapid, strumming patterns. The important characteristic of this strumming style is the fingernail (outer) side of the finger tips is also used, and in such case, in reverse of the way it is done when the fleshy side of the finger tips is used, namely downward and upward (thumb).
David Michael Gordon "Davey" Graham was a British guitarist and one of the most influential figures in the 1960s British folk revival. He inspired many famous practitioners of the fingerstyle acoustic guitar such as Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, John Martyn, Paul Simon and Jimmy Page, who based his solo "White Summer" on Graham's "She Moved Through the Fair". Graham is probably best known for his acoustic instrumental, "Anji" and for popularizing DADGAD tuning, later widely adopted by acoustic guitarists.
Tim Kliphuis is a Dutch violinist renowned for mixing gypsy jazz with classical and folk music.
Alex Machacek is an Austrian jazz fusion guitarist
Mark Wingfield is an English guitarist and composer based in the UK. Most of his output is rooted in jazz, but he is also active in contemporary classical music. Much of his output is directed towards performing and studio work. Wingfield cites jazz, rock, Indian, Japanese, African, and classical music as influences has written over 70 compositions. He attempts to combine these with classical music.
Stephen John Parry, is a Welsh guitarist and composer who was a founder member of the experimental rock band Hwyl nofio.
Glen Heald is an Australian guitarist and multi instrumental singer/songwriter who plays a mix of contemporary rock, fusion, blues, blues rock, folk and acoustic ballads. He is a fully independent Aboriginal recording artist who has written, recorded and produced eight solo albums.
Richard Smith is an English guitarist specialising in the fingerstyle guitar tradition of Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Jerry Reed. He is the 2001 National Fingerstyle Guitar Champion.
Matchbook is an album by guitarist Ralph Towner and vibraphonist Gary Burton recorded in 1974 and released on the ECM label.
Folk Songs is an album by bassist Charlie Haden, saxophonist Jan Garbarek and guitarist Egberto Gismonti recorded in 1979 and released on the ECM label in 1981. The album follows the trio's first recording Magico (1980).
Jimmy Stewart is an American guitarist who has performed a wide variety of music since the late-1950s. He is best known for his association with jazz guitarist, Gábor Szabó, but has been extensively involved in many genres of music as an arranger, conductor, producer, orchestrator, musical director, and educator. Stewart has appeared on over 1,200 recordings.
La Barrosa is a flamenco piece by Spanish virtuoso guitarist Paco de Lucía. An alegrías, it featured on his 1987 album Siroco and is one of his best known and acclaimed works. The piece is named after Playa la Barrosa, a 6 km long beach in Chiclana de la Frontera, Cadiz. He has performed it all across the world including a performance in front of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid in 1996 and televised nationally on TVE1. It is played in the key of B major with a capo on the second fret. Eric Clapton and Richard Chapman described the piece as "full of effortless delicacy with cascading phrases".
Cepa Andaluza is a 1972 composition by virtuoso Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia. It featured on his 1973 album, Fuente y caudal. A Bulería, it is generally played in C phrygian, with a capo on the third fret, based on the C 7 flat 9 chord. It has been played by Grisha Goryachev.
Martin Simon is a composer and guitarist born in Roznava, Slovakia, in 1975. He has lived and worked in Bratislava, New York City and Warsaw.
Per Arne Ferner is a Norwegian jazz guitarist, known from bands like Flux and Ferner/Juliusson Duo.
Geoff Achison is an independent Australian Melbourne-based singer/songwriter guitarist, whose artistic focus is of the blues, blues rock and soul genres. He performs in two modes – as a solo artist performing and singing with acoustic guitar, and bandleader as a singer/electric guitarist.
Gabriel Vicéns is a guitarist, composer and painter from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico currently living in New York City.
