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Guitarist
Career Overview
Guitarists are skilled performers who also frequently write and record their own music. In addition to practicing and performing, they teach, handle tasks such as booking shows, and collaborate with other musicians.
Alternate Titles
Guitar Player
Salary Range
$11 to $87+ an hour1
How To Become a Guitarist
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Career Description
Guitarists play the acoustic, electric, and classical guitar. They perform live and play in studio for recording sessions. They practice regularly to learn new music, keep their skills sharp, and to keep them in top-notch shape for gigs. Many write and perform their own solo work. Still others prefer to focus on collaborating with their fellow musicians as part of a band.
Many Singer-Songwriters use the guitar to accompany themselves, and might even be multi-instrumentalists, switching to saxophone, piano, or another instrument effortlessly. A professional Guitarist needs to be prepared with a lot of knowledge about music and must develop impressive technical prowess on the fingerboard.
The most in-demand Guitarists cultivate a unique and instantly recognizable sound and approach to playing the guitar. They have massive skills and solid technical ability, developed through years of practice and playing experience. Some excel at one or two styles, while others specialize in playing many styles of music, both contemporary and classical.
Whether on tour, in the studio, or on the concert stage, they are easy to get along with, friendly, and have strong networking and people skills. Building up a strong reputation as a soloist or member of a band takes time and sustained effort.
All professional Guitarists are deeply in love with the guitar, playing the guitar, and guitar music. Simply put, they love what they do.
In addition to the performance aspect of their career, Guitarists also handle many music business-related tasks, such as booking gigs, marketing their music, creating social media content, and scheduling rehearsals. Many Guitarists also teach music to private students.
To get an in-depth look at what it’s like to be a professional Guitarist, we talked to:
- Jim Campilongo (Solo Artist, Lead Guitarist in The Little Willies)
- Daniel Donato (Cosmic Country Guitarist)
- Eliot Fisk (Classical Guitarist, Professor at the Universität Mozarteum & New England Conservatory)
- Sharon Isbin (GRAMMY-winning Classical Guitarist, Founding Director of the Guitar Dept at The Juilliard School)
What do professional Guitar Players do on a typical day?
That’s a great question because it’s something I wonder about my peers. And I ask them constantly, “What are you practicing? When are you practicing? How do you practice?” My questions are usually practice-oriented.
I start my days really early. In my opinion, being a professional musician doesn’t mean waking up at 1 pm, smoking a joint, and practicing in front of the mirror. I don’t want to dissuade anybody, but it requires a lot of work and wearing a lot of hats.
I’m working on my Weebly website, my newsletter graphics; getting the links squared away and making sure they work. Booking gigs. Writing a bio for a group. Emailing fellow musicians for scheduling or calculating budgets for airlines and hotels is the tip of the iceberg.
The other thing is I do a Patreon and every week I make an instructional video. I’m giving lessons on Zoom, I write a monthly column for Guitar Player Magazine called “Vinyl Treasures.” In a way, I feel like a Cartoonist who has to come up with a new cartoon every day. I’m constantly thinking about what am I doing for next week’s Patreon? Who am I going to write about next month or when the queue runs out?
There are all these things that go along with being a “professional musician.”
I basically just use social media to promote myself. I usually find social media a multitude of opinions I didn’t want to know, but the alternative is not doing it–and that’s not an alternative I take. How else can I let folks know what I’m up to?
My days are typical and atypical at the same time. I do try to practice every day. I have constant lists of material I want to work on, what I need to work on. If I just go pick up a guitar and wait for inspiration, I might skip practicing. I need structure.
Truth be told, I don’t want to practice every day, just sitting in a room all alone with a guitar. I’ve been playing guitar for forty-nine years; it’s not like I wake up every morning clicking my heels saying, “Oh boy, I get to practice arpeggios today!” But if I have a goal to practice, reinforced with some structure, I’ll do it.
It’s kind of like doing sit-ups. I’ll lay down on the floor doing sit-ups and I’ve never been more comfortable in my life than before I did them. Then I do them and I’m like, “I’m really glad I did those sit-ups,” but twenty-three hours later I completely forget that feeling of gratification and I don’t want to do them again. Sometimes practice is a little bit like that.
There is no blanket statement that fits for everyone. When I am home, I wake up early, I exercise, I read, I do my non-creative work such as business, phone calls, etc, and then I move onto my creative work which can be writing, practicing, and content creation. When we tour with the #cosmiccountry band, I basically turn into a simple machine that sleeps a lot, and stays purely in creative mode, while my Tour Manager and management handle my non-creative tasks.
Speaking for myself, I practice Transcendental Meditation twice a day, twenty minutes each session–it’s a great relaxation technique that can benefit anyone! I jog some twelve miles a week to stay fit, though not on performance, rehearsal, or travel days. I eat vegetarian, organic, and healthfully, practice the guitar, read, answer emails, do social media to promote new recordings, projects and shows. I go on tour to perform, and when in town, teach and direct guitar departments I created at The Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival.
It depends on which part of the guitar world you’re talking about. I’m a classical Guitar Player. That’s a very small subset of the big picture of guitar. I wouldn’t have any idea of a Rock Guitarist or an Electric Guitarist’s profile. I do not even really know all that much about the world of jazz guitar, although I was honored to go on tour with two of the all-time greats: Joe Pass and Bill Frisell (and to record and tour for many years with flamenco legend Paco Penya.) I know people in all parts of the guitar world but even after all these years, I’m still most interested in the classical guitar.
I was the last direct disciple of Andres Segovia, who is to this day like the Albert Einstein of the classical guitar. He reinvented the instrument starting about 100 years ago or so. He finally passed away in 1987 at the age of ninety-four, but he was playing practically right up to the end–really big halls, sold-out concerts. He was a great idol for anybody my age or a little older (and remains so for anyone who loves music and has some common sense among the younger set.) Anyway, I come from that tradition.
Being a Classical Guitarist is its own special thing. In the musical world of today, there is in one sense a lot of democratization: constant posting by anyone and of anything on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc. The advantages of democratization are great. The disadvantage is that an Andres Segovia post might have 50,000 hits, and some bozo, who in my estimation may not be good at all, might have two million hits, just because that person may know how to manipulate social media.
But for someone who’s young and starting out, the good thing is that you can invent yourself. More so than ever before, a musical career is about your own life story. I think that’s great. It’s all about the joys and sorrows of being alive and how music enables you to get through life in a wonderful, productive way, and be, hopefully, of benefit to society.
The guitar is a very interesting instrument because as far as I know, it’s still the most popular instrument on earth. And there are so many different forms of it. My teacher Segovia once said: ”Of all the creations of God, two have assumed every size and shape in order to accompany humankind: the dog… and the guitar!”
There are many, many kinds of guitars. Amplified, non-amplified, six strings, seven strings, eight strings, eleven strings, twelve strings, etc.–the ukulele is a derivative with four strings—the banjo (four and five-string versions) the sitar, the Japanese koto, the Turkish saz, the Chinese pi-pa, etc. are all related to the guitar.
And guitars have for centuries existed in every size, shape, and composition. Now we have solid-body electric guitars, at the other end of the continuum from acoustic guitars such as what I play. The acoustic classical guitar is itself an endless mystery. There is not time enough in one lifetime to explore its astonishing possibilities. There are all these incredible subtle things affecting the sound: the age and disposition of the wood, when the wood was glued, what the humidity is… There are thousands of tiny little details that make the difference between heaven and hell for us Classical Guitarists. It’s just a fascinating instrument.
The other thing that’s so intriguing is that the guitar is the world’s folk instrument par excellence, yet if you go back in history, the guitar or something like it existed way back into the 1500s and even before. The ancient Greeks spoke of the kithara. Our repertoire stretches across five centuries and is beginning its 6th century now.
In the pursuit of the essence of the classical guitar, you can literally experience time travel. That’s how I like to teach it. You can go back to the time when Columbus set out to explore America. Soon after that, the very first Spanish guitar books started to be published in Spain. You can time travel back to then. You can time travel to Elizabethan England, Shakespeare’s England, where the lute, which is a sister instrument to the guitar, was so popular. The famous opening speech of Richard III speaks of the “lascivious tinkling of a lute.”
Music allows us to traverse the most intimate human emotions over centuries and still the language speaks to us and touches and enriches us in astonishing ways. If you’re involved in the classical guitar, you almost can’t avoid speaking and reading Spanish. But there’s also a very rich Italian tradition, a German tradition, a French tradition, and other legacies from all the different countries of Europe.
Nowadays, we have so many brilliant musicians from all parts of Asia, Eurasia, Africa, etc. so really, we have this possibility of unifying people through the art of music across the political barriers which are, for musicians, always an illusion. We musicians have always gotten together with people from all over the world. We’ve always lived the multiethnic, multiracial thing, which is, I hope, going to increasingly become the future of the planet despite all the hate that’s bandied about.
My wife, virtuoso Guitarist and arts entrepreneur, Zaira Meneses, and I started a guitar festival here called Boston Guitar Fest some years back. We are about to have our 17th straight year despite the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021 we were all online on our Zoom feed. This year we will do a hybrid festival (part live part online) which is twice the work. The movie part will take place at the New England Conservatory as usual but the entire festival will be available for online viewing well. Even during the worst time of the plague we were in action around the world: broadcasting back and forth to Latin America, up through America, over the west coast of America, then across into Europe, even to Australia and setting up parts of the festival for asynchronous viewing during to time zone differences.
In addition to our Boston Guitar Fest, we’ve also started the Eliot Fisk Guitar Academy (EFGA) which we’re doing on our own as an effort to offer something new and fresh. My whole approach has always been multidisciplinary; cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, cross-lingual and EFGA continues to reflect that. Most of the staff are former and present students. EFGA also commissions new works (such as the new 6 Preludios Elegiacos by Leo Brouwer dedicated to Zaira Meneses or organizes recordings such as my own double CD of my transcriptions of the 6 Bach Cello Suites currently in production for Musica Omnia Recordings.
My career was always a mix of many things. I’ve been teaching for a very long time, and teaching remains very important to me. First of all, I learn so much from the students. But also, I’m trying to take the instrument into the future, and in my case, pass on the great tradition of which I’m about.
I’m the youngest guy still actively performing who has a direct personal link to the Segovia tradition. Many others have already passed on, so I feel a real responsibility to try to maintain the chain that connects through Segovia and others back hundreds of years into the past.
I do my best to give the young people that I mentor a complete humanistic, cross-disciplinary education. We try to understand history from the inside in a way that is not anachronistic and that brings the past before us as if it were contemporary. The old instruments differed in many ways from their modern equivalents. If you want to interpret music that was written in the 1500s, you have to know about those instruments because they don’t sound exactly like their modern counterparts.
In a similar way, when you read a Shakespeare play in a modern edition there are numerous notes to help to explain many subtleties in old English. Things don’t mean exactly the same thing as they once did, and there are all kinds of references that we couldn’t possibly know now because they were unique to the past. In a similar way, when you interpret the music of the past, you need to try to get inside the cultures in which that music was conceived, to enter the mind and experiences of people who are long gone.
A lot of us musicians probably end up spending more of our lives in the company of the spirit of Johann Sebastian Bach than we do with most members of our families! These Composers who have been dead for so long obsess us. They’re always with us. We’re always trying to get in touch with them and keep this little thread of what we call civilization alive.
Can anyone become a guitarist?
With the right knowledge and consistent practice, anyone can become a professional guitarist. The first and most important step is to develop your guitar-playing skills to the point where people want to hire you. Then you need to always be learning and improving your skills. Another aspect to focus on is the business side of being a professional musician, which involves marketing your services, networking, and understanding performance royalties and session musician royalties.
Salary
Most professional Guitarists work as freelancers on a project basis, whether for live concerts or in the recording studio. They earn a flat fee for a session or gig, and sometimes they might be paid an hourly rate (see below). Playing in cover bands tends to pay the most, especially for high-profile gigs, private and corporate events, or weddings. Guitar Players who sing can earn extra pay for adding their vocals to a performance.
Starting out playing in bars, clubs, or community events, pay is usually low, maybe $100 a night or even less. It can only go up from there. A high-profile event might earn musicians a $300 to $500 performance fee, while famous Guitarists or those working with famous artists can earn thousands a night. Many tours pay by the week, and so do jobs on cruise ships or at amusement parks.
While there’s a lot of work out there for Guitarists, there’s also a lot of competition, which tends to suppress pay rates. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics states that on average, musicians make around $11 per hour on the low end of the spectrum and $87 or more on the higher end of the spectrum.
There is a wide range for Guitarists, with superstar, household-name musicians making even more than the stated $87 an hour. These individuals can make thousands of dollars per gig. The average working Session Guitarist can earn a living at it, but many hold down other “day jobs” to provide for a better income and living standard. This is common across all professions in the arts.
How do Guitar Players make money?
What I teach my students is always to have as many income streams as you possibly can. It’s the same principle as when you buy a mutual fund when you’re investing money. You have some bonds. Bonds are like a teaching job. You’re not going to have explosive growth, but something’s going to be there for you.
I tell students to try and get a teaching job, to either create their own private teaching studio or find an institution that can offer employment and (hopefully) health insurance. I tell students to just be able to eat and pay the rent.
I encourage people to play–especially to explore chamber music possibilities. Smaller groups have fewer touring expenses. Even if you just have one duo partner, that’s a great start. If you have a group of three, already you’re splitting fees three ways and your expenses go up.
It’s important to play with a lot of different people. If you’re a Guitarist and you play with a Flutist, then you attract all the flute people to your concert. You play with cello, you get the cello enthusiasts. That kind of thing. Straddling the genres is very helpful. I’ve done jazz projects and flamenco projects etc. Cross-disciplinary stuff is great. That’s just another way of reaching out and broadening your audience and broadening your appeal.
Nowadays, you also have to be posting stuff for free online all the time. You just have to be posting, posting, posting. I don’t enjoy doing that very much, so I don’t do as much of it as I probably should. At a certain point, I can’t be just thinking about business. But the first thing a young player starting out has to do is to solve that fundamental enigma of how to pay the rent and have food to eat. Still, you want to be creative in a way that is not too cheap and obvious, to do art that matters in a good way. So that’s the real challenge.
My students go many different routes in piecing together a multi-income stream economic solution.
Teaching is how I first started making some kind of consistent money. It wasn’t from sporadic gigs. I was really fortunate because I started playing when everybody played guitar. Guitars were like the computer. You’d go to somebody’s house and you’d go, “Oh you know Neil Young?”–show me that!
I was lucky enough to get a teaching gig at a shopping center and I really learned a lot about the guitar. In order for me to teach, I had to answer the questions. Sometimes I was on page ten and the student was on page seven. Sure, there were some things at that time I could do really well, but I did learn a lot. It’s a tough job and it’s very draining to give lessons. Out of the multitude of jobs I’ve had, I think the hardest job I’ve ever had was teaching.
Gigs don’t pay unless you’re in a top 40 band. If you’re in some rock band and people are playing originals, there’s no money in it. I mean, I pay my guys now no matter what. But I have multiple income sources, so it’s not like I can’t pay my band, get groceries, and my rent. It’s more like “I’m taking a loss at this gig, but I wanna do this gig because it’s important.”
People ask me for advice and I always say, do one thing for your career every day. Practicing doesn’t count. Reach out to a club. Call a Drummer. Hang up lesson posters. Post on Twitter. Organize a mailing list. Put up a Craigslist ad saying you’re available to teach. It doesn’t have to be huge. But at the end of the month, you’ve done thirty things for your career. And then the days where I feel like, what I call “feeling like raw hamburger”–like I just wanna pull the covers over my head–I do it anyway. Because I do my one thing for my career.
There are many avenues of revenue possible for the modern day musician. My earned income is through touring, ad revenue, royalties, private instruction, e-commerce. My portfolio income comes through dividends, interests, and gains on investments.
On the music front, I am paid for concerts, teaching, recording, and publishing.
How much money do guitarists make?
Being a professional guitarist looks different for each person, so it can be difficult to pinpoint an exact salary. Guitar teachers can make anywhere from $15 an hour to $150 an hour. A session guitarist can charge between $25 an hour to $200 an hour, or between $50 per song to more than $500 per song. And a performing guitarist typically makes between $50 per performance and $200 or more per performance. Again, these numbers vary widely with each guitarist in their specific situation.
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Career Outlook
While it’s undeniable that music is a difficult career, the same can be said for just about every other career. To become a professional at anything takes a lot of preparation, dedication, persistence, and hard work. Still, there are careers that might offer more job security, autonomy, and higher incomes, at least starting out.
For most people who choose music for their career, the thought of being in a 9-5 office job might seem abhorrent. Becoming a musician isn’t necessarily for the faint of heart, but what other job will let you play music on stage in front of thousands of people and get paid for it? Music as a career has its ups and downs, but the professionals know how to take it all in stride and be thankful for the opportunities they have to be creative and have lots of fun while earning a decent living for themselves.
Like all professional musicians, the career-seeking Guitarist usually feels the choice was not theirs to make; it was made for them. There just isn’t anything else they could even see themselves doing in life. Staying true to the music, they find a way to support themselves, sometimes living in a closet at a friend’s apartment for a while, working a day job, living off very little income while they maneuver themselves for that “big break” that will finally put them out there.
It’s not an easy life, but as a young person, it’s a lot easier than for someone advanced in years. The big breaks tend to be a lot of little breaks strung together. Being in a well-regarded band; meeting a certain person in the industry; learning new techniques; getting accepted to a luthier school; getting a job inside a record company–these are all examples of little breaks that eventually turn into bigger and better breaks. The casual observer doesn’t see all this. They just see the musicians on stage and think it happened overnight. That’s not really how this all works.
There is most certainly a career to be had as a professional Guitarist. For proof, just look at the people doing it. Studying the careers of other successful musicians is recommended, including reading any biographies, watching interviews, and sometimes even talking to them directly. Many people will share their “secrets” of success if asked. There are many examples of newcomers who eventually got to play with their heroes.
Always be curious and try to learn from the best how to chart a career course forward. There’s usually an oversupply of great musicians but there’s also a strong demand for people who can play really well. Meeting that demand is one of the keys to forging a career beyond your wildest dreams.
What jobs can I get as a guitarist?
The three main jobs you can get as a skilled guitarist are 1) a session guitarist, 2) a performer, and 3) a guitar teacher. A session guitarist gets hired to play guitar on someone else’s recorded track, so they would spend a lot of time in recording studios or working from their home studio. A performing guitarist could be the main act on stage, or they could sit in with other bands when they need a guitarist. And a guitar teacher teaches other people how to play guitar. As a professional guitarist, you can do a combination of these three things (or all of them).
Career Path
Every professional Guitarist can recall the moment they fell in love with the guitar, and they knew at that moment that playing the instrument at the highest level would be their lifelong goal. Falling in love with playing guitar and dedicating oneself to playing music is where every professional Guitarist got their start. The next step is learning to play guitar well, which could take many months or even years of practicing, learning new music and techniques.
Learning the fingerboard inside and out, playing chords, melodies, and solos, studying the recordings of established musicians, and gaining understanding of the many styles of music is all par for the course. Most budding Guitarists find a good Teacher, get together with other musicians to jam, join, or form a band, and play gigs (or busk on the street) to get their playing experience, chops, and musical skills together. This prepares them for the competitive business that is music.
There are a lot of great Guitarists, so the competition is fierce. The most in-demand session players will have developed their own recognizable sound and have good people and business skills to back up their talent and ability. Learning new music quickly and being good at networking lead to more and more opportunities, and as reputation grows, more and better work comes along.
Some musicians spend most of their lives working with a specific band (think Jerry Garcia, Keith Richards), while some others specialize in developing a solo career (think Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter). Others might do a combination of these things, while working constantly as a Session Player for recordings and tours (think Steve Lukather, Larry Carlton).
As skill, ambition, and network increase, a great Guitarist can forge a meaningful and sustainable career in music. It invariably takes long-term dedication, strategy, talent, really hard work, plus some luck to turn the love of playing guitar into a career.
How do you start a career in guitar?
I would encourage people to be good at what they do independent of their band. If you have to rely on others, sometimes that’s a recipe for failure.
For the first probably ten years of my career (if you want to even call that a career), I felt that me and my band members should do something personal and unique to us. I had a garage band. We played our own music and worked on our own music, but eventually, it became kind of a wedding band where we did the hits of the day. I felt that we started competing with thousands of others as opposed to having something unique and personal where we weren’t competing with anyone.
My career started to become a career when I thought I was finished (ha ha). I think I was thirty-two or thirty-three. It took me a long time to get it together–to take practicing seriously. Once I was thirty, it took some pressure off. I loved the music of Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West, Buddy Charleton and Leon Rhodes, and hot ’50s/early ‘60s instrumental country music. Couldn’t dance to it. It wasn’t country, it wasn’t rockabilly and I assumed there was no audience for it, but I thought, “That’s what I want to do.” And I did it. And because of that, I didn’t compete with anybody. And the audience can feel one commitment, passion and energy.
I believed in it and had a little knack for writing that led to releasing my first record. From that point on, I’ve put out fourteen records. Not all that specific genre, but that was my philosophy–BE YOURSELF. I think I benefited from it, instead of being a Singer-Songwriter who sounds like “fill in the blank” and looks like “fill in the blank.” And you’re competing with all that. If you completely believe in it and that’s your face and your voice and your soul: then do it. But if you’re compromising, somebody is going to do it better than you because that’s them. You can’t beat anybody at their own game.
A band is a whole different deal than being a solo artist, yet the way to success is different for everyone. I must stress that success is not a one size fits all term, especially in the music business. I define success by bringing my music to as many people as possible that genuinely find value in it.
I’ve been doing that, and am continuing to grow at this, by consistently communicating through content, releasing music, being active on my podcast The Lost Highway, and most importantly, making sure that anything I put my name on will make me proud five years from now.
I’m mostly a soloist, but have formed partnerships with other Guitarists, Instrumentalists, and Singers that I admire, including a trio called Guitar Passions with Jazz Guitarists Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo. My most recent band, Strings for Peace, [and] the title of our new bestselling album, was created when invited to join India’s foremost family of sarod masters, Amjad Ali Khan, and his two sons.
I guess I didn’t think about my career so much as I thought about the fact that I wanted to spend my life thinking about music and working in music. My father was a very respected and unusual University Professor, very ahead of his time. (He wrote a book about the ecological imperative in marketing back in the year 1975, for example.) My mother was of that generation where it was more difficult for women to make careers, but she had a pretty distinguished career as a Social Worker working with elderly people. In my case, my father said, “Look. I’m not going to pay for a music conservatory so you’re going to have to go to a liberal arts school.”
I ended up going to Yale. I was at Yale as an undergraduate, and then I did a master’s degree in an additional year. After that, I fled academia…almost. In September of the year I got my master’s degree from the Yale School of Music I ended up founding the Guitar Department there at the age of 22. The guitar still flourishes there under the leadership of my great friend and colleague, Ben Verdery. I wanted to escape academia, but I ended up being part of it on two continents starting in 1977 up to the present.
After a few years at Yale, starting at age 28 I left Yale to go to Koeln, Germany, because I had an incredible offer at the Hochschule fuer Musik there which also allowed me a lot of time to travel. Starting in 1989 I was recruited from there to Austria, to the Salzburg “Mozarteum” University. I’ve been on the faculty there for like thirty-five years although I started at first part-time, now [I’m] full-time as well at the New England Conservatory in Boston.
In those days there were more chances to perform than exist today (especially post-pandemic!) You were more “based” someplace than actually living there full-time. So it wasn’t all that difficult for me to be based in Cologne or be based in Salzburg, or be based somewhere else in Europe. I still came to America quite a lot, but at the end of the twentieth century, I became even more interested in coming back to America. I went back and forth to Europe a lot until COVID basically put an end to all of that. Now I’ll probably get back to doing it again but I’ll have to stop for good at the Mozarteum in 2024.
Returning to the subject of my performing career: at first, I just wanted to do music. I just had to do it. I knew I was going to die if I didn’t do it; at least I felt like I was. That’s what motivated me.
I think with the young musicians of today I see the same thing: they also have this tremendous enthusiasm and this need to do music. Even with all the tremendous economic challenges, which are endless, musicians are just incurable romantics I think. They have to do music. By hook or by crook, they’re going to find a way.
The history of Jazz Musicians is a good example of that. Many of them had to have second jobs. Back in the horrible, dark ages of Jim Crow and all of that. How much they suffered! In the USA they couldn’t even go to a decent hotel. That’s the despicable legacy of the racism that is still with us and affects all aspects of life. Many Jazz Musicians especially, I think, had a very hard time economically. I think probably still to this day, that jazz is a very tough road, and very competitive also. The talent is endless and it’s all over the place. I think it’s the same with popular music. There aren’t a lot of groups that breakthrough.
The classical guitar has been very male-dominated, at least the classical guitar was. Now, we’re in a generation where it’s evening out a lot. Even thirty, forty years ago, the Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Orchestra) didn’t have any women in it. Now, almost all the European orchestras are near 50/50, maybe even majority women. The same thing is happening here.
Some of the really famous Conductors are now women, although my dear friend, Marin Alsop, is still not just the only woman Director of a major American orchestra in Baltimore, but the only American directing a major American orchestra! The big orchestras tend to get these European Music Directors imported from somewhere else. Marin has the only one, and now she’s finally stepping down from Baltimore after about fifteen years there.
Sabine Meyer, the Clarinetist, was the first woman full-time member of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Now such a situation would be incomprehensible. The Presidents of both of my schools right now are women: the New England Conservatory has a woman President (Dr. Andrea Kalyn ) and the Mozarteum has a woman leader there as well (Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Gutjahr). That’s an extremely welcome development and long overdue. At least that part of things is changing in a really good way.
How long does it take to become a good Guitar Player?
It depends on your goals. Do you want to become Johnny Ramone? That’s gonna take six months not including Johnny’s brilliant laser-like focus. Creedence Clearwater? That doesn’t take that long. That’s the great thing about guitar. If you learn three chords, you could be a great artist. Johnny Ramone didn’t know a minor chord but he became, in a sense, a great artist with an important legacy.
It’s kind of like saying, “I want to exercise, how long will it take me to look like Baryshnikov?” or, “How long will it take me to lose 25 lbs?” It’s so relative. I would generally say it took me about six months before I wasn’t thinking “My fingers hurt!”
Aside from being driven, I was lucky to find a really encouraging Teacher. Her name was Bunnie Gregoire. She was a fascinating, generous person. I went to my first lesson concerned she’d say, “You’re not talented–get out!” but I went to it and she was supportive, not to mention she was a sixty-year-old beatnik. She kinda spoke beatnik: “When cats are grooving” and that sort of thing. I thought, “This is the most interesting person I’ve ever met and I want more!”
I was really surprised at how difficult playing the guitar was. It hurt my fingers. What I thought would be easy wasn’t easy. I thought it was all in the right hand, the picking hand. I didn’t have a clue. I’d be struggling and squeaking out crappy songs. Commit to dedicating six months to learning, and after six months, you will be creating something that resembles music.
Forever. You never become as skilled as you would like to become. That’s the fascination. I think almost anybody who’s in a profession that’s trying to achieve excellence would say the same thing. It’s pretty much the same conversation. One lifetime isn’t long enough to figure it all out. That’s the good and the bad of it.
But if you’re going to talk about that basic competency, I think that famous 10,000-hour rule is pretty good. But again, I’m a Classical Guitarist. It’s the most labor-intensive instrument there is. It’s got all the problems of all the instruments combined in one place! Even when we need to amplify in a big hall we are not playing around with electronics. We’re producing the sound with a mixture of fingernail and the flesh on the right hand, and the left hand is adding many nuances to the sound and occasionally producing some notes with tiny “pull offs” (ligados) in the left hand. The tiniest little error, half a millimeter of error, and you can lose a note.
The ten fingers are basically like ten dancers so you try to be perfect athletically, but your mind also has to be able to split down at least ten tracks because each finger has to be in the right place at the right time. What I do is incredibly specialized and off-the-beaten-track.
I started busking on the street at twelve in Nashville. I then got into Nashville’s most famous house band at sixteen. We then played four shows a week, at four hours a night, sixty songs a night, for a total of 464 times. It is different for everyone.
I began guitar studies age nine, and with good training, hard work, and long hours of practice, I began performing professionally at age sixteen.
Experience & Skills
Starting out with lessons and playing with other musicians or in a band, the aspiring professional Guitarist will spend long hours practicing. While this takes a certain amount of discipline, it isn’t as hard as it seems, because it’s great fun to practice as knowledge accumulates and learning surges ahead.
According to most pros, practicing gets harder later on, because it can be frustrating to have to relearn things you forgot, and you won’t be moving ahead as quickly day-to-day. Most Guitarists practice more when they’re starting out than later in their career, depending on time available and what they need to accomplish.
Knowing the fretboard “like the back of your hand” (really, really well), developing excellent fingerboard technique, being able to play chords, melodies, and improvised solos cleanly and with the appropriate musical feeling (e.g., using proper dynamics and rhythmic “feel”) regardless of style, are expected from professional Guitarists. Being able to read music, both single notes and chord symbols, is extremely helpful and even expected in many musical situations, but not all. There are some very successful Guitarists who are not great readers, though many Guitarists do read music very well.
Reading and other important skills can be learned in school, and there are many excellent guitar programs at famous schools, colleges, and universities around the US and the world.
Attending college and earning a music degree with guitar as principal instrument used to be less common than it is today. While not all aspiring professional Guitarists choose to study music in school, those that do will have the advantage of being musically prepared in other areas, such as arranging, music production, songwriting, and music business. College is also a great place to network with other musicians who will become the future leaders in the music industry.
Beyond fretboard skills, general music knowledge, the ability to play in ensembles and bands, and music business acumen, the professional Guitarist would do well to cultivate an appealing, easy-going personality, and be able to get along well with others in a group. Check your ego at the door, smile, be personable and friendly, and play only what’s best for the song. Having the right attitude will go very far in the world of professional music and being well-prepared and easy to work with are what ultimately get the callbacks for Session Guitarists.
How long do professional Guitarists practice each day?
As much as you can get in. But it’s better to do it when you’re able to concentrate. If you’re so exhausted that you can’t really bring your best it might be better to study the music without the instrument. In fact, when we travel–which I haven’t been able to do so much since the plague hit us–a lot of times you don’t have the luxury of practicing only when you feel strong. Sometimes it helps even to lay slowly and quietly at the end of a long day and set yourself up for a good day when you are feeling fresher.
If you have an international flight, you’re not practicing during the flight (although most of us can practice mentally without any instrument to hold onto). Still getting to Europe, for example, can take you near to 20 hours door-to-door. You can’t always practice as much as you’d like. Therefore, you have to be super well-prepared so that when you do go on the road and you have jet lag to deal with, fatigue, your preparation is absolutely secure and you can go on stage in front of a bunch of people you’ve never seen before and play well.
Ideally, I think about five, six hours of practice a day is great, but that can be very difficult to attain, especially if you have a family and you have other responsibilities. It’s rare that I have an entire day at my own disposal where I can decide what I want to do with the entire day. That almost just doesn’t happen anymore.
Even some of the most famous people in our profession are quite open and say that they have to spend so much time planning the tours and negotiating this, and negotiating that, and so a real career is not quite what you might have imagined when you were younger. It’s when you’re younger that you have free time.
When you’re starting out usually you don’t have any money, but you do have time, and hopefully, you can really just focus on your own art. You don’t have kids to drive around or other responsibilities that eat into your purely artistic work. I think that in music, just just like in athletics, it’s great to be able to start young. You don’t necessarily have to practice all that much at first, but having started young, just the familiarity with the instrument, having the instrument in your hands next to your body, is important and very difficult to recoup later on.
People who are gifted athletically can start later because they have great mind/body coordination from being athletes. Having that athletic ability, perhaps they can catch up quicker. The guitar is so dependent on the physical attributes: fingernails, the size and flexibility of the hand. If you have a big hand you can do certain stretches that a little hand cannot manage. But many great virtuosos make up in agility and speed for smaller hands. No one has everything or is without some shortcomings. The work of a lifetime is minimizing the shortcomings and maximizing the talent.
Still, classical guitar technique relates to the body of the player almost as much as is the case for Singers where the instrument is literally part of your body.
It changes but I shoot for an hour as a minimum. (That isn’t including playing while I’m watching a movie and stuff, which I do a lot of anyway.) I sit and focus for at least an hour every day. It’s distilled. It has goals. Sometimes there’s blood on the floor from struggle. It’s not easy some days. But I don’t go, “I’m gonna play the half a song I’ve been playing for twenty years that I don’t know the second half of.” It’s goal-oriented work for about an hour.
I usually enjoy it. Sometimes I don’t want to do it, but as soon as I’m in, it’s good. It’s a little like jumping in a pool. It can be uncomfortable at first. But settling in and feeling grateful for the moment usually sets in.
When I first started playing, it was more like two or three, if not six hours. I was totally obsessed.
It’s efficient now. A lot of it is relearning things I forgot, which is frustrating. That’s a big part of it. The six hours came really easily back then because I was in a new zone, like a new altered reality.
I suggest to students to try to practice five minutes a day. Ease into it. I’m not a real taskmaster because I think learning is a marathon and not a sprint. If I tell some guy who’s forty-years-old, has three kids, and a demanding day job that he has to practice an hour a day? That’s when “try five minutes” is reasonable. It’s like a relationship. You have to work and keep in touch with that relationship. Five minutes will generally turn into twenty once you’re in it. But if you say you have to practice an hour or not practice at all, people will choose not to.
I focus at least four hours of a day on music on a creative level. I might have non-creative tasks that add onto that. Four hours is quite the task.
In high school, I practiced five hours a day. As a pro, sometimes I do much more when learning demanding new works under deadline.
Education & Training
Starting out early in life with a good instrument and an effective Teacher will give an advantage, but it’s not a hard and fast requirement. There are plenty of examples of people who started playing much later in life. Playing in bands, learning to read music (not tablature), learning songs, understanding more than just the basics of music theory, attending concerts, and listening to a LOT of great music are all components of the education of the contemporary Guitarist.
To progress from a beginner to an intermediate student player usually takes 6-12 months of study and practice, to become an advanced player or a concert-level student performer should take 3-5 years for most people.
Keep in mind that while it’s easy to get started with learning some chords and playing accompaniment to easy songs on the guitar, most people never progress beyond this level. This means the future pro will need to apply themselves if they are serious about learning to play well. Practicing long hours isn’t always productive either; it’s possible to practice ineffectively without knowing what you should really be working on at each level.
Therefore, most Guitarists choose to find a Teacher to work with them. There are top pros who continue to take lessons! If a top pro is studying with a Teacher, why wouldn’t you? There’s only so much one can accomplish on their own, and the right Teacher can point out the things you should and shouldn’t be working on and show you how to attack them.
Compared to several decades ago, there are now many more college guitar programs. It’s common for students to earn a bachelor’s degree in guitar performance, and even master’s degrees are available. College can also be a great place to build the networks needed to succeed later in the music business, and to learn all about the different facets of music and the music industry.
College programs also offer unique performing experiences which might not be available elsewhere, such as performing with a jazz big band or guitar ensembles. While colleges and universities are an expensive way to learn, keep in mind that there are also many scholarships available. Studying with an array of experienced faculty at a college or university can be an immensely valuable life-changing experience.
Going to a top school in a major urban center (e.g., New York City or Los Angeles) can lead to many professional opportunities and is a great way to cram a lot of learning into a relatively short time. What you can learn in school in a few years might take a lot longer to learn otherwise.
So, attending a school can be a huge time-saver for some. Everything learned has some intrinsic value; learning is never wasted. Whether in school or by studying privately, dedication to lifelong learning should start early for the aspiring professional Guitarist.
FAQ
Is there anything else you think that up-and-coming Guitar Players should know about?
I’m basically always saying the same thing: go for a varied income stream and paint your own portrait. The only other thing I will say: Find what you love. Do what you love. You’ll do that best. The market may not want what you love, so then you may have to adapt a bit, but first, find out what you really love and try and convince people of its importance. That’s it.
Speaking of creative solutions: I happened to hear a clip on NPR today about a Blues Guitarist named Daryl Davis. I couldn’t believe what he’s been doing, what he’s done successfully for a number of years. In short he has befriended over 500 now-former Klan members using music as a common language.
He’s actually been able to get these people to renounce hatred. Many of them have given him their Klan robes as a testament to that friendship. ASTOUNDING!
He has done an amazing TED Talk as well.
I’ve been thinking about trying to do something like this forever. As the country is now ever closer to the brink of a new civil war, I think Davis practically deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
We might not even know him if he was just gigging around doing his blues gigs and his Booking Agent was booking him. But he’s been able to leapfrog out of the confines of simply being a musician, and he’s become an incredible peacemaker, what Dr. King called a “drum major for righteousness”!
Do you know the Opera by Mozart called The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte)? Perhaps you remember in the first act, where the eccentric bird catcher, Papageno, is with the heroine Pamina, and they’re being chased around by what are called the evil spirits, (bösen Geister). Papageno takes out his magic bells, not knowing if they can save him and Pamina. He sounds the magic bells, and all the bösen Geister, who are basically emblems of evil, become so enchanted by the music that they’re incapable of doing evil, but become entranced by the magic of music and cease to do evil. In a sense, Daryl Davis achieved that with his Klan conversions. That, to me, was such an inspiring story of true career success!
Sources
Jim Campilongo
When TONEQUEST MAGAZINE wrote “…another stellar Campilongo record from the fertile mind of Jim Campilongo. How does he do it? Damned if we know…” they were looking at an overview of Campilongo’s fourteen solo releases and commenting on the music’s growth and diversity. The Jim Campilongo 4 Tet is another step in this evolution.
BILLBOARD MAGAZINE calls Jim Campilongo “an American treasure,” an accolade which this Guitarist’s artistry and influential career has richly earned him. TIMEOUTNYC describes Campilongo perfectly–”New York has no shortage of guitar heroes but few cover as many bases as Jim Campilongo; reveals a range that extends from seductive country-swing to atmospheric jazz and well beyond.” And the NEW YORKER says “There it was again: the stinging treble, the spooky overtones, the strings snapping and booming under his hands the sound of a Tele being played as skillfully and exuberantly as it can be played, it sounded like nothing and nobody else sounded like Jim Campilongo.”
With fourteen albums of original material and guest appearances on dozens of recordings–from the Bammie-winner’s contribution on Cake’s million-selling Prolonging the Magic to (most recently) doing lead guitar duties with The Little Willies, his band with Norah Jones–Campilongo has played with JJ Cale, Al Anderson, Gillian Welch/David Rawlings, Peter Rowan, Martha Wainwright, Bright Eyes, Teddy Thompson, and Burning Spear to name a few, has earned two Gold records, and has written music for national ads for National Grid, Volkswagen, SBC, Michelin and Jack Daniel’s.
Campilongo also had repeat appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Later . . . with Jools Holland (BBC), Abbey Road Sessions (BBC), and has been interviewed on many major radio shows.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Through the lean ropy sound of his Fender Telecaster, Mr. Campilongo connects American styles (Blues, Rock, Country, Jazz, R&B) in a sly knowing way.”
THE NEW YORKER
“Jim Campilongo holds court. American music is a melting pot of influences, but few guitarists capture the nuances as well as Campilongo does.”
NY POST
“Campilongo is one of those New York secrets. A master of the electric guitar, he weaves in spaghetti western picks, blues chords and jazz refs into his haunting tunes, a combo of originals and covers.”
NYC VILLAGE VOICE
“An engaging improviser whose interest in entertainment is equal to his interest in art. His supple moves can keep an audience enthralled– meaning their asses wiggle and their minds jiggle.”
JAZZTIMES
“You’ve got the makings of a very twisted guitar hero who deserves worshipping. Clever, crafty, quirky and cool.”
THE NEW YORKER
“There it was again: the stinging treble, the spooky overtones, the strings snapping and booming under his hands the sound of a Tele being played as skillfully and exuberantly as it can be played it sounded like nothing and nobody else sounded like Jim Campilongo.”
TIMEOUT NEW YORK
“New York has no shortage of guitar heroes but few cover as many bases as Jim Campilongo; reveals a range that extends from seductive country-swing to atmospheric jazz and well beyond.”
Daniel Donato
When people first meet Daniel Donato, they’re not fully braced for this walking tornado of creative energy. “They think there’s something that tips the scale in ways they don’t understand,” says Donato about his over-the-top, slightly manic vibe. “But what actually tips the scale is the amount of thought and analysis I put into my work and art, all of which is taken from the lessons of my life.”
Donato, a 25-year-old Nashville native, has distilled those life lessons into his debut album, A Young Man’s Country, his proper introduction to the general musical audience. Recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium in a mere two days and produced by guitar-ace Robben Ford, the record weaves outlaw country, Grateful Dead-style Americana, and first-rate songwriting into a singular form Donato calls “21st-century cosmic country.”
It might surprise some that the Telecaster-wielding wunderkind, who at 16 became the youngest musician to regularly play the iconic honky-tonk Robert’s Western World while gigging with the Don Kelley Band, began his musical journey in a purely millennial fashion. Before he ever picked up a guitar, he discovered he had an aptitude for music via the video game Guitar Hero. At the time, he didn’t feel compelled to try his hand at the real thing until one day, about the age of 12, he heard the electric perfection of Guns ‘N’ Roses’ “Paradise City” blast from a set of speakers and his world was changed forever.
“It was the first time I ever had a vision for my life,” says Donato, who was partly drawn to music because he sucked royally at skateboarding. “I then took one of my dad’s old guitars . . . and I literally fell in love with it.” From then on, Donato lived and breathed music, practicing his chops around the clock. He’d play before school, during his lunch break, and in the evenings at home, sometimes falling asleep with the six-string in his hands.
It wasn’t long before he was busking on lower Broadway in Nashville, playing eight hours a day on weekends for tips. It was after one of those day’s sessions that he got a wild hair and snuck into Robert’s on a night when house act the Don Kelley Band was playing and his wig-dome was blown. “It was the first time I ever saw a band that was that good up close,” Donato said. “So I’m literally watching them play and I’m crying. I decided right then that I wanted to be the best Guitar Player in the world.”
Donato continued busking outside arenas before John Mayer and Phish concerts and on the streets of Nashville and it was then, while playing on Broadway, that he’d give Don Kelley his business card every Saturday night, hoping for a chance to audition. One day, while still a junior in high school, he got the call to come play. Donato was more than ready, and he delivered the goods in spades. He was so good, in fact, that he became a regular member of the band, performing four nights a week for more than 450 shows with the group.
Playing nightly with the Don Kelley Band was a formidable education for the young musician. Jamming regularly with Nashville’s most seasoned players, stalwart pickers who may have played in Buck Owens’ band, or Dolly Parton’s, or Alan Jackson’s, expanded his musical vocabulary while honing his stage presence. Along the way, he was soaking up stories of adventures on the road and learning about the ups and downs of the music business. In short, he was gaining priceless life lessons and a musical education from wells that run deep into the musical history of Nashville.
Around the time he turned 18, one of Donato’s high-school Teachers, a serious music lover who had seen his student play at Robert’s, gave him a Grateful Dead box set. It was another eureka moment for the Guitarist. His love for the Dead may have been ignited much earlier by virtue of the fact that his mother was a bona fide Deadhead who followed the group on tour when she was pregnant with the future Guitarist, but it was that collection that changed the way he looked at music. “It gave me a tie to all of the classic country gold I’d been working down at the honky-tonks each weekend,” he said. “Grateful Dead and Merle Haggard had always lived in my heart, but now, the link was made, and I had a vision on how to keep it alive for this generation that I am coming from.”
During the days of his Robert’s residency, Donato continued to busk at various locales, even playing the Grand Ole Opry, and it is the sum of all these gigs, experiences any teenage musician would kill for, that inform the sounds on A Young Man’s Country.
“Ain’t Living Long Like This,” one of three covers on the album, is a song by Waylon Jennings, who was recording at the Sound Emporium the day Donato was born. “Angel From Montgomery,” a song Donato learned on the fly while busking for tourists, pays tribute to the late John Prine. Donato recorded his unique take on the tune before Prine’s death. The Grateful Dead’s “Fire On The Mountain” is tacked on to “Meet Me In Dallas,” a tune Donato wrote while on the road with Paul Cauthen. The other seven songs, all originals, showcase the promise of a young Songwriter coming into his own, one of the highlights being “Luck of the Draw.”
The message of these songs contains the central tenet of Donato’s “Cosmic Country” ethos, which is about finding the courage to blaze your own path. As such, it is an ethos the artist extends beyond music into the channels of social media, where he’s built up a huge following of devoted “DD Heads,” as his fans call themselves. His podcast, Daniel Donato’s Lost Highway, brings together like-minded creatives to get at the heart of what makes artists tick, for which he’s interviewed Brothers Osborne, Brent Cobb, Orville Peck, and Garry Talent of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.
Incubated to the sounds of the Dead, educated by some of Nashville’s finest players, and having more than 2,000 shows under his belt and a social media presence, Daniel Donato is indeed a millennial whirligig of creative fire. He’s been dabbling in professional music since the age of 14 and yet he’s just getting started. A Young Man’s Country is the portrait of a restless artist as a young man, one whose story is singular and is still in its exciting, early chapters–and as this effort shows, the future is indeed cosmic.
Eliot Fisk
Eliot Fisk began to study the guitar motivated by his brother Matthew, born with Down’s Syndrome. While the imagined family singing sessions to a guitar accompaniment never turned into anything, the instrument slowly became the focus of his life.
Ten months spent in Sweden attending elementary school in 1965-6 produced the necessary catalyst to learn Swedish fluently and to begin to practice the guitar seriously. This passion burst into full flame when on his return to his native Philadelphia Eliot began to study with the remarkable (and mostly self-taught) William Viola, whose love of the guitar was lifelong although his musical activities were mostly limited to teaching on Saturdays in a guitar store in Philadelphia.
In 1974 Eliot met and began to study with his idol Segovia and at Yale University (1972-77) supplemented those encounters with guidance from the great harpsichordist and scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick. Following his graduation from Yale summa cum laude and a successful debut at Alice Tully Hall in New York in 1976, Eliot Fisk began a professional career that has taken him around the world as a soloist and chamber musician performing in leading concert halls on 5 continents.
Eliot has created an enormous amount of new music for the guitar through innumerable transcriptions and many new works in all genres by eminent composers, written for and dedicated to him. His numerous recordings have achieved critical and public acclaim.
He has enjoyed a long career as an educator particularly at the Universitaet “Mozarteum” in Salzburg, where he teaches in 5 languages, and at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where in 2006 he founded the highly successful Boston Guitar Fest. Many of his students have become great leaders in the musical world and continue his efforts to combine the great romantic tradition with the best of modernity.
Together with his wife, virtuoso guitarist Zaira Meneses, he recently founded the Eliot Fisk Guitar Academy (EFGA) which aims to project his legacy of interdisciplinary musicianship and humanitarian aspiration around the world.
Sharon Isbin
Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility, multiple GRAMMY Award winner Sharon Isbin was named the 2020 Musical America Worldwide Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist ever to receive the coveted honor in its 59 year award history. Hailed as “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time,” she is the winner of Guitar Player magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award, Germany’s Echo Klassik, Concert Artists Guild’s Virtuoso Award, and the Toronto and Madrid Queen Sofia competitions, and was the first guitarist ever to win the Munich ARD Competition. Isbin has appeared as soloist with over 200 orchestras and has given sold-out performances in many of the world’s finest halls, including New York’s Carnegie and Geffen Halls, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Paris’ Châtelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, Munich’s Herkulessaal, and Madrid’s Teatro Real. She has served as Artistic Director and soloist of festivals she created for Carnegie Hall and the Ordway Music Theatre (St. Paul), New York’s 92Y, and the national radio series Guitarjam.
American Public Television’s presentation of the acclaimed one-hour documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour has been seen by millions on over 200 PBS stations across the U.S., and abroad including Europe, Japan and Mexico. Winner of the ASCAP Television Broadcast Award, the film is available with bonus performances on DVD and Blu-ray. Watch the trailer at: www.sharonisbintroubadour.com Other recent national television performances on PBS include the Billy Joel Gershwin Prize with Josh Groban, and Tavis Smiley. A frequent guest on NPR’s All Things Considered and A Prairie Home Companion, Isbin has been featured on television throughout the world, including CBS Sunday Morning, Showtime’s The L Word, and as soloist on the GRAMMY nominated soundtrack of Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed. She performed at Ground Zero for the first internationally televised 9/11 memorial, in concert at the White House by invitation of President Obama, and as the only classical artist to perform in the 2010 GRAMMY Awards. She has been profiled in periodicals from People to Elle, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, as well as appearing on the covers of 50 magazines.
Isbin’s catalogue of over 30 albums from Baroque, Spanish/Latin and 20th Century to crossover and jazz-fusion, has sold nearly a million copies and reflects her remarkable versatility. Her two latest releases in May 2020 of world premiere recordings of music composed for her are Affinity featuring Chris Brubeck’s acclaimed concerto for guitar and orchestra, and Strings for Peace, with India’s legendary Amjad Ali Khan in a program of ragas for guitar, sarod and tabla. Her 2019 Souvenirs of Spain & Italy with the Pacifica Quartet showcases beautiful and rarely heard guitar quintets from the Baroque to mid-20th century, including works by Vivaldi, Boccherini and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and debuted at #1 on Amazon and #2 on Billboard. Her Alma Española with Argentinian-American opera star Isabel Leonard has also been a #1 bestseller, and is the first Spanish art song album with guitar of its kind in 40 years. It includes twelve world premiere arrangements by Isbin, and was honored with a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Producer of the Year, Classical in recordings by David Frost. Other recent #1 bestselling titles include Sharon Isbin: 5 Classic Albums and Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions with rock and jazz guests Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo. Her 2010 GRAMMY-winning Journey to the New World with guests Joan Baez and Mark O’Connor spent 63 consecutive weeks on top Billboard charts. Her Dreams of a World soared onto top classical Billboard charts, edging out The Three Tenors, and earned her a GRAMMY for Best Instrumental Soloist, making her the first classical guitarist to receive a GRAMMY in 28 years. Her world premiere recording of concerti written for her by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun received a GRAMMY and Germany’s prestigious Echo Klassik Award. She received a Latin GRAMMY nomination and GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Music Artist (alongside Melissa Etheridge) for her Billboard Top 10 Classical disc with the New York Philharmonic of Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez/Ponce/Villa-Lobos concertos, the Philharmonic’s only recording with guitar, which followed their Lincoln Center performances with Ms. Isbin as their first guitar soloist in 26 years. Other bestselling titles include Baroque Favorites for Guitar with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and her GRAMMY nominated Journey to the Amazon with Brazilian percussionist Thiago de Mello and saxophonist Paul Winter. Her recordings have received many other honors, including Recording of the Year in Gramophone and CD Review, Recording of the Month in Stereo Review, and Album of the Year in Guitar Player.
Other CDs include J.S.Bach Complete Lute Suites, Aaron Jay Kernis’ Double Concerto with violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Wayfaring Stranger with mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, and concerti by Joaquin Rodrigo which the composer praised as “magnificent.” She is also featured on the GRAMMY Foundation’s Smart Symphonies CD distributed to over five million families.
Sharon Isbin has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire with some of the finest new works of our time and has commissioned and premiered over 80 works by world-renowned composers, including more concerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous solo and chamber works. Works written for her by John Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner and Lukas Foss are featured on her American Landscapes, the first-ever recording of American guitar concerti. (In November 1995, it was launched in the space shuttle Atlantis and presented to Russian cosmonauts during a rendezvous with Mir.) She premiered Concert de Gaudí by Christopher Rouse with Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony, followed by the U.S. premiere with the Dallas Symphony. Among many other composers who have written for her are Joan Tower, David Diamond, Aaron Jay Kernis, Leo Brouwer, Howard Shore, Ned Rorem and Ami Maayani, with highlights including John Duarte’s Joan Baez Suite, and a duo by rock guitarist Steve Vai which they performed in Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet. Recent premieres of compositions written for her include a work by Richard Danielpour co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 125th anniversary and by Chicago’s Harris Theater, and the dazzling Affinity: Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra by Chris Brubeck which honors his father Dave Brubeck in his 2020-21 centennial.
Highlights include tours with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Austria’s Tonkünstler Orchestra and Belgium’s Philharmonique de Liege, a week of performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Filarmonica Toscanini in Milan, MIDEM Classical Awards in Cannes, and most recently, a 21-city Guitar Passions tour with jazz greats Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo, as well as collaborations with Sting, tours with the Pacifica Quartet, performances with the Detroit, National and Montreal Symphonies, and sold-out recitals in Carnegie Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and the Kennedy Center. Her latest partnership, Strings for Peace, with sarod master Amjad Ali Khan in an extraordinary program of ragas for guitar and sarod, is an eloquent and impassioned call for harmony—in music, religion, and culture throughout the world. Strings for Peace debuted on a multi-city tour of India and will appear throughout North America in 2020 along with an album release.
Isbin has toured Europe annually since she was seventeen, and appears as soloist with orchestras throughout the world, including the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Montreal, St. Louis, Nashville, New Jersey, Louisville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Buffalo and Utah Symphonies; the London Symphony, Orchestre National de France; and BBC Scottish, Lisbon Gulbenkian, Prague, Milan Verdi, Belgrade, Mexico City, Jerusalem and Tokyo Symphonies; and chamber orchestras including Saint Paul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Scottish and Lausanne. Her festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Ravinia, Grant Park, Interlochen, Santa Fe, Mexico City, Bermuda, Hong Kong, Montreux, Strasbourg, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Ravenna, Prague and Budapest International Festivals.
As a chamber musician, Ms. Isbin has also performed with the Emerson String Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guitar Summit tour with jazz greats Herb Ellis, Stanley Jordan and Michael Hedges, trio recordings with Larry Coryell and Laurindo Almeida, and duo recordings with Carlos Barbosa-Lima. She collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and has shared the stage with luminaries from Aretha Franklin to Muhammad Ali.
Born in Minneapolis, Sharon Isbin began her guitar studies at age nine in Italy, and later studied with Andrès Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, and for ten years with noted Bach scholar and keyboardist Rosalyn Tureck with whom she collaborated on landmark editions/recordings of the Bach lute suites for guitar (Warner Classics/G. Schirmer). She received a B.A. cum laude from Yale University and a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music. She authored the Classical Guitar Answer Book, and is Director of guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and The Juilliard School (which she created in l989 becoming the first and only guitar instructor in the institution’s 100-year history).
Sharon Isbin has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since age 17 and donates her time to perform benefits for the David Lynch Foundation, along with Katy Perry, Sting, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno, to bring TM to at-risk communities. In her spare time, she enjoys trekking in the jungles of Latin America, cross-country skiing, snorkeling and mountain hiking.
References
- 1US Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Musicians and Singers". US Bureau of Labor Statistics. published: 9 April 2021. retrieved on: 6 August 2021