Leo Kottke Competitors

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Question: when is an acoustic guitar not an acoustic guitar? Rulebreaker. Trailblazer. Visionary. Phenomenon. And yet, even the breathless plaudits of the world press dont quite do him justice. When Preston Reed picks up an acoustic guitar, words will fail you. To watch Reed perform is to witness the bending of reality. The New York master tweaks the nose of musical convention, pokes the eye of received wisdom and burns the rulebook of the past. Using an evolution of the two-handed acoustic technique he pioneered in 1987, he fuses chord-based grooves, soaring melodic runs and polyrhythmic percussion that integrates the breathtaking potential of the guitar body. The power and depth of his original compositions are as unique as the mans execution, from his roots in blues, rock, funk and jazz to explorations in Middle Eastern and neo-classical styles, Reed's music embraces familiar sounds in a fresh and original way. Preston Reed doesnt need a band. He is the band. Over 30 years after his idiosyncratic style was born, Reeds seismic global impact has created a sea of guitarists playing in his style, many of them inspired by 1994s hit instructional DVD, The Guitar Of Preston Reed: Expanding The Realm Of Acoustic Playing. Today at the height of his game, Reed's recordings and live performances still define the sound of the pioneering compositional guitar genre he invented over a quarter century ago. The studio is his playground, but the road is Reeds natural habitat. This is a man in motion. His music represents a border-hopping universal language, and fittingly, tour bookings have drawn him across the planet, for performances that leave cultural ripples in their wake, from Europe to Australia, China to the US and beyond. Reeds musical journey has endless twists and turns, but theres one distinct line in the sand. It was drawn in the summer of 1987, as the guitarist sat in his Minneapolis apartment and wracked his brain for a way to escape his musical rut. Until that point, Reeds path had been familiar. As a child ...

About Bruce Cockburn: One of Canada's finest artists, Ottawa-born Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed a 40 year long illustrious music career, releasing 31 albums to date. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while traveling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders. For his songs of romance, protest, and spiritual discovery, Cockburn has been honoured with 12 JUNO Awards, an induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, a Governor General's Performing Arts Award, and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world's top instrumentalists. He remains respected for his activism on issues from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt, working for organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and Friends of the Earth.