The New Orleans Jazz Museum will host the Across the Pond Guitar Festival on Friday, September 2, beginning at 6 p.m. The event includes musicians from New Orleans as well as Canada and Italy.

Participating musicians include the New Orleans Guitar Masters, Jimmy Robinson, Cranston Clements, Woodenhead, John Rankin, Phil DeGruy, Papa Mali and Jamie Lynn Vessels. Gavino Loche of Italy and Adrian Raso of Canada will also join the lineup.

Gavino Loche is a virtuoso of the guitar. He is capable of moving from one genre to the next with the greatest of ease. His YouTube performances have garnered millions of hits. In 2010 he was awarded for the best up-and-coming Italian guitar player at the A.D.G.P.A (Atkins-Dadi Guitar Player Italian Association) annual convention. Gavino was the winner of the “Concorso Italiano Chitarre 2010” as well as in 2013 winning the guitar contest at “Arrangiatevi.”

Loche’s solo performances sound like two really good guitarists playing together. He combines tapping, percussive sounds and incredible fingerstyle arrangements. The initial astonished audience reaction is, “How does he do that?”. He is also author of the book “Contemporary Fingerpicking Guitar” and a Journalist for the first italian acoustic guitar magazine  “Chitarra Acustica” (Acoustic Guitar).

Adrian Raso is a respected guitarist/composer from Guelph, Ontario, Canada and has been the proud recipient of several Ontario Arts Council Grants in Popular Music.  Adrian has recorded two instrumental EPs and ten full-length instrumental albums. 2020 has seen Adrian transition into the world of film and begin his journey as a screen composer. His music has been featured in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) and Konstantin Statskiy’s Hotel Belgrade (2020).

Favorable reviews and critical acclaim have led to artist endorsements from Gretsch guitars, Godin guitars, Dr. Z Amplification, The Deering Banjo Company, Michael Collins guitars, K&K Sound pick-ups, Keeley Electronics, Wampler Pedals, Pigtronix, Radial Engineering, Pedaltrain, and Biltmore Hats. Raso is considered a guitar virtuoso, an exceptional songwriter, and his jaw-dropping live shows worldwide never fail to impress.

The New Orleans Guitar Masters include Jimmy Robinson, Cranston Clements, and John Rankin.

Jimmy Robinson has been recording and touring for over 40 years. He has received critical and audience praise for his unique virtuoso approach to the guitar, and his rich compositional skill. Robinson studied classical guitar and composition at Loyola University in New Orleans and The Eastman School Of Music in New York. He combined these elements with his electric experience to forge the solo acoustic style that he now tours with. His has there solo albums to his credit, Vibrating Strings, Guitarworks and Three.

He has toured the world with appearances at The Acoustic Franciacorta and Madame International Guitar Festivals both in Italy, The Gutarrenzauber Festival, Gros Rohrheim, Germany, The Zihuatenejo International Guitar Festival, Zihuatenejo, Mexico, The New Orleans French Quarter Festival, over 25 Years at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and more. He has opened concerts for John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea’s Elektrik Band, The Neville Brothers, and many more.

With a career spanning forty years, Cranston Clements has performed literally thousands of gigs, having toured world-wide and recorded with a long list of renowned performers. Being a native New Orleanian has afforded him the opportunity to work with many of the city’s premier artists.

His resumé includes the likes of Cyril Neville, Dr. John, Johnny Adams, Wayne Cochran & the C. C. Riders, Marva Wright, Stanton Moore, Boz Scaggs, Maria Muldaur, Allan Toussaint, the Dixie Cups, the Neville Brothers, Mighty Sam McClain, Joe Clay, Irma Thomas among many others. He has also partnered in original projects including Twangorama, the Rockabyes, the Clements Brothers, Sexdog, and the New Orleans Guitar Quartet, to which he has contributed numerous original songs and arrangements.

John Rankin is an accomplished New Orleans musician and performer. He has been described as a New Orleans hybrid of Leo Kottke and Chet Atkins, but his expansive style covers many genres. A versatile master of solo acoustic guitar, he blends New Orleans feel and charm with originals, jazz, classical guitar, folk, blues, rhythm and blues, and the American songbook. He is also known as a powerful singer/songwriter with a wide array of songs, vocal and instrumental, that reflect his broad approach. His powerful harmonica playing, in sync with his guitar, adds a real impact to his songs and stories.

He has been a featured performer at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival since 1981. He has taught guitar and songwriting at Loyola University New Orleans for over thirty years, as well as Tulane University, University of New Orleans, and Xavier University. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in Music Education award in 2012 by Offbeat Magazine for his commitment to teaching.

Woodenhead, New Orleans’ seminal instrumental rock band marked a major career milestone in 2015: their 40th Anniversary. Throughout the years, the band has stayed true to their aesthetic of excellent musicianship, superb original songwriting and authentic instrumental rock that is awe-inspiring and distinctive. Just don’t call them a fusion band. Woodenhead is the incomparable legendary instrumental rock band from New Orleans.

Papa Mali (born Malcolm Helm Welbourne in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 6,1957) is a New Orleans-based singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer. He has been a touring musician and recording artist for decades. Yet, he is probably best known as the front man for 7 Walkers, a band formed in 2009 that includes three musical icons: Grateful Dead founding member and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, The Meters’ founding bassist, George Porter Jr. and lyricist Robert Hunter.

Papa Mali is also known for his own live performances and recorded output, most notably his two albums for Fog City Records (2000’s Thunder Chicken and 2007’s Do Your Thing), both produced by Dan Prothero and the latter featuring some of New Orleans’ most legendary musicians.  When not on tour with 7 Walkers, Papa Mali can usually be found at home in New Orleans, where he regularly performs with his own band, Double Uptown Shotgun, often at his favorite neighborhood watering hole, The Maple Leaf Bar or at nearby Tipitina’s.

Jamie Lynn Vessels creates original New Orleans roots rock for the wanderers, the dreamers, the fighters—those who live on the same off-the-beaten path that Vessels has been following all her life. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist has developed a name for herself in the roots music culture in New Orleans, where her voice and her unabashed honesty consistently create a community out of a room full of strangers.

Her new album If I’m Being Honest promises to cast that same spell, armed with bluesy, hard-hitting guitar riffs and lyrics that don’t shy away from the hard and hopeful experiences that make us human. It’s a chemical reaction that results in the raucous explosion of rock and roll energy and lyrical complexity, leaving an unmistakable impression on listeners. If I’m Being Honest captures that power like never before, using it as the catalyst to create community for the wanderers, the dreamers, and the fighters.

After falling under the spell of Chet Atkins, Phil DeGruy a native New Orleanian, began his tenure with jazz great Lenny Breau in 1976. By the early ’80s DeGruy began plucking an electric guitar behind its bridge and was compelled to incorporate that sounds into his music. Hank Mackie, DeGruy’s extraordinary teacher, suggested fashioning the harp strings to sit on the guitar’s body where the pick guard would be located, thereby extending chord voicings in one motion and evoking the illusion of a “limitless” guitar, turning a sad chord into a tragedy, a happy chord into bliss, and thereby enabling the juxtaposed variations of both.

Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased at the door with cash/credit or online. The program will take place inside the third-floor performance center of the museum.

The Across the Pond Guitar Fest will be live-streamed on Facebook for free.

400 Esplanade Avenue (in the New Orleans Jazz Museum), New Orleans, LA 70116

© 2022 OffBeat Magazine Website by Westguard Solutions