Artist: Bill Connors
Bill Connors is an American jazz guitarist who was a member of Chick Corea's band Return to Forever. After leaving Return to Forever, he recorded three acoustic albums and then three electric albums as a leader/soloist. Connors began playing guitar at age 14. After three years of extensive self-study of the rock and blues influences that were his first inspiration, he began to play gigs around the Los Angeles area with a heavy blues/rock group called Middle Earth. He found his way to jazz, the music that would lead to a lifelong commitment.
"I'd been playing for about four years", he explained at the time of his RTF tenure, "and suddenly had an overnight change. I didn't want to be a blues guitarist anymore. I began listening to people like Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, [bassist] Scott LaFaro, Miles Davis, [John] Coltrane—anyone who had a 'jazz' label. Django Reinhardt really got to me. The first time I heard one of his records, I thought that was just what I wanted to be. He had all the fire, creativity, and energy that rock players have today. And the amazing purity of his melodies—you just knew they came from a totally instinctive place."
In 1973, after sitting in on a gig, Connors was asked to join the fusion band Return to Forever, led by keyboardist Chick Corea that included bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Steve Gadd.
In 1974, Connors left Return to Forever, and began to explore the New York jazz and session scene, performing with guitarist John Abercrombie and keyboardist Jan Hammer, and recording with former Return to Forever bandmate Stanley Clarke.
During this period, recording with vocalist Gene McDaniels and Stanley Clarke kept the guitarist's creative impulses occupied with a variety of challenges—but not for long. "Around 1975, I'd decided to become a classical guitar player", he muses. "I did my first solo album in 1974, and just decided on the spur of the moment to do it all on acoustic. That was just such a contrast from blowing people's ears off with my 200-watt Marshall that it really started to capture me."
A further impetus came with Connors' discovery of classical artist Julian Bream. "I was sitting with his album 20th Century Guitar—a real classic—and it has this piece by [German composer] Henze that I really loved. It was just getting to me, so I sat down for a couple of days and transcribed it—on my steel-string guitar, with my funny pick-and-finger technique [laughs]. When I got it, it gave me so much pleasure that I said, 'Okay, I'm going to be a classical guitar player.' And that's what happened."
Connors recorded his solo album Theme to the Gaurdian (ECM) in 1974, making the switch from electric to acoustic guitar. Simultaneously he began to study classical guitarists. Two more albums on acoustic guitar followed: Of Mist and Melting (1978, ECM) with saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Jack DeJohnette and Swimming with a Hole in My Body (1980, ECM). During 1976 and 1977, Connors recorded with Lee Konitz, Paul Bley, and Jimmy Giuffre in New York City.
Further information about Bill Connors is found here.
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Connors, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
Bill Connors 1979 Antibes, France with jan Garbarek
Bill Connors: Videos
Bill Connors Acoustic Solo 1978 San Fransisco
Bill Connors - 1978-10-21, Tralfamadore Cafe, Buffalo, NY