I spent Sunday afternoon at a jazz guitar clinic conducted by John Stowell, a Portland (Oregon) based guitarist. The clinic was sponsored by the Seattle Jazz Guitar Society (a new group who don’t have a web site just yet).
John’s a wonderful player and a good teacher, with a real knack for analyzing and talking about how he approaches his playing. After taking some general questions and loosening up the group of about 10 guitarists and me, the lone bassist, with Jobim’s “If You Never Come To Me”, he spent most of the afternoon working us through the use of various modes of the melodic minor scale.
It’s been a number of years since I thought about jazz theory in any depth, so this was an afternoon well spent, as well as a chance to meet some new fellow jazz enthusiasts.
There’s a good video podcast of John playing solo on the very cool Portland Jazz Jams podcast site.
Oren Sreebny 