North Shore guitarist and composer Briand Morrison has been working on a CD of original jazz, rock and blues and he will be bringing his unique style to a concert at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts on September 20.
Guitarist and composer Briand Morrison of Grand Portage will release his new CD at a Sept. 20 performance at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts.
The CD was made possible through funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board and in partnership with the North Shore Music Association. Morrison has composed 12 original jazz, rock, and blues numbers for guitar and an array of backing instruments and vocals. He recorded the material at his studio with several regional musicians and produced a full-length album.
Morrison was inspired to play jazz guitar as a young teenager, when he heard Joe Pass play on the album Portraits of Duke Ellington. “I couldn’t believe my ears,” he says. “Jazz, I thought, really can be played on guitar.” Also influenced by Tal Farlo, Kenny Burrell, D’Jango Reinhardt, John McLaughlin, George Benson, Pat Martino, Steve Kahn, John Abercrombie, and his all-time favorite, Wes Montgomery, Morrison said he wanted to study guitar seriously.
He began studying with Dave Pederson at the West Bank School of Music in Minneapolis, learning technique and theory and coming to feel that “jazz was more interesting than rock, because it was richer in every way: harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically” and that it “gave rise to more expression and color when playing and soloing.”
After studying for two years with Pederson, Morrison was hired at 16 by the West Bank School of Music as a rock guitar teacher. His special skill, he says, “was the ability to learn, transcribe, and teach a song to a student in one half-hour lesson.” In 1979 he left Minneapolis to attended Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Today, while he continues to compose for and perform solo jazz guitar extensively, Morrison also composes and performs in a style he calls “reminiscent of a Hendrixy, Stevie Ray, Allman Bros, Early Clapton sound—a refined ’60s/’70s style.”
The ACA performance begins at 7:30 p.m. For ticket or more information, contact the North Shore Music Association at (218) 387-1272.
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