Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar

reputation as a bright young talent, invited him to play a
series of concerts with him in France and Belgium.
Grappelli liked Taylor’s playing enough to ask him along
on the next tour. Their rapport was such that Taylor ended
up playing with Grappelli for 11 years.
“I was always very conscious of what a very special
thing it was to work with Stephane,” Taylor says. “Stephane
and Django were, really, the first European jazz musicians
who gave jazz a European voice and European sound. So
I really felt honored and fortunate to be with someone who
was such a big part of that.”
For those who find the notion of playing bass, chords
and melody at once mind boggling, the video opens with
Taylor’s demonstration of how he puts together the basic
elements of “I Got Rhythm” as a guitar solo. Many of
Taylor’s arrangements, including his version of “Shiny
Stockings” and Ellington’s “Squeeze Me,” seem to draw
more inspiration from pianists such as Art Tatum and Bill
Evans than from other jazz guitarists. However, transferring
piano concepts to the guitar isn’t exactly a verbatim
procedure.
“You can’t play on the guitar everything Art Tatum
played,” Taylor says. “What you can do on the guitar is
suggest a lot. That’s actually the whole idea of the guitar –
I suggest more than I really play, which has a lot to do with
how I voice things, and rhythmic things that I do that give
the impression of playing a whole lot more.”
Taylor’s Brazilian-flavored take on “My Funny
Valentine” is a good example of how a well-known standard
can be practically re-invented by arranging it in a different
groove. He says that although he rarely plays a tune exactly
the same way twice, each arrangement has a basic
structure that’s flexible.
“I’ve always enjoyed the arranging side of it, and so
just about every tune I play solo has some kind of an
arrangement as a framework,” Taylor says. “It’s not a strict
arrangement – I always like to have some kind of
introduction, and an ending, and a key change or a twist
in the middle. Of course, that doesn’t necessary mean that
I’ll play all that – it’s really like a bit of a safety net. I’ll
always remember what Stephane told me. We spent so
much time together, travelling together, we’d sit and talk
about everything from the weather to politics. Once we