Steven King, USA National Fingerstyle Guitar Champion, was born in New York on November 16, 1952, grew up in Los Angeles, and has made the Seattle area his home since 1993. He studied jazz, arranging and composition in college in the 70’s, (classmate of Eddie Van Halen at Pasadena City College’s Commercial Music program 72-74), was a casuals band leader from the mid 70’s through the 80’s, and developed his unique guitar style in the 80’s and 90’s which won him the coveted National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship at Winfield, Kansas in 1994. Steven has performed concerts and guitar clinics around the world from 1995 to 2006, and has recorded 21 various guitar albums sold on his website, www.kingofguitar.com, where you can find audio clips and link to video clips as well.
Steven’s latest solo guitar CD, “Classical Swing” may indeed be a first, a unique concept in guitar music CDs - a solo guitar exploration of some of the greatest music ever written from two points of view, CLASSICAL and JAZZ. Steven performs many true-to-the-original arrangements of classical standards on nylon string classical, each followed by his jazz treatment of the same titles performed on his Chasson steel string acoustic with "bass expansion " (see footnote). Titles include Faure's 'Sicilienne', Rachmaninoff's 'Vocalise", Bach's 'Sheep May Safely Graze' 'Air on a G String' 'Brandenburg #3' and 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring', Pictures at an Exhibition, Delibes' 'Flower Duet' from 'Lakme', Bizet's 'Intermezzo' from 'Carmen', Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', and Tchaikovsky's 'Romeo and Juliet'.
Previous CDs in Steven’s catalogue include 7 CDs dedicated to his own solo guitar arrangements of Beatles songs, some original guitar music, and some variety jazz standards, popular, and show tunes. Be sure to visit Steven’s website, www.kingofguitar.com for lots more surprises.
Footnote: “Bass Expansion” is a method Steven has developed and employed with his guitars and recordings, and in his live appearances, where the two bass strings of a guitar in standard tuning have a separate pickup installed, with that signal run to an octave device, dropping the pitch by one octave, in the true bass guitar range. This bass signal is blended in with the usual output of all six strings in the normal pitch range, and when played in a fingerstyle approach with bass line counterpoint, it has the sound of an upright bass playing along with the guitar, but better still, combined with the subtle natural acoustic percussive sounds of the right hand executing all the chords, rhythms, bass lines and melodies, the total sound is perhaps more properly described as a unique acoustic trio.
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