MUSIC

Dosey Doe Coffee House presents Stanley Jordan Trio. TWO SHOWS!

From the moment he made his debut in 1985 with the gold-selling Grammy® nominated album Magic Touch, guitar virtuoso Stanley Jordan has proven himself as a forward thinking innovator. With his nimbly executed "touch" or "tap" technique, he ushered a dazzling and spellbinding new sound into the world of progressive instrumental music.

Over the course of five major recordings and several smaller independent releases, Stanley has explored earthly and astral musical trailways. Because of the extraordinary originality of his approach to guitar, Stanley has been looked upon first and foremost as a musical original, orbiting in an artistic universe without predecessor or immediate successor.

To describe Stanley Jordan is to think of him as a world-class musician who marches in all aspects of his life to the beat of his own drum. He is a progressive thinker with goals and ideas that stretch far beyond record deals, fortune or fame.

Each project that followed his classic Magic Touch (Stanley was also nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy that year) has taken him into thrilling virgin territory. Those projects included a solo guitar album titled Standards Volume 1 (1986) where Stanley made the bold statement that songs by the likes of Stevie Wonder and the Beatles deserved recognition as standards as much as chestnuts like "Georgia On My Mind." He followed that with the band album Flying Home (1988) and an especially edgy album titled Cornucopia (1990, a Grammy nominee in the Best Pop Single category for the title track), half of which was straight ahead jazz recorded live and the other half, multi-dimensional originals recorded in the studio. Still later in 1994, after a move to Arista Records (then-helmed by pop music maverick Clive Davis), he recorded the bracingly eclectic Bolero album, featuring covers of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon," Jimi Hendrix's "Drifting," his original "Plato's Blues" and the CD's centerpiece, a 17-minute arrangement of Ravel's "Bolero" broken up into rock, African, Latin, "groove" and industrial versions.

Frustrated with the demands of the commercial music industry, among other things, Jordan went into a self-imposed exile from the rat race in the `90s that included a retreat to the mountains of the Southwest. He re-emerged with a new life's direction. "Most people - if and when they find their calling - come to see themselves in some sort of service capacity," he states. "Right now I feel a strong desire to bring my music to the people not just for entertainment, but also for inspiration and healing."

Though he maintains a busy international touring schedule, his broader interests stretch into the studies of Music Therapy and Sonification. He also owned and operated the Sedona Books and Music Store in Arizona.