Peter Sprague
If you live in San Diego, you are in the area or you just love jazz guitar then you have to check out guitarist Peter Sprague.
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| Picture of Peter for the Carlsbad Music Festival Source: petersprague.com |
Peter’s music is described as being “as progressive as John Mclaughlin and as jazzy as Pat Metheny” by the San Diego Reader. If you have not heard either of the two guitarists mentioned above I would also recommend diving into their work along with Peter’s.
Peter immersed himself in jazz when he was fifteen years old. It was at this time that he created his first band with his brother Tripp on tenor sax, Rob Schneiderman on piano, John Leftwich on bass, and Toddy Bryson on drums. And thus Peter’s musical career was born!
Later in his life, Peter would study with jazz guitar great Pat Metheny (mentioned above) and play with jazz pianist Chick Corea as well as Rob Schneiderman. Again check all of these cats out!
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| Guitarist John McLaughlin(left) and Chick Corea(right) Source: chickcorea.com |
I am a big fan of Chick Corea and it is basically impossible for me to sum up his gargantuan career. I am sorry but you are just going to have to jump into his work and listen.
Peter Sprague meticulously studied the work of jazz icon Chick Corea and was able to publish transcriptions of many of his works. See Jazz Solos of Chick Corea for an example.
From his experiences teaching and from writing transcriptions for Chick, Mr. Sprague was able to create his own technique book known as The Sprague Technique. From there, Peter created a multitude of books filled with some of his tunes as well as other books filled with transcriptions of the jazz greats.
Back in Del Mar, Mr. Sprague created his own recording studio known as SpragueLand, which was created to be a Californian version of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Land Studio.
SpragueLand is devised not to create, hit-records but, “to keep costs low” and to, “release a product [Peter is] happy with.” Along with recording his own work, Peter also recorded many local San Diegan artists at SpragueLand as well.
There you go! This is the basic gist of Peter’s life and music career.
As of now Peter has been working with bassist Gunnar Biggs, vocalist Leonard Patton, a string orchestra and much much… more.
Sorry for the long rant. Now go and check out this amazing guitarist!!!
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