Jim Ferguson
| Jim Ferguson | |
|---|---|
Jim Ferguson in 2011
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | James Edwin Ferguson |
| Born |
December 23, 1948 Dayton, Ohio, US |
| Genres | Classical, jazz, world, acoustic |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, music educator, author, music journalist |
| Instruments | Guitar |
| Website | fergusonguitar |
Jim Ferguson (born James Edwin Ferguson; 1948) is an American guitarist, composer, music educator, author, and music journalist/editor.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Jim Ferguson began his early music education playing the trombone at age 7, and then after eight years of study, switched to the guitar at age 15. He moved to California and began his music career in the 1970s, performing, teaching, and devoting serious study to the guitar. He has since performed in the U.S. and abroad, is featured on solo guitar CDs showcasing his original compositions for classical guitar, and has had numerous compositions published in both anthologies alongside the works of other notable contemporary composers and in publications dedicated solely to his works. Jim Ferguson is the author of seven highly acclaimed jazz guitar instructional books, including his best-selling first instructional book All Blues For Jazz Guitar, and is well known for his work as an award-winning and Grammy-nominated music journalist and editor, where he has generated groundbreaking and unique instructional articles for guitar players, has been influential in advancing how the guitar is played, and has spread his expert knowledge of jazz and classical guitar to the wide audience of Guitar Player Magazine and other music publications. He holds B.S. and M.F.A. degrees and has taught guitar and music courses at California universities for over 25 years, has conducted guitar and music workshops in the U.S. and abroad, and has taught guitar privately for over 40 years. A biography of Jim Ferguson is featured in Maurice J. Summerfield's The Jazz Guitar—Its Evolution, Players and Personalities since 1900.
Before gaining widespread recognition and praise as a performer, composer, educator, and author, Ferguson was already well known in the guitar world as a prominent journalist for his hundreds of articles, interviews, reviews, instructional columns, and series for national and international magazines including Guitar Player (1979–1992), Down Beat, JazzTimes, Fingerstyle Guitar, Britain's prestigious Classical Guitar (1993–1998), and others. His advanced music education, which included studying with Lenny Breau, George Barnes, David Tanenbaum, Red Varner, and José Rey de la Torre, and earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in Performance and Literature from Mills College (Master's Thesis: "Darius Milhaud's Segoviana—History, Style, Implications"), enhanced the scope and level of expertise of his work and made him even more in demand. He wrote 14 biographies and two history articles for The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and edited several volumes for Guitar Solo Publications of San Francisco, including an instructional series on the works of Fernando Sor, Leo Brouwer, and Matteo Carcassi, and Federico Moreno Torroba's Castillos de España. He also compiled numerous collections of historic performances for Fantasy Records, Rhino Records, and Concord Records, and worked on several projects for other labels including Riverside Records. In 1994, Jim Ferguson and Orrin Keepnews earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Album Notes for their liner notes to the 12-CD set Wes Montgomery—The Complete Riverside Recordings. The extensive liner notes include a biography of Wes Montgomery by Ferguson and Jim's interviews with numerous prominent jazz musicians including Nat Adderley, Ron Carter, Kenny Burrell, John Scofield, and Tommy Flanagan. As Jude Hibler (20th Century Guitar) said in her 2001 interview of Jim Ferguson, "With his many excellent accomplishments, his quest for excellence, and his sensitive, informed writing, it is little wonder that many consider him to be the Jazz Guitar Guru."
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