John Russell (musician)

John Russell
John Russell performing with Mopomoso at the Vortex Jazz Club in April 2010.
Background information
Born	1954 Kent, England
Genres	Free improvisation
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Acoustic guitar
Years active	1970s–present

John Russell (born 1954, in London) is an acoustic guitarist who has worked exclusively in the field of free improvisation since the 1970s. He has been active consistently during that time as a promoter of concerts of freely improvised music in London, providing hundreds of playing opportunities for both local and international musicians. Russell has appeared on more than 50 published recordings. He has been described as "…an acoustic guitar loyalist who always manages to combine a classical delicacy with the fire of rock".

John Russell was raised by his paternal grandparents in rural Kent, and his grandfather gave him his first guitar at the age of 11. At school, he taught himself guitar and formed a group to perform his compositions. He discovered free improvisation after King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp suggested that Derek Bailey and Sonny Sharrock were the two musicians doing the most to push the boundaries of the instrument. On moving to London at the age of 17, he quickly became involved with the free improvisation scene, playing at The Little Theatre Club (run by drummer and educator John Stevens), becoming a member of the Musicians' Co-op and starting to organise concerts. In 1975, he helped co-found the journal Musics. Russell took weekly lessons in conventional technique from Derek Bailey for about a year, then in 1977 he gave up the electric guitar to play the acoustic guitar exclusively.

While his mature guitar technique inevitably overlaps with that of Derek Bailey, there are important differences. In a review of Analekta (Emanem, 2006) Nate Dorward writes: "Russell's debt to the instrumental vocabulary of Derek Bailey is clear throughout, especially in his attraction to wide intervals, his resolutely segmented, percussive attack, and his systematic variation of timbre and means of production (open string, fretted, harmonic, behind-the-bridge pling); it's in subtler matters of pacing and mood that his individuality comes through. He tends to dwell pensively, almost circularly, on chords or motivic cells that Bailey would have brusquely disposed of, and has a very different approach to group playing, preferring to merge into the larger ensemble sound (whatever the size of the group), and play with rather than against or aslant his musical partners.”

In 1983, he appeared in the Channel 4 TV documentary Jazz on Four: Crossing Bridges which looked at six innovators of jazz and improvised guitar. The other players were Brian Godding, Fred Frith, Ron Geesin, Hans Reichel and Keith Rowe.