Grammy-winning guitar virtuoso Earl Klugh has recorded over 30 albums in his multi-million-selling career including 24 Top 10 charting records – six of them No. 1 - on Billboard’s Jazz Album chart. Klugh has garnered 13 career Grammy nominations, the latest for Klugh’s most recent project and Concord Records debut, HandPicked, a solo guitar album featuring a handful of collaborative string duets, released in the summer of 2013. “Making a record that includes instrumental duets is something I have really been looking forward to,” says Klugh. He has recorded duets with country legend Vince Gill, contemporary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro; three very different musicians, but whose styles Klugh admires greatly.
Earl absorbed a world of influences in his youth, from Wes Montgomery to Sergio Mendes, to the jazz and classical guitar music of Brazil, Argentina and Spain, the pop songs of Burt Bacharach and the Beatles, and the pop-folk eruption of the early Sixties and Motown’s legendary studio-session band, The Funk Brothers. “Music for me has always been a driving force in my life,” he says. “I love the emotion music evokes, and the stories it tells. No matter the genre, or style, I can always find something to enjoy. Music has no boundaries.” Klugh’s lifelong appreciation of contemporary popular music resulted not in a pastiche of styles, but in a philosophical positioning of his music for the broadest audience of music lovers.
As a composer and recording artist, he is counted among the lynchpin figures of a new contemporary jazz, and rightly credited for the extension of his instrument’s artistic scope. Additionally, Klugh’s credit appears on recordings by Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Al Jarreau, Mary J. Blige, Jamie Foxx and many others. He has been invited to play as a guest artist by such diverse peers and admirers as Jimmy Buffett, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis, Michael Jackson and Brenda Russell, and has recorded legendary collaborative albums with George Benson and Bob James. He has worked extensively with symphony and youth orchestras featuring a catalogue of over 50 charts by Grammy winning arrangers Don Sebesky, Dave Grusin, Johnny Mandel and more.