Benjamin Geer

Trying to Be a Jazz Guitarist

I started playing jazz guitar around the time I went to university. I wanted to combine the improvisational tradition of jazz with non-tonal harmony and large-scale structures. But I thought I should start with bebop. In 1995–96, while working as an English language teaching assistant in France, I had the opportunity to play in an amateur big band as well as a quintet: Here are some earlier recordings, from 1991: