Trying to Be a Jazz Guitarist

• Français : J’ai essayé d’être guitariste de jazz

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:

When I was about 30 I stopped playing, mainly out of frustration from my own slow progress and from the difficulty of trying to be a musician while needing to earn a living in some other way. I wish I had kept at it.