Spotlight Thursday: Bruce Forman presents The Red Guitar
Bruce Forman presents the Red Guitar in the next Spotlight Thursday in the Jazz Cave at the Nashville Jazz Workshop on Thursday, November 17th. The Red Guitar is a unique and captivating one-man show by one of the country’s leading jazz guitarists, Bruce Forman. The evening will also include a set of jazz from Bruce with NJW co-founder Roger Spencer.
The performance is at 7:30pm CST (Doors at 7:00pm).
LIVE PERFORMANCE TICKETS ($35)
The Red Guitar
Imagine receiving an invitation to a gala featuring John Coltrane, Sigmund Freud, and Faust. Bruce Forman’s “The Red Guitar” is all that and more. It draws on Forman’s decades of experience as a formidable jazz guitarist and his considerable skill as a storyteller and teacher, producing a work that is greater than the sum of its dazzling parts.
A story in and about jazz, The Red Guitar showcases Bruce Forman’s genre-breaking inventiveness and his ability to improvise and create within a classical form. Enlisting the full power of the jazz idiom and integrating it with seasoned and provocative story-telling, he confronts the dilemma of artistic obsession face-to-face—by creating a work of art that simultaneously explores and demonstrates the hold that music has over its most ardent followers, the hold that poses itself as a life-or-death, must-be-solved-question: “The Red Guitar. Do you play it…or does it play you?”
See where you stand. See and hear The Red Guitar
**Based on The Red Violin, where the instrument brings turmoil and tragedy through generations; and The Red Shoes, where the shoes desire to dance ultimately possess and kill the dancer, this is a story that explores the genesis and nature of our passions, and what lengths we are willing to go to serve them.
***Bruce Forman combines stellar guitar playing, humor and compelling storytelling that explores a life in the pursuit of sound. The Red Guitar: do you play it…or does it play you?
About Bruce Forman
Besides “The Red Guitar,” Bruce Forman’s work includes 17 CDs as a leader and as a sideman with luminaries such as Ray Brown, Bobby Hutcherson, and Roger Kellaway. His latest CD, “Reunion,” (link below) is collaboration with bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton, and is a loving homage to the 1960’s “Poll Winners” recordings of Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, and Shelly Manne. (Fun fact: the recording was performed using original instruments of Kessel, Brown, and Manne.)
A close friend and colleague of the late Barney Kessel, he was described by Barney as “one of the great lights of our age.” Bruce is now the keeper of Kessel’s legendary Gibson guitar, a fascinating story in itself. In the early 2000’s Bruce branched out into Western swing with his group Cowbop. And if that wasn’t enough, he is educator in residence at USC, hosts a podcast, and is the author of a novel! Sometimes described as a “Renaissance Cowboy,” Bruce Forman is a true original, and an evening with him is not to be missed!
Policies: The Jazz Cave is a BYOB establishment, with no alcohol or food service. You are free to bring alcoholic beverages and snacks. We sell soft drinks and bottled water. The Jazz Cave is a listening room, and we ask patrons to keep conversation to a minimum and silence cell phones. Audio and video recording is prohibited. TICKET SALES ARE FINAL. We do not issue refunds. Masks are recommended for all patrons.