Fingerstyle Guitar Magician Martin Taylor Solo at Xiqu Centre

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A PhD and MBE, guitar magician Martin Taylor’s greatest claims to fame might be the long stints he spent playing in more famous musicians’ bands — namely filling in for the late Django Reinhardt alongside gypsy jazz forefather Stéphane Grappelli (1979-1980), and working for former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman (playing in his Rhythm Kings from 1998 until their disbandment in 2016). In more intimate settings, he’s also played alongside some of the most famous guitarists in jazz — Joe Pass, Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd.

Yet from his first professional engagement — playing in the window of a local music store aged eight — until today, more than six decades later, Taylor’s gifts have been most evident when he goes it alone. Playing solo and completely unaccompanied, he’s developed an instinctive finger-style technique, comping lead lines, chords and basslines simultaneously, so seamlessly that might make you think you’re listening to three players at once. And no, there’s no looping or snazzy effects — it’s all sheer, hard-earned virtuosity. 

Once a regular Hong Kong visitor, this marks Taylor’s first performances in the city for 13 years — performing two shows in a single night with old pal Eugene Pao stepping in to duet on a few numbers. Expect an evening of reimagined jazz classics, as heard on this year’s beautiful new solo album Standards, Vol. 1, plus a few contemporary pop tunes by artists like Norah Jones — which to Taylor are just tomorrow’s standards in the making.

“You know, the tunes that we call standards were really pop songs of the great American songbook going back to the 1930s and 40s — I play some standards that are 100 years old,” Taylor told us in an exclusive interview. “They were songs that everybody knew, but they didn’t begin life as jazz standards. They were pop songs of that time — and I’m following that tradition of jazz musicians taking pop songs and making them jazz standards.”

The performances take place at 19:00 and 21:00.