Don Paterson & Graeme Stephen

Don PATERSON AND GRAEME STEPHEN ARE TWO OF SCOTLAND’s leading guitarists. With contrasting and yet highly complementary individual styles, they bring their shared love of jazz luminaries including Bill Evans, John Abercrombie and Pat Metheny to bear in a duo that champions melody, harmonic richness and musical enquiry.Though better known as one of the UK’s leading and most decorated poets, Don Paterson has had a second career as guitarist for many years. In the mid-1980s he moved to London to join the free-improv scene, where he took lessons with the great guitar maverick Derek Bailey. For twelve years he co-led the Celtic-jazz ensemble Lammas with saxophonist Tim Garland, playing classical and 12-string guitars and sharing stages and studios with top jazz players including trumpet master Kenny Wheeler, vibraphone virtuoso Joe Locke, and pianist Jason Rebello. As well as collections of poetry and aphorisms, he recently published an enthusiastically received memoir, Toy Fights. Graeme Stephen’s versatility has taken him into folk and world music as well as jazz of many different styles. His long partnership with piper, saxophonist and whistle virtuoso Fraser Fifield has been hugely productive and his talent for creating new soundtracks for classic films from the 1920s has won him admirers in different art forms. As a composer he has also worked with the Dutch string quartet Zapp4 and enjoyed critical success with albums including Vantage Points, where he expressed in music the geographical locations that moved and influenced him. Stephen was a crucial member of the Dutch-Scottish group Lowlanders and since 2014 he has been a central figure in the jazz collective Playtime, performing new music and honouring jazz masters from Charlie Parker to Bill Frisell.