Inside and Out: Tonal, Polytonal, and Atonal Techniques for the 21st Century Guitarist

This event has passed.
Please see the events listing for upcoming events.
Event Dates
Oliver Colvin Recital Hall (1W)
1140 Boylston Street
Boston
MA
02215
United States

In the realm of modern jazz, fusion, progressive metal, and rock, this clinic, led by faculty guitarist Norm Zocher, will focus on striking a balance between in and out playing through the application of many tonal, polytonal, and atonal techniques, including the use of super arpeggios, double pentatonics, double harmonic minor, diminished, whole tone, augmented, and double augmented scales, as well as improvisation with the cycle of fifths/fourths and the Mother Chord on the guitar.

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, and referred to as a "guitar legend in the making" as well as one of "Boston's best composers,” Norman Zocher is a longtime professor in Berklee College of Music's Guitar Department, and New England Conservatory Jazz Department faculty member. He was the youngest faculty member at both places at the time of his hiring. Zocher has performed and/or recorded with a broad range of artists including Esperanza Spalding, Maria Schneider, John Medeski, Muhal Richard Abrams, Oliver Lake, and many others. The recordings of the Abby and Norm Group with his wife, fellow Berklee guitar professor Abigail Aronson Zocher, gained him international recognition as a guitarist and a composer. Other critically acclaimed albums have featured Zocher with Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, John Patitucci, and Joey Calderazzo. He is a composer and guitarist for the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra where he writes, performs, and records works for guitar and jazz orchestra. His recent work for solo violin, "Rock Ethic" (Affetto Recordings), commissioned by String Department faculty member Mimi Rabson with a grant from Berklee, was featured in Strings magazine and has been performed around the globe by former Metropolitan Opera Concert master Elmira Darvarova and others. Described by the Boston Globe as a “fast rising star of pedal steel,” Zocher has accomplished many firsts on the instrument, including being the only person to ever perform John Coltrane’s 26.2 on pedal steel guitar as well as performing the world premier of "Giant Steps" on the E9 neck in a duo with bass legend Cecil McBee. Known as the Super Bowl of steel guitar, Norm was a featured performer at the International Steel Guitar Convention, where 5,000 steel guitarists from 33 countries converge on St. Louis. As a theoretician and international clinician, Zocher is the founder of A Grand Unified Theory of Music, which details how the harmonic series is at the root of all things musical, and the Everything Sheet, which finds that all melodic or harmonic possibilities are one of 350 unique structures.