With an acoustic fingerstyle guitar that will challenge your imagination, Chris Proctor uses the tools of his trade — 6- and 12-string guitars — and the many expressive ways to play them, to venture into new territories, drawing on elements of folk, jazz, blues, classical, and pop.
DIRTY LINEN
Proctor’s virtuoso fingerstyle technique and compositional abilities combine to render an original collection of pieces that very much lives up to its name. In the way Proctor explores melodies, and with his unique variety of tunings and spidery fingerings, he is a true pioneer of the contemporary fingerstyle form.
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
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LAYER MAGAZINE, Chris Proctor’s “haunting slide, spectacular writing, killer contrapuntal chops and sensitive articulation” put him “in a league with the Peter Fingers and Martin Simpsons of the world.” He is also mentioned in the same breath with Michael Hedges and Leo Kotke — in two words, he's a virtuoso and explorer, whose “full-voiced guitar songs” bring out the instrument’s deepest voices and most sonorous qualities.
With a performing career of 12 years, nine CDs, books, videos, magazine articles, and a guitar model made to his specifications by Taylor Guitars, Proctor has built a reputation as a guitar player’s guitar player, an elite fingerstyle composer, arranger, and performer. Chris’s latest CD, “Under the Influence,” showcases his talent for original arrangements flavored by folk, classical, jazz, and pop elements. The album opens with “Nights in White Satin,” an amazing demonstration of Chris’ s E-bow work and guitar technique. Chris moves on to a version of Neil Young’s “Ohio” that may be even more powerful than the original, and a medley called “Bach to Ireland” that combines Bach’s Sixth Brandenberg Concerto and two beautiful traditional Irish jigs. Is it magic that makes this Baroque-Celtic marriage work, or is it Chris’s ability to hear things in music that other people don’t? It hardly matters, as they come out to the same thing.
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