| Jim Hall | |
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Jazz guitarist Jim Hall, in 2010 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | James Stanley Hall |
| Born | December 4, 1930 |
| Origin | Buffalo, New York |
| Genres | Jazz, cool jazz, post-bop |
| Occupations | Guitarist, composer, arranger |
| Instruments | Guitar |
| Years active | 1955–present |
| Labels | ArtistShare, Telarc, A&M |
| Associated acts | Chico Hamilton Quintet, Jimmy Giuffre Three, Art Farmer Quartet |
| Website | www.jimhallmusic.com |
James Stanley Hall (born December 4, 1930, Buffalo, New York) is an American jazz guitarist.[1]
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Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music,[2] Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s. There he studied classic guitar with Vincente Gómez.[2]
He played with Chico Hamilton Quintet, (1955–1956), Jimmy Giuffre Trio (1956–1959), Ella Fitzgerald (1960–1961), Ben Webster, Hampton Hawes, Bob Brookmeyer, John Lewis, Zoot Sims, Paul Desmond, Lee Konitz and Bill Evans. By 1960 Jim had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, among others. His live and recorded collaborations there with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond and Ron Carter have become legendary.
Formal recognition as a composer came in 1997, when Hall won the New York Jazz Critics Circle Award for Best Jazz Composer/Arranger. His pieces for string, brass, and vocal ensembles can be heard on his Textures and By Arrangement recordings. His original composition, Quartet Plus Four, a piece for jazz quartet augmented by the Zapolski string quartet, was debuted in Denmark during the concert and ceremony where he was awarded the coveted Jazzpar Prize, and later released on CD.
His most recent large-scale composition was a concerto for guitar and orchestra, commissioned by Towson University in Maryland for The First World Guitar Congress, which was debuted in June 2004 with the Baltimore Symphony. He was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award in January 2004. Jim was one of the first artists to join the fan-funded label ArtistShare and released his first recording "Magic Meeting" in 2005. In November, 2008 the double-disc album Hemispheres was released through the ArtistShare label featuring fellow guitarist and former student Bill Frisell[3] with Scott Colley (bass) and Joey Baron (drums).
Jim Hall has always used an extremely simple approach regarding his gear. In the early stages of his career, playing with Chico Hamilton, he used a Gibson Les Paul Custom. From that moment on, he has been associated with the Gibson ES-175 guitar. This guitar, originally with a single P90 pickup, was used with a Gibson GA50 amplifier. He then switched to a humbucking pickup before adopting a custom made D'Aquisto guitar. After the GA50 he started using solid-state amplifiers, mostly Polytones (although he also used Walter Woods Amp and Harry Kolbe GP-1 Pre-Amp and Cab). Currently he is using his signature Sadowsky guitar, based on his original D'Aquisto.
He uses flatwound strings gauges 11, 15, 20 (plain), 30, 40, 50 (from high E to low E) and small teardrop picks of heavy gauge. It's not rare to see him using a Boss Chorus pedal and a Digitech whammy pedal.
When asked if he ever tried playing solid-body guitars again, he said "solid bodies are strange to me, I need to feel the body resonating". Jim Hall considers himself a musician first and a guitar player second, and his whole approach to gear reflects this.
With Manny Albam
With Bob Brookmeyer
With Gary Burton
With Ornette Coleman
With Paul Desmond
With Bill Evans
With Art Farmer
With the Kronos Quartet
With Jimmy Giuffre
With the Modest Jazz Trio
With Helen Merrill
With Greg Osby
With Sonny Rollins
With Sonny Stitt