Connecticut-based Jazz composer and guitarist Bill McCormick was educated at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. There he studied with Tom Szymczak, Jon Damian, spent 2 1/2 years building a solid musical foundation with Bill Leavitt, and experienced a brief but life-changing 7 month period of study with guitar great Mick Goodrick.
His performing career cut short in his mid-twenties by a debilitating shoulder injury, Bill was musically inactive for over a decade. But the urge to create music became too strong to ignore. “I began writing some musical exercises for guitar, and just kept going.” These “simple exercises” soon spawned a catalogue of books and Bill’s first CD, “Music For Guitar Volume I”.
With his second CD “To Be Continued…” Bill presented eight compositions, performed by a quintet comprised of five of New York’s finest Jazz artists. Featuring Ken Hatfield, Jazz’s leading exponent of the nylon string guitar, Bill’s quintet also includes reed man Jim Clouse, bassist extraordinaire Hans Glawischnig, master percussionist Steve Kroon, and drumming genius Dan Weiss.
“My intent is to showcase Ken Hatfield in a wide variety of Jazz genres so that listeners can enjoy the full range of Ken’s terrific talent, experience and artistry. In addition, I’ve been tremendously fortunate to have secured the top-flight skills of Jim, Hans, Steve and Dan for this recording. In every way, the right players came together at the right place and at the right time to create this CD.”
“Blues Talkin’: Suite For Solo Guitar (Modern)” is Bill’s most recent recording which presents new work performed by Louisville, KY based guitar virtuoso Craig Wagner. Bill states that “Blues music is the backbone of the Jazz language, which, though uniquely American in origin, has now spread throughout the world. People from all cultures can feel it and ‘speak it’. Craig’s interpretation of these new pieces is, in a word, masterful – an arrow shot straight to the exact center of the bullseye.”