Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues player – with full audio examples and backing tracks

On entering a room containing a piano, what pianist doesn’t turn white at the command, ‘You can play – let’s hear you!’ You thought you were visiting friends, not giving a performance, so of course yo

LAST MONTH, I discussed some of the advantages of playing in a power trio, such as the open harmonic canvas that it affords me as a guitar player. “Threw Me to the Wolves” is a song of mine that prese

A STAPLE OF many great country and country rock songs — and, in the hands of Jimmy Page and Albert Lee, rock songs — is the sound of the B-bender. For those unfamiliar, a B-bender is a string-pulling

Kammerorchester Basel/Giovanni Antonini Alpha ALPHA1092 76:29 mins The most familiar of the symphonies here, if only because it has a nickname, is No. 55, whose ‘Schoolmaster’ title arises out of the

Víkingur Ólafsson (piano) DG 94867411 76 mins The Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has recently been playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations around the world, and that led him to consider recording next