"Always lush and lyrical, with just the right amount of harmonic angularity and tangy dissonance. Her sound displays a lovely sinewy edge that allows the listener to glean every nook and cranny of her wonderful style." - Darrin Fox, Guitar Player Magazine
"One of the top players in an emerging generation of jazz guitarists." - John Heidt, Vintage Guitar
"A Sizzling Guitar Goddess"
Sheryl’s playing is unquestionably "sizzling". She has groomed incredible chops and impeccable taste with which she applies them. It’s said (by Lee Metcalf, The Villager) that she can "go from zero to blazing in two beats", but she is continually praised for never sacrificing melody and lyricism for technique. "She balances superior technical skills with a strong lyrical sense and swinging touch…" continues Metcalf, and Joe Taylor of Soundstage says "Bailey combines an astonishing command of the fingerboard with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention."
As for the guitar, she’s hardly had it out of her hands since the age of 13. That was when her mother finally relented to Sheryl’s begging for a Harmony Strat from the J.C. Penney catalogue. Though Sheryl was a rock-star wannabe, the influence of her pianist mother got her obsessed with learning harmony, and her first teacher in Pittsburgh, John Maione, introduced her to the guitar tradition—Wes, Jimmy Raney, George Van Eps, Joe Pass and others.
She eventually attended Berklee College of Music. Her years of dedication and focus won her 3rd place in the Thelonius Monk International Jazz Guitar competition in 1995, and she was chosen as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department in 2000 for a South American tour. She is now said to be "One of the top players in an emerging generation of jazz guitarists" (John Heidt, Vintage Guitar). And the Goddess part? Well, let’s just say that Sheryl’s maintains a schedule of performing, teaching, writing, touring and recording that is almost superhuman.
Her own trio, the Sheryl Bailey 3, is a modernized version of the organ trio—hard-swinging but with a unique harmonic edge. They are in demand in her home city of New York, and have also toured extensively in the U.S., Europe, South America and Australia. She also tours the world as a member of David Krakauer’s "Klezmer Madness" (combining Klezmer with jazz, funk and hip-hop), and she rocks with the "Jazz Guitars Play Jimi Hendrix" quartet. A partial list of others with whom she has performed includes Richard Bona, George Garzone, Mike LeDonne, Irene Cara, Jack Wilkins, Howard Alden, Shingo Okudaira, Ingrid Jensen, Dwayne Burno and Gary Thomas.
To date, Sheryl has 5 CDs out under her name, and a live DVD, "The Sheryl Bailey 3 Live in NYC" now available from Mel Bay records. Each successive release has drawn more accolades. Of her most recent, "Live at the Fat Cat", Joe Taylor says, "...this disc proves again that Sheryl Bailey is one of the most gifted and exciting jazz guitarists on the scene", and that she is a "jazz composer of the first order."
2009 will see the MCG Jazz release of "A New Promise", her recently recorded tribute to Emily Remler, featuring Sheryl as the solo artist with Pittsburgh’s acclaimed Three Rivers Jazz Orchestra. Sheryl is also heard on recordings of many other artists—Krakauer, Richard Bona, Shingo Okudaira, Irene Cara, Gary Portnoy, and KJ Denhert among them.
It’s hard to imagine she also finds time to teach, but Sheryl is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, and on staff at the Collective in New York. In keeping with Sheryl’s philosophy of "giving back", she also teaches at the Ronald McDonald House in association with the NY Pops. She has been an Artist in Residence and a Clinician at countless other programs and institutions, including NYU, Bates College, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, Towson University, the LA Music Academy and the Guitar Institute in L.A.
And don’t forget her impressive list of publications…..Sheryl’s first book was "The Chord Rules" in 2001, and in 2009, Mel Bay will be publishing her book "Moveable Shapes: Concepts for Reharmonizing II-V-I’s". She also contributed to Volume 4 of Mel Bay’s "Master Anthology of Jazz Guitar Solos" and she writes a column called "New York Scene" for the Mel Bay Guitar Session.
So, Sheryl lives up to Elliot Simon’s description, in all facets of her work. At a recent duo performance in New York—Sheryl and Jack Wilkins—I sat next to Jimmy Wyble. After a couple of tunes, Jimmy leaned over and whispered, "She’s one of the top five"…as in, one of the top five guitarists in the country. And Vintage Guitar terms her "one of jazz guitars current front runners."
"Top Five"? "Best Bop Guitar Player"? "Sizzling Guitar Goddess"? However you phrase it, Sheryl Bailey is unquestionably making a legendary name for herself.
Evelyn Palmer
Associate Professor, Berklee College of Music Department: Guitar
"I came from a family of professional musicians and we all had to study the piano. Maybe it was because I was rebellious, but I wanted to play the guitar instead of the piano. I think it was because you could play rock music on the guitar. So I had studied piano and trumpet as a kid, but when I got the guitar, that's when I got really serious about music.
"[The guitar] is loud. It's a contemporary instrument. The electric guitar, which is mostly what I play, to me it's a contemporary sound. It's a voice, and it seemed like the voice that expressed me the best. There are so many things you can do with the guitar, whether you want to play straight jazz, or you want to be a singer songwriter, or a composer, or a film scorer. You can get a good background in harmony, melody, and rhythm from studying guitar. It's in many ways a complete instrument.
"I try to make my teaching as practical and as based in the real world as possible. Because I do perform and I tour a lot, and record, I try to bring that experience to my students, to tell them this is what you really need to know to go out there and do it, and be successful.
"The ideals of being professional—being prepared, being on time, having a good attitude, being someone who's friendly and easy to work with—sometimes is as important about getting the gig as anything. Because there are so many great players, the more that you're prepared and the more that you're a good person to work with, you're going to move to the top of the list of people to call".
"For me, what's important is that the material that we're dealing with in class is practical to what a real musician has to deal with. It's about developing the skills that you're really going to need to make you successful. Those are the skills that I learned at Berklee, too. I think that's what's awesome about Berklee: You get to study with people who are really out there doing it, and to learn from that experience."
>- B.M., Berklee College of Music
>- Guitarist
>- Band leader of the Sheryl Bailey Three, featuring drummer Ian Froman and organist Gary Versace
>- Performances with Howard Alden, Rob Bargad, Richard Bona, Irene Cara, KJ Denhert, Dena Derose, George Garzone, Gary Grainger, Jazz Guitars Meet Hendrix, David Krakauer, John Pisano, Gary Thomas, and Jack Wilkins
>- Recordings include solo albums A New Promise, Live in NYC, Live @ the Fat Cat, The Power of Three, Bull's Eye!, Reunion of Souls, and Little Misunderstood; and Bubbemeises, Krakauer Live in Krakow (David Krakauer), Munia: The Tale (Richard Bona), and Destiny (Gary Portnoy)
>- Featured in Just Jazz Guitar (February 2003) and Guitar Player magazine (August 1999)
>- Finalist, 1995 Thelonious Monk Competition
http://www.sherylbailey.com/
The Sheryl Bailey 3 performing "Cedar's Mood" (dedicated to Cedar Walton) from the live jazz DVD recorded in New York available from Mel Bay. Featuring Sheryl Bailey on electric guitar, Brian Charette on Hammond B3 and Ian Froman on drums.
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