Adrian Legg

There is a power to Adrian Legg’s playing that clearly distinguishes him from the countless acoustic maestros who follow the trail of the many highly technical finger-style guitarists who are adept at blurring the lines between classical, jazz, folk, country and — dare I say it — New Age. It could easily be said that it is this same sense of power in his style that has endeared him to rock audiences as well. Indeed, he has long been associated with guitar-heavy labels like Relativity and, now, Steve Vai’s own Favored Nations. The affable Englishman is a virtuoso who approaches each performance with 20 fingers across two hands, demonstrating a rare and elaborate dexterity that has earned him top honours in all manner of guitar player polls, year after year. This 11-song outing can only add more legions to his base of adoring Leggheads. A truly solo work, Legg can approximate an entire orchestra as he jumps from elaborately contoured melody to fast-fingered picking or a rich layering of rhythms to ringing harmonics. Songs like "The One-Eyed Turk” (played on dobro) and "O’Malley & Delacey” help to distance him from his contemporaries by about 200 kph but, as Legg would tell you himself, he’s more interested in the total effect than he is mere velocity. Simply spellbinding.