Joscho Stephan Transatlantic Guitar Trio
Biography Joscho Stephan Transatlantic Guitar Trio
Joscho Stephan
comes from Mönchengladbach and has been known in NRW for a long time. His overwhelming virtuosity is particularly evident in Django Reinhardt's 'Nuages' (from 24:50), where he solos for almost 5 minutes and quotes 'Stairway to Heaven' as if in passing.
Richard Smith
The fingerstyle specialist Richard Smith originally comes from England, but then emigrated to Nashville, the Mecca of country musicians, and has integrated well into the music scene there, as can be clearly seen on his homepage. Even as a young man he played with Chet Atkins. In Düsseldorf he plays a long solo with 'Mr. Lucky' (from 14:56) and looks really happy doing it, he seems to have merged with his instrument.
Rory Hoffman
is a particularly interesting musician. Not because he is blind, but because he grew up in Tennessee in a family of musicians and learned to play several instruments autodidactically. This includes the rather unknown Xaphoon, also known as the 'bamboo sax' or pocket saxophone (see photo). It was only developed in 1976, is made of bamboo or plastic, sounds similar to a saxophone or clarinet and is played with the reeds of a tenor sax. Rory explains all of this quite humorously and then plays 'Time on my hands', sometimes whistling through his teeth.
Rory is versatile, he stands for country & western, bluegrass and gospel, but also plays gypsy jazz and Latin. In the blues 'Night Life' he sings and accompanies himself for almost 10 minutes, including a solo. The guitar lies across his lap, his right hand swirls over the fingerboard while he plucks the strings with his left hand, similar to a zither. According to his own information, he plays like this because when he started playing the guitar at the age of 3, his arms were still too short - or is this just another one of those stories that are told again and again and are part of the musician's trademark?
The group's first album was released in 2020, NRWJAZZ reported on it at the time. Two of the pieces were also played in Düsseldorf.
The second album 'Swinging Inventions' was released some time ago and is currently only available as a download.
Joscho told me that this tour will be repeated next year because the trio is so successful. But that will take some time. Joscho's next concert in NRW will take place on January 5th at the Bergisches Guitar Festival in Remscheid, the trio will include Torsten Goods and Stefan Rey.
