Biography
Fingerstyle guitar virtuoso Guy Van Duser has long supplied background and theme music for National Public Radio broadcasts while appearing as a featured performer on Prairie Home Companion. Beginning in the late 1970s, his extensive work with clarinetist, saxophonist, vocalist, and pennywhistler Billy Novick has appealed to audiences drawn to early jazz, swing standards, and Tin Pan Alley pop tunes. Although lifelong admiration for Chet Atkins, early experience as a bluegrass bassist, and years spent as a sideman with country musician Bill Staines demonstrate his ability to move across genres, Van Duser remains at heart a jazz guitarist devoted to the warm, reassuring pop and jazz melodies of the 1930s.
Born in 1948 to a concert pianist and a food service worker, Van Duser grew up in upstate New York, where he studied piano and accordion as a perceptive youngster and played guitar duets with his father under the influence of the elder Van Duser’s record collection and radio tapes. A taped broadcast first introduced him to a portion of Atkins’ Finger Style Guitar album; the first Atkins LP he purchased outright was Chet Atkins’ Workshop, an album of pop and jazz standards. When Van Duser later met his idol, he demonstrated his command by reproducing a complex passage from one of the Atkins recordings that had originally inspired his professional path. According to legend, Atkins turned pale, sat down, and regarded Van Duser with a mixture of admiration and astonishment before remarking, “kid, that album was overdubbed!” Atkins was equally impressed by Van Duser’s solo guitar arrangement of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and soon created his own version of the piece, in which one guitar evokes an entire marching band.
Van Duser and Novick first encountered each other in the 1970s while writing music for separate dance companies, discovering that their approaches and temperaments complemented one another effectively. Novick contributed pennywhistle to Van Duser’s debut album, Finger-Style Guitar Solos (Rounder Records 3021), recorded in Newton, MA in 1977, with the exception of the definitive “Stars and Stripes,” captured live at the Nameless Coffee House in Harvard Square in May 1976 and placed at the close of side two. The cover bears a meticulous pen-and-ink self-portrait by Van Duser. Novick appears on most of Van Duser’s more than ten albums, and the pair have toured for decades, performing in churches, coffee houses, and small clubs for modest yet devoted audiences. Van Duser’s second album, Stride Guitar, recorded in 1980, captures the core of his musical outlook; its title reflects a Harlem stride piano-inspired guitar technique, while the selected melodies come from composers including Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Richard Whiting, Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, and Jerome Kern. Released in 1987, American Finger Style Guitar draws selections from three early Van Duser albums still awaiting complete reissue by Rounder. In addition to playing piano, bass, mandolin, and electric guitar, Van Duser partnered with Novick during the 1980s and 1990s as arrangers and performers on albums by vocalists Priscilla Herdman and Jeanie Stahl. He also supplied arrangements for a 1992 album issued under guitarist Terrence Farrell’s name. Beyond his continuing work with Novick and occasional projects such as arranging music for Sheldon Mirowitz’s PBS documentary Columbus and the Age of Discovery, Van Duser teaches guitar part-time at the Berklee College of Music.
Born in 1948 to a concert pianist and a food service worker, Van Duser grew up in upstate New York, where he studied piano and accordion as a perceptive youngster and played guitar duets with his father under the influence of the elder Van Duser’s record collection and radio tapes. A taped broadcast first introduced him to a portion of Atkins’ Finger Style Guitar album; the first Atkins LP he purchased outright was Chet Atkins’ Workshop, an album of pop and jazz standards. When Van Duser later met his idol, he demonstrated his command by reproducing a complex passage from one of the Atkins recordings that had originally inspired his professional path. According to legend, Atkins turned pale, sat down, and regarded Van Duser with a mixture of admiration and astonishment before remarking, “kid, that album was overdubbed!” Atkins was equally impressed by Van Duser’s solo guitar arrangement of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and soon created his own version of the piece, in which one guitar evokes an entire marching band.
Van Duser and Novick first encountered each other in the 1970s while writing music for separate dance companies, discovering that their approaches and temperaments complemented one another effectively. Novick contributed pennywhistle to Van Duser’s debut album, Finger-Style Guitar Solos (Rounder Records 3021), recorded in Newton, MA in 1977, with the exception of the definitive “Stars and Stripes,” captured live at the Nameless Coffee House in Harvard Square in May 1976 and placed at the close of side two. The cover bears a meticulous pen-and-ink self-portrait by Van Duser. Novick appears on most of Van Duser’s more than ten albums, and the pair have toured for decades, performing in churches, coffee houses, and small clubs for modest yet devoted audiences. Van Duser’s second album, Stride Guitar, recorded in 1980, captures the core of his musical outlook; its title reflects a Harlem stride piano-inspired guitar technique, while the selected melodies come from composers including Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Richard Whiting, Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, and Jerome Kern. Released in 1987, American Finger Style Guitar draws selections from three early Van Duser albums still awaiting complete reissue by Rounder. In addition to playing piano, bass, mandolin, and electric guitar, Van Duser partnered with Novick during the 1980s and 1990s as arrangers and performers on albums by vocalists Priscilla Herdman and Jeanie Stahl. He also supplied arrangements for a 1992 album issued under guitarist Terrence Farrell’s name. Beyond his continuing work with Novick and occasional projects such as arranging music for Sheldon Mirowitz’s PBS documentary Columbus and the Age of Discovery, Van Duser teaches guitar part-time at the Berklee College of Music.
Albums
