No guitar is safe.

Welcome everybody, Jude Gold here. It's episode 138 of No Guitar is Safe, The Guitar Show, where guitar heroes plug in.

And wow, plugging in today, a true hero of guitar, especially jazz guitar, although his music spans

so many more realms than just one genre. Julian Laj, spectacular young player. I definitely

remember him as a young player because didn't get a chance to tell him this, but the first time

I heard of him, well, it was a funny call working at Guitar Player magazine,

sponsor of today's episode, by the way. When I was full time there, which was like 2001 through 2009,

got a call one year about in 2005, but it wasn't from a guitar player. It wasn't from a guitar player's

publicist. It was from the great jazz vibraphonist, Gary Burton.

Great educator as well. And he, well, it's actually an email, I think, and he was just

raving about, not his own music per se or anything like that, but about this young guitar player

he had met, probably a student at Berkeley

of his at that time. The kid was probably 17 or 18. He's about 33 years old now for today's

interview, and we are, of course, talking about Julian Lodge. I don't even think I talked to Julian

back then, but I did a little story on Gary or something. Well, now, flash forward. Here we are.

2021, almost halfway through this year. Can you believe it? Music is returning and it's just great to have

Julian on the show because he has just bloomed as a jazz voice or a guitar voice or a musician's voice

who happens to go through the guitar.

This is a sample from today's episode which you're going to hear. Yeah, that's Julian performing for

you. The interesting thing is this piece is 100% improvised.

It's really pretty phenomenal, the stuff that Julian improvises, and you know, I'm going to ask him, like, what is improvisation?

Can it be learned? Are there tactics one can take to become a better improviser?

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