Hello everyone and happy December. I am working away on season seven. Well, really, I'm doing that

while preparing for the holidays, which are always a busy time. And I've got another older episode

for you all. In the meantime, a really fun one from a few years back that I'm sure some of you

have already heard, but I'm equally sure that others of you haven't.

Before that, though, a music recommendation.

If you are on guitar YouTube at all, you have doubtless come across the Italian guitar phenom Mateo Mancuso,

an exceptionally talented young man who plays finger-style progressive jazz and can move across the fretboard as fast as anyone I've ever seen.

The videos of him are always impressive, but I've been enjoying listening to his recorded music as well,

since it gives kind of a different, if not better, at least different sense of where he's at as an artist and where he might go from here.

You're hearing Samba Party right now. It's a later track off of his 2023 album, The Journey.

It's a really fun track. I love the way that it sounds in general. It sounds a little bit like old Pat Mathini group recordings.

Music bit like old Pat Mathini group recordings. And of course, once they get cooking, he does that thing that he does where he begins playing so fast that you kind of have to unbuckle your mind and just hold on for dear life.

Yeah. I'm Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

Now with that said, there's actually a lot of room for him to expand musically to grow as an artist from here, as amazing as he is.

More instruments, denser arrangements, different styles, and actually slowing down a bit.

Mancuso has this really strong jazz background that comes out and is playing.

Some of my favorite parts of his solos aren't those insanely fast runs.

They're the melodic development that he'll do for like two or three bars at the start of his solos.

He actually has a lot of great melodic ideas as an improviser.

So he's a great player, and it's a good reminder that as fun as it can be to watch these

burning, exciting young players on YouTube and on social media, it's just as rewarding

to go and find their latest album and actually just sit and listen to it. It's something that I

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