Jason Spurway

Jason Spurway was born in 1966, Norfolk, England, into a musical family. At the age of 3, under the encouragement of his mother, he began playing guitar. Early exposure to popular music soon fuelled a passion for rock music and electric guitar which continued through to his teens. At 15 he joined his first band, playing alongside uncle Ian Jacobs, who is also a guitarist and by the age of 17 he had already acquired a reputation locally as a brilliant guitarist, but had begun to find the rock genre too limiting. It was around this time that he discovered the music of Paco de Lucia and John McLaughlin, which helped to provide the inspiration for a new direction and a return to acoustic guitar, his main love from childhood. A long and intense period of study followed. He started to teach himself classical guitar and read every book on theory, Jazz improvisation, harmony, counterpoint and composition that he could find, as well as taking theory lessons from respected teacher Paul Miller. This led inevitably to more formal studies of classical music and to the University of Glasgow 1996-99, where he specialized in performance and composition.

In 1998 he won a scholarship to attend the West-Dean International Summer School for Classical Guitar, where he received lessons from David Russell, Aniello Desiderio and Elena Papandreou. On return to Glasgow he continued his studies with the renowned guitarist Allan Neave.

In 1999 he returned to England and devoted a year to composing a new repertoire for guitar and in 2000 he moved to Germany to pursue a solo career performing his own music. A year later marked the release of his debut CD “Receptive” (art-mode-records), an exciting, virtuosic display of solo guitar playing with a wide range of influences - Classical to Jazz, Flamenco to New Music. While more recent experiments with electronics have further expanded his already diverse sound pallet, particularly with the projects “Inner Light” and “11 Pieces”.

To date, Jason Spurway has composed over 100 works for solo guitar and continues to be a rising force as performer, composer and improviser.