Among so many electric guitarists in the world today, Claude Pauly certainly stands out to be a very creative and energetic player. His latest release Mind Meets Matter speaks high volumes of his terrific chops along with some very solid writing.
Claude was born in Luxembourg in 1964, and eventually found his way to the guitar via various other school music instruments at the age of 16. Soon the electric guitar became a main focus, and the initial self taught years lead him through various blues, rock and experimental bands.
Having been exposed to and passionately loving really all kinds of music, from Louis Armstrong to Pink Floyd and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, his focus eventually shifted to mostly guitar based jazz fusion, and his emerging urge to understand and master jazz fusion music and guitar playing lead him to enrol in various technique and theory courses at the London Guitar Institute, mainly studying with Shaun Baxter. London was to later became his home for a few years, and those years’ input, merged with a large array of musical and guitaristic influences, were to forge a large part of his jazz- fusion playing and writing style, always trying to merge the energy and emotional intensity of electric/rock guitar playing with the vast array of harmonic colours, tensions and musical shapes of the jazz and fusion vocabulary.
Playing in various projects, Claude also continuously refined his compositional and arranging skills, and also started to write and produce radio and TV jingles for various Luxembourg based stations. Back in Luxembourg, he started teaching and doing session work for various rock, pop and zouk artists, continued the jingle work and wrote music for theatre and modern dance plays. He intensely gigged with the fusion band Garlicks, who released the critically acclaimed CD “Mutant Standards”, and later on he released “Jazzperiments”, an acid-jazzy/ambient record less focused on guitar. He performed with and wrote for in the acoustic Spire Trio as well as numerous local and international fusion and jazz formations. Together with some of Luxembourg’s finest jazz musicians, Claude then got involved in the highly successful “India meets Europe” project, featuring Benares sitar master Deobrat Mishra, and arranged an composed some of the concert material, consisting of a blend of traditional Indian music and jazz fusion.
The fusion CD MIND MEETS MATTER features bassist Kai Eckhardt (John McLaughlin, Garaj Mahal) , drummer Alan Hertz (Scott Henderson, Garaj Mahal) and keyboardist Frank Martin ( John McLaughlin, Richard Bona, Sting).
