From the moment he made his debut in 1985 with the gold-selling Grammy-nominated album Magic Touch, guitar virtuoso Stanley Jordan has proven himself as a forward thinking innovator. With his nimbly executed “touch” or “tap” technique, he ushered a spellbinding new sound into the world of progressive instrumental music. Over the course of five major recordings and several smaller independent releases, Stanley has explored earthly and astral musical trailways. Because of his innovative approach to guitar, Stanley has been looked upon first and foremost as a musical original, orbiting in an artistic universe without predecessor or immediate successor. With his new album, State Of Nature (his first mainstream release in over a decade, and his debut for the Mack Avenue label), Stanley Jordan makes another bold step by using his music to aurally illustrate profoundly unifying truths about man's relationship to nature and humankind.

“Part of the reason that I made this album were revelations I discovered in my journey to try to become a better person,” he states. “The other reason is that I discovered some disturbing information about environmental issues such as global warming, the deterioration of our planet and man’s role in it. When I was a kid, my family lived in what is now known as Silicon Valley, which used to be a vast swath of open land with farms and orchards. People talked a lot back then about taking care of the environment, but fast forward to today and it's still a problem. It made me wonder how humans can know about things like global warming and still not do anything. What is it about humans that makes us so intelligent and yet so unwise?”

The concert at Strathmore will find Stanley weaving classical, jazz and rock textures to get across his messages of atonement and harmony. Beyond his signature touch technique on guitar, Stanley utilizes other revolutionary techniques, such as playing two guitars at once, playing guitar and piano simultaneously, and incorporating sounds of nature that he recorded himself.