JAZZ IN THE BOX: MASTER JAZZ GUITAR ANTHONY WILSON

Anthony Wilson is a guitarist and composer known for a nuanced body of work that moves fluidly across genres.

Born in Los Angeles, Wilson is the son of the late jazz trumpeter and bandleader Gerald Wilson. That lineage has deeply informed his creative trajectory, compositional choices and instrumental groupings along with the wide-ranging discography that blooms out of them. Wilson’s acclaimed collection of organ-trio albums, which feature Larry Goldings on organ and alternate drummers Jim Keltner and Jeff Hamilton, reimagine and reframe post-bop, soul-inflected jazz. His new album Frogtown (2016) is Wilson’s widest-ranging work to date and his debut as a singer.

An inventive soloist and sensitive accompanist, Wilson has provided texture and authority both on stage and in recording sessions for jazz legends such as Ron Carter, Mose Allison, Bobby Hutcherson, Bennie Wallace, Joe Sample, Al Jarreau and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

While his footing is firmly in the jazz idiom, Wilson pivots with ease into other genres. Over the last decade, he’s been part of sessions and performances with a diverse roster of artists, including Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, Aaron Neville and Barbra Streisand. In 2009, he arranged and orchestrated Brazilian composer Ivan Lins’ “Love Dance” for Ms. Streisand’s Grammy-nominated album Love Is the Answer.

In 2001, he became a core component of Diana Krall’s quartet after joining her for a series of concerts in Paris at the Olympia Theater that became the Grammy-winning recording and concert film Live in Paris (2002).

A gifted composer as well, Wilson, while still in his 20s, won the Thelonious Monk Institute International Composers Competition in 1995. Since then he has received commissions from IAJE, the Henry Mancini Institute, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.